Elora of Stone by Jaime Lee Mann

Elora of Stone by Jaime Lee Mann
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Just as the prophecy foretold a pure heart and a wizard get married and have twins a boy and a girl. The boy is taken and the family is broken, but the girl knows he is still alive. Meanwhile, their ancestor needs both children to free her from her rocky prison and will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
This story has all of the elements of a great fantasy, fairies, an ogre, an evil witch, children with powers who first mess up then save everyone at the last minute, a bad being which is good, and a good being which is bad. Since this, the novel has all of these things why only three stars? It is because it was not executed properly. The  major complaints I have about this book are the author switches from third to first person loosening the overall flow making the middle drag. Next there are two characters with similar names Lochlan and Larque I had a hard time determining the difference between them epically during their initial conversation before the formal introductions were made. Finally, The important backstory is given at the end leaving the reader wondering where the story was supposed to be going. This leaves a lot of holes and loose ends which were not addressed in the second half despite promising such. This novel was not all bad the end is well written and almost carries the weight of the rest of the story. The emotional connection between reader and the characters is more present in this novel than the in second book in this series, mainly because there are fewer characters introduced at once so there is more time to get to know them individually. The children in this story are fantastic they hold this whole series together. Would I recommend this series? Yes to younger audiences who do not care about individual characters or underlying deep plot points and are only interested in the above-mentioned list of good fantasy elements. I still believe this series has great potential and have not given up on it yet. I did notice a marked improvement between the writing style between the first and second book and have a feeling the third one is going to really shine.

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