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James Islington’s The Shadow of What Was Lost arrived in 2014 as a self-published novel, was picked up by a major publisher in 2016, and has since quietly built one of the most devoted readerships in contemporary fantasy. It’s the kind of book that gets passed between friends with a slight air of conspiracy: have you read this yet? Why hasn’t everyone read this?
Here’s the review I wish I’d found before I started.
What’s It About?
The Licanius Trilogy is set in a world where magic — called the Essence — exists but is heavily restricted following a catastrophic war. Those who can use it are bound by the Augurs, an ancient order, and constrained to obedience through Oaths backed by magical compulsion.
The story follows three main characters:
Davian — a student at a school for those with Essence abilities, who is facing serious consequences for his failure to develop any power. When everything he thought he knew about himself turns out to be wrong, his story accelerates rapidly.
Wirr — Davian’s best friend, from a noble family, with political complications of his own. He’s the most grounded of the three POVs and provides much of the political texture of the novel.
Caeden — a young man found at the edge of a massacre with no memory of who he is or how he got there. His storyline is the most mysterious and — when it starts to unlock — the most jaw-dropping.
The plot involves an ancient threat re-emerging, a prophecy with uncomfortable implications, and a time-travel mechanic that is used with more intelligence and care than the genre usually manages.
What Works
The world-building is excellent. Islington has clearly thought through the implications of his magic system and his history, and the novel rewards careful reading — details dropped early pay off chapters later in ways that feel genuinely earned rather than contrived.
The Caeden storyline is the standout. It’s structured as a mystery, and Islington doles out information with real skill. By the time revelations start landing in the final third, the pieces fit together in a way that’s simultaneously surprising and inevitable — the mark of plotting done well.
The pacing is strong for a debut of this ambition. At around 700 pages it’s a substantial read but it doesn’t drag. Islington is good at chapter endings.
The influence of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson is obvious — this is squarely in the Wheel of Time tradition of large-canvas epic fantasy with intricate magic systems. If you love that tradition, Shadow of What Was Lost is the best recent entry in it.
What Doesn’t Quite Work
The prose is functional rather than beautiful. Islington is competent but he’s not Rothfuss. If you’re primarily a prose reader, you’ll find this solid but unremarkable on a sentence level.
Some of the secondary characters are thinner than the leads, particularly early on. The school setting in the opening section does the job but doesn’t quite distinguish itself from similar settings in other books.
The Series
The Licanius Trilogy is complete: The Shadow of What Was Lost, An Echo of Things to Come, and The Light of All That Falls. All three are published. All three deliver. The conclusion is particularly satisfying — Islington sticks the landing in ways that many ambitious fantasy trilogies fail to.
Rating: 4/5
Rated 4.4 Stars on Amazon. Buy The Shadow of What Was Lost here.
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Check out Sunset In the East — a mind-bending short story collection from Ben Luxon.
