Saber and Shadow

If you like fantasy, swords, action and gore galore this is for you. Steer clear of the lame, anemic rewrite SABER & SHADOW unless you prefer your reading material censored and bland.

Saber and Shadow is remarkable in its plot and setting as well, but I found the characters to be its main strongpoint. Megan and Shkai'ra are very well-developed characters, and the authors did not give in to the trend of making the main characters disgustingly idealistic. This book, as someone once said of the Illiad, "embodies all the ethical untidiness of living people." Three cheers for realistic characterization!

This is one of the best books in the Fifth Millenium series. The budding romance theme is different from a lot of stories, being about two women.The city of Fehinna is realistic and vivid, from the sewers to the Sun Temple. I was a bit confused about the God-King, but I think that was the idea. I liked the pace of the book, fast but not so fast it's hard to understand; it was fun reading about such thoroughly human characters; they were never goody-goody idealists, particularly Shkai'ra. I wish the authors would write more about the Fifth Millenium.

This book has some of the best fight scenes I've read in quite a while; both coherent and quick. That, plus two likeable characters and plenty of baddies to test their mettle made this book fun to read. The descriptions were wonderful and really gave the impression that the story's world a life outside the story, and an ongoing humorous mini-plot didn't detract at all from the more serious goings-on it was only tangentally related to.