C. L. Aire

New Review by Samantha, winner of the AMC Expo giveaway

​

You know a story is a true fantasy novel if it comes with a map. On the eve of her tenth birthday, Cassie has a prophetic dream of war and death on a massive scale. After six years of almost nightly repeats of the same prophetic dream, Cassie, with her two best friends of Gemma and Kieran, head to the capital city from their far northern town in the hopes of averting the war that haunts Cassie's sleep. Their travels aren't as as easy and carefree as they have been imagined. Life's optimism at 16 rarely matches reality, those strangers met on the trail aren't to be taken on face value and magic can be found simply by changing your perspective. The surprise "twist" at the end of the novel, when the prophesied epic battle happens, didn't actually surprise me as I predicted it happening partway through the novel. That this is from a first time novelist surprises me as its quite good. The plot and story is so good that I had go out of my way to find minor problems. While probably enjoyed most by the teen/young adult market, it does have an appeal to all audiences in my opinion. With a few small, mainly grammatical and formatting, changes could be a great and addictive read. Being hyper-critical, there is a few minor issues with this novel. There seems to be an editorial lack of diligence. At one point, when the three travelers first catch a glimpse of the sea, all three gawk at its size and expanse. It's mentioned that none of the three have ever seen the sea, having lived their entire lives landlocked in the middle of an island. Yet much has been made of Gemma being from an island far to the south, with different beliefs and customs (which help move the story along more then once), and only comes to live in Ar-ken with Cassie and Kieran in the far north "relatively" recently. Also, there seems to be the odd word missing or where sentence structure occasionally seems somewhat clunky. Also, there is the odd occurence where it isn't clear who has spoken. I bought this novel at a pop culture convention after talking to the author, who was a lot of fun to talk to.