Zelia is not an elf but was raised by elves. She doesn’t really know why but it doesn’t matter when your childhood – all five hundred years of it – is so wonderful. When suddenly her world crumbles, Zelia finds herself forced to kill innocent people and looses hope that she can, someday, escape the evil wizard who is using her newfound powers. Her unexpected dream connection to a child god allows her a second chance at life but she’s then pulled into all sorts of adventures to try and manage her powers and save the people around her.
I really enjoyed this a lot. In addition to elves, wizards and gods, there are dwarves, dragons, griffins, wolves and a human or two. The narrative is a bit repetitive since Zelia needs to explain to almost everyone she meets why she looks so young when she’s really not but there’s so much happening and it’s so fast-paced that I didn’t mind much.
The narration by Senn Annis is quite good (and what a change from K. C. Luck’s The Lesbian Billionaires Club, where I first heard her voice!). I at times got confused as to who was talking but it wasn’t the narrator’s fault, just that there are many characters with unusual names.
There’s no romance in this first book in the series and no hint as to what the main character(s)’s sexual orientation might be, so it wouldn’t, on its own, qualify as lesfic. Just as the Sophie Fournier series by K. R. Collins, which I love too, in a totally different genre. But it’s fun and exciting and heartwrenching and book 2, Tempered in Ice, is next of my list.
Jude in the Stars 