Sisters of Shadow and Light by Sara B. Larson

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I love a good portal fantasy.  Give me a magical book, doorway, or ancient set of rocks that transports you to another world, far away, full of fantastical creatures and civilizations.  In Sisters of Shadow and Light we are transported to a world very similar to ours but struggling to recover from an attack of creatures from the land of the Paladin, a people from another world who came through to earth through magical portals.  From it’s first epic line, “The night my sister was born, the stars died and were reborn in her eyes,” we are transported to an abandoned citadel where magical thorns keep out the world and keep in Zuhra and her family.  

Sisters of Shadow and Light has everything in a great fantasy-a missing parent, a large and rambling home, doors that must remain locked, a sibling with mysterious behaviors, and a large magical bush keeping out the rest of the world.  Set in a large and abandoned citadel once inhabited by the Paladin, Zuhra and her sister Inara live with their mother Cinnia and loyal servant Sami. The family’s life was forever changed on the night Inara was born. Adelric, Paladin and father to Zuhra and Inara, went missing, never to return.  Feeling lost and abandoned, Cinnia refuses to speak of Adelric and his people and raises the girls to have little knowledge of their family and the outside world. Inara, seemingly always in a dream land with a magical green thumb, spends her days secluded in her gardens.

When a young man stumbles through the magical thorns and claims to be studying the Paladin people, the shock of a visitor upsets the already uneasy household.  With a greatly outdated wardrobe and lack of social experiences, Zuhra is both fascinated by and embarrassed to be around Halvor. Emboldened from his presence, she enters the mysterious library at the citadel to provide Halvor with texts on the Paladin.  Even after facing strict punishments from Cinnia for their tresspasses, Zuhra and Halvor end up in the library again, and when Inara joins them and tries to climb the mysterious staircase set in the center of the room, a portal to the Paladin homeworld is opened, sending Zuhra through and leaving Inara behind.  

Now in her father’s homeworld, Zuhra must return home, help save her family from the rakasa, large, dangerous creatures from the Paladin, and help reunite her family and save her sister.

Whew!  There is so much going on this book! Family secrets, magic, murderous creatures, portals, oh my!  Sisters of Shadow and Light is fast paced, compelling, and has unique and complex world building. I hope in future books the author lets us explore both the homeworld of the Paladin and the abandoned citadel where Zuhra and her family lived. I’m sure it’s full of more secrets to uncover. 

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Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title.  All opinions, and mistakes, are my own.