Medium – Book
About the Book – Leading on from ‘The Good Hawk’, the second book in the Shadow Skye Trilogy begins a few weeks after the previous book ends. We again see Jaime and Agatha, our heroes from the previous story, but also meet Sigrid, the eponymous Broken Raven of the title. The story sets off on three different routes. Agatha, who has Downs Syndrome, is trying to protect the inhabitants of Skye from horrible shadow monsters, Jaime travels to Scotia (Scotland) to try and locate the man that made the shadow monsters to destroy them. Meanwhile, Sigrid is chained to the king of the Norveg, being his eyes as he lost them at the end of the last book. Our three heroes fight against the evil, both magic and human, to try and save the people of Skye.
My Rating – 4/5
My Thoughts – I really enjoyed the first book in the Shadow Skye Trilogy – in fact, it was one of the first books that I read this year that I rated 5/5. I did not enjoy this book quite as much, but that isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy reading it. I think it is very much a bridging book between the first and third books, so it does lose something slightly from that. As with the previous book, I love the way that it is written. The three main characters sort of ‘narrate’ their own chapters, and the characters all have their own voices. Jaime’s is anxious and fretful, Agatha’s is brave with the speech patterns of someone with Downs, Sigrid’s is full of Norveg slang. The fact that the book is written this way helps us to feel closer to the characters.
Sigrid doesn’t appear in the previous book, but she is a lovely addition to the story. Sold by her unfeeling mother to the King, she is chained to him day and night, to be his eyes as his have been scratched out. She is brave and fiery, commenting on the strangeness of the English court that she visits that the women don’t speak or fight. She ends up being extremely brave, and I couldn’t help but like her. Agatha, again, is an absolute joy. Jaime is extremely anxious and nervous – the author does a great job of showing someone with (I think) a generalised anxiety disorder who ends up having to face his fears. I’m really looking forward to the third book (which I think is out next year) and will look forward to it joining my TBR pile!
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