Review of The Shade of Highfall

[Stellarbear]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Shade of Highfall" by Mark O'Dell.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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This book Shade of Highfall is a fantasy book which will take you into the fantasy land called Highland written by "Mark O'Dell". It is about a girl called Shrew who has a keen ability to find weird and strange things. In this way she finds a blade which connects her with a spirit of Fair. This journey takes her from orphanhood to a cult and her family. The attention to architectural details and surrounding environment is quite appreciable. The shrew’s character development and the entire plot of the story were good it had potential in it.

When I started this novel the first thing I noticed was the incredibly detailed descriptions – a feature that I was glad to see was continued throughout the story. Resulting from the descriptions I was able to visualise all the characters and the locations easily. It can be seen to me that the author requisites carefully planned the city of Highfall and the various levels of society before writing The Shade of Highfall.

The Shade of Highfall builds gradually, and I really appreciated this slower pace as it allowed the novel to take its time and properly introduce Shrew and Highfall. It was very enjoyable to follow the story as it progressed and see Shrew grow and develop into a fierce, independent woman and become the Shade of Highfall. As well as being captivating, I thought this was a really clever way of bringing the past and present together and giving the reader a peep into Highfall’s long history.

For me, the writing methodology was a bit confusing. The story had a bit of flaws in it, like the characters are introduced in the story without any pretext. Incidents are happening without any pre-context.at the ending, the novel got a bit of confusing everyone started trusting Shrew, and she is fighting like a warrior who had fought multiple wars, and introducing characters in the ending seemed a bit off for me. I feel like the author ruined his own suspense in the ending.

As it is having plot holes in it, so I would rate this book 2 out of 4 stars .

The readers who are willing to read an action filled fantasy story, this one is just perfect for you.

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The Shade of Highfall
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