Sanctuary of the Shadow

God please take all of the one-star ratings from this book and give them to The Wren In the Holly Library.

I've had some time to research some of the opinions and think on my own for this novel and I have to say that, for my personal opinion, Sanctuary of the Shadow was unfairly judged and review-bombed- but it's also partially the publisher's fault for misrepresenting and misadvertising what this book is actually about.

Red Tower, while they are known for their gorgeous covers and deluxe editions, are also known to publish books that aren't regarded very well. Even Fourth Wing, which blew up on TikTok and I personally loved, has plenty of haters for their own reasons. When Sanctuary of the Shadow came out to much anticipation, it was given one-star reviews left and right which lead to a rapidly dwindling Goodreads average rating (it is currently at 2.90 as of my writing of this review). After reading many of the more popular reviews on this website, I've come to a conclusion as to why so many people disliked this book: misadvertisement.

Red Tower marketed this book as a fantasy romance (“romantasy”) set at a magical circus. The issue here is not that there is no circus, it's that the circus is featured a lot less than what the marketing team promoted it to be. The description of this book makes it seem that the circus is the main setting for the entire story, and even the cover of this book features a circus tent front and center. However, the circus itself was only featured in about 30% of the novel. Readers were, of course, disappointed.
 
I, on the other hand, went into this book with zero expectations as well as the knowledge that the circus did not play as big of a part as it was made out to have, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing wasn't perfect, but it was far from the worst I've ever read, and while I thought it was cute I didn't much care for the romance. What kept me hooked to this book were the characters and the world-building. I loved Harrow and Malaikah, Raith and Ouro grew on me after some time, and even the ringmaster Salizar and his assistant Loren had captured my interest. The world-building of the magic system, the queens, and the world's history was so rich and explained well. It honestly reminded me of The Wizard of Oz, with Queen Furie as the Wicked Witch of the West and the wraiths as her flying monkeys, and I would not be surprised if Ascher took inspiration from that for her novel. The worst part of this book for me was probably the spice, as I found it to be a bit too abundant for my taste and I ended up skimming those scenes. Overall, despite that one thing, I really enjoyed this book and I'm very excited to read Malaikah's (and hopefully Ouro's) novel when it is released. I only wish that this book had been sold to a publisher that knew how to properly market its products instead of using BookTok tropes and keywords to go viral.

If you've read this far, and you have any interest in Sanctuary of the Shadow at all, I encourage you to ignore the haters and please give it a chance. It's not a masterpiece, but it's worth much more than a 2.9 average rating on Goodreads. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Pre-Reading Updates: I don't wanna read Sanctuary of the Shadow BUT THE PARASITES IN ME WANT TO READ SANCTUARY OF THE SHADOW I don't wanna read a book that has a rating below three stars on Goodreads BUT THE PARASITES THE DEMON IN ME IT WANTS TO READ IT