It's quite the busy patchwork, and a world that you're launched into suddenly. There are seven races in Elantra: the immortal Dragons, including the Emperor, and the austere, magical Barrani the winged Aerians, the snarling Leontines, the telepathic Tha'alani, humans and one other that's not revealed apart from a brief aside about their agoraphobia.

The only reason it gets two stars is because the plot is actually very intriguing. I started reading it late last year and only now decided I should finish it - all the time with a frown on my face. This is a book I wanted to throw at the wall every second sentence. To find the source of the kidnappings and ritualistic killings, Kaylin must understand what is happening to her and what the connection is, before more children she personally knows are taken. To complicate matters, the Lord of Nightshade has marked her, and the marks on her body are changing again. It's an uneasy alliance between Kaylin and Severn. He's teamed her with a Dragon, Tiamaris, and Severn, who's transferred from the Wolves. But the killings have started again, closer together this time, and the Hawklord has put her on the case. She practices her healing magic in secret and under the protection of the Hawklord, a rare magic that would see her sent to the Emperor if it were discovered. Now, seven years later, her name has changed to Kaylin and she's a member of the Hawks, one of the three Lords of Law of the city of Elantra. Thirty-eight children are found murdered with markings like hers carved into their skin - and she knew all of them - until they suddenly stopped the same day she ran away from the fiefs, from Severn, from the horror of what she'd seen.

Then one day strange markings appeared on her arms and legs, and the killings began. Elianne was an orphaned child of the fiefs, scraping out a living in the fiefdom of Nightshade with an older boy, Severn, and two other little girls.

Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara