Shroud of Shadow

Rating:
Summary: Last Elf trys to find hope!
Review: Natil is the last of her peaple and her powers are fading. She still trys to heal even if all she can give is a song. The church is burning anything and any one it can not accept. Is there still room in the world for magic or elves anymore. Gael Baudino's 'Shroud of Shadow' is a dark book as the title might suggest but it is not just about what harm peaple do to each other it is also about redemption.There is light at the end of the tunnel.A compelling read.

Rating:
Summary: Ugh...
Review: Natil is the last of the Elven race, and in this novel she takes a runaway nun, Omelda, under her wing during the time of the Inquisition. Natil's powers are mostly gone, except for her miraculous harp playing, which is the only thing that saves Omelda from suicide. Natil herself is suicidal, and wants nothing more than to crawl under a rock and cease to exist. Obsessed with this goal, she doesn't do much for Omelda except get the two of them indentured to a selfish rich man, his greedy sons, and his perverted grandsons. Much description of sadistic rape follows.

Natil keeps herself going because she has visions of Elves reawakening in the twentieth century--the only trouble is that these elves are this rather boring couple who spend all their time navel-gazing and talking about how groovy their new powers are. So anyway, they're the hope of the Elven race, and Natil goes on about her business, bemoaning her own lack of powers and still planning her departure from this world. Natil's self-pity blinds her to the much more dire plight of Omelda; I was sorely disappointed in Natil over this.

Eventually, all the major characters end up charged by the Inquisition. Description of nasty tortures follows. Some of the characters get a semi-happy ending, due to the fact that money conquers all, but the end suffered by one of the characters is absolutely pointless and depressing. Overall, the book sunk me into a morass of despair while all the while making me want to throw up. I wanted to wash my brain out with soap afterward. (Literally--after I finished the book, I had to read some pages of something else before I could sleep.) Perhaps this is the effect Baudino is trying to acheive. And yes, I know that these atrocities really happened to real people during those times. But there's no law saying I have to enjoy reading about it in detail. The scenes where Natil actually *does* something, for example when she plays the harp or when she stands up to the Inquisitor, are quite good, but you have to wade through hundreds of pages of gross-out to find them.

Rating:
Summary: A story in the best tradition of Science Fiction/Fantasy
Review: The best of science fiction/fantasy doesn't just tell old worn familiar stories with new props (dragons instead of horses); it helps us live another vision, another time in history, another point of view. It challenges our thinking, makes us walk in the other persons shoes, and kicks our butts out of the daily rut. It tells us stories that we have to keep thinking about for awhile after the book is finished. Gael Baudino's "Shroud of Shadow" is such a work. The story takes us back to the days of the Inquisition and the death of magic. It leads us through our own history as the last Elf ...passing among humans as a woman harpist...struggles with a world bereft of beauty, and one almost lost to hope. The writing is beautiful, the experience both chilling and disturbing. Let yourself read this book. Let yourself talk a walk through the past that will raise questions about our present...and future.

Rating:
Summary: Decent story.....if you can ignore the authors social views
Review: The idea was a good one.....but the promise of the story was not played out well. I believe the author had an agenda behind writing this book. Perhaps it was the dedication to all women who had been killed by husbands or boyfriends in the state of Colorodo which prefaced the book that tipped me off? The characters in the book, with the exception of the elf Natil, fall into the stereotypical ideas of the abusive male, and the resigned-to-fate female. Most of the action of the book tells of violent acts against women. Several times the author used the phrase, "men striking women, women scolding men..." to describe the life in a city.

Rating:
Summary: Dreadful
Review: This book makes an attempt to address serious issues. Unfortunately, having terrible things happen to your characters -- such as being abused and repeatedly raped -- doesn't necessarily make for serious treatment of such issues. The character Omelda's very passivity in the face of such treatment is incomprehensible, and passive characters aren't exactly the stuff of satisfying fiction. None of the characters in Shroud of Shadow are very believable anyway, and although the Inquisition rears its ugly head near the end, you could almost think it wasn't that big a deal because it is so easily dealt with. The author seems to be saying that having plenty of money to throw around can solve just about any problem.