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Review: Shadowplay by Tad Williams

After spending the last 2 months mixing in reading of Shadowplay with some other books, I finally finished it last night. And wonder of wonders, I am actually writing the review the next day (instead of waiting 2-3 weeks and forgetting what I want to say). You might wonder if taking 2 months to read a book is an indicator of how interested I was in the story. As you will see, the answer to that question is "yes".

Like Shadowmarch, I have very mixed feelings about Shadowplay. One of the complaints you will see most often about Shadowmarch is that it was too slow. That was true, though I thought only the middle 1/3 was slow. Stuff started happening in the last 1/3 of Shadowmarch, and I assumed that pace would carry over into Shadowplay. Wrong. In many ways, I enjoyed Shadowplay less than the first book. I thought this one was actually slow for the first 2/3 of the story..only gaining momentum (and hence, my interest) in the final 1/3. There were many, many times where I had to put the book down due to lack of interest. I like most of the characters just fine, but it seemed like nothing was happening to any of them. I like to be really vague about story details in my reviews, as I would rather write something shorter that just gives you my overall feeling of the book. And that is why the following summary won't even list character names. Anyway, for the first 2/3 of the book we have one character on the run to escape Shadowmarch. The escape starts off interesting, but quickly turns boring until the very end of the book. We have 2 other characters wandering around in the shadowlands, but nothing too exciting happens to them, either..until the final 1/3 if the story. We finally get more time with the captured King, but being a prisoner, nothing happens to him until the final 1/3 of the story. Do you see the trend? Sure, there might be a couple of pages for each POV where interesting things happen early in the book, but for the most part it feels like we are being fed information/background that we will need for the final 2 books. The story doesn't feel like it is advancing really at all, until, you guessed it, the final 1/3 of the book.

So the lack of momentum and important things happening really ruined the pace of the book for me. With so little happening, it was hard to read 50-100 pages without getting bored and moving on to something else. Then I would pick up Shadowplay after a few days, read another 50 pages, then put it down again. The good news is that once you get to the final 1/3, you are reminded how great a Tad Williams book can be. At the end, lots of interesing stuff is happening to pretty much every POV character..and you are thinking "here we go! this is great! there is finally some real tension and danger now". Thus, I was able to read the last few hundred pages without feeling like I needed to pick up another book. The third book is set up for some really great storylines. Though I thought the same exact thing at the end of Shadowmarch. Luckily reviews hint that books 3 and 4 really redeem the series (that link is to a review of the 4th book, so be careful if you click it. If you do click it, read his summary of the early books in the first 3 paragraphs). I usually agree with that fellow from A Dribble of Ink, so I am looking forward to the really good stuff from the end of Shadowplay continuing through the rest of the series.

At this point, I'm not sure what kind of recommendation to give. If you are a fan of Williams, you will most likely enjoy this book despite the slow start. If you like your story to evolve more slowly, you will like this book. However, if you are looking for something a little more action packed, along the lines of Erikson or Barclay, you might struggle with this one. I think a true judgement of this book (and really, book 1) will have to wait until the entire series has been read.

Grade:
First 2/3 of the book: C-
Final 1/3 of book: A-