Review : The Shadowglass by Rin Chupeco

“𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐦𝐞, 𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤, 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐈 𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝. 𝐌𝐲 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬𝐠𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬 𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐠𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡, 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫…”

• Author : Rin Chupeco
• Release date : March 5th 2019
• Publishing house : SourcebooksFire
• Number of pages : 449

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Head here if you want to read my review of The Bone Witch and here for The Heart Forger.

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Tea is a bone witch with the dark magic needed to raise the dead. She has used this magic to breathe life into those she has loved and lost…and those who would join her army against the deceitful royals. But Tea’s quest to conjure a shadowglass—to achieve immortality for the one person she loves most in the world—threatens to consume her heart.

Tea’s black heartsglass only grows darker with each new betrayal. And when she is left with new blood on her hands, Tea must answer to a power greater than the elder asha or even her conscience…

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Characters :

Tea Pahlavi : I think Tea has become one of my favourites heroes if not my favourite. Even if almost everyone tries to distance themselves from her because she is dangerous (she is plagued by strange visions, and sometimes she does not control herself), she strives to complete what she believes in. She is driven by the unfairness of the Asha association, the horrors committed by the Faceless, the plots against herself and her friends. Wouldn’t we all want to achieve the impossible just to save our loved ones ? Even in the midst of betrayal, traumas, deaths, she remains steadfast and that’s what I liked about her. Sometimes she is too emotional and impulsive and some of her choices suffer from these personality traits.

I ADORED Tea and Kalen. He is brave enough to follow her on her path to vengeance. His love for Tea is so… pure and strong. He would stay by her side until Tea’s quest is achieved and he would fight anyone trying to kill her or taking her away from him. Both of them have strong personalities and sometimes they clash but their way of dealing with it was a lot more adult-like than in a lot of novels.

I crawled out of my grave, as I promised. Do you think I’d let you get away again? You promised me daughters with your eyes. Where you go, I will follow.

The secondary characters were as good as in the first two books. Not a single side character was left out and each one of them had an important role.

Likh has grown a lot. During the first two books, her was struggling with his identity and was trying to find her place in the world. Well, now, she’s found it. The way Likh was developed was well done and so was her transition from « his » to « her ». She even tried to find if some kind of magic existed to turn her into a woman but to no avail. She has also grown more confident. I have never seen her raise his voice and when she did it in the book, I was surprised but in a good way. Her relationship with Khalad (the Heartforger) was cute. At first, there were some funny scenes because Khalad was not too comfortable with it being known by everyone. But he goes beyond that and both of them support the other.

Story :

The story is still told by two people : the bard in the future and Tea in the past. But both perspectives are slowly merging together to give us a very epic finale to the series. The Shadowglass is as fast-paced as The Heartforger. Her team (Kalen, Likh and Khalad) travel to other countries by riding a three-headed dragon trying to discover the truths about their world and some unknown forms of magic. One of my most favourite scenes was during the Yadoshians’ banquet during which both Likh and Tea got drunk.

In the final sequel, we learn a lot more about mythology and the way the most important texts were altered to suit a specific agenda. How to distinguish between the true and the false ? They also speak about how important magic is for both the Asha association and the Faceless. The former wants to use it to assert their powers while the latter wants to fulfil a misleading belief of the god they venerate.

Words are shapeshifters. They take different forms to suit different motivations. The word for blue can be sifted and changed until it spells red. We share similar teachings with the Faceless, but what they take and learn from those teachings are different from the messages we treasure. It is why words are important, and it is why they can be dangerous.

Tea’s journey finally comes at an end. She had to make a choice : either to achieve shadowglass and to become a godlike woman and to save his brother or to destroy magic once and for all and kill her brother and Kalen. We see Tea struggling with her sanity as she is let to believe that the dark is driving her crazy and that she has become dangerous for everyone. Her emotions are so… raw that you can’t help but feeling sad for her. The writing was really good in conveying this feeling.

Tea finally puts a stop to a system in which dark Ashas were used by the Asha Association to put down daevas. By drawing too much in the dark, dark Ashas were led to an early grave as it takes a toll on them. All along the trilogy, she remains true to her desire to save both the future Ashas and the existing ones. Without magic, the elders of the Asha association would see their authority undermine and they would not be as feared as they are now. A lot of people have been led to think that dark Ashas were bad and that they were to be avoided like the plague but Tea knows the truth and fights for it.

As I was reaching the end, there definitely were tears in my eyes as I knew what was coming to happen. But I’m glad that the author chose this ending as it makes a lot more sense.