3 out of 4 stars
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Elf Brief by Jordan David is a fantasy novel depicting the life and times of Santa and his elves. It is the first in a series of nine books. Jordan has an unusual take on how the North Pole runs and the life of its denizens. The book concentrates on one elf in particular, explaining everything from his perspective. This elf is called Noel Night.
Noel is selected for an important task. It seems that Santa is retiring, and he needs Noel to document the whole period of his retirement and the recruiting and training of his replacement. Noel first task is to observe the recruitment of the new Santa. Some of the other elves object to this, but Santa insists and he gets his own way. This gives Noel insight into the FCD (first contact department) and reveals some of their secrets. After this Noel then starts to investigate all other aspects of North Pole life giving the reader an excellent opportunity to find out all about the environment the story is set in.
The characters are very well thought out and each has their own distinct personality. They elves also have a specific job and they can tell just from the color of the hat an elf is wearing what that job is. Each characters action is colored by this job, and it all works very well.
The Landscape is also well thought out, and the description of buildings and the location of each are well done, I really felt like I was there while reading this. I did think that the inclusion of a map would be helpful. There is a glossary of terms at the back of the book. However, I found the description within the story to be detailed enough that I didn’t need it.
I really enjoyed the storyline but after careful consideration I rate this book at only 3 out of 4 stars. The reason the book didn’t rate the full 4 stars is because of the numerous mistakes in the choice of the correct word. For example, the word ‘waste’ is used instead of ‘waist’ and ‘due’ for ‘do’. There are also mistakes in the tenses of some of the words used. If you can cope with correcting these as you read and you enjoy a good fantasy book then this is well worth a read. I’m looking forward to starting the next book in the series.
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The Elf Brief
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