Shadow's Son

Book Details:
Genre: Fantasy
Page Count: 278
Publication Date: June 22, 2010
Why I read it: looked good
Grade: B

Cover thoughts:
I like this cover pretty well. It seems to go along with the story good, too.

About the author:
This is Jon Sprunk's first novel. You can find his website here.

The plot:
Caim makes his living on the edge of a blade, but when a routine job goes south, he is thrust into the middle of an insidious plot. Pitted against crooked lawmen, rival killers, and sorcery from the Other Side, his only allies are Josephine, the socialite daughter of his last victim, and Kit, a guardian spirit no one else can see.

Characters:
I'll be honest here. I don't think Caim is a particularly likable character. He's an unfeeling assassin, after all. He does get better as the book goes on, but I have a hard time connecting with him. Our lives don't exactly have a lot in common. :) Josephine (Josey), on the other hand, is one of those strong female characters that I really like. Maybe even a little too strong, at times, because there is a scene in particular that she seemed to barely have a reaction to, and her reaction should have been much stronger. Kit flutters in and out of the story to the point where we really don't know much about her. We just get banter between her and Caim, mostly. I would be interested to find out more about her.

Setting:
The worldbuilding seems to take a backseat here in this character and action oriented book. Thinking back on the story, I don't really know a whole lot about the world or the way it works, except that there is a bunch of political strife going on. There are a lot of fight scenes, though, with play by play descriptions, so if you're looking for action, you'll find plenty here.

Read this if you're in the mood for: a pretty straightforward action-packed fantasy. There's not a whole lot here that's new. It's also not one of those that's so hard to read that you have to concentrate hard every second. It's just a nice, quick fantasy.

Continue or part ways?
I'll definitely continue on to the next in the series. I'm curious to see where the story goes from here.