Could you kill a god?It’s been six weeks since Allish Statia, former prima ballerina at the Mersetzdeitz Ballet, broke her leg during the last performance of La Sylphide. In that time, she has healed (mostly), relaxed (a lot), and taken advantage of her husband’s willingness to order take-out on most weeknights.Then someone breaks into her apartment and points a gun at her.Using the wind … gun at her.
Using the wind elemental powers few knew she had, she is able to subdue the man. But he is only part of something much bigger—and much more dangerous.
Sylphide is a gripping fantasy novella with gritty, fast-paced action, unforgettable characters, and a story that will send your imagination into overdrive. If you love hard edges on your fantasy, download a sample or buy Sylphide now.
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I got signed up to the author’s mailing list as part of a contest. Didn’t win, but I did get a few free books out of it, including this. I really liked this novellette and was impressed enough with author that I’ve also bought the next book in the series. (Which says a lot because I usually only read free books unless I already know the author well).
The main character is named Allish, which I choose to pronounce like Alice with a slurred ending, though I’m not sure how the author actually intended it to be. The setting is close enough to modern day tech to fool the reader into thinking of it as an Urban Fantasy set in a modern, English-speaking country. But then we get to describing the names of countries, which are unrecognizable (and unmemorable) and you realize it’s a complete fantasy world after all. It would have made more sense to me if the native characters names were more conventional while the mages who were supposed to come from a different world had different names, or if both were different but in noticably different ways. Anyway… these things are fairly minor but this is why I can’t give it the full 5 star rating.
I only noticed one typo (author says “conscious” when she meant “consciousness”) which is better than most books I read. (There was one other that turned out to be intentional as the character spoke that way, so that doesn’t count).
In the story itself, the world was just like ours (excluding political borders) and had no magic until recently when a number of magic using refugees from another world showed up. The other world was being destroyed so they came to settle here. All of this is background and isn’t shown in the story itself, that’s just the world as it is. There are some details that never do get explained too. This is just the story of one woman (from the normal world) who gains magic in her own way, and it turns out to be very different from how the alien mages have theirs.
It’s a nice little origin story for a character. Well written, fast paced, and with a decent mix of action and character development.
Another reviewer I saw called this a romance. That’s simply untrue. Yes, she is married. She lives with her husband and they are in love. But there’s no part of the story that had anything to do with that. There’s no “romance” tropes involved at all. So I’m not sure where that reviewer got that impression.
Overall, I liked this story a lot and definitely recommend it to any modern fantasy readers out there. Especially if you’re also a comic book fan — while the story had almost no similarity to a superhero story I think it will appeal similarly to supers origin stories. In fact, I would kinda love seeing this translated into graphic novel format. That would be pretty awesome actually – now I hope the author actually reads this.