Genre
Historical Fantasy / Fiction
Synopsis
In case you haven’t read Daughter of the Otherworld and you’re here to read a spoiler free review for Son of the Serpent I’ve placed its synopsis behind the spoiler tag below.
Click to reveal spoiler
Winter 1169. Isolde arrives at the stronghold of the Descendants, her immortal kin. It soon becomes clear that Isolde is magically gifted, but as she learns to harness her abilities, visions of death and fire consume her. Heartbroken at parting from young warrior Cuan, and scarred by the destructive power of her enemies the Fomorians, Isolde struggles to find her place in the immortals’ world. Cuan, nephew to the High King, is growing in fame. Caught between a curse that will destroy him, a desire for revenge, and his love for Isolde, Cuan is offered a new path by a mysterious stranger. But a warrior so close to the king has many enemies, and with Isolde no longer at his side, escaping death a second time may prove impossible. As war between Ireland’s kingdoms continues, Anglo-Norman lords, eager for power, encroach ever further onto Irish soil. Ireland’s clans must choose: work, and fight, together – or risk the destruction of their whole world.
Review
The first Gael Song trilogy is one of the best historical fantasy / fiction I’ve ever read so when I read Daughter of the Otherworld I was a little surprised by the direction it went, these choices to me made it feel weaker in comparison to the previous era’s trilogy. Having read Son of the Serpent I’m glad to say improvements have been made, however unfortunately one focal weakness still remains.
One change I noticed when reading Son of the Serpent when compared to Daughter of the Otherworld was the shift from having a character focused book to being more story focused, Shauna Lawless does still try to balance this with building character arcs but for me the core of the story is the political manoeuvring of the different clans and the impact it has on Ireland and its people. This is something I feel Shauna Lawless does brilliantly as she always leaves you wanting to know more about the clans and the strategies they use to accomplish what they want. Also this shift now makes the book feel more aligned to the historical fiction genre and books like The Last Kingdom.
Whilst I mostly enjoyed the POV’s for Angelo and Cuan I feel this book is let down is by Isolde’s character arc and the over reliance on characters from the previous trilogy. This was the same problem I had with Daughter of the Otherworld, however I do think this has been improved upon for Son of the Serpent. Whilst the characters from the previous trilogy do take a bit a of back step in this book to allow the newer characters to flourish the arcs and motives for a lot of the newer characters seem controlled / dependent upon the fate of the previous characters. I can understand this needing to be done for Daughter of the Otherworld but I think Son of the Serpent would have been stronger had the previous characters taken a much bigger step back or been changed to background characters.
Overall I did enjoy the book and I think the shift to story over character focused does help but the characters are certainly its weakest aspect and it hurts the book more than what I’d like.
