Sharon Shinn

Sharon Shinn is the master of slow-burn, clean romantic subplots. My favorite thing about them is that they are always mature, and the characters usually act quite reasonably. This book is a high fantasy quest, with a big helping of intrigue where the southern lords are plotting treason against the king. High fantasy quests are hard to make interesting because they can be meandering as the people questing go from town to town and it can be difficult in between episodes of dramatic things to pay attention. This book suffers a bit from that, but I can fully say that I don't have a lot of patience as a reader and quest fantasy is not my favorite sub-genre so I don't count that as a strike against this book. If you like quest fantasy you probably won't mind it. What saved it for me was that all of the characters were interesting, and I wanted to know more about them. I became terribly invested in each of the characters' relationships with each other. This book is also setup for mysteries and conflicts that will hopefully be revealed in the next books, so I will definitely be reading them.… (más)

This story read like a poorly-developed first, possibly second draft. The main character ("Val") was supposedly in her late 20's but comes across as a petulant, immature young girl. Val has some interesting aspects where she is tuned into the forest and the land, especially the 'heart tree', so what the heck was the author thinking by not designating her the Hunti prime? With such a strong narrative lead in, developments inexplicably fizzled as someone else in the family took over.

Add in a perfunctory romance: Sebastian, who was the oh-so-charming rogue and unpredictable smuggler-thief, especially with this eye-roll, cringe-worthy "I always loved you", and Val's "oh, I loved you too but didn't know" response. Such unwriterly tropes detract from any reader-engagement.

A real shock was Shinn’s loss of her usual excellent pacing: the story was into chapter 27 before anything actually happened. Finally, we see the plot take off. Except nope, over-the-top-action for a couple segments, followed by a chapter or two and the finale of Val's adventure hiding from pursuit in the Challinbar grove on her family estate was a flatlined rescue; ultimately, a boring dénouement was so trite, it was hard to believe someone else didn't ghost-write the story.

Where is the talent that is so evident in the first 4 Elemental Blessings books, not to mention the wonderful heroines like Zoe, (Troubled Waters), Rachel (Archangel, Samaria series), Senneth (Mystic & Rider, Twelve Houses series), for example? More importantly, where is her editor? Readers may be very disappointed with how Elemental Blessings was continued.… (más)