In this second installment of the author\u2019s fantasy series, teenager Timothy Brennan continues to deal with the recent discovery that he is not a human; rather, he is an elf with some talents of the s\u00eddhe, or fairies. In the previous entry, Timothy learned of the existence of elves and his place in their society\u2014he is the seventh son of a seventh son in the lineage of Tuathla (Timothy\u2019s grandmother), the recently deceased ruler of the elves. In addition to his grandmother, Timothy has also lost Aenya, the s\u00eddhe who helped him adapt to S\u00eddhlin, the elf world, in the previous book. Aenya was apparently killed by Cadwaladr, an elf who is attempting to take over S\u00eddhlin and was in cahoots with Timothy\u2019s now dead uncle. Cadwaladr enlists the help of a sinister s\u00eddhe, Siofra, who infiltrates S\u00eddhlin to assassinate Timothy and any elf elders who stand in his way. But unbeknownst to anyone, Aenya survived in Sla\u00edne, which in human legends was referred to as Eden. The author succeeds at catching readers up with the story so far without resorting to excessive exposition dumps; not everything referenced is explained in detail, but he provides enough information to prevent readers from getting lost. Nilsen writes with a gritty sense of realism and excels at conveying fast-paced action in descriptions of battles and in other set pieces throughout the novel. Timothy is an amusing protagonist; despite his sad backstory, he keeps a sense of humor, often teasing his elf friends by using phrases (like \u201cWhat up?\u201d) that they do not understand. Still, he has a lot of characteristics stereotypical of a protagonist in a male power fantasy: Before he knew he was an elf, he was \u201ca video game playing, high school geek,\u201d yet he secretly has great power and manages to woo a beautiful s\u00eddhe. Still, fans of action-oriented fantasy will find the prose and plot compelling.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this second installment of the author\u2019s fantasy series, teenager Timothy Brennan continues to deal with the recent discovery that he is not a human; rather, he is an elf with some talents of the s\u00eddhe, or fairies. In the previous entry, Timothy learned of the existence of elves and his place in their society\u2014he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}