This is a set of three novellas which combine to form one longer story.
The first part, 'The Prisoner', is beautifully done, with a wonderfully
mysterious and quite spine-chilling atmosphere. The second part, 'The
Knight', is still very readable but loses a little of the atmosphere.
The third part, 'The King', gets a bit bogged down in politics and loses
traction a little, but ends on a fine note.
The three stories
together form a complete whole, or perhaps I should say a potentially
complete whole. The story arc is resolved with a satisfactory flourish
(although with plenty of room for possible future development), but many
elements seem quite skeletal. The characters, in particular, are not
quite fully fleshed out. The world-building is very solid and well
thought out, but the little glimpses we catch here and there of how
things work are tantalising; more detail would have been welcome. I
would have liked to know more about the religious system, for instance,
and how the power of the light works in this world. I'm a big fan of not
info-dumping the background, but this was a little too minimalist for
my taste.
The main character, the elf, is quite compelling,
although we weren't given much detail about him but the gradual reveal
of who he is and his powers was masterfully done. However, although some
development is expected, even in a piece as short as this, and it was
always clear why he changed, I still didn't find his transformation
entirely credible. Again, a little more time spent on fleshing out the
character would have been good. Of the other characters, the good ones
seem a little too good, sometimes, especially Lenora and Fredric. The
king's mixed motives seemed believably human, although he was rather too
stupid at the end. The prison warden, Captain Torren, I liked very
much. This was an excellent portrayal of an honourable man caught in an
extremely difficult situation, and trying to do the best he could.
It
may be that the author intends to pad this out to novel length at some
point, in which case undoubtedly the rather unfinished nature of this
material will be irrelevant. Even if not, a final editing polish
wouldn't go amiss; I didn't spot any errors, but there were a few
slightly clunky lines which a little rewording would deal with. I
cringed, for instance, when the elf said he would 'holler'. This may
seem like a long list of criticisms, but it’s more a matter of
frustration that the book was so short - I would have liked much more.
Despite my grumbles, none of them affected my enjoyment of the book,
which I found very readable. Four stars.
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