Promise of Shadows
Author: Justina Ireland
Series: -
Pages: 371
Publisher: Simon & Schuster for Young Readers
Release date: 11th March 2014
Add to Goodreads
Synopsis. (Goodreads)
Zephyr Mourning has never been very good at being a Harpy. She’d rather
watch reality TV than learn forty-seven ways to kill a man, and she pretty much
sucks at wielding magic. Zephyr was ready for a future pretending to be a
normal human instead of a half-god assassin. But all that changes when her
sister is murdered—and she uses a forbidden dark power to save herself from the
same fate.
Zephyr is on the run from a punishment worse than death when an unexpected reunion with a childhood friend (a surprisingly HOT friend) changes everything. Because it seems like Zephyr might just be the Nyx, a dark goddess made flesh that is prophesied to change the power balance. For hundreds of years the half-gods have lived in fear, and Zephyr is supposed to change that.
But how is she supposed to save everyone when she can’t even save herself?
Zephyr is on the run from a punishment worse than death when an unexpected reunion with a childhood friend (a surprisingly HOT friend) changes everything. Because it seems like Zephyr might just be the Nyx, a dark goddess made flesh that is prophesied to change the power balance. For hundreds of years the half-gods have lived in fear, and Zephyr is supposed to change that.
But how is she supposed to save everyone when she can’t even save herself?
Review:
2 ½ out of 5 stars
Promise of Shadows is a book I was quite excited about reading, I have never
read about Harpies before and the premise seemed quite unique but I was left
underwhelmed by this one unfortunately.
At the
beginning of the book we meet Zephyr Mourning who has been stripped of her
wings and sent to Tartarus - the Underworld. She is now serving a life sentence
for using a forbidden dark power and killing a God. Along with her closest
friend Cass she is rescued by Blue and her childhood friend Tallon and taken to
the mortal realm.
As the story
progresses, we find out Zephyr may be the missing Nyx and prophesied to change
the power balance, her sole purpose is to kill Hera to make things right. Not a
lot happens for a majority of the book unfortunately and what was going on left
me confused, the action was limited and the pacing was slow as I waited for
things to get interesting – which they did towards the end but it was very slow
to build.
The MC fell
flat for me; she lacked personality and relied too much on others to get her
out of tricky situations which just led to unnecessary trouble. I also couldn’t
believe that someone with the abilities of a goddess constantly found herself caught
in a bind despite holding an amazingly strong power.
I love
mythology in books but the terminology in this one I found was lacking – I am
still a tad clueless about what an AEthereal and Exalted
are. The explanations that were needed I thought were missing.
The
concept was wonderful but I feel this book needed more world-building and
character development. The secondary characters interested me more than the
MC’s, Cass was intriguing and Blue bought a bit of humour to the story, Tallon
I just found to be arrogant and the romance wasn’t believable at all. There
were a lot of YA clichés that weren’t realistic.
Overall,
Promise of Shadows had a lot of potential
but regrettably left me feeling underwhelmed.
Thank-you
kindly to Simon & Schuster via Edelweiss for the opportunity to read and
review this title.
