Review: a lovely mix of imaginary and real in a sweet adventure tale
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 23, 2013
Sara has just moved twice because of her father's job, and ended up in a tiny mining town in Eastern Washington. Since the death of her mother, she and her father hit emotional hard times. Now it feels like things are finally looking up for them. Though she feels like she may have seen a few strange, unexplainable things, it doesn't dampen her hope. Sara even makes two new friends at school in Nate and Chloe. They give her immediate acceptance, something she hasn't met with lately.When the strange things Chloe sees turn out to be real, Sara must call upon her new friends to help her. An earthquake signals the beginning of a war between the Human world and the Magic world. A Sprite, and a talking cat inform her that she is a healing witch. They introduce her to a wood nymph named Muriel who confirms.  Sickened and possessed, the Unseelie King, Timaron needs the healing gift of her human magic to bring him to his right mind and call off the war. The success or failure of her mission will determine the fates of both kingdoms and the Earth itself. Can they succeed?Linell Jeppsen has crafted a lovely mix of imaginary and real in a sweet adventure tale. Adventure, high fantasy, romance, and a message of natural conservation carry the reader through a touching tale. Her characters are sweet and likable with some youthful doubt tossed in from time to time. Their guilt and desire to redeem their evils drives them toward a battle for peace and into your heart.I felt that the voice of the story wavered a bit between a desire to be contemporary and an old fairy-tale voice. It would have been more consistent and smooth to stick to one or the other. At times, telling about a scene over showing through dialogue stole some of the drama. There were many times I would have liked to read more about what the character thought or felt about during the tale, but their emotions were left a mystery, taking away from the emotional impact of the scene.Linell doled out some of the characters' quirks and personal descriptions in a somewhat haphazard way. She treated the reader to big personality revelations in a sentence or two during a scene in which I felt they didn't really fit. I would have liked to see her main characters struggle a little more with the upturn of their reality at the beginning of the story too. They seemed to reflect a little and then accept all manner of supernatural creatures.Linell's story withstood the few challenges and I really enjoyed her imaginative tale. Her characters' relationships gripped the reader like real relationships, peppered with guilt, doubt, self-consciousness, yearning, and hope. I loved the variety and description of her characters and places, not too much and not too little. War of Odds is a lovely read!I received this book from the author for the purposes of unbiased review.