Published: 1980
Rating: ★★★★☆
After 130 pages I abandoned my reading of Shadow & Claw, frustrated by the seemingly ad-hoc scenes with little direction; another endless quest novel. Then I picked it up again some months later and was immediately hooked. Spellbound. Most strange. In her introduction Ada Palmer describes the reader as ‘powerless…groping through the maze trusting there will be meaning at the end’ which rings very true, and perhaps explains why I put it down for a spell.
But it’s a masterful tale masterfully told. The characters and world are unlike any other whilst being uncomfortably genre familiar. My enjoyment echoed that of reading Palmer’s Too Like The Lightning which confounded and delighted in a similar manner: trust the author and the reader is richly rewarded.