Thank you to Netgalley for providing this copy for review. I shall be honest in my review as a result!

Child of Light was written by the incomparable Terry Brooks and releases on October 12, 2021.

Update: The release date for Child of Light has, since I wrote this review, changed to October 19th.

Auris was a prisoner for as long as she could remember, which wasn’t long given her memory loss at the age of fifteen. She escapes the Goblin prison where she has been held and runs straight into the Fae, one of whom happens to think she might just be one of them.

I’m going to be honest with you, I didn’t like this book to the point where I DNF’d it.

Is that good for a reviewer? Probably not. But I told myself I wasn’t going to read things I don’t like.

Let me tell you why I don’t like it.

The writing was stiff and unwieldy. The author regularly used three words were one would do. And that wasn’t even when characters were speaking. Speaking of the dialogue, it had no flow to it. It was almost like the words for this book didn’t come easy to the author, and given that Terry Brooks has been writing good books for longer than I’ve been alive (I’m 41) this simply shouldn’t be the case.

So yes, my biggest complaint is with the writing. I just couldn’t get past it. I wasn’t enjoying myself at all. Which is not what I expected going into this book, as I loved the Landover series.

Now let’s talk about the other thing I have a problem with. Auris goes through something terrible at the beginning of the book, but what racks her brain when she’s rescued? How hot her rescuer is.

Sure, she thinks of the terrible thing now and again, but she thinks about how she is attracted to said rescuer more. Why does the author think this is something a 19-year-old girl fresh out of a traumatic experience needs to do?

Le sigh.

It bothered me a lot, okay?

It’s a 1 star DNF for me.