Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-98.247.168.42-20181122042639/@comment-37719459-20181207012241

Yeah! I especially liked the very beginning, with her being introduced to the elven world. The only reason I don't like it more is because there are a few major plot holes that I felt like weren't explained, and are in all the books, but they're introduced in that book.

1.) THE ECONOMY--Seriously, the economy makes no sense.  But on the other hand, from a writer's perspective, it wouldv'e taken a REALLLLLY long time to come up with a solution to an economy where jewel-encrusted clothes aren't a big deal (there's a little something called RESOURCE EXAUSTION but who cares, it's a kids' book, where people work for pretty much nothing, and most of all, where money isn't needed, but wanted--which is essential to the idea of elves, but is completely contradictory to the laws of economy. But still, it's kind of a small detail in the book, and it isn't important to the plot. I get it--that's nearly impossible.

2.) THEIR POPULATION--It was kinda unrealistic to make a species that never dies but keeps having kids.  The only book I know of that succeeded in making a race like that is Eragon, but the elves are kinda...weird.  The thing is, if there's a couple million elves, and fifty are born each year (Assuming that there are about 2 or 3 schools like Foxfire, with around 20 elves per Level), that would mean that the Elven race had only been around for about 20,000 years.  However, in Nightfall, it does give us some details about the Elves being a "small, scattered race" so elves probably dies more often, and they probably had less children.  Heck--the elves might not have been immortal at this point (they were probably originally immortal, but that's something that shouldn't be explored; it's just the mysterious origin story. And if the elves were always immortal, the first elves would know how they were created, which... doesn't make sense. Anyways...) and so they probably only added like 5 elves to their population per year, which brings the elves' existance to around 110,000 years.  This means that the VAST MAJORITY of elves are Ancients, but they make it seem like that's rare.  I have a small idea that doesn't make a ton of sense, but it would kinda tie up the loose ends of the population issue--maybe a mass extinction a few thousand years ago that only a few survived?  That would explain the lack of ancients, and the elves' small population.  I don't know.  Let me know if that makes sense.  I've gotten WAY off track.  Back to the list.

ABILITIES/TALENTS/LIGHT LEAPING--I just felt like Shannon Messenger explained only a few of these things scientifically but left the rest--they vaguely explained Vanishing and light leaping, but not really anything else. That might be intentional, but if it's not magic, I'd like to know how they do it. I can understand how Mesmerizing and the mind over matter tricks and telekinesis, but the rest of them? Not really. It would be cool to hear an explanation. That's one of the reasons I liked Nightfall--they kinda emphasized the science behind Everblaze and the sopordine.

Anyway, that turned out WAY longer than I meant it to be, but, as a short answer, YES! I loved the first book. I just think maybe she should have written the Sky Fall series or something else as a first book so that the first book of her main series wasn't quite as... there's a word for this I'm sure. I can't think. Sorry.