Book Review: Shadow of the Lion by Linda Dielemans

 

 Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Schaduw van de leeuw.

I do really like reading some prehistoric fiction from time to time. I find it to be a very interesting time period and I wish I read more about it before. So why not do that now. Spoilers ahead.

28.000 years ago, a young woman named Joeni is being trained to be the "dreamer" (a type of shaman) of her clan, where she is competing with another apprentice-dreamer named Tira. When one of Joeni's prophetic dreams accidentally ends up sending a lot of her clan's members to their deaths, Joeni's position in the clan is compromised, eventually leading to the banishment of both her as well as Toek, the clan's current main dreamer. Now on their own, the duo will have to survive, all the while Joeni is trying to decipher the meaning of her many dreams involving a lion-headed man.

Quite an interesting read. I'd be lying if I said I was engaged all the way through, but it was pretty good. It was well-paced and most of the characters felt believable and at least semi-rounded. I liked the world-building for these prehistoric humans and how the "dreamer" role plays into clan life. It felt like a real world I wanted to explore, but also one full of perils and dangers, where even ones dreams can lead to dire consequences. 

There's also quite a few good interpersonal conflicts between the characters. I liked the relationship between Joeni and Toek (though I don't think it was super well-developed or anything) and the rivalry between Tira and Joeni was also interesting and well-written. Especially after they spend a long time apart and eventually end up meeting up again in another clan under different circumstances, where Tira is now an expecting mother and Joeni is a fully-realized dreamer. The duo never really quite got along and they're pretty nasty to one another throughout the book, but I also don't feel they completely hate one another, either. There's still some respect for the other here, at least on a few occasions in the book. At some points I wondered if there wasn't going to be an actual friendship between the two, but I think leaving it like this is better and more realistic. More so quiet respect and acceptance than actual friendship, especially after how much they've been competing with one another in the past.

One thing I do think the book lacks was a bit of action. There isn't a whole lot of it, except the occasional  predator attack here and there. Like, even the inciting incident (the slaughtering of Joeni's clan members by the lions which came to pass because of a dream she had) just takes place off-page. There's a pretty intense action scene near the middle of the book where Joeni is attacked by a cave lion and half-blinded, but that's kind of it. Most of it is just her struggles in clan life and her traveling alone (and at first with Toek) during her banishment.There's a few cool dream sequences here and there and like I mentioned before I quite enjoyed the character interactions, but I'd have liked a little bit more action. Or maybe have Joeni witness the actual massacre of her people that caused the entire plot to happen. Right now it's just told to us after the fact, a bit anticlimactic. 

Another minor flaw: the book can't seem to keep the number of eyes Joeni has consistent. She starts the book off with two, but loses one of her eyes to a lion attack about halfway into the book. But even thereafter the book multiple times says things such as "she closed her eyes" and "she opened her eyes". Like, plural. When it has been made explicitly clear she doesn't have two eyes anymore. It just kind of reads like the author forgot about her character's disability, sometimes only about a chapter after her scarring. It's not that hard to edit "eyes" to "eye" (even in the original Dutch language, "ogen" to "oog") before publishing, so why this is still here I'm not sure. Doesn't read as particularly consistent and it's a really easy fix. 

Overall this was a pretty good book with good interactions, world-building and some neat concepts, I just wish it had a bit more action to keep me engaged. And while I liked the characters and do consider them rounded, I also wasn't particularly that invested in any of them. Like, I did want Joeni to succeed, but I didn't particularly like any of the characters here. They were okay.

Rating: 3.5/5