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A review by thebooknerdscorner
The Mountains of Ebbon by
3.0
An adult fantasy debut featuring a young lesbian woman whose life changes for the better when she washes ashore on the Elven Realm and befriends the Queen and her traveling companions.
Elowen has been cast out from her noble family for being gay and now she's on the run with her very life on the line. In a desperate attempt to escape, Elowen boards a boat and sails for a distant continent. However, her ship is destroyed in a storm and she finds herself washed up on the shores of the Elven Realm. There, she meets the stoic queen Lilja and her merry band of travelers who are looking for the cause of the blight that is killing all the crops in the kingdom. With no way to return home, Elowen joins them on their quest and begins to learn that maybe with this band of misfits is where she truly belongs.
I must say, I am struggling a bit on how to rate this one. On one hand, I really enjoyed my time with this story, I like the main cast of characters, and I found myself needing to know what happens in future installments of this series. However, this book does read a bit like fanfiction, it doesn't follow the structure of most books, and the writing is rather amateur (as was the editing). I did read an ARC of this book though, so hopefully some of these things were resolved before the final version was published. And if not, these are things that the author can certainly work on remedying in the future installments.
I really enjoyed Elowen as a main character. For one, she's a lesbian, plus sized woman who is riddled with anxiety and is prone to having panic attacks. I love all the diverse groups that she is a part of and her nervous personality made her an interesting addition to the fantastical world full of fearless elves who are willing to put their entire existence into fighting for their kingdom. The fact that she has a fair dose of trauma to deal with from her past life added some serious depth to her character, too.
Lilja's gang of elvish warriors is quite diverse in personality and I found myself greatly appreciating each one of them as I progressed throughout this book. I may not one hundred percent be able to tell them apart even at the conclusion of this story, but hey, that's kinda to be expected with how many of them there are. Aidan has got to be one of my favorites with his nerdy nature and his reluctance to fight. Keres is quite fiery and certainly left a lasting impression in my mind. Cassia is sweet and I was shocked by how many times she surprised me in this one book alone. I look forward to spending more time with this group one day.
I do appreciate how Elowen's character addressed several prominent issues in our society. The most obvious being the fact that the human realm exiled her from her homeland just for being a lesbian.
This showcases a nasty aspect of our society that I hope we can get over sooner rather than later. No one should be discriminated like Elowen was for being who they truly are. The fact she also had to deal with prejudicial beliefs in the Elven Realm due to the fact that she is a human also takes a look into our racial differences and how people are also treated unfairly just for being who they are.
I want to go into a little more detail into the strange formatting of this book and some of my minor gripes when it comes to the way this book was written. Some of these things did take away from the story a bit, so I wanted to address them. One of the first things I noticed is how repetitive the vocabulary is. Right from the start, the same words are used over and over again in the same paragraph, which can make some scenes really grating to read. This is something that would be super easy to remedy in future stories. The pacing in this book is also a bit odd. There are times where it will jump months at a time in the middle of a chapter, which was really hard for me to follow on occasion. There should definitely be at least a page break if we are about to jump a major amount of time. The final thing I wanted to mention is the fact that this book infrequently changes perspectives with no rhyme or reason. From time to time, this also happens in the middle of chapters which can be quite jarring. This attributes greatly to the roleplay/fanfiction vibes that this story has. Most of these things aren't the worst things in the world, but they certainly took my brain quite a bit of time to adapt to.
Overall, "The Mountains of Ebbon" is a fun high fantasy adventure that explores the complexities of gender differences and prejudices all while being packed full of exciting circumstances. I enjoyed the characters, the banter, and the themes that this book explores. This book may have struggled a tad in the vocabulary and editing departments, but I still very much enjoyed the story. I am definitely hooked enough to check out the next installment in this series and see how Elowen gets out of the sticky situation that she finds herself in at the end of this book.
Elowen has been cast out from her noble family for being gay and now she's on the run with her very life on the line. In a desperate attempt to escape, Elowen boards a boat and sails for a distant continent. However, her ship is destroyed in a storm and she finds herself washed up on the shores of the Elven Realm. There, she meets the stoic queen Lilja and her merry band of travelers who are looking for the cause of the blight that is killing all the crops in the kingdom. With no way to return home, Elowen joins them on their quest and begins to learn that maybe with this band of misfits is where she truly belongs.
I must say, I am struggling a bit on how to rate this one. On one hand, I really enjoyed my time with this story, I like the main cast of characters, and I found myself needing to know what happens in future installments of this series. However, this book does read a bit like fanfiction, it doesn't follow the structure of most books, and the writing is rather amateur (as was the editing). I did read an ARC of this book though, so hopefully some of these things were resolved before the final version was published. And if not, these are things that the author can certainly work on remedying in the future installments.
I really enjoyed Elowen as a main character. For one, she's a lesbian, plus sized woman who is riddled with anxiety and is prone to having panic attacks. I love all the diverse groups that she is a part of and her nervous personality made her an interesting addition to the fantastical world full of fearless elves who are willing to put their entire existence into fighting for their kingdom. The fact that she has a fair dose of trauma to deal with from her past life added some serious depth to her character, too.
Lilja's gang of elvish warriors is quite diverse in personality and I found myself greatly appreciating each one of them as I progressed throughout this book. I may not one hundred percent be able to tell them apart even at the conclusion of this story, but hey, that's kinda to be expected with how many of them there are. Aidan has got to be one of my favorites with his nerdy nature and his reluctance to fight. Keres is quite fiery and certainly left a lasting impression in my mind. Cassia is sweet and I was shocked by how many times she surprised me in this one book alone. I look forward to spending more time with this group one day.
I do appreciate how Elowen's character addressed several prominent issues in our society. The most obvious being the fact that the human realm exiled her from her homeland just for being a lesbian.
This showcases a nasty aspect of our society that I hope we can get over sooner rather than later. No one should be discriminated like Elowen was for being who they truly are. The fact she also had to deal with prejudicial beliefs in the Elven Realm due to the fact that she is a human also takes a look into our racial differences and how people are also treated unfairly just for being who they are.
I want to go into a little more detail into the strange formatting of this book and some of my minor gripes when it comes to the way this book was written. Some of these things did take away from the story a bit, so I wanted to address them. One of the first things I noticed is how repetitive the vocabulary is. Right from the start, the same words are used over and over again in the same paragraph, which can make some scenes really grating to read. This is something that would be super easy to remedy in future stories. The pacing in this book is also a bit odd. There are times where it will jump months at a time in the middle of a chapter, which was really hard for me to follow on occasion. There should definitely be at least a page break if we are about to jump a major amount of time. The final thing I wanted to mention is the fact that this book infrequently changes perspectives with no rhyme or reason. From time to time, this also happens in the middle of chapters which can be quite jarring. This attributes greatly to the roleplay/fanfiction vibes that this story has. Most of these things aren't the worst things in the world, but they certainly took my brain quite a bit of time to adapt to.
Overall, "The Mountains of Ebbon" is a fun high fantasy adventure that explores the complexities of gender differences and prejudices all while being packed full of exciting circumstances. I enjoyed the characters, the banter, and the themes that this book explores. This book may have struggled a tad in the vocabulary and editing departments, but I still very much enjoyed the story. I am definitely hooked enough to check out the next installment in this series and see how Elowen gets out of the sticky situation that she finds herself in at the end of this book.