DNF Review – Shadow of the Fox (Shadow of the Fox, Book 1) by Julie Kagawa (2/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 416 pages
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: October 2, 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1335145161
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Shadow of the Fox series
Source: Owlcrate
Rating: 2/5 stars

“One thousand years ago, the great Kami Dragon was summoned to grant a single terrible wish—and the land of Iwagoto was plunged into an age of darkness and chaos.

Now, for whoever holds the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers, a new wish will be granted. A new age is about to dawn.

Raised by monks in the isolated Silent Winds temple, Yumeko has trained all her life to hide her yokai nature. Half kitsune, half human, her skill with illusion is matched only by her penchant for mischief. Until the day her home is burned to the ground, her adoptive family is brutally slain and she is forced to flee for her life with the temple’s greatest treasure—one part of the ancient scroll.

There are many who would claim the dragon’s wish for their own. Kage Tatsumi, a mysterious samurai of the Shadow Clan, is one such hunter, under orders to retrieve the scroll…at any cost. Fate brings Kage and Yumeko together. With a promise to lead him to the scroll, an uneasy alliance is formed, offering Yumeko her best hope for survival. But he seeks what she has hidden away, and her deception could ultimately tear them both apart.

With an army of demons at her heels and the unlikeliest of allies at her side, Yumeko’s secrets are more than a matter of life or death. They are the key to the fate of the world itself.”

This is the first book in the Shadow of the Fox series. I stopped this book about 50% of the way through. I loved Kagawa’s Iron Fey series and really enjoyed her Immortal Rules series as well. I couldn’t even get through the first book of the Talon series and this book was similar for me.

About 70 pages into the story we are still switching viewpoint and being introduced to new characters. After that the book does settle down a bit and only switches between 3 POVs, which gives us a chance to engage with the story and characters a bit more.

The story is boring, the characters seem very stereotypical. I feel like there isn’t really anything original in here…just a lot of plot lines pulled from existing fantasy stories. For example this reminded me of some sort of mash-up between Airbender and a million other manga series out there.

I normally love reading books based on Japanese mythology and folklore, but this just wasn’t well done. The characters felt hollow and the the dialogue between them felt stiff and unnatural. The story and plot were predictable.

Overall this wasn’t the book for me. After both this and Talon I think I am done with Kagawa as an author. I am not sure what’s happened to her writing style over the last few years but she needs to go back and look at her earlier works. Her earlier works were much more creative, exciting, and engaging.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– New Release Reading Challenge
– Goodreads Reading Challenge