As far as atmosphere is concerned, this is a good Elemental Masters novel. It's cosy, it has some of the characters from The wizard of London, and it has selkies. Story-wise it's not brilliant. A bit tame, you could say. There is no evil to be defeated, and the trouble to be solved is more in the line of a bad family squabble than anything else. Ok, the family happens to concern magical beings, but other than that it's a matter of a nasty father-in-law. I'm a fan of the Elemental Masters series, though, so I thought it was enjoyable! ( )

I am so disappointed.

The story of Mari, destined to be wife to a selch and a water master in her own right, had potential. And honestly, I have loved the Elemental Masters series, especially since I find that they're based on faerie tales utterly charming.

However, this book has been infuriating.

Lackey has been especially formulaic and feel-good with this book. Gone is even the slightest hint of darkness. I'm disappointed with that -- Lackey used to be genuinely good at creating genuinely human characters who confront painful topics. Maybe this is just more young-adult than usual.

I'm also more than halfway through the book (page 170) and I don't know who the villain is. I guess it could be the new constable, but we've only really seen him once. Puck's mentioned a couple of times that there are dark powers interested in Mari, but I've seen little to no evidence of it.

There has been hashing and rehashing of the same information, both information from Sarah and Nan from The Wizard of London, the way magic works, and of the information Mari has been given. I just stumbled over the second instance where she discovers the selch aren't immortal. Yes, twice. And the first one was only twenty pages or so ago.

Sarah and Nan are seeming especially powerless in this book, too; they came to town, toddled around, found the bookshop, declared themselves incapable of finding their quarry, and called on Puck to help after saying over and over that they didn't want to. For two young women reputedly trained in the Sherlockian methods of investigation, it seems especially wishy-washy.

This is honestly the very first Mercedes Lackey book that I have genuinely disliked. These books tend to be my go-to comfort books; I know what I'm getting and I like what I get, but this seems rushed and ill-thought out. It's like she settled on The Tempest but couldn't figure out how to deal with it, rather than writing the story and letting it fall out.

Anyway, grump. I'm only halfway through, and if by some miracle the book redeems itself in that time, I'll update my review. As it stands, I'm really sad, especially since Lackey is one of my top ten favorite authors.

Updated: the conflict in this book was so weak. I finished it, but I'm still really sad. I have LOVED the Elemental Masters series, and this one fell so flat. Some parts were really rushed, some were really slow, the villains were more..well..not very villainous, and Lackey left major characters out of the book (Daffyd) for long periods of time to just spontaneously pop up out of nowhere later. Grump. :/ ( )

Mari Prothero is a fisherman's daughter living in a small town on the coast of Wales. She lost her mother and brother when she was an infant when they were swept away by a rogue wave. Mari is able to see Elementals and other creatures but has given up talking about it since it made her father uncomfortable. They live outside the town and are more prosperous than most of the others who fish for a living. Mari finds out why when she turns eighteen.

Mari learns that the Prothero's have a long-standing deal with the Selch. They get prosperity and safety on the seas in exchange for children and relationships with Selch. Her mother didn't die, but tather took herself and her son back to live under the sea with the Selch. Now, Mari finds out that it is her turn to take a Selch lover and have children with him - one child to stay on the land and one to go under the sea.. Mari is appalled! However, some of her non-human friends have told her that she does have a right to bargain to get the best deal she can rather than just follow those plans.

So Mari demands a teacher to teach her about her abilities as a Water Master and an assortment of young men to be her suitors.

Meanwhile in London, Nan and Sarah have returned from Africa and and wondering what they should do with their lives. They aren't elemental masters but do have paranormal abilities of their own. After deciding that teaching isn't the career they've been looking for, they appeal to the head of the Elemental Masters to find them some investigative work and are promptly dispatched to Wales to follow up rumors of a new Water Master.

I liked the setting of this story. I liked the characters and the way magical elements were woven into Edwardian life. The writing was wonderfully descriptive and the narration was engaging. ( )

Of course I read this without knowing it was part of a series, and not the first part, and of course I haven't read the others.

Nonetheless, it was a quaint study of characters, which shows that Lackey can write traditional courting tales, and put twists on fae myths and delicate forms of fantasy. It was not an action-packed story, but it didn't need to be. Curiously, this is the second Lackey audiobook I've listened to, and the second in which there is a production of Midsummer Night's Dream. Perhaps it will become a motif throughout her immense body of work, or perhaps it was a coincidence.

I know with time and considering the large number of her audiobooks available at my library, I'll be able to piece together many more elements of her style and world-building. Even so, this was a satisfying listen, if only for the fact that it offered plenty of Welsh and British flavoring as regards the atmosphere and dialogue.

The characters are not as stand-out as the ones I met in Hunter, but I would obviously need to find the other myriad volumes in this intricately plotted series of element masters, or wizards, really, and I am not opposed to doing so. ( )

I've actually owned this book since shortly after it came out, but made the mistake of reading reviews on it before actually reading it, and so I was put off and unsure if I even wanted to read it.

Pfft.

Many of the reviews on Goodreads complain that "half" of this book is just excerpts from The Wizard of London, or that it relies too heavily on The Wizard of London. There are 6 pages of text taken straight from The Wizard of London (yes, I went and counted), and all of them are bits describing how Nan and Sarah met Puck and their relationship with him. So if you HAVEN'T read The Wizard of London already, there is quite a bit of backstory of Nan, Sarah, Lord Alderscroft, and other characters from that book that play roles in this. Like many of Misty's novels, she likes to interweave characters into other books set in the same world.

I read Wizard of London so long ago, and wasn't much of a fan so I didn't bother to remember much of it, so I was grateful for the refresher on who the heck these "Sarah and Nan" people were, and what their whole deal was. And while I think the book would have perhaps been better if it was it's "own" story without such a heavy reliance on these girls from another book, they had a purpose to be there and even a plausible backstory/reason for their involvement. So OK, I'll buy it.

This was a nice addition to the Elemental Masters series. I liked the Welsh setting and the people, loved Mari and the Selch, and felt there was a wealth of old, druidic/gaelic tales touched on. I may reread this one a time or two in the coming years, and it falls somewhere in the middle if I were to rank all the Elemental Masters books (with Phoenix and Ashes at the top of the list and The Wizard of London at the bottom). Worth a read (but maybe not worth buying the moment it came out in hardcover and then not reading it for nearly a year...) ( )