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Thursday 25 July 2013

Fantasy Novellas Review: 'The Dark Elf of Syron' by Laura Lond

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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