Good idea, starts off well. I liked the characters, and the world seemed to have some interesting possibilities. But then it went kinda flat.

The pacing seemed off. It felt like the book was about 1/3 as long as it needed to be to make this really work, especially given the amount of time spent building up to the point where she enters the fairy land. What happens after that is so fast it comes off very forced.

Also, the character description seemed a bit off. Mara turns out to be quite a heroic lady, but we don't see her making difficult decisions; the main difficult decision is over in a snap, and there wasn't anything anticipating it or really following it either.

Probably partly because of the shortness of the important parts, we don't have even partial answers to a lot of questions. Why does she decide to go along with it anyway? Why does she start to feel that way? Why does he start to feel that way? Why does their magic work that way? How does that thing at the end work? There's no explanation for any of this, nor was there really any foreshadowing of it either. These things are merely stated, and that deflates the story like a pin popping a balloon.

I was hoping for something more like Tara Grayce's "Fierce Heart", in which an elf and human who have never met before must marry to seal an alliance (not too different from what we have in this book, where the human and elf must wed to fulfill prophecy). But in that book, the relationship is allowed to develop and deepen through various difficulties. ( )

Meh, never really quite got going enough for me. Sort of a nice idea, but needed a lot more expansion of the details and storytelling to get there.

A young maid in a castle finds a key. she dutifully tries to hand it in, but it won't be found. She's dismissed into the dark forest where the key opens a gate into another realm - here she's the fated princess prophesied to save them all. The particular terror that she's due to aid them with, in an encroachment from the Void, another passing world that forces terrible monster through. No it doesn't seem to make any more sense now than it did reading it to start with.

Everyone is very accepting that his is how it should be. There's no politics, no manipulations, no drama and no tension. Prince explains to the girl that she's fated to save the world, by marrying him, and she goes Oh okay then. They save the world.

I liked the idea. The initial Castle passages were well written. I liked the dark elves world, as a concept, but it was much less well executed, and the characters failed to sparkle. Everything happened very neatly and then it ended. Which is a shame because the author has written some much more engaging books. I suggest reading them instead. ( )