Charles Ingrid

{first in Elven Ways tetralogy; fantasy, magic, elves}(2006)

About 700 years before the story starts the Vaelinars (also known as elves) were cataclysmically exiled to the world of Kerith which was already inhabited by other humanoid and non-humanoid races and they now all live uneasily together. The Vaelinar are still called 'the Strangers' by the native races and hold themselves apart; they are long-lived (a couple of them even remember the exile though they would have been children then) and are now the only race with magic and don't usually acknowledge Vaelinar half-breeds since they do not carry magic in their blood. The two prologues which give us this information are written as though penned by historians of this world; the language in them is awkward and hard to follow but the narrative picks up once the actual story starts.

We follow a few characters of different races through this story. Sevryn is a half-blood Vaelinar who does not have their striking, multi-coloured eyes - but, unusually, he does have magic and finds it useful to be underestimated. The Farbranches are a dwarve-like Dweller family with three sons and a daughter who wants a sister - and they rescue a young girl from the nearby river who has Vaelinar looks and no family so they adopt her as their own and give her the name Rivergrace. In the larger world of Kerith there are war-like factions who want to break the uneasy peace or conquer lands and peoples in a quest for power; the Vaelinar ild Fallyn clan likes to make trouble and Quendius the half-breed Vaelinar wants to challenge the gods of Kerith - who abandoned their peoples when the Vaelinar arrived.

I like the warmth of the Farbranch family. Their everyday lives are woven through this fantasy and give the story a structure to build around as we spend much of the book following them, first in the countryside where they suffer Bolger and Raver raids and then in the city, where they meet other races. They also meet Lariel the Vaelinar Warrior Queen and Sevryn. There are politics and war brewing and even some environmental pollution - although I felt that particular issue was resolved a bit easily.

This is the first book of a tetralogy; although the ending is wrapped up neatly enough that it could be read as a stand-alone though it leaves enough open to continue the overarching story in the next book. It does do a lot of world building so there are initially a lot of threads to follow until they are braided together and it covers a lot of physical territory too; I could have done with a map. The timeline is initially confusing because there is a gap of twenty years between the first few chapters and the rest of the book which is not filled in and, possibly, because the Vaelinars have long lives which skews the concept of relative ages.

I think this was a LibraryThing automatic recommendation and it was quite engaging. There were some animal deaths, casually mentioned and not dwelt on, which I could have done without though it was probably only enough to take my rating down by a quarter of a star.

3.5-4 stars… (more)