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TerraFae
"Who said Immortality was Forever?"Life trickled by well for Cas, goblins tended to stay dead after getting run through and her partner in crime - Hum, the Giant of whatever place he chose for that week - was still vertical.But that all changed one day in an inn (it's always a dilapidated inn as opposed to a warm meadow or carriage show) when a cowled figure entered her life and bonked it good.Now she's stuck leading a pack of elves, and one ass, through a forestry maze that's determined to keep them from their goal; which she'd happily tell you about as soon as she figures it out herself.
- GenresFantasy
287 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 2, 2012
246 people want to read
About the author
Sabrina Zbasnik
19 books31 followersS.E. Zbasnik is the author of the Dwarves in Space series – think Tolkien and Hitchhiker’s merged in a horrific transporter accident – as well as a bunch of other fantasy novels. You can find her on twitter as well as facebook, and hopefully not standing right behind you.
Lover of halloween and video games. If you want to talk darkspawn, ghouls, geth, or dremora come on over. We have desserts. The cake is not a lie, but I wouldn't trust the ice cream.
Lover of halloween and video games. If you want to talk darkspawn, ghouls, geth, or dremora come on over. We have desserts. The cake is not a lie, but I wouldn't trust the ice cream.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 18, 2013
(even though i had to put this one on hold to read another book...)
amazing writing, great story told by a creative, perhaps slightly askew zbasnik. certainly not your standard read, but that's the main reason i enjoyed it so much.
amazing writing, great story told by a creative, perhaps slightly askew zbasnik. certainly not your standard read, but that's the main reason i enjoyed it so much.
July 25, 2013
Fun!
July 31, 2014
I received a copy of this book through a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for my honest review.
Terra Fae is an adventure and fantasy story about a girl, Cas, who is kidnapped and brought to Terra Fae, and island inhabited by elves. While she is there, she is forced to go on a death defying quest for...something (but the reader doesn't know what). I like this premise and found many of the details of the book to be interesting and fun to read, but in the end I was unsatisfied with the overall story, character development, and writing style. Because of this, I would give this book 2.75 stars on a good day.
There were many redeeming attributes to this book. First, I liked Cas' attitude about the world around her. She is rough around the edges and always has to be a few steps ahead simply because she is a woman. She is guarded and uses insults to cover up the fact tat she is really insecure and doesn't know what she wants or where she truly wants to be. This is highlighted in several places in the story where Cas reminds herself that she doesn't know why she continues to go along with the Elven quest, but then continues to go along for the heck of it.
Second, I liked the mystery and complications surrounding Analia, a half-elf that also went on the quest through Terra Fae. We don't know much about her, with the exception for bits here and there, but she actually seemed like a character I would like in real life. However, her reason to be in the story at all was shaky at best (with the exception of being part of a convenient plot point towards the end of the book), which really took away from my enjoying her completely.
Third, I liked the backstory between the humans and the elves and the way Gwydion's view of his people change throughout the book. I would have liked more detail, but I am not sure if that would have enhanced the story any.
Now, onto the BAD. Like I said above, I had three main issues with this book: the story as a whole, character development, and Zbasnik's writing.
Overall Story
Not only are the readers left in the dark about the purpose of the quest, the end point of the quest, or even where the characters are going during most of the book (which I know is intentional), but after finishing the story and having these questions answered I am still let with a feeling of 'what was the point of that book?' In the end, once all the loose ends were tied up, I didn't feel anything about the story. I knew where they were going, what they were looking for, and why they needed to look for it, but I had an overwhelming feeling of "who cares?" The main character of the story, Cas, literally could have done anything else for the course of the month and her fate would have been the same. When the whole adventure doesn't matter or have a personal connection to the main character, it is difficult for me, as the reader, to care at all.
Character Development
Like I alluded to above, the main character ends the book pretty much the same as when she enters it. Does the reader know more about her and get personal glimpses into her head? Yes. Does she change or grow at all? No. That goes for almost every single character in the book, with the exception of Gwydion (in a stretch). Gwydion had to do some soul searching and learned some unpleasant things about his people, the Elves, which I am sure caused some change, but the reader is not around to see this. At the end of the story Cas says goodbye and we are left without any idea of how this quest influenced Gwydion. Analia and Matteus continued to remain completely flat characters until the very end of the book.
Writing Style
Finally, the issue I had from the beginning of the book was Zbasnik's writing and how confusing it was. This is the main reason I gave this book the rating I did; it is hard to get lost in a story when I need to constantly be stopping to figure out what is going on. The story is mainly told through the eyes of Cas, but with snips here and there from the other people on the quest (Gwydion, Analia, and Matteus). However, Zbasnik switched between viewpoints from paragraph to paragraph with little to alert the reader that a new character was now telling the story through their eyes. This was made even more difficult to discern because the way the character's inner thoughts came across on the page were indisitnugishabe from one another. Without names, I would have been completely lost. This may have also had something to do with my gripe #2 about underdeveloped characters.
Terra Fae is an adventure and fantasy story about a girl, Cas, who is kidnapped and brought to Terra Fae, and island inhabited by elves. While she is there, she is forced to go on a death defying quest for...something (but the reader doesn't know what). I like this premise and found many of the details of the book to be interesting and fun to read, but in the end I was unsatisfied with the overall story, character development, and writing style. Because of this, I would give this book 2.75 stars on a good day.
There were many redeeming attributes to this book. First, I liked Cas' attitude about the world around her. She is rough around the edges and always has to be a few steps ahead simply because she is a woman. She is guarded and uses insults to cover up the fact tat she is really insecure and doesn't know what she wants or where she truly wants to be. This is highlighted in several places in the story where Cas reminds herself that she doesn't know why she continues to go along with the Elven quest, but then continues to go along for the heck of it.
Second, I liked the mystery and complications surrounding Analia, a half-elf that also went on the quest through Terra Fae. We don't know much about her, with the exception for bits here and there, but she actually seemed like a character I would like in real life. However, her reason to be in the story at all was shaky at best (with the exception of being part of a convenient plot point towards the end of the book), which really took away from my enjoying her completely.
Third, I liked the backstory between the humans and the elves and the way Gwydion's view of his people change throughout the book. I would have liked more detail, but I am not sure if that would have enhanced the story any.
Now, onto the BAD. Like I said above, I had three main issues with this book: the story as a whole, character development, and Zbasnik's writing.
Overall Story
Not only are the readers left in the dark about the purpose of the quest, the end point of the quest, or even where the characters are going during most of the book (which I know is intentional), but after finishing the story and having these questions answered I am still let with a feeling of 'what was the point of that book?' In the end, once all the loose ends were tied up, I didn't feel anything about the story. I knew where they were going, what they were looking for, and why they needed to look for it, but I had an overwhelming feeling of "who cares?" The main character of the story, Cas, literally could have done anything else for the course of the month and her fate would have been the same. When the whole adventure doesn't matter or have a personal connection to the main character, it is difficult for me, as the reader, to care at all.
Character Development
Like I alluded to above, the main character ends the book pretty much the same as when she enters it. Does the reader know more about her and get personal glimpses into her head? Yes. Does she change or grow at all? No. That goes for almost every single character in the book, with the exception of Gwydion (in a stretch). Gwydion had to do some soul searching and learned some unpleasant things about his people, the Elves, which I am sure caused some change, but the reader is not around to see this. At the end of the story Cas says goodbye and we are left without any idea of how this quest influenced Gwydion. Analia and Matteus continued to remain completely flat characters until the very end of the book.
Writing Style
Finally, the issue I had from the beginning of the book was Zbasnik's writing and how confusing it was. This is the main reason I gave this book the rating I did; it is hard to get lost in a story when I need to constantly be stopping to figure out what is going on. The story is mainly told through the eyes of Cas, but with snips here and there from the other people on the quest (Gwydion, Analia, and Matteus). However, Zbasnik switched between viewpoints from paragraph to paragraph with little to alert the reader that a new character was now telling the story through their eyes. This was made even more difficult to discern because the way the character's inner thoughts came across on the page were indisitnugishabe from one another. Without names, I would have been completely lost. This may have also had something to do with my gripe #2 about underdeveloped characters.
August 5, 2014
I really enjoyed reading this-- it was engaging and difficult to put down.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews