| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: Medium Violence level: Medium-High (especially because it's directed against children) Back Cover: “There are elves out there. But they're the good guys. In an age where plastics and superlight metals are replacing 'cold iron' they are able to come out once more and work their magic on humans. And the humans they work most on are kids—hurt, neglected, abused children. The bad guys: those who use children for their own ends. When young Jamie Chase is kidnapped by his divorced father, he becomes the prisoner of a radical cult. His mother gave up job and home to search for him—but now she's running out of resources; the only way she'll ever find her child is with the uncanny help of a fun-loving, hard-driving elf....” |
After reading quite a lot of books by Mercedes Lackey, I've gotten the impression that she doesn't much care for organized religion. Her plotlines tend to suggest that it causes people to turn their brains off, which makes them much easier to manipulate. And in this case, the real bad guy has had centuries of experience in making use of that. It's the worst kind of evil—the kind that encourages bigotry in order to spread itself throughout a whole community. In a way, I sort of feel sad for these people who've turned their brains off in search of God. Yes, it was their own choices and attitudes that led them there, but it's kind of sad even so.
Sorry. That's probably just about enough depressing stuff about the bad guys. Let me tell you a bit about the good guys, who most certainly have their brains switched on. They include not just the race car driving elf mentioned on the cover, but also a ghost, a mechanic, and my favorite—a telepathic teenage boy having a religious crisis and deeply divided loyalties. Poor kid. Sometimes I guess you have to be bashed over the head repeatedly with the truth before you're willing to take drastic action about it.
I think my favorite moment in these books is when a previously unsuspecting human is suddenly confronted with the idea that elves are real. It never ceases to amuse, and it also tends to signal when the real action can begin—because the elf doesn't have to pussyfoot around pretending to be another ordinary human anymore. The interesting thing is that if you take out the bit about salamanders and elves and so forth, this book reads a lot like a crime drama. Solve the kidnapping, rescue the kid, stop the cult of fanatics. I can almost imagine the cast of Criminal Minds at work in the background somewhere.