I was given a copy of the audiobook, narrated by Sean Pratt, by the author, Steven A. Guglich, as part of Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program. The first book in a clean fantasy series.

I will start off by saying that I was approximately 3 to 4 hours into this book before I really had any idea what was happening or who the main characters were. The book jumped around a lot between characters and even eras during the character and world building.

This book builds on the folklore of St. Nicholas, his beginnings and end and the continuation of his legacy. There was a lot of extra story plot around the elves and goblins and their interactions with humans.

The main character, Jeremy, is a pied piper of sorts and has the ability to magically draw children to him. However, unlike the pied piper, Jeremy does not have a nefarious purpose, he just truly loves to make children happy. Jeremy is thrown into a fantastical world that the day before he would have said was impossible.

There are many other primary characters and a whole host of secondary characters.

Most of the time I was a little unsure of the plot and where the book was heading. While well written, the world building and discovery of each individual piece of backstory was very long and drawn out. I understand that the book ended with the intention of this being a series, however 19-hours later and I feel like I’m still grappling with the plot. ( )

I was given a copy of the book by the author as part of Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program.

This first-of-a-series clean fantasy by Steven A. Guglich is a weird combination of genres. it’s most definitely a fantasy, but there are also some science-fiction, folklore, and historical fiction bits thrown in. The plot forces one to suspend belief—a lot—and it seemed pretty silly most of the time.

Every type of fantasy character (except the kitchen sink) appears in the book: gnome, elf, human, goblin, dwarf, troll, and some new ones I hadn’t encountered before. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, which is even more difficult when listening.

The main character, Jeremy, is a mild-mannered, city-boy teacher when his adventure begins. Guided by a warrior elf who insists he is a protector, Jeremy ventures into another, hidden world of fantastic creatures and political upheaval. Calling Jeremy mild-mannered isn’t an exaggeration. He is rather soft and emotional, but he eventually showed some backbone.

An alternate, more mysterious character is Masaru, a trained Ninja assassin, who wants to take over a throne and be the ruler he was meant to be. The two stories told in parallel didn’t make much sense to me, and I hope the author will tie them together in future volumes.

The length of the book is just too long. There is a lot of backstory and explanations about magic are slowly revealed, but I think the book could have been two volumes instead of one. The mystery of the hidden world was drawn out, even though there is still a lot left to explain.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated very well by Sean Pratt.

Plenty of violence; no sex; no foul language. ( )