Two Review: Shadow Study by Maria V. Snyder

I have been waiting so, so long for this book to come out. I first read the Study series in high school—in fact, so did my parents. It was like a Hooker family book club. I digress.

I reread the series again two years ago, in my senior year of college…simply because I missed the characters. That, my friends, is my idea of a good book—the kind where you miss the characters so much that you reread it. It’s like seeing old friends again.

I had no idea that Snyder would be coming out with a fourth book. In fact, I thought it was only supposed to be trilogy. Naturally, I lost my sh*t when I spotted the untitled fourth book on Goodreads.

I’ve never pre-ordered a book on Amazon. This time, I did. And I’m glad I did. Our original plan was to leave our books unopened and read it together on Friday. However, Amazon messed up Kiesha’s order…which meant I had to open my package that had been staring at me all day and speed-read the book so she could borrow it. After all, what are friends for?

The layout was different than in past Study books. Each chapter is from a different point of view—Yelena, Valek, or Janco (side note: do you pronounce it JANE-co or JAHN-co?). At first, this was odd. After a while, it grew on me, and I enjoyed seeing the world from these characters’ eyes, and getting an all-around view of what’s going on.

In past books, it’s been all about Yelena using her powers and coming to terms with them. In this book, she loses them—which I was fine with, except it severed her connection with Kiki. That made me sad.

One downside to the book was the timeline in reference to the last three—this is eight years in the future, and you’ll have a difficult time understanding what happened during those eight years unless you’ve read the Glass series. There are many references to the events and characters in those books, but reading the summaries should make it a little bit easier. I recommend reading them first.

Overall, I loved this book and am hoping the cliffhanger at the end means a fifth book 🙂 A definite 5/5 on Goodreads for me!

So, Shadow Study. I definitely haven’t been waiting as long for it as Lauren, but I was still absolutely thrilled when I found out Snyder was writing it. I love this world SO much but I will admit that while I did get through the book and understood the references that are made to the Glass Series, I definitely should have read those first. Reading Shadow Study before the Glass Series might ruin them for me because now I know exactly what happens (I will definitely still be reading them though), so for any of you that are thinking you’ll jump right to this one, I would rethink that.

I really, really liked this book but it just wasn’t as good as the previous 3 for me. I’m not sure if it was because of the chapters jumping from one point of view to another (and in absolutely no order) or the huge time jump, but it irritated me more than any of the other books have. I was very impatient, wanting to know what was happening with Yelena and as soon as something crazy happened, the next chapter would skip to Valek (swoon) or Janco (so. annoying.) and I was very tempted to skip ahead to specific chapters.

The other thing that I didn’t like, was the Janco (I pronounce it JANE-co, I can’t do the JAHN-co thing) point of view. I felt like it was very obvious why it was in there, but if not for that one particular reason (I’m being vague so I don’t spoil anything) then his chapters would be pointless. This one particular reason could have easily been shown through Valek or Yelena, who I enjoy so much more. I was also frustrated with Yelena and Leif’s relationship – in Fire Study they’d grown really close and in this it felt to me like they had grown apart and he talked about food way more than I’ve noticed in any other books.

Overall though, this book was great! It’s the same Sitia/Ixia world of amazingness that Snyder writes SO well and that I love so much and it was great to get into it again. I rated it 4/5 stars on Goodreads, mostly because of Janco’s chapters and not being very fond of the new format. I definitely recommend reading this if you’ve read the Study Series and the Glass Series.