Elven Jewel
Kasper Beaumont
The halflings live a life of peace until their lives are endangered by cruel invaders. What starts off as a quest to warn the protectors, becomes a quest to rescue the Elven Jewel and save Reloria.
I put off reading this novel because the cover didn’t fill me with confidence (I have included the updated image here). Lo and behold, setting off into it I remained nervous. By about half-way through, I was already committed, even if I didn’t feel particularly pushed to finish it.
You know, despite pretty much knowing what was going to happen, and the rather stilted storytelling, I enjoyed it. This is basically a remake of Lord of the Rings, for a younger set of readers. To an extent, I was confused as to why there was a lot made of the growing romance between two of the characters when the rest of the novel felt quite childish. But combine that with some of the somewhat graphic violence, and it became an early teenage novel where I would expect more character depth.
While Fendi (who I considered the main character) apparently is developing a silver tongue, I really didn’t see that role of him developing, despite the other characters commenting on it. I wanted to see more! Saying ‘no’ to killing someone does not make you a negotiator. Equally, you’ve got to do a bit more explaining to the new allies about the dangers.
Some of the names of things, I wasn’t sure that although they were deliberate choices, they could have been less, obvious? The author went to the trouble of renaming his characters depending on what their race was, I felt like it would have been better to also rename all the animals rather than leaving some as recognisable.
This novel has now gone through a complete renovation (sorry, it’s called editing when you aren’t updating a house!), which I haven’t actually read. I would expect that with that editing, it could be a candidate for 4 stars for the right audience. As it stands, 3 stars.
Dear me. This novel. Where to start with its faults. There weren’t enough clues for the reader to really feel like they were on the scene. I was told how to feel about every situation, I didn’t need to think for myself. Again, the blurb gives away too much of the novel contents.
Stetz-Waters creates characters that are compliments of each other, particularly in these romances of hers (
This novel was trying to see itself by other reviewers as a ‘thriller [and] a titillating delight’. Sorry, the sexual tension that Kendra seems to feel towards Lynch isn’t even that tensioned for me as a reader. I saw it, yes, but the gripping storyline was what did it for me.
This novel takes both its name and its conversational writing style In the ‘tradition’ of 
If this novel had been billed as an expose of what it looks like when a family is ripped apart by a disappearance, then maybe I could have gotten into it. Even then, it was too caught up in what Sam felt for anything else to really come through. I never want to be in that position.
As long as you can get past the extreme amounts of explicit swearing in the prologue and first chapter, you’ll be golden for reading this novel. If that sort of thing bothers you, I advise skipping straight ahead. I put the book down and tried to take a nap instead of keeping reading at that point. Anyway, I persevered and it got better from there.
This is the novel of when parenting isn’t smooth sailing. Or perhaps, just parenting in general. It takes a look at how men and women somehow change in the months following their child’s birth, and yet hopefully stay the same.
I couldn’t work out what the main part of this novel was. Finding someone? Yes, ok. Saving a magazine? Yes, ok. Exposing some sort of crime? Yes, ok. Character development? Nope. Boring stuff about jobs that I didn’t care about? Oh, yes. None of the action happened in the first half. I wanted to love it, I really did.