Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman Review

Title: Shadow Scale

Series: Seraphina #2

Author:Rachel Hartman

Date Published:March 10th 2015

Publisher: Random House Children's Books

Seraphina took the literary world by storm with 8 starred reviews and numerous “Best of” lists. At last, her eagerly awaited sequel has arrived—and with it comes an epic battle between humans and dragons.

The kingdom of Goredd: a world where humans and dragons share life with an uneasy balance, and those few who are both human and dragon must hide the truth. Seraphina is one of these, part girl, part dragon, who is reluctantly drawn into the politics of her world. When war breaks out between the dragons and humans, she must travel the lands to find those like herself—for she has an inexplicable connection to all of them, and together they will be able to fight the dragons in powerful, magical ways. 

As Seraphina gathers this motley crew, she is pursued by humans who want to stop her. But the most terrifying is another half dragon, who can creep into people’s minds and take them over. Until now, Seraphina has kept her mind safe from intruders, but that also means she’s held back her own gift. It is time to make a choice: Cling to the safety of her old life, or embrace a powerful new destiny?

*This review contains spoilers*

I really liked book one of the series, this was the problem I only liked it but I didn't love it so it really wasn't a book I re-read every chance I got so after almost three years of waiting I felt very disconnected to the characters and the story. Even though the authors added a little recap of the first book at the beginning and I re-read the first book I still wasn't able to like this books as much I wanted too, the fact that  the pace of the book was incredibly slow didn't help matter at all. The thing that made me take out a full star out of this book was how the author handled Seraphina's relationship status, how can you make her someones Mistress?!?! I mean I never felt anything towards Kiggs, I'm pretty neutral about him, so I can't really say that the deserved Phina and then it turned out that Kigg's cousin/wife is also in love with Phina? How did that help in the story if it's just mentioned at the end of the book.

Again I think I would've liked this book a lot more if it had been published in the traditional year after like most YA do, sure there are a few authors like J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin that can take their sweet time with continuing their series but they both had millions of readers, and other media that kept their books and worlds alive (TV, movies, video games), sadly for Hartman she had to compete with other YA authors that were just as good and published their books more quickly, also 2+ years is a lot of time to build up expectations and sadly mines to have been to high.

Final Rating: