Shadow Scale
A Companion to Seraphina
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4.2 • 67 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Seraphina took the literary world by storm with 8 starred reviews and numerous “Best of” lists. At last, her eagerly awaited sequel has arrived—and with it comes an epic battle between humans and dragons.
The kingdom of Goredd: a world where humans and dragons share life with an uneasy balance, and those few who are both human and dragon must hide the truth. Seraphina is one of these, part girl, part dragon, who is reluctantly drawn into the politics of her world. When war breaks out between the dragons and humans, she must travel the lands to find those like herself—for she has an inexplicable connection to all of them, and together they will be able to fight the dragons in powerful, magical ways.
As Seraphina gathers this motley crew, she is pursued by humans who want to stop her. But the most terrifying is another half dragon, who can creep into people’s minds and take them over. Until now, Seraphina has kept her mind safe from intruders, but that also means she’s held back her own gift. It is time to make a choice: Cling to the safety of her old life, or embrace a powerful new destiny?
Praise for Seraphina:
A New York Times Bestseller
An Indie Bestseller
Winner of the William C. Morris Debut Award
Winner of the Cybil Award for Teen Fantasy and Science Fiction
An Amazon Top 20 Teen Book of the Year
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of the Year
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Library Journal Best Young Adult Literature for Adults Selection
A Booklist Editors’ Choice
An ABA New Voices Pick
A Publishers Weekly Flying Start Author
An ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book
An ALA-YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults Book
Recipient of 8 Starred Reviews
“Beautifully written, well-rounded characters, and some of the most interesting dragons I’ve read in fantasy for a long while. An impressive debut novel; I can’t wait to see what Rachel Hartman writes next.”
—Christopher Paolini, New York Times bestselling author of Eragon
“A novel that will appeal to both fans of Christopher Paolini’s Eragon series and Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown.”
—Entertainment Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this strong follow-up to 2012's Seraphina, Hartman continues the adventures of that book's eponymous half-dragon, who is now assigned with finding and uniting her fellow "ityasaari" before the full-blooded dragons can resolve their civil war and mobilize to wipe out the southern human kingdoms. But some ityasaari don't want to be found, and one, who has the power to enter and control minds, would rather see them united for her own bitter purpose. With numerous factions jockeying for power and war on the horizon, Seraphina must unlock her own long-dormant potential and find a way to save everyone she loves. As the page count attests, Hartman's style is leisurely; she builds her epic fantasy carefully, with attention to detail and atmosphere, while letting the plot simmer and allowing just as much to happen off-screen as in Seraphina's presence. She juggles the large cast skillfully, balancing wide-screen action with intimate character development (including some deft, thoughtful treatments of gender identity), allowing for some subtle yet surprising revelations. This is a worthy and wholly satisfying continuation of Seraphina's tale. Ages 12 up.
Customer Reviews
Didn't tie anything up and made no effort to explain anything
The first book wasn't anything amazing it was just something to read but was at least interesting enough that it didn't earn any complaints from me and since this was a series I obviously had to read the second book. One thing that really irritated me, and I had huge problems with this in the first book as well, was that the author would just throw random terms in there and it would be left up to your own detective skills to figure out what half this crap means and I had hoped that since it was the second book of this series that there would be less confusion. Secondly there were too many loose ends left and the main character basically didn't do anything but travel for more than half the book. It was also annoying that she just accepted failure and knew for at least half the book what to do to help the other characters but just did nothing but I guess that was the authors way of trying to make a story. Thirdly it was like all the characters mindset had changed completely from the first book to the second one like Lucian Kiggs, a character who from the first time he was introduced in this serious was some who valued HONESTY and THE TRUTH, married his now lesbian cousin who is queen of their country and is perfectly okay with this. I don't think I would have minded this so much if it weren't for the fact that all of this was thrown onto us within the last 40 pages or so like nothing led up to that conclusion and best of all Seraphina, the main character, is perfectly okay with this because she has now seen the whole universe and understands different perspectives of life or whatever it was point Is most the book could be summarized Into like two pages but was dragged on causing all the characters to have different attitudes and made the book confusing an utterly pointless. Don't read this book if you think it's going to be decent because you will just end up wasting your time.