Sea of Shadows

Oh dear. I read this while I was also reading Robin McKinley's Chalice, so it's hard not to compare the two. Like Chalice, the theme of Sea of Shadows was an inexperienced Chosen One (two of them! Twin sisters!), thrown in to crisis mode and fumbling their way towards an understanding of their powers, while desperate danger encompasses their village. I wasn't loving this before I started Chalice, and I loved it even less after - a prime case of an author trying to hard, I think. Everything kept getting worse and worse for our plucky (well, one was plucky, the other was wimpy) protagonists, but not ever giving me a feeling of, "Oh no! How will they get out of this!" but rather, "Oh, what now, for crying out loud." It all just felt rather tedious by the time I got to the end.