Review: Convoluted adventure novel
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 25, 2013
**Spoilers below**This book was over 500 pages but, after reading it, I feel that the story could have been told in 200 pages.Finnie, the heroine, goes from our world to a parallel one with dragons and elves.  But the dragons and elves barely appeared in the story.  The elves appeared for a few pages near the beginning  and in the middle, and the dragons appeared for a few pages near the very end.  And considering that much ado was made about the hero's position (as the first in a millennium to control both species), it was disappointing that they were more props than actual characters.In fact, most of the characters in the story besides Finnie and Frey were just props.  Only in the story at strategic times to show how lovable, loving, clever, brave, adaptable, adventurous, etc. Finnie was.  Because her main reason for going to this parallel world was to go on adventures (her parents, having been rich adventurers that died young, passed this same drive on to her).So rather than a cohesive plot, where every scene is meaningful to the story, it felt like the author created a checklist of "adventures" for Finnie to go on. Such as, have Finnie:Go to a magical kingdom and marry a handsome adventurer.  Check.Enjoy a sleigh ride through charming snow capped villages. Check.Charm the residents of a small, rustic town.  Check.Drink beer, learn to become a card shark and charm all the manly men she meets in the story.  Check.See an elf in real life.  Check.Learn she can communicate with certain animals.  Check.Bond with her alt-parents.  Check.Go to a ball in an expensive and pretty dress.  Check.Escape an assassination.  Check.Have an adventure on a boat.  Check.Befriend her husband's band of loyal adventures and earn their undying respect.  Check.Visit a cool chalet owned by her wealthy husband who has properties all over.  Check.Etc, etc, etc.Then later the author tried to loosely string those adventures into some type of plot involving political intrigue.  Of which Finnie is supposed to be a key character, though she doesn't care whats going on around her in the slightest (except as it affects her "adventures").  But at the end of the story I was left wondering what the point was.  The plot seemed to get lost in all of Finnie adventures.  And then after spending copious amounts of time focusing on trivial details earlier in the story, it's like the author looked at the word count and sent the story into overdrive skipping from one thing to the next to get the story wrapped up asap.At first the whole point of the book seemed to be that Finnie (having replaced her counterpart as the parallel world's princess) needed to bear her new husband a son to one day take over as king (and keep her parents kingdom from falling into the hands of her wicked uncle, who ruled the neighboring kingdom - the two kingdoms used to be one and were split by the two king's father).  Finnie's alt-parents only had a daughter, who could not take over as their kingdom's ruler, and apparently the only man fit to marry her didn't want the job of king.  So it was up to Finnie and Frey's future son.But then in the end, Frey unilaterally forces the evil uncle to sign a paper abdicating his throne and going into exile.  Then he decides to make Finnie's mother the first female ruler (after her husband dies) until he and Finnie have a son that comes of age to rule.  Because his position as Frey Drakkar (ruler of elves and dragons) puts him politically above kings and queens.So with that being the conclusion, I can't help but wonder why Frey couldn't have exercised his apparently unilateral decision-making ability to shape kingdoms and do this from the beginning.  All the hundreds of pages of vague, poorly explained political intrigue and machinations seemed to be for naught, except:Involve Finnie in a convoluted power scheme between two kingdoms, which she has no hand in solving.  Check.But the book is not 1 or 2 stars because for the most part I enjoyed the personalities of Finnie and Frey and seeing their relationship and interactions.  It was the best part of the book for me, and we got to see a lot of it.  I just think the book would have been better and more honest (and also shorter), if Finnie hadn't been a princess in the parallel realm and involved in convoluted schemes with a man who was technically a king but not actually a king, apparently.  Nothing of substance in the world of the story, or the life of the characters, would have been different if Finnie had just been a regular woman who hooked up with a ship's captain and had an adventure or two.  It would have been just as meaningless as the story we actually got.