author of Raiders of the Arcana series
About Empire of Shadows, book 1
One trifling little arrest shouldn’t have cost Ellie Mallory her job, but it’s only the latest in a line of injustices facing any educated woman with archaeological ambitions.
When Ellie stumbles across the map to a mysterious ancient city, she knows she’s holding her chance to revolutionize Pre-Colombian history. There’s just one teensy complication. A ruthless villain wants it, and Ellie is all that stands in his way.
To race him to the ruins—and avoid being violently disposed of—she needs the help of maverick surveyor Adam Bates, a snake-wrangling rogue who can’t seem to keep his dratted shirt on.
But there’s more than Ellie’s scholarly reputation (and life) on the line. Her enemies aren’t just looters. They’re after an arcane secret rumored to lie in the heart of the ruins, a mythical artifact with a power that could shake the world.
Between stealing trousers, plummeting over waterfalls, and trying not to fall in love with her machete-wielding partner, will Ellie be able to stop the oracle of a lost empire from falling into the wrong hands?
Review
Empire of Shadows, book 1
Jacquelyn Benson has captured the essence of adventure stories with Raiders of the Arcana. The tone and pacing are set from page one where Ellie, our FMC, is protesting for the suffragette movement. Immediately she is on the run from the formidable Jacobs, our series long bad guy. I feel like part of classic adventure stories is the pacing, we always need to be going going going, and Benson does not let up until we meet Adam, our MMC, in British Honduras (modern day Belize). At this point, the pacing does slow down in order to let the main characters get acquainted. Benson does very well to not let the romantic elements of the narrative bog down the adventure and treasure hunting.
This, true to form, adventure pacing is only part of why this book is so good. Benson has also crafted interesting and complex characters, at least the main two. Jacobs is another situation, but according to Benson, we will learn about some of his backstory and motivations in Arrow of Fortune (book 3). In book one, Ellie and Adam are given time (that somehow doesn’t interfere with the main narrative) to expand on the page. In book two, a large portion of the plot is the character development of Ellie’s brother Neil. He is someone who has never realized (or in some instances acknowledged) how straightforward his life has been. He was never prohibited from schooling or had to fight for a job. He has never been denied access to managing his own archeological dig sites. He has been, I’ll say, lucky in locating dig sites. Benson doesn’t let him continue with this comfortable existence he has, nope, she muddies the waters with the ethics of British archeology in Egypt and women’s rights. I love that she doesn’t shy away from these discussions.
The amount of research and care put into writing these books makes me confident that these are books that I will continue to come back to time and again.
You can purchase Jacquelyn Benson’s books on her website, and you can join her Patreon here. She often has additional chapters or stories in the Raiders of the Arcana series as benefits for becoming a patron.
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