What do you think?
Rate this book
441 pages, Hardcover
First published August 15, 2017
Normally, Elliot refused weird propositions from potentially demented strangers.
“Hello,” said the beautiful elven maid. “I was just thinking, and I mean no offence, but—how can any fighting force crowded with the softer sex hope to prevail in battle?”
“Huh?” said Elliot brilliantly. “The softer what?”
“I refer to men,” said the elf girl. “Naturally I was aware the Border guard admitted men, and I support men in their endeavor to prove they are equal to women, but their natures are not warlike, are they?”
Elliot offered, after a long pause: “I don’t enjoy fighting.”
She favored him with a slow smile, like dawn light spreading on water. “Very natural.”
“In fact,” Elliot confessed, encouraged, “I never fight.”
“You should not have to,” she said. “There should always be a woman ready to protect a man in need.”
“I wish I could grow a moustache like that,” Elliot said wistfully.
“Probably a bad idea,” said Luke. “You can’t control the hair you’ve got.”
“Besides,” said Serene, joining them, “I know it’s natural and everything, but don’t you think it looks weird if a man has hair anywhere but on his head? I mean, can they not be bothered to put in the time and effort to look good?”
“Oh dear, a child,” said Serene, moving backward with more alacrity than elven grace. “Could someone fetch a man to see to it?”
The group stared at her, as one.
“In elven society caring for the children is considered a task for the menfolk,” said Elliot, sighing and wondering why nobody else ever bothered to read a book.
“Of course it is,” said Serene. “The woman goes through the physically taxing and bloody experience of childbirth. A woman’s experience of blood and pain is, naturally, what makes womenkind particularly suited for the battlefield. Whereas men are the softer sex, squeamish about blood in the main. I know it’s the same for human men, Luke was extremely disinclined to discuss my first experience of a woman’s menses.”
Luke stared ferociously into the middle distance, obviously trying to visualize himself somewhere else, having an entirely different conversation. Serene patted him on the back. “Perfectly all right, I should have had more respect for your delicate masculine sensibilities.”
“Thank you,” said Luke, sounding very far away.
“What, you people expect women to tear apart their bodies and then go to all the bother of raising the children? That takes years, you know,” Serene remarked sternly. “The women’s labour is brief and agonizing, and the man’s is long and arduous. This seems only just. What on earth are men contributing to their children’s lives in the human world? Why would any human woman agree to have a child?”
“The more she talks the more sense it all makes,” said Elliot. “Has anyone else discovered that?”
“Where have you been?” Elliot demanded.
“Looking for you!” Luke snapped back. “How was I supposed to know you were off hiding in trees, you lunatic?”
“Don’t be rude to me when you’re rescuing me, loser,” Elliot told him. “That’s terrible manners. You’re the worst.”
Elliot gave up on subterfuge, clung to the counter, and said, “All right, you got me. I need some books full of specific elven instructions on how to please an elven lady.”Bright stared at Elliot, and Elliot wondered if he had perhaps misunderstood. “Sexually please her, I mean,” he clarified. “Very specific instructions, please. Do you know of a book like that?”
Bright drew in a deep breath. “How dare you?”
“The library is meant to be a place of learning, not of judgment,” said Elliot.
“Excuse me, sweetheart,” said Elliot. “Darling? A moment of your time? Sugarplum? Sugargrape? Sugarassortedfruitsandvegetables?”
Luke did not even turn his head.
“HEY, LOSER!” said Elliot.
The woman in odd clothing “tested” him by asking him if he could see a wall standing in the middle of a field. When he told her, “Obviously, because it’s a wall. Walls tend to be obvious,” she had pointed out the other kids blithely walking through the wall as if it was not there, and told him that he was one of the chosen few with the sight.When the woman asks Elliot to come with her to the magical land on the other side of the wall, he promptly tells her no one will miss him (Elliot’s problematic home life is explored later in the book) and heads over the wall with her. There he finds, somewhat to his disappointment, that he’ll be attending school to be trained as either a warrior or councilor. Elliot, more inclined to using sarcastic words than his fists for fighting, quickly opts for the council course. He equally quickly begins to mock Luke, the handsome blond guy who seems inclined to act as the leader of the group of new students at the Border, and Luke’s smiling sidekick Dale, mentally dubbing them Blondie and Surfer Dude. And Elliot immediately falls in love with an “elvish maiden” warrior who introduces herself as Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle.
"storybook strange and known by heart"
"I don’t need you to explain to me the concept of a magical land filled with fantastic creatures that only certain special children can enter. I am acquainted with the last several centuries of popular culture."
“Two harpies, one stone,” he added, and then saw the way Serene was looking at him. “A diplomatic stone! A diplomatic stone.”
“Excuse me, sweetheart,” said Elliot. “Darling? A moment of your time? Sugarplum? Sugargrape? Sugarassortedfruitsandvegetables?”
Luke did not even turn his head.
“HEY, LOSER!” said Elliot.