Book cover – Frey by Melissa Wright
Frey tells the story of a young, orphan, elf girl, growing up in a village with her aunt who hates her. She is set apart from everyone else in that where everyone else has magic, she does not. You learn that her mother is dead and that there are questions regarding her death. When she starts to manifest her magic in strange, destructive ways, the entire village, including the council start to watch her very carefully. A strange, handsome elf called Chevelle arrives, saying he has been appointed as her watcher and starts to teach her more about the elves and about magic. And then the trouble really starts.
I struggled with this book. Perhaps it’s me as I’m getting older that I’m getting restless and, yes, a little less tolerant of foibles. But let me start with what I did like about it.
Ms Wright tells a good story. It has pace, it is interesting – captivating – with unusual and likeable characters, good descriptions of place and action. By the end of the book, I was disappointed that it had finished and I am keen to read the next one to find out what had happened with Frey and the others with whom she is travelling.
However, as I mentioned earlier, I did have some problems with this book. My initial problem was the portrayal of Frey herself. She is a teenager living in a society of people who live a very long time and yet I felt that she could have been dropped into a high school in any American film and would not be out of place. To me, her sulky, uncommunicative behaviour and tendency to isolate herself in her bedroom seemed very stereotypical of a western society teenager and I felt that an opportunity was missed to develop other outward expressions of her personality. At the same time, it could also have given a deeper look at the structure of the elven society in which she was living. What I read seemed very like a small town in our western society, just with more trees.
The other major issues I had were with Frey’s relationship with Chevelle. The first issue here was the lack of communication between them. There were times when I thought it obvious that it would only be natural for someone to ask a question or demand an explanation but Frey did neither. This gave an added frustration of leaving the reader in the dark about motivations.
The lack of communication between the two was such that, for all the attractive descriptions of him, when the inevitable relationship started to develop, it felt wrong and Chevelle, just started to seem creepy.
However, in spite of these issues, I am keen to read the next in the series. I like the world that Ms Wright has created and I want to know more about it. I was to get to know her characters better and I want to see if Frey grows up and starts to realise her potential.
Book Cover – Pieces of Eight by Melissa Wright
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