|
Statistics
- Title - Valley of Shadows
- Author - Y I Lee
- Genre - Fantasy/Youth
- Publication Date - June 2009
Preview
In the Valley of Shadows, nothing is quite what it appears to be. What Celia is forced to face here is worse than antyhing she experienced in the land of Dauthus. The evil that resides in the valley messes with your mind.
Review
First of all, I'd like to mirror my last review by thanking Y I Lee for sending us a free copy of her novel so we could review it. Any aspiring writer should visit the internet forum ChristianWriters.com
Valley of Shadows is written in the style of CS Lewis's Narnia or John White's Archives of Anthropos, meaning it is allegorical. Children travel into a dangerous fantasy world where each major conflict or story point has an analogy to real life issues surrounding faith, morals, and religion. The target demographic for Valley of Shadows seems to be youth although anyone else can enjoy the story as well. This apparently is a continuing theme with Lee's book since her previous work Through a Glass Darkly was written in the same fashion.
The main body of the story was well and good but I felt the climax and end to be a bit weak. The final villian is demolished almost too easily. *spoiler* With the remaining chapters I kept expecting a final twist with the step-father of Celia playing some final dastardly role. Perhaps he could have kidnapped Celia or mirrored some of the actions of Darkson. Instead, it's a very long, feel-good ending. This is not that bad a thing since many authors leave the reader hanging with scant details of their character's long term fate. But I still feel there could have been something more. *end spoiler*
The most disappointing aspect of the novel was the writing. The descriptions, narrative, and so on were fine. It was the grammar that reminded me of a transgressive novel...and, no, that's not a good thing in this case. I was constantly finding mistakes every page and to my mind this is very distracting.
I read Valley of Shadows over a period of a month. This is a bit longer than usual but my excuse is that I've been editing the Alpha Jan's upcoming novel Tourniquet. This affected my experience since there were long gaps between reading. Overall, I would say it's a good book but the editor, or author, should have spent more time with the editing process.
More Information
www.yvonne-Leeshadows.blogspot.com
www.Lovewriting.co.uk
|
