Shadow in the Empire of Light by Jane RoutleyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This isn't at all a bad book, but it does have flaws. It could be tighter, could be tidier, and could be clearer. The worldbuilding, while not straight out of a well-used cookie cutter, is not extensive; the viewpoint character, while she isn't completely passive, gets rescued quite a bit, and doesn't seem to achieve all that much. The plot has a lot of threads, but they don't form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. There are gestures at romance for the main character, but the gestures go in several different directions and never amount to much in the long term (though there is one explicit scene).
It also features one of my pet peeves, which is biblical names in a setting in which Christianity is decidedly not present; it always suggests to me that the author has not thought things through.
In terms of the story: Shine, the main character, is part of a large family all with names that have to do with light in some way (though some of them have add-ons, like Blazeann or Sparklea, most are along the lines of Radiance or Gleam). They're a cadet branch of the imperial family in a nation that I at first thought was based on ancient China, because of its tendency to self-isolate and refer to pale-skinned foreigners as "ghosts". As the book progressed, though, it became clear that if China was an influence, it was only one influence, and a good bit of the setup was out of the author's head (which I approve of; taking an entire fantasy society from a superficial impression of a real historical society always seems lazy to me).
The family are, on the whole, pretty nasty, with a few exceptions, and even the exceptions are still mostly entitled aristocrats with a tendency to indulge themselves in drug-taking and sex. You become an aristocrat by being a mage, and mages, rather than using their powers for useful things like building bridges or clearing agricultural land, apparently leave all of that to the peasants to do by hand, and mainly use their (primarily psychokinetic) powers recreationally.
Shine's aunt, who raised her, is, at least, a radical thinker who thinks the peasants should be, you know, paid for their work rather than made to work on the nobles' land as a form of taxation, and educated, and so forth. But she and Shine are "mundanes," non-mages, who are therefore only gentry, not nobility, and have little status in the family (though considerably more than the peasants outside it, which Shine is at least uncomfortable about).
Multiple and mostly non-intersecting plots are under way in and around the family, as they come to the country estate that Shine and her aunt manage for an annual fertility ceremony. Shine gets involved in all of the plots one way or another, but isn't especially effectual. At one point, she finds out (through Convenient Eavesdrop, which is a plot device I hate) that two family members are planning to sabotage the matriarch's drug stash so that she's incapacitated and loses face; she attempts to foil the plot, but (view spoiler). Later, while she does take effective action once against an enemy, she and her companions keep getting into dire straits and then getting cavalry-rescued unexpectedly (this happens three times in quick succession). Eventually, all of the plot lines wrap up, mostly not very conclusively, with minimal help from Shine, and in a way that reveals they were never all that connected in the first place.
I made a note partway through that I didn't feel like the author had the chops to achieve a really satisfactory ending, and reflecting on the ending, I think I was right. Overall, the book feels undercooked. The middle does plenty of development of lots of different things, but they never come together, and the main character is caught up in events more than she drives them. The worldbuilding is underwhelming, and yet I found myself confused more than once about how things worked.
I have to say that I picked up the book in large part because it had a telepathic cat in it, and I've been a sucker for telepathic cats ever since I read Andre Norton's Forerunner books at the age of about 11 or 12. The telepathic cat could have been more utilized, but overall, she was a good one, even if her name (Katti) was distinctly unimaginative.
I received a copy via Netgalley for review.
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