Play of Shadows is the third in Barbara Nickless’s Dr. Evan Wilding series. Kudos to her for developing an atypical protagonist (Evan Wilding is a dwarf with an enormous intellect and a PhD in semiotics) and thrillers that are atypical to say the least. I love reading thrillers and Greek myth retellings, so Nickless hits the ball out of the park on this one, as far as I am concerned, especially as this series is more intellectual than the usual thrillers. This is the third in the series but can be easily read as a standalone.
In Play of Shadows, Evan reunites with his three-years-younger brother, River, to battle a mythological being, the Minotaur (part ancient Greek god, part bull, part human) in Chicago. River is an archeologist, an Indiana Jones type character (another of my favorite tropes) who was gifted an Indiana Jones hat by their father. The brothers had an absent mother and a domineering pharmacologist father who traipses around the world seeking new drugs. The book takes a look at sibling rivalry, good versus evil, whether people are born innately bad and how soon depravity is evidenced in the young.
I enjoyed the technical aspects of the books, the derivations of names, the ancient scripts, and the myth of the minotaur, but these are easily understood by laymen without a semiotics background.
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Play of Shadows (Thomas & Mercer, November 14, 2023) is available through:
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You can read my reviews of Nickless’s other books here:
The Sydney Rose Parnell series
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