I was really excited to read this book! The idea of promises bound by magic, into knots, is a pretty interesting idea. And that the people who break those promises, become oathbreakers, well, they'd be outcasts. So I had to read Raim, who didn't know his promise, and then broke it. I just knew I was going to rage at the unfairness of it all!

This world where magic is it seems mostly gone, except the power in the promises, was really interesting to learn about. The way that society has been built around it-and how people who break their promises are outcast, was an interesting concept!

Raim was such a great character, and it really sucked that he was put into this position. That he only had one promise knot, but had no idea what it was, it's really unfair that he broke it, when he didn't even know that he was. He was strong and he was loyal, and I was rooting for him to survive!

Watching as he did his best to survive, while wondering what his promise was, was really great. As things got more complicated, I loved watching as his goals changed, as he realized some things about this world and as events shaped up to be dealt with in the next book!

This was a fantastic read, and I can't wait to read the sequel!

I just was not able to get into this book as much as I had hoped. I was hoping there would be more progression, but unfortunately the character growth was slow.

The concept of the magic in this book is absolutely fascinating (magical promise knots - BOOM), but the execution of the explanation leaves something to be desired. I think that's a lot of what I can say about this book. The ideas are good and interesting, but it never quite came together and clicked. The lack of character development also hurt the story. I wanted more arcs, more change, and more direction in the plot as well.

This is a rough book to fairly rate, but my review falls somewhere on the lower side of the 3-star range. It's just that this book is all over the place, and that makes it hard to really 100% comprehend everything that's laid out. McCulloch should get credit for creating a magic system that is actually fascinating. The concept of promise knots, and the events that unfold if you break one, are solidly interesting. The execution and explanation of this magic system? Not so much. For as long as it took to set things up, and all the info dumps that were present, I really felt lost for a long time in this story. The magic system is there, but it's not well explained, and that's frustrating.

The other part of this book that was rough for me was the lack of character development. I'm a very character driven reader, and I like to feel like my protagonists are learning and growing. I didn't feel that way during my read, although I admit that I did like Raim overall. I just felt like he spent so long trying to find the secret behind his knot, and then right when he was close the book went on all sorts of tangents. It just didn't flow, and Raim just didn't grow, and that made it hard for me to really connect with this story.

I think there's a lot of good things in The Oathbreaker's Shadow. I think that the premise overall is solid and that, with a little bit more love, this book could have been great. I am actually interested to see what happens next, to be honest.

Tried to get into this one a couple of times and it didn't seem to click. DNF.