I’m not really sure why, but I do like a circus story. Perhaps it’s that feeling created by reading Ray Bradbury Weird Tales many years ago, or even Charles Finney’s very odd The Circus of Dr. Lao. More recently, I liked the TV series Carnivale, which also seemed to dip into that feeling of surreal oddness, mixing it with magic and mystery. Even more recently, some may also prefer to think of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, though there were parts of that novel that didn’t quite work for me.
So I had high hopes for Sanctuary of the Shadow, a book that takes this idea and uses it to create a spicy romantasy.
Harrow is the last Seer, the rest of her clan being murdered by some nasty Wraiths when she was ten years old. The only survivor, she has been taken in by Salizar (Sal) as a fortune teller in his Incredible Elemental Circus. Salizar seems to be a character straight out of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes – he’s an Elemental, (i.e: he has magic powers) and initially seems like a character that’s good and wants nothing more than to protect Harrow, but over the course of the book we discover that he has a dark unpleasant side to him that means that he’s not to be messed with.
Despite this, all is generally well, with Harrow managing to pay her way as a fortune teller and simultaneously keep her real identity secret, until Salizar buys and keeps captive a strange new attraction with no name, no memory of who – or even what – he is, let alone an explanation for his odd yet deadly powers. Harrow finds herself immediately attracted to the creature who calls himself Raith. Although his appearance strikes terror into many of those who see him, including Sal, Harrow believes that underneath his hunky bad boy exterior there is a sensitive soul in pain.
With Harrow’s half-human, half-panther trapeze artist friend, Malaikah, Harrow arranges to help Raith escape, which they do. They then spend five days in bed, with lengthy detail given of their activities other than sleeping.
The remainder of the book strengthens this bond with between Harrow and Raith, although there are complications which threatens to destroy their blossoming relationship. Both find themselves involved in a feud between three Goddesses, which affects not only them but the world around them.
I could sum the book up as “Hunky horror meets winsome water-based Seer” which sums it up fairly well. Sanctuary of the Shadow is one of those magic romantasy books where you pretty much get what you might expect – lots of yearning, instant love at first sight, arcane magic and quite a bit of explicit sex. Although the ‘he’s a misunderstood bad boy who is a good man really, and I love him’ angle may be laid on a little thick, the main characters seem to form a pretty good team, as they fight enemies that for some reason seem to want to kill Harrow.
My main issue is that I was rather unconvinced by the character of Harrow. As an elemental with an extended lifespan, she is about sixty years old at the time of the novel, and yet her almost-permanent wide-eyed innocence and enthusiastic actions mean that she acts like a breathless teenager. This dichotomy seems to sum up the book for me – much of it reads like a Young Adult style novel in terms of plot and characterisation and would appeal to a younger age reader, but then this is punctuated by rather raunchy sex scenes, which to me makes it perhaps inappropriate for those young teenage readers.
Of course, this may be what a reader wants. Sanctuary of the Shadow is a romance where the ideal is emulated and as a result, and reduced to simple terms, of course the main characters are beautiful, fit, handsome and horny. For me though the regularity at which people are described in those terms became a little wearing towards the end.
To add to this, I did feel that many of the minor characters that sounded interesting and could add depth and colour were not really used well. Characters such as Salazar were used at the beginning and then pretty much abandoned by the end with a perfunctory sentence. In the same way, the world around Harrow and Raith seemed insubstantial – and Fantasy-light. There’s a nondescript tavern, deserts, and forests – but nothing of detail. Even the circus, after the promising potential hinted at in the beginning, is something that become near-irrelevance, which was a frustration. By the end I felt that I would have liked to know more about this place the characters inhabit.
Summing things up then, Sanctuary of the Shadow is a bit of an uneven mix for me. Whilst it is undeniably page-turning, I also felt that it was simplistic and overall an undemanding read. I know that sometimes that’s good – readers don’t always want to know every detail of a world or the innermost thoughts of the characters that inhabit it – but for me it was a dealbreaker. Nevertheless, as the focus here is on the intense personal relationship Raith and Harrow have, and if that’s what you’re reading the novel for, you certainly get that. For anyone not wanting that, and perhaps wanting more, this may not be the book for you.
SANCTUARY OF THE SHADOW by Aurora Ascher
Published by Transworld/Penguin, March 2024
400 pages
ISBN: 978 180 4994 948
Review by Mark Yon
