Review: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman

Title: Shadow Scale (Seraphina #2)
Author: Rachel Hartman
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
Release date: March 10th 2015
Source: Netgalley
Format: eARC

Rating: 4.5/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

You can read my review of Seraphina - here

The kingdom of Goredd: a world where humans and dragons share life with an uneasy balance, and those few who are both human and dragon must hide the truth. Seraphina is one of these, part girl, part dragon, who is reluctantly drawn into the politics of her world. When war breaks out between the dragons and humans, she must travel the lands to find those like herself—for she has an inexplicable connection to all of them, and together they will be able to fight the dragons in powerful, magical ways.

As Seraphina gathers this motley crew, she is pursued by humans who want to stop her. But the most terrifying is another half dragon, who can creep into people’s minds and take them over. Until now, Seraphina has kept her mind safe from intruders, but that also means she’s held back her own gift. It is time to make a choice: Cling to the safety of her old life, or embrace a powerful new destiny?

Shadow Scale bring us back to Goredd, the city where Seraphina lives, which is preparing for war against the dragons who want to break the treaty with humans, so the Queen Glissenda decide to try to bring together all the half-dragons in order to see if they can help in the war, because is suspected that most of them have unique powers that could be useful in combat against dragons. And because Seraphina is a half-dragon and also has a link with others like her, through visions, she´s sent on a mission in order to collect them and bring them to Goredd, so she must look for them in the other Kingdoms, and during her journey she finds allies and friends, but also finds people who see the half-dragons as aberrations, so that her mission will not be easy. On this journey, her constant companion is Abdo a 12-year-old half-dragon boy that can see the "light" emanating from his race.

During her trip Seraphina start having problems with a half-dragon that can influence and take over the mind of the other half-dragons, with whom Seraphina had had a confrontation before when she was a little girl and at that time she could successfully ban her from her mind . But now it seems she has become mentally stronger and has her own agenda in the war that is about to happen between humans and dragons.

I loved this book, the only thing I had issue was the romance, which although it isn´t the main part of the plot, at least for me it was important, because Seraphina and Lucian are great together and they had not enough interaction during the book (this is my opinion), but the few interactions they had were great and loved them.

And for the epilogue, I can only say that it was bittersweet with a touch of hope. I liked it although it saddened me. And I would greatly appreciate if in the future the author decides to write a short story or novella.

Overall, Shadow Scale is an amazing book, the plot is fascinating and unforgettable, it´s beautifully written, has its fair share of action, interesting twists and turns in the plot and lost of intrigue ... there were times when Seraphina could not trust anyone. I loved it! It makes me sad to know that this is the conclusion of Seraphina´s story. I highly recommend this duology for fans of epic fantasy books.