Review: Not a Bad 1st Effort
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 9, 2014
I wanted to rate this higher as  the central characters and the world setting has great potential. However the overall style mostly left me confused on many levels.The best examples of this is how the author deals with humans.:Narzel was a trickster from human legends, known for playing tricks and making jokes frustrated and angered most people.Some things were hard to explain to humans. Just because they lived in a world where everyone else was magical didn't mean they really understood magic."The humans had been free and mostly equal for the past three hundred years. There isn't a human alive that remembers slavery" the dwarf finished with a flourish of his fork....... They tried to compensate with technology and innovation. ...... Regardless of their legal state they were still the dumb younger race to most of the world..................................................................................................Too often added details and background instead of helping form a coherent picture of this world  leaves more questions and inconsistencies. There are witches, warlocks, sorcerers, hedge-practioners and humans without (IMO) a clear pattern of how (or if) they are related.  Not to mention [to me] the heroine's confusing character, background and relationships.I will most likely read and recommend the next offering by the author but unless it shows a bit more polish and better exploration of the bigger picture worldview, unlikely to invest more time and energy.  I also found that the ending was too much of a rushed cliff-hanger.Overall I felt there were just to many moving parts (plots, subplots, characters, relationships, species / races) thrown together in a much too hurried manner.