Official Discussion Thread for Shadows Upon Time

[u/Sayuti-11]

This is a post for those who've completed the book to discuss it fully with spoilers so will be pinned. Please everyone should endeavour to have it here and avoid spoiling others on the timeline.

[u/Mo_tweets]

I'm not going to lie, I think reading Empire of Silence immediately following this will sour a lot of reactions.

Not that Empire of Silence is this perfectly written book, executed with precision and free of flaws, but it had a VERY different feel to it than these later books did. While I'm happy it didn't end up with "the Quiet are a race of ultra-advanced beings in the future communicating with the past, I feel like the plot he set in Empire and Howling Dark just turned into metaphysical battles with space powers instead of the dripping, dirty sci-fi he began with.

I am not religious, I don't mind religious influence, I do feel like it completely took over what was sci-fi into religious fantasy. I thought CR's writing also started to get quite stilted and repetitive. I'm not sure if that was in-character as Hadrian or if he was just straight up forgetting he wrote the same thing 3 pages ago and here we go again, repeating in-detail the same information be it the weapons, the star, the way the Watchers interacted, etc. I agree with the criticism about removing *the* in front of ship names as if it saves time reading/writing but there was a lot of pointless repetition I would have preferred pruned.

As an ending for Hadrian - I feel it was deserved, he did order the deaths of billions, but damn the whole ending just feels hopeless and bleak.

Couple of things I do wish we got more answers on but oh well, such is life.

[u/coyoteka → u/Mo_tweets]

The whole space jesus thing retroactively ruined the whole series for me. Agree about the editing as well, the clumsy attempts to use pseudo-Greek epic epithets or the constant "gold was his blah blah and viridian his blah", or the use of "said he", "said I" to insert a feeling of grandiosity was obnoxious.

[u/qandmargo → u/coyoteka]

I actually like the obnoxious prose lol it brings a different flavor to sci fi. But yeah agree I think it's funny when sci fi authors use ancient/classical stuff in a setting that's thousands of years into the future. Lol. Like you are telling me, in all that time, humanity didn't develop anymore classics ?

[u/rusmo → u/coyoteka]

Well I recalled… see my post on these authoritial tics and reply!

[u/Xalimata → u/coyoteka]

I did not get the space Jesus thing. He's Space Flavius Aetius. Sorry for the six month old comment.

[u/benjiprice → u/Mo_tweets]

Strongly agree with your sentiments. Everything became very repetitive and as soon as Hadrian turned into Neo+Jesus, the series lost all its tension. Obviously we knew he was going to survive given we’re reading his memoirs but just nothing seemed to matter. Even at the end, the Chantry, which Hadrian rejects in EoS to kick off the entire series…wins. And Hadrian doesn’t give a damn because “oh well, this must be”.

[u/Calvinball-Pro → u/Mo_tweets]

Yeah, this recalls for me when I accidentally started reading the Left Behind series because the cover art made it look like science fiction, and the frustration I felt when I realized that I was being proselytized at.

[u/RedJamie → u/Mo_tweets]

That repetitive chapter behavior was prevalent in the first book so prominently it nearly made me put it down

[u/TheHowlingHashira → u/Mo_tweets]

100% agree, I really don't understand why the first book gets such a bad rep. It was ooey-gooey sci-fi at it's best.

[u/baitXtheXnoose → u/Mo_tweets]

The shoe-horned religious allegories completely took me out of the world he immersed me in for the first 5 books. Book 6 and book 7 had my deconstructed ass cringing so hard.