Kelly's Reviews > The Serpent's Shadow

Dr. Maya Witherspoon grew up in a home of science and magic; her father is a respected English surgeon, and her mother is a sorceress and Priestess in her homeland of India. And while Maya was able to hone her skills as a doctor and surgeon under her father's tutelage she was never able to learn magic from her mother, even though she was a powerful sorceress in her own right as Maya's magic came from her father's English side, something her mother knew nothing about. So when both of her parents end up dead, her mother from cholera and her father from a snake bite that Maya is certain was magical in nature she flees to London with her Indian family including a menagerie of pets, hopefully to escape whatever magical threat her family faces. There, she establishes a surgery and works to better the lives of the poor in some of London's worst neighborhoods. With newfound friends and a career that fulfills her, Maya's worry of magical threats seems far off, especially when she meets the handsome Peter Scott a Water Master who agrees to train Maya in her magics However, the serpents shadow is long indeed, and Maya will need every bit of her magic and her friends to defeat it.

This was basically a Snow White retelling with an Eastern twist, and I found it to be quite unique among Snow White reimaginings. Lackey seems to simply have no end of ideas when it comes to putting new twists on beloved tales!

Like *all* of Lackey's female leads, Maya is absolutely wonderful. She is so fierce and absolutely kind hearted, however, what makes her character truly stand out is her kindness is not entirely altruistic Yes, Maya does many good things, but she does them with knowledge that she can find some benefit from it as well. And that's so nice to see. No one is perfect, and no one is just so selfless that everything they do is for someone else's benefit. I do have to admit that I didn't like Peter right off the bat but by the end of the book he had grown on me and he was really the perfect "Prince" to Maya's "Princess". All of the side characters were excellent as well.

There wasn't anything original about the magic system but I don't believe that matter much here, the story is about those who master specific elemental magics so it didn't really need anything groundbreaking in terms of the magic system in my opinion.

The thing I *loved* about this though is just how absolutely blatant that Lackey is in regard to not just how awful it was to be a woman in 1909 but how awful it was to be a woman of mixed race in a male dominated profession in London in 1909. There is a scene where there is a Suffergate March after a young woman is killed after being forced to fed while on a hunger strike, and it is probably one of the most emotional scenes I've read. Maybe because we currently face so much opposition in terms of women's rights, but this particular scene hit hard. I cried. On the bus.

My *only* very small complaint here is that the transitions from one character to another were sometimes very abrupt, so I'd be a bit lost. Actually, that's not quite right. It felt like the scene with the last character was not quite finished before we transitioned to the next. The introduction of the bad guy was extremely abrupt; one second, we are learning that she even exists, and the next second, her plotting is every other chapter. Again, it's not a huge complaint, but it just seemed really uncharacteristic of Lackey's writing.

Overall, this was just another excellent story by Lackey, a unique retelling of a fairy tale by an author who has really turned retellings into fine art.

You can check out all of my reviews at my Blog! Kelly's Book Nook