The Crowded Shadows
Celine Kiernan
Orbit, 2009
U.S. trade paper, first edition
ISBN 978-0-316-07708-8
512 pages; $14.99

I’ve never attempted to write a trilogy, or even to outline one, so I’m unable to say why second books in trilogies are so difficult to do well. In fact, I’m rather hard pressed to come up with a single trilogy in which the second book was excellent in and of itself – and I don’t except Tolkien or Pullman from that judgment. Celine Kiernan’s Moorehawk Trilogy is no exception to the unfortunate rule that a second book must simply present information that a reader must have in order to understand how the trilogy resolves, but can do little more.

The main characters of The Crowded Shadows spend most of the first half of the book wandering about a forest, ostensibly with the intent of finding King Jonathon’s son, Alberon, and determining why he has rebelled against his father and to resolve their differences, if possible. Wynter, the Protector Lady and the character from whose point of view the story is told, meets up with Razi, the king’s older but illegitimate son, and his friend, Christopher, in a sufficiently dramatic way in the early pages of the book. They then spend nearly one hundred pages riding around, trying to avoid danger in the shape of the Loups Garous, apparently a band of villains who take slaves wherever they can find them – and who are responsible, as we learned in the first book, The Poison Throne, for Christopher’s enslavement and injuries. Ultimately they meet up with the Merron, a group of people who bear some resemblance to the Irish in our world – though I hasten to add that the resemblance seems to be mostly physical and a matter of language. The differences between this group and the present-day Irish are otherwise immense, principally because this tribe is pagan, and its rituals are critical to the story.

Christopher was originally one of the Merron, and is adopted into this tribe after they have a serious run-in with the Loups Garous. This short-lived battle gives us some information about Christopher that is dropped into the story and left to lie with no explanation whatsoever, one of the many annoyances contained in this volume. Another is that there are several conflicts and misunderstandings that could be avoided if only one or more of the characters would simply explain things to the others. Instead, the plot plays out with great anguish involved to those who could have been spared it. A third problem is that the author continues to tease her audience with the idea of a relationship between Christopher and Wynter, but never manages to bring the relationship to life. How many times can two people share the same bed and not have sex? Since we’ve already learned in the first book that Christopher is an especially sexual male, and we know that he is an older teenager besides, this is hard to fathom – especially since Wynter tends to offer herself up on a platter. No matter how tired from the road these people are, it is unrealistic for Wynter to have reached the end of The Crowded Shadows with her virginity intact.

The Crowded Shadows is at least one-third longer than it needed to be. Things happen at a glacial pace until one reaches the final one hundred pages, when the plot finally takes off and we learn who the Merron are and what they are in Jonathon’s kingdom for – and what they must sacrifice to make a new home for themselves.

I remain unconvinced that this trilogy is principally intended for young adults, despite the age of the protagonist and the characters close to her. Yes, there is no explicit sex, but sex scenes rarely play out well in science fiction and fantasy in any event, no matter the intended audience; and there is a high quotient of violence that would prevent me, at least, from offering these books to a middle-school-aged child. Adults will likely find this a quick and decent read, though they will be impatient to get to the meat of the story. I hope for more in the third book in the series, The Rebel Prince.

A final note on this edition of the book: whoever was charged with proofreading this book (assuming anyone was) did a terrible job. Misspellings abound, and punctuation often goes missing. There is no excuse for such unprofessional practice from a major publisher like Orbit.