Trigger Warnings: um, a lot? Racism, sexism, homophobia, orphan protagonist, incest, emotional abuse, sexual abuse.

Shadow in the Empire of Light is a complicated fantasy novel by Jane Routley. Or at least, how I felt about it is somewhat complicated?

On the face of it, it’s a fun story of a young woman whose nightmare family come to stay for what is, essentially, “the holidays”. Shine has a giant cat she can communicate with telepathically, but that is the only magic she is able to do, and as such it cast rather low down in her family’s complex pecking order. There’s a great deal of politics amongst the magic users in the family; coupled with being tasked the burden of trying to hide an illegal immigrant, mayhem (as the cover promises) ensues.

This is the surface of the novel, and sounds straight-forward enough.

However, underneath that, is actually a pretty dark and gritty story that I absolutely wasn’t expecting. There’s an awful lot going on here, and I’m not entirely sure where to start. The worldbuilding? Let’s start there, it’s usually a good place to start, right?

We have a matriarchal society, as women are much stronger magic users than men. The magic system derives from crystals embedded in the magic users’ foreheads, that glow when they use them. Therefore everyone’s names have some kind of connection to luminosity (Shine, Bright, Radiance, Sparklea, etc). They undergo some kind of test as children to find out if they have an affinity to magic or not, and unfortunately for Shine, she did not. She is also an orphan, and lives with ther Aunty Effluent. Her other aunt, Splendance, is the current religious matriarch. Her grandmother is the Empress. So we’re talking about royal and posh magic users with extremely strong senses of privilege.

Back to this matriarchal society. Sex is extremely important in this society; the religious festival that has brought the family to the estate is a fertility one. Splendance performs rituals on the fields to ensure the crops will grow, and in the evenings there is feasting and, well, fucking. There aren’t any spicy scenes, but there are many, many references to sex. This is a society which is very open about naked bodies and personal relations.

And I guess this is where we step into the realms of why this was a complicated read for me, in terms of how I felt about it. I liked the messages this story was promoting; the celebration of female sexual desire. The exploration of a society in which women’s roles and desires were placed first. But it felt quite heavy handed in its execution. In order to highlight the issues in our society, Routley replicates them in hers but reversed. So we have men treated as disposable, fathers as little more than sperm donors who don’t matter. I appreciated Routley’s message, but it lacked nuance.

Similarly, issues of class and race were treated in the same manner. There’s a great deal of racism towards the people of the neighbouring country who were white. Shine’s cousin, Bright, who has been banished from the family for being gay (a crime in society centred around fertility), has rescued an ‘Outlander’ who they call Shadow (it’s unclear whether this is his own name or not, and as far as I’m aware it’s not questioned/he’s not asked). For most of the book, he’s nicknamed Ghost. Shine herself is constantly under attack from her family as she is of mixed heritage, and so is nicknamed ‘ghostie’, and her family make fun of her for being pale. She’s also made to feel inferior for her lack of magical ability; she isn’t treated as a royal, merely as an aristocrat, and again suffers numerous humilities for this.

There’s a great deal of intrigue, family secrets, betrayals… there is a murder, but it doesn’t happen until quite late in the story, so it’s not a who-dunnit. There’s a great deal of injustice. There is also a huge cast of characters due to the nature of Shine’s family. There’s a family tree at the start, but I did find some inconsistencies when referring back to it, which only added to my confusion of who was who.

This has ended up being quite a negative review, and I’m generally loathe to review books in a negative way. Particularly as there was a great deal I enjoyed about the book. I did become very attached to Shine, she was an easy character to like, despite her own prejudices; she was very human in that regard. I tried not to focus on the fact that the character she kept lusting after was her cousin. I mean, it’s a fair historical representation of royal families, anyway. I loved her relationship with Katti – in fact, Katti is a fantastic character. I wish there’d been a great deal more of her, as her imperial nature was so perfectly feline, I could have happily read a book just entirely about her.

All in all, this is one of the more unique stories I’ve read this year. It’s a fun read, but expect something darker than the cute cover and light blurb portray! Give this a go if you fancy something different to the usual fare, something quirky and unexpected.