This was well rounded and a fully realized character. I was pleasantly suprised to find I enjoyed it. Will definitely be looking up other titles by this author. ( )

Written twenty-five years after Ariel, this second book of The Change takes place in the following generation. Fred (son of Pete from the first book) is skilled at casting spells and wants to learn more. Cocky and self-sure adolescents, Fred and his best friend Yan push the boundaries of known ability. Yan gets heady with the potential power he can wield, the two friends argue about their responsibilities and Yan is forced to flee the community. Later when creatures come hunting a unicorn horn- key to the most powerful magic that could undo the laws of the Universe- Fred knows what Yan is planning to do- and that he must put a stop to his grandiose plan. So with a few companions he goes off on a mission to confront his best friend. This story arc was so much like the first book. Quest through a decayed landscape full of ruins of civilization, to find and stop the bad guy. Some of the original characters have a large role in it as well. Enough of it was unique- and I especially liked the explanations about the laws of magic, and how Yan and Fred were able to discover new ways to manipulate it, comparing along the way to how computer systems work. It's interesting to me how many stories inside stories were told here, with characters relating their histories, what happened to others... (Fred does quite a bit of eavesdropping, ha). In one part telling stories of the past is even part of a large ritual. It was nice to get some details from the first book filled in.

One interesting aspect is the very subtle suggestion that Fred and Yan were lovers. It's something I might not have noticed if someone else hadn't pointed it out to me. It's just not a big part of the story... was the character keeping it secret? certainly his father didn't know exactly how close he and Yan had been. It's never really made clear.

On the whole I didn't find this book quite as funny as Ariel. A lot of it is built on action- but the narrative seemed to slow down the closer it got the end with the big showdown. At some point I was just anxious for it to get there and making myself read through all the obstacles the characters had to overcome. And unfortunately I didn't feel as connected to the characters themselves. The unicorn in particular wasn't as strong an individual as I remember. I wish there'd been more about Avy. And the centaurs in here? They sound freakishly menacing but I was unable to picture them clearly...

Sounds like there's another installment coming- Avalon Burning. I'd read it.

from the Dogear Diary ( )

This was a novel well worth reading. The characters were well drawn and unique, the story line like nothing I've read before, fraught with human frailities and strength, loss and love, and the scenes devastating in light of the harshness of this alternate reality.
I felt Steven could have shortened this tale by a third and it still would maintain the impact it did, but at the same time I almost didn't want the story to end.
At first, his writing style threw me off a bit. Sentences that should end in a question mark didn't and commas were not used where I would expect them. There were numerous place where the tense shifted within the same paragraph. Since this was done in first person, I assume Steven wanted to reflect what could be expected from a young man who grew up in a world without schools and where most people either don't want to read or were never taught.
The ending was drawn out as if Steven didn't want to leave that world and the afterword did provide some insight into his thoughts on this, but did nothing to add to the novel. He really didn't want to write this and was really too darn busy with his life to do so, but his inner writer refused to give in. This was our gain, though I do think better editing would have made it stronger. ( )

Elegy Beach is the sequel to Ariel: A Book of the Change, and you might call it “Ariel, the Next Generation,” except it isn’t quite like that at all. Yes, the protagonist is the son of Pete Garey, the protagonist (and not quite hero) of Ariel, but the writer takes his own sweet time getting around to admitting that yes, Pete went and had a mini-me.

The main plot of the story revolves around Fred going on a quest to stop his friend and fellow magic-user Yanamandra Ramchandani from accomplishing his goal of “correcting the Change” and turning everything back to “the way it was.” (An act that would kill a lot of creatures and people who wouldn’t be able to survive or even exist under the “old system.”)

Read the rest of this review at A Wicked Convergence of Circumstances ( )

It was a page-turner, and the world was better thought-out and/or described than it was in "Ariel".

There were some authorial mannerisms, though, that started annoying me early on and got increasingly irritating as they went on and on and on. The worst was the lack of question marks after most questions, both in dialog and in interior monologue. Did he think this was a clever trick when used over and over and over again. Did he think it added to the uniqueness of the voices when pretty much everyone did it. Was it the goal to make it seem like everyone spoke and the narrator thought in a robotic monotone. -Et cetera.

Combined with sentence fragments that could well have been crafted into actual sentences... well the voice was grating early on and just got worse.

Decent plotting, reasonably well-thought-out world, poor characterization, and really annoying voice; obviously, my personal take on it. ( )