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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?
"Starred Review. This is a worthy and wholly satisfying continuation of Seraphina's tale. Ages 12–up." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review ... the intricate plotting, clever surprises ... and lovely prose make this a worthy conclusion for all of Hartman's big-hearted characters." - Booklist
"Starred Review. [Hartman] continues to expand her world with enough history and detail to satisfy even the most questioning of readers, doing it all so naturally that it's hard to believe this is fiction. Dragon fiction has never flown higher." - Kirkus
"The lengthy work suffered from an over-abundance of explanation of who the dragons were without really giving readers a sense of the main characters' ideals and motivations. Still, for lovers of Christopher Paolini's and Anne McCaffrey's dragon stories, this is an adequate addition to dragonlore." - School Library Journal
This information about Shadow Scale was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Liz Edgar
Rachel was born in Kentucky, but has lived a variety of places including Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, England, and Japan. She has a BA in Comparative Literature, although she insists it should have been a BS because her undergraduate thesis was called "Paradox and Parody in Don Quixote and the satires of Lucian." She eschewed graduate school in favour of drawing comic books.
As a child, Rachel Hartman played cello and lip-synched Mozart operas with her sisters. The famous Renaissance song "Mille Regretz" first moved Rachel to write a fantasy novel rooted in music, but her inspiration didn't end there. She wrote Seraphina while listening to medieval Italian polyphony, Breton bagpipe-rock, prog metal, Latin American baroque, and Irish sean nós.
Rachel Hartman lives with her ...
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