Shadowmancer

Rating:
Summary: Barely readable
Review: Oh, dear. It's very rarely that I have to struggle to finish a book, but if I hadn't been stuck in a hotel room with nothing else to do this one would still be languishing, half-finished, on my bedroom floor. It's long since gone to Oxfam to bore some other poor soul rigid.

Creaking plot, cardboard characters, overt evangalism, overused Bible quotes and tired cliches in the place of dialogue - Shadowmancer has nothing to recommend it, unless you're looking for a cynical laugh at the author's heavy-handed attempt at fundamentalist anti-occult propaganda. ("KIDS! Magic is DANGEROUS! Don't try this at home!!!") The sound of one or two characters - the obligatory feisty girl sidekick/token female character, for example - struggling to develop personalities is drowned out by the clanking of the plot and the chorus of hallelujahs.

If you're raising kids in the Christian faith and want good fantasy fiction for them, for goodness' sake stick to CS Lewis or Pullman, or even Pilgrim's Progress. Don't touch this book with a bargepole - it'll put them off for life, not to mention the dangers that the sloppy writing poses to their English grammar.

In all honesty: recommended only for punctuation-impaired fundamentalists.

Rating:
Summary: SHADOWMANCER BY G.P. TAYLOR
Review: I'VE JUST READ THE REVIEWS SUBMITTED BY [e-mail] AND HATWELL BOOKS AND I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH THE NEGATIVE VIEWS THAT THEY HAVE GIVEN ON THIS GREAT BOOK.

THIS BRILLIANT NEW WRITER MR G.P.TAYLOR, HAS WRITTEN A "MASTERPIECE". THIS BOOK WHICH IS NOW IN IT'S 8th REPRINT HAS JUST SIGNED UP A PUBLISHING DEAL WITH AMERICAN GIANTS PENGUIN PUTNAM. IT HAS RECEIVED RAVE REVIEWS WORLDWIDE AND IS A TALE OF SUPERSTITION, WITCHCRAFT,AND MAGIC AND IS SET IN NORTH YORKSHIRE ON THE EAST COAST, AROUND THE AREA WHERE MR TAYLOR LIVES.

IT'S ONE OF THOSE BOOKS THAT GRABS YOU FROM THE START AND IS VERY ADDICTIVE,AND IT ALSO APPEALS TO ALL AGE GROUPS. IF YOU WANT A GREAT READ,THIS IS THE BOOK TO GET,IT'S HOTTER THAN POTTER AND ALL THE REST PUT TOGETHER. 10 OUT OF 10 FROM ME, I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE NEXT 2 BOOKS TO COME OUT.

Rating:
Summary: Shadowmancer
Review: Obadiah Demurral wants to be God. I know a few people like that and it never works - they never learn do they, or do they? With our heros Raphah, Kate and Thomas around, good is sure to prevail.
I thoroughly enjoyed Shadowmancer. It is very well written with what I call the '3D effect'. I felt as if I was in each scene, so much so I could actually smell the environment surrounding me. I was delighted with the Christian element running through it, it made it all the more real and comforting when good and evil are so much a part of our lives.
G.P. Taylor did not need a magic wand to elicit magic, the book was pure magic in itself.
I look forward to seeing the film and reading his next novel.

Rating:
Summary: terrible writing
Review: Even if one doesn't mind the over-religious tone (after all, the author is a vicar and there's nothing wrong with him promoting his own beliefs), the writing of this book is terrible. The characters are two-dimensional caricatures. The author couldn't be bothered to create his own dialog for the priest character, but instead continually fills his mouth with verbatim quotes from the Bible. And the dialog of the other characters....totally unbelievable is putting it mildly. There is no character development; instead the author simply tells you what the characters feel.

If you're after well-written fantasy by a writer who promotes a Christian world view without shoving it down the readers' throats, look to contemporary writers like Stephen Lawhead and the old masters like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. This book is to Lewis, Tolkien, and JK Rowling what a Ford Fiesta is to a Rolls Royce.

Rating:
Summary: Good, But too fast.
Review: Shadowmancer gets you going from the first page, it just goes straight into all action, fun and games and high pranks. Throw in a bit of magic and some strange monsters and you get an interesting read. The problem with it is very simple, you take a very promising situation, expect it to develop into a dozen pages of nerve tangling plot, with a twist or two along the way, and it does not do it, it is over in half a page and you are left thinking, I could have done that better. I however did not, and credit to Mr Taylor for doing what I have failed in twenty years of promising to do, but it could have given so much more to the reader. Definitely more Tolkein than Potter, but a long way from Lord of the Rings. It is enjoyable, and worth having a look at.

Rating:
Summary: ...an interesting response to the Potter phenomenon...
Review: I was intrigued when reading the promotional material for this book that it was lauded as being on the same magnitude as the Potter saga. To be honest, when I read the first few pages, I thought "Here we go again...characters like the Death Eaters, teenage boy in magical capers.". It made me cynical from the start. I truly believe that had Harry Potter and his world not come along, this book would have stood up more on its own merits rather than appearing to be a Christian response to their unfounded fears that Rowling's books incite children to want to practice black magic and stray from the "path". The religious subtext becomes frankly too much for me, and although I can take a little of everything, this took the biscuit, as we say. There's a fine line between making a point and forcing a point. As a Christian kids book, it's fine, wonderful even, but as a piece of fiction, it reads more like an exaltation to God and a denunciation of the rest. For my money, there's a better book out there...go find it!

Rating:
Summary: Lucid novel from G.P Taylor.
Review: The shadowmancer is a enthralling read and i was lucky enough to meet G.P Taylor and get a signed copy of this book (not hearing of him before hand), the book is more similar to anything by J.R Tolkien than anything else i've read though it does'nt quite reach the quality of J.R Tolkien it's not that far off. It would be good to see G.P Taylor do a epic such as Lord of the rings and who knows what it may manifest into. This is a good read for people into the fantasy genre and feel like something to read thats a little bit different with which involves witches and other mythological creatures.

Rating:
Summary: Shadowmancer!!!!!
Review: Wow! What a brilliant read! Tons better than Harry Potter. I couldn't put it down. To my way of thinking G.P. Taylor is as good as Tolkien.More pleeze!

Rating:
Summary: Fantasy meets Christianity... and fails.
Review: Far worse than any fantasy that I have ever encountered, Shadowmancer is a feable attempt to meld Christianity and fantasy.

Its failure as a work of fiction stems from the disjoined and incongruous style of combining a makeshift fantasy with paraphrased scripture. The reader experiences the Christian content in the same way that it was added to the novel: as an afterthought. Although the plot employs the rote good-versus-evil format, it does not significantly lend itself to the Christian interjections. The plot is trite and narrow. It lacks the subtlety and forethought that are required to effectively weave a religious message into a novel. In retrospect, the author very well could have written the fantasy story independent of the Christian elements only later to inject passages lifted from the Bible.

As a fantasy and novel, Shadowmancer derives its few interesting aspects (e.g. its magical creatures and spirits) from sources entirely external to the principal characters. The characterization in the novel is so immature that the reader never identifies with or sympathizes with the protagonists. The reader might easily forget the main character's name if it weren't for the Biblical allusion: Thomas. Even the internal conflict that the name Thomas implies is never adequately realized.

As a Christian work, the novel is stupifyingly horrible. The Christianity in the novel lacks all the intrigue and subtlety that one finds in works like C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. While all the details necessary to proselytize are contained in the passages lifted from the Bible, their separation from the plot casts them as thinly veiled attempts to indoctrinate.

The Christianity adopted to combine with the fantasy plot is a blend of Benny-Hinn-style prayer and Peretti-style spirituality. However, the Christianity is so poorly framed that the novel never truly resolves the inherent conflict of Christian theology and fantasy-witchcraft that are likely to torment the Christian reader.

(...)

Rating:
Summary: Scraping the bottom of the fantasy barrel
Review: Books that actually get published just don't get a whole lot worse than this. If you're just looking for good fantasy, be prepared to get bombarded with pathetic religious symbolism, heavy-handed storytelling, a disturbing lack of plot, non-existent character development, stilted, cliched dialogue, and a heavily derivative style.

I find it very telling that Mr. Taylor sent this book in to an agency to have it critiqued and they sent it back saying it was the worst writing they had ever seen. He proceeded to publish it with his own money. I can't fault him for being a smart businessman, as he is raking in the cash now, but I CAN and DO fault anyone who read this book, enjoyed it, and recommended it to someone else. Whatever happened to good taste?

If you're reading this book because you want something Christian, this is not the place to look either. A very cursory search of the internet will turn up interview after interview where Mr. Taylor denies that this book is any such thing, and claims that it is equally valid for Jews or Muslims. He all but says that all three of the above are the same religion, etc.

Within the book, the good guys rely more heavily on magical artifacts and miracles that function more like spells than they do on God himself. Verses are quoted at a frenetic pace, torn ruthlessly out of context . . . twisted, juxtaposed with other verses which are taken equally out of context . . . and even misquoted (with key words added, removed or changed).

I can virtually guarantee that if you read this book, you WILL regret it. I had a compelling reason to finish it which had nothing to do with whether or not I wanted to, but that notwithstanding, as soon as I was done, it went flying at the most distant wall I could see . . .