Dragons Rising: Euphrasia, Sora, Arin & Wyldfyre

After watching Seabound, I can't take Nya's "become the water" mantra in Season 5 seriously. I mean, years later, she literally becomes the water!

The Serpent's Shadow by Mercedes Lackey

This is my first non-Valdemar Lackey book. I read it because I saw the latest book in this series, The Elemental Masters, which is about Annie Oakley. That one looked cool, but I can't read a series out of order, so...

he way I understand it, each of the books in The Elemental Masters are a loose retelling of a fairy tale. This one works with Snow White. It takes place in an alternative. Edwardian England, where elememental magic is practiced by a secret group who had been born with and trained in the use of their magic

Maya Witherspoon's element is Earth. Her father was an English doctor, her mother was an Brahmin, in India, a former priestess. Surya had her own magic, but didn't teach her daughter because Maya's magic was of her father's land. So, Maya is mostly self taught with her magic. She was formally trained as a doctor in India and the book opens with her, having moved to England after the death of her father, trying to get certified in her new home.

As she uses her magic to help heal, in her medical practice, she attracts the attention of both the secret group and someone who means her harm. While dealing with all of this, she has to deal with sexism and racism.

I like the writing and the story is intersting, it weaves with selected threads of the fairy tale, I would say that if you didn't know it was there, you would probably be about a quarter or half way through before it really started to come together as a Snow White retelling.

It does suffer from what I think of as the Temple of Doom syndrome (Temple of Doom, is my favorite Indiana Jones movie, because of the humor and the adventure, but boy howdy does it have problems).

There is a twisting of Hinduism, there is a... I don't know how to put it... A devaluing? Of Hindu Gods.

Now, it could be argued that these things are character perspectives. Not every person who practices Hinduism is going to sacrifice people to Kali (something the Goddess does not want). The people in Temple of Doom have corrupted Kali worship. In The Serpent's Shadow, the same can be said. The devaluing could also be seen as a character perspective. Maya identifies as a Christian, but asks for help from some of the Hindu Gods. She justifies it by reasoning that the Bible said not to put other Gods before Him, and she wasn't, she was asking their help in addition to Him. And the deities sort of become sidekicks. This sat badly with me, similar to how the people of India in Temple of Doom were depicted as eating bugs and monkey brains. That wasn't meant to be a sign of evil, because the guys asking Indy for help also ate bugs. It was callously using India and one of its cultures as the "other". The tone being that the people are inferior. Forgetting that there are cultures that eat bugs, they are a plentiful source of protein, and the stuff we eat in the West would be seen as gross to others.

The twisting of a good thing by a villain is one thing, but a depiction of Gods being religated to "back up gods" and happily performing this duty just feels icky.

All in all, this one was annoying reading experience. I did like it, I just didn't like how somethings were depicted.