Kari C. reviewed on + 77 more book reviews
This book started out strongly. Set slightly into our future, there is now a gate that allows humans into an alternate universe - this one with elves in it. However, the gate just switches out land in our world for land in the other world. In the case of our world, the gate covers most of Pittsburgh. For most of the month, Pittsburgh resides in Elfhome. One day a month it's returned to Earth for supplies and allowing people to leave or enter.
The story follows Tinker, an 18-year-old genius who's lived in Pittsburgh/Elfhome all her life. During a Shutdown day (a day that Pittsburgh is in Earth) an elf enters her life chased by monsters. She helps him defeat the monsters, then keeps him alive until the return to Elfhome. After that her life is changed forever.
As I said, the story started out strongly and I devoured the first half of the book. Then the romance starts entering in and it gets weird.
***SPOILERS***
A very nice human she's known since she was 13 turns out to have been obsessing about her since she developed into a woman at 15. Once this is out of the bag it's like any self restraint he had is completely gone, leading him to actually attempt to rape her at one point. The counter-relationship with the elf seems better at first, but he also does some pretty strange stuff considering he's only known her for a few days.
*** END SPOILERS***
Unfortunately the weirdness in the romance put me off of the book. I skimmed ahead to see if it go better and ran across one more scene that lead me to put the book down altogether - a bit of cruelty from the bad guy that as far as I can tell serves no purpose but to show how much of a bad guy he really is. I don't mind horrible things happening to characters so long as it advances the plot. Horrible things for no reason but to show how bad the bad guy is - not my thing.
The story follows Tinker, an 18-year-old genius who's lived in Pittsburgh/Elfhome all her life. During a Shutdown day (a day that Pittsburgh is in Earth) an elf enters her life chased by monsters. She helps him defeat the monsters, then keeps him alive until the return to Elfhome. After that her life is changed forever.
As I said, the story started out strongly and I devoured the first half of the book. Then the romance starts entering in and it gets weird.
***SPOILERS***
A very nice human she's known since she was 13 turns out to have been obsessing about her since she developed into a woman at 15. Once this is out of the bag it's like any self restraint he had is completely gone, leading him to actually attempt to rape her at one point. The counter-relationship with the elf seems better at first, but he also does some pretty strange stuff considering he's only known her for a few days.
*** END SPOILERS***
Unfortunately the weirdness in the romance put me off of the book. I skimmed ahead to see if it go better and ran across one more scene that lead me to put the book down altogether - a bit of cruelty from the bad guy that as far as I can tell serves no purpose but to show how much of a bad guy he really is. I don't mind horrible things happening to characters so long as it advances the plot. Horrible things for no reason but to show how bad the bad guy is - not my thing.
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