Lynnie 
Amy 
I was not in the mood to become familiarized with the
fantasy world being laid out at the beginning of the novel. I might have set it
aside if my sister hadn’t recently enjoyed this novel. Since I like when we can
post joint reviews, I persisted.
Thankfully, the characters and their backstories became
interesting after learning a little about their situations. The characters were
fun to get to know and I liked that many of them weren’t necessarily good or
bad but somewhere inbetween. While this was another novel about a magical race
being attacked, the particular world described in this novel had its own charm,
limitations, and characteristics. The way the relationships wove together
worked really well. I liked it and look forward to reading the sequel to check
in with these wonderful characters again.
Picking up 1-1/2 weeks after There Will Come a Darkness
ends, Pool does a fantastic job catching the reader up about the major plot
points from the first novel in the series. HOORAY!!! I wish more authors would do this! Well done,
Pool!
Amy's Review
As the Shadow Rises is another amazing adventure story with all the
characters moving around the world, doing what they think they should be doing
or reacting to the circumstances that were forced upon them. Again, all five
points of view are equally intriguing. The mysteries and the discoveries are
fun. While the characters stick to their current “teams” during most of the novel,
some overlapping does occur.
My complaint comes near the end when things are simply not
so believable (in a novel which already requires huge gobs of acceptance with
wild fantasy elements). We discover some crazy identities/motivations
and then the “novices” are able to simply control and/or persuade significantly
experienced and powerful villains. The story had many conveniences that felt
too easy. But, overall, I am still enjoying the adventure and the clear writing
by Pool. So, I plan to finish the series after the final novel is released.
I listened to the audiobook for this novel which was narrated by Todd Boyce. Let me say that he has an incredible voice repertoire which was very impressive. There are a lot of characters in this series and he gives them each their own sound and uses many different accents. However, I could not stand the voices he gave to Anton and Illya. They sound very similar but that’s okay since they’re brothers. But why did he make them sound like a creepy Christopher Walken? UGH! I like Anton’s character and he just sounds SO WRONG. Boyce would sometimes narrate with slow-speak, taking too many breaths within sentences, which can be very useful for certain narration projects but not novels. That is my biggest complaint with his work on this novel. It was like he was Casey Kasem (I bet he could do a spot-on impression) emceeing the Top 40. Whenever he spoke in what I imagine to be his own voice (which he gave to Jude) particularly, he reverted to the emcee/movie trailer method of speech. Weighing the pros and cons, I’ll give him an A- for this one, mostly as a reward for his huge vocal cast of characters. I just wish he’d made a few different choices.
Lynnie's Review
I
decided to try to put my commuting time to good use and listen to an
audio book- this was a great choice. I enjoyed the narrator's voice
repertoire immensely and he did a great job of bring the story to life
for me. My only complaint about him is that I did not like his vocal
choice for one of my favorite characters, Anton.
That said, this
was another action-filled journey into the world of Pool's Age of
Darkness series. Like any good middle book, characters were moved around
the chess board, met and left one another, as their stories were
further interwoven to set up the final book. I admit that if I had not
been listening to the book I likely would have skimmed many of the
chapters. I found that I didn't care very much about several of the
characters (Hassan and Beru in particular) as their stories moved
slowly and just didn't interest me. I was thrilled whenever there was a
chapter from Anton or Jude's point of view as I found both their
character development and journey to be the most interesting overall.
Still,
I'm looking forward to reading the third book when it's released. I
definitely think that reading this series so close to one another has
helped me remember what is going on- with so many characters and
locations, I think I would have lost track if I'd had to wait a year
between novels.
young adult, fantasy
Amy's Review
Sadly, about a quarter of the way through this final novel
in the trilogy, I almost put it down and did not finish. And then ¾ of the way
through, I almost put it down again! The story in this one just became too far-fetched,
rambling, and cheesy. I love fantasy but only when it feels plausible or
reasonable on some level. The examples I state here are not spoilers if you’ve
read the previous novels in the series. The fact that Beru was able to harness
an all-powerful god within her body was just too extreme in my mind. Also, the
various levels of power were exhausting to keep up with and sometimes
nonsensical—the main characters would defeat seemingly impossible situations
and then later fall to a group of people with no more power than they
themselves had.
Another thing that bugs me in general are overly religious storylines
in fantasy novels. Even though it is a religion created by the author, if it’s
not done just perfectly, I really don’t care enough about some fake belief
system whose only purpose is for non-human super-forces to rule over and cause
harm to humans. Such is the case here. It just grew tedious. And then there is
an all-powerful prophet who regrets that they’ve created this entire difficult
situation for the characters. Oh paleeze. The romantic relationships felt sappy
instead of genuine. I’m really having a hard time coming up with anything I
loved about this one.
It’s tough to do trilogies that can maintain their momentum
in all three novels. Usually, the
middle book is the disappointing one because the author’s manipulation from
forcibly inflating the story arc shows. But it’s downright depressing when
you’d been enjoying the first two novels and then the final installment sags so
much. Plus, this novel was WAY TOO LONG!
On top of my downwardly spiraling opinion of this trilogy the further I got, the audiobook narrator, Todd Boyce, was so annoying in this one. I had docked him some points in the last novel because of some of his vocal choices with the characters. But his new problem with this novel was that, when he was not voicing a specific character, his “narrator” voice was whispery—almost as if he was trying not to wake a sleeping person in the next room. This tone did not match the tone for a fantasy action novel and would have been better for a bedtime story. His reading alone almost made me stop listening to the audiobook. But I did not have access to a Kindle or hardcopy edition of this novel so I persevered. I give him a B- because he definitely contributed to my poor opinion of this novel. I would have scored him even lower except he did still display a great variety of voices for the characters.
The last book in the Age of Darkness series, and my sister & I had such different opinions of it! I honestly think it's because she listened to the audiobook and I read Katy Rose Pool's latest. Having listened to the second in the series, I did not enjoy the narration as much as I enjoyed reading the books. While I thought the narrator had a nice array of voices, his choices really made me dislike characters that I had previously enjoyed & generally made me not like the story so I made the conscious decision to read this last book & I definitely think it helped me focus on the story more than the voice selections.
I enjoyed the conclusion of this series- even though yes, parts of it were cheesy and melodramatic and absolutely unrealistic & convenient. One of the joys of fantasy novels is that sometimes things just magically work out the way you want them to & this book is no exception. I was glad to see that everyone didn't have a happy ending, but I did think that everyone got the ending that seemed appropriate. More than anything though, I enjoyed the journey. It's hard to say too much without spoiling the ending, so I'll just say that if you enjoyed the first two, you will likely enjoy the finale as well. I'm looking forward to seeing what Katy Rose Pool writes next.
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