The Serpent's Shadow

The Serpent???s Shadow is the second of Mercedes Lackey???s ELEMENTAL MASTERS novels. These are stand-alone fairytale retellings and this particular one is based on ???Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.??? The story takes place in London in 1909 and it???s so different from that familiar tale, though, that you may not have recognized its influence if I hadn???t told you, even though the classic elements are here (seven companions, an apple, a magic mirror, poison that puts the heroine to sleep, a kiss). Read the rest at FanLit: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/the-serpents-shadow/

I loved the premise of this and have to give this some kudos for doing something that most fantasy books in the early 2000s would never - have a POC protagonist who is half-Indian and whose Indian heritage actually plays a major part in the plot. There were some issues in this book that stuck out to me however.

Colonialism. You can't avoid this topic if you're talking about Indian characters living in Edwardian London. I have mixed feelings about the way it was dealt with here. As I've already said above, I appreciate that Lackey was pretty progressive for her time in even having a half-Indian protagonist being aided by Hindu gods. I loved the idea that there was a different type of magic in India which was separate from that of the English. What I didn't like, though, was the fact that the antagonist was also Indian and Hindu. Shivani's whole motivation behind her crusade was to get vengeance against the British for colonising India. No matter how twisted and deranged Shivani might be, she ultimately killed a microscopic fraction of the people the British did when they colonised India (and many other countries), so taking this motivation of vengeance and casting it in a villainous light just somehow didn't sit right with me. Obviously I'm not saying that we should all become murderers to seek vengeance and violence is never the answer, but I'm also not a fan of casting a colonised subject as a villain in that light - it smacks too much of a “people should stay in their (subjugated) place” message to me.

Women's rights. It's also hard to avoid this topic in Edwardian London when your protagonist is a very, very progressive female doctor in a world where the suffragette movement is in full swing. I thought this theme was much more well-done than the one about colonialism and I would've actually preferred if we had perhaps had more emphasis on this one rather than the other. Having an average-sized book deal with two such heavy themes was just too little pages for too much to say, and I felt like the book could've been more focused.

Chemistry was non-existent. Again, too little pages for too much to say. There was so much about the above two themes and establishing the magic system that it kinda squeezed out the romance. I'd typically be fine with that, but I've a feeling the romance was supposed to be a main part of the story so I was a little confused here. We didn't really see Maya and Peter spending a lot of time together apart from Peter giving her lessons on magic, and that's about it. They didn't seem to have much conversation (as far as we saw) with each other outside of that. The bit where their feelings were made known to each other also felt incredibly abrupt and out of nowhere, and so I couldn't quite buy into everything that followed.

Ending felt rushed and almost anticlimactic. The book kinda felt like it was over before I knew it. I was anticipating a much longer confrontation and with more conversation between the antagonist and our main characters, but we didn't really get that. I was also expecting something of an “aftermath” chapter where we have the characters reflect about what happened and maybe also round up a bit of the themes that were explored in the book like the colonialism bit or women's rights - but we also didn't get that.

Overall, it was fairly enjoyable and I might pick up the next book. I really liked the premise of retelling the fairytales but all within the same universe and with the same magic system as a base, but I felt like the themes and storytelling could have been tighter.

I've been curious about Mercedes Lackey. I really liked this - and it's a very long series to tackle...

I really liked Maya and the Peters, and many of the minor characters. The idea of India and its relation to the British empire was not very modern, but we are always deep in the p o v of characters from whom those views, in the time of the story, would make sense.

The fairy-tale retelling part was handled well, not too obviously, and was part of the charm of the story.