Just Finished Reading Shadowplay by Tad Williams

Continuing along with Tad Williams' four-part fantasy series Shadowmarch, I just finished reading book #2, titled Shadowplay.  It continues the various narratives of its characters, focusing on twin teenage nobles Prince Barrick and Princess Briony as they struggle to survive and deal with their own personal trials.  The background story, that of a war between the gods reminiscent of Greek or Hindu mythology with accompanying conflicts between various races of people in the world, is gradually revealed through cryptic chapter-heading "quotes" from old religious scriptures.  With this Williams presents a two-fold mystery: one, what actually happens to the protagonists as the story unfolds, and, two, the ultimate explanation of all the weird manifestations plaguing the world and poor Barrick, who miserably suffers from terrible nightmares and seems to have had a mysterious quest implanted in his mind from the enemy Qar leader.  The author also widely spreads out the narrative, and there are many story lines going on at the same time...a little hard to keep up with them all, sad to say.

Shadowplay, unlike a lot of other books within series, has no noticeable ending and as such is hard for me to regard as a separate entity.  Instead, all of the various subplots just trail off, presumably to be resumed at the start of the third book.  By contrast, take a series like Harry Potter that, while moving to an eventual resolution that happens at the end of book #7, still has distinct stories for each memorable book.  Not with Shadowplay, though.  I think this works against the reader being able to remember the story when they finally do get around to starting the next book in the series.  Also, all of this arcane mythology from chapter to chapter doesn't help things, either.  Still, since one of the saving graces of this series is that it comprises only four books, I've already reached the halfway point and expect the author to begin to work to tie everything back together in the last two volumes...he has quite a task ahead of him if he wishes to be successful!