E. L. Lyons

DNF at page 174. It hurts me to say that I didn’t like this book. The author was so generous with the packaging of this book that I wanted to absolutely love it. So I hate that I couldn’t get into the story. I got to page 150 and it took me four months to pick it back up again. Partly because I wanted to give it another go and mostly because I had a feeling that I didn’t want to read it.
It’s a well written story with an intriguing plot that most readers will easily devour. It was definitely me and not the book.… (meer)

Starlight Jewel got under my skin. Sometimes its tensions had me reluctant to pick it up again for a few days, or I read only a chapter at a time. That's how much I liked its heroine Axly, the Starlight Jewel. Axly is one of the hybrids born of humans mating with humanoid woodland sentients called sprygans. There's an illustrated page between a double-page map and the table of contents that is 'Anatomical Manifestations of Sprygan Gifts in Sprygan-Human Hybrids'. The information on that page is useful, just as the illustrations give us a good idea of what a Sprygan looks like.… (meer)

Starlight Jewel may be one of the more interesting worldbuilding settings I've read in a while. The cultures and relations of sprygans and humans and hybrids (oh, my!) felt very well thought through and well rendered, resulting in a world of nations and cultures with a lot of interesting complexity while still not difficult to grasp enough to understand the setting of the story. (BTW, more preview of this is available at target="_top">lyonspen.com/starlight-jewel.) This is not an easy feat, and I much appreciate finding a writer that can do this well.

And then there're the characters. All different, all interesting, all reasonably consistent in their behaviors (even when they surprised me, which some of them did), and all with a degree of depth, background, motivation, etc. Especially Axly, with all her tortured and conflicting motivations driving a series of incredibly difficult decisions and the inevitable self-imaging that such a history will build in a person. Which, of course, also makes for an equally interesting and evolving story.

If I had any complaint, it would be of a few points at which the story jumps forward in time too sharply. Particularly, at 25% in, the story jumped about a year with no transition; a little coverage of that time, especially near its end (was this departure as messy as the previous one?), would have gone a long way in easing or avoiding the stark disorientation of that jump. Overall, it didn't detract that much from the overall experience; just a somewhat stumbly bit that could have been smoother.

The story does include a great and climactic resolution to the immediate crises, albeit with many open questions about the immediate future and an assortment of loose threads that promise of much more story to come. This should not surprise anyone, as it is Book One in a series, after all.

I'll definitely be watching for Book Two.… (meer)