Many people compare this series with Wheel of Time and I agree that that comparison is fair, in that both series' are deeply flawed and I ended up not liking them. The whole teenage wunderkind trope is, at least for me, a thing of the past. On top of that the characters in The Shadow of What Was Lost stay quite bland. It's always about their powers and not about their actual characters. There's a lot of world building in this book and instead of the characters showing agency and leaving their mark, they just seem part of the building.

I can see why people would enjoy this book, but it's not for me.