...This book sucks.
This book was beyond a slog, honestly. To give you an idea of how much of a slog it is, I started this book in december. And I just finished it now at the end of march. And I can read a book this size in a week!!

I picked this up cause I read one of the author's previous books, Lord Mouse, and remember it being unremarkable but readable. I figured this would probably be either just as unremarkable or better, but nah. It's worse.
And I think the biggest difference here is that Lord Mouse is half as long as Shadow Mark. And what Shadow Mark gains in length it spends doing... pretty much nothing. There's so much unescessary description!! Paragraphs and paragrahs of nothing!!
And like. I don't like saying that a part of a book is just nothing, or that descriptive paragaraphs are useless. But they certainly felt this way here. Padding, honestly.

Not that the plot itself here is anything amazing either. It's an unengaging mystery with clues that aren't revealed in an interesting way. Most of them are random assumptions made that are somehow right, it doesn't feel earned. And the romance. Ah, the romance. It's bland and unearned, and I'll leave it at that.
And it makes me mad cause there are little ideas throughout that give a glimpse to more interesting possibilities! There are divine marks that herald destiny in this world. But ah the titular shadow mark isn't one of those. There are mages and for some reason they can't usually wear armor!! Except for this one guy! But he's already dead and him being a mage who wore armor isn't important.
Instead we get the most obvious answer for most questions, there aren't any real twists. And, sure, there doesn't need to be a twist for a story to be good. But this story isn't good to begin with. I swear, near the end of the book there are TWO separate instances of the protag seeing/hearing new info about the bad guys and going "Oh huh. How did I not realize that earlier?" I don't know dude. Sure could've made your life easier if you did.

And just to kinda dissapoint me one last time. For no reason the book ends (spoilers, if you care) in a kinda xenophobic note. Throughout you hear that the kingdom in this setting is at war with barbarians in a neighboring province. And the first we hear of this the book kinda implies "ah but the barbarians aren't the monsters the kingdom sometimes sells them as!" which could be interesting if the story actually sought to explore that war.
But it doens't. Until it does at the very end when (again, spoilers) it's revealed that the big bad were just barbarians from that province in retaliation. No real nuance, no real discussion of who was the aggressor. Just "Well, I guess they really are bad guys".
Fuck off.