By IraDean Adams
Ever felt like the black sheep, like you were just a little bit off - or, well, maybe everyone else is? Your just not like other people. Maybe you aren't. Maybe you are not people at all, I wasn't. Of course I didn't know that till I was in high school being followed by a raven, but then do any of us really know who we are before high school?
Still, it isn't your average high school student who turns out to be a dark faery prince destined to save or destroy the world. Two worlds, really. Yup, nothing like a little added pressure during your first year. After all, being a teenager, a foster child, and a freshman just wasn't enough to be getting on with.
No worries though, the job comes with nifty powers and a couple of good friends. And if all goes according to plan I may even get to meet my real father. Of course he wants to use my cursed blood to extend his unnatural life, but I'm sure we can move past that. At anyrate, should be one heck of a ride.
Changeling: of Light and Darkness by IraDean Adams is an urban fantasy mixing the world of faerie creatures with homeless shelters and Coca-Cola. I love this kind of writing. I love Neil Gaiman and Fables is one of my favorite comics. This genre is an awesome breeding ground for creativity and even a paint-by-numbers story can be memorable.
Now plot-wise there isn’t a lot new here. It’s pretty standard YA fiction. “Boy finds out he’s special and has powers/Boy needs to Save the World from Evil.” Not that treading old ground is so terrible, especially since young adults are less likely to have read as many of these as I have. (Not to pigeonhole any younger readers here. If you are as jaded as I am then… well I’m sorry. You really don’t want to be me.)
It starts off strong. We are introduced to 15 year old Eaun as he navigates his first day at a new school. Eaun is a foster kid who has no memories of his parents and has been shuffled between foster families and children’s homes since he was an infant. He considers himself an outsider, rejected by society. He is convinced his newest family hates him and would rather shut people out than be hurt again. It’s a strong POV, even if it’s not always an appealing one.
Eaun’s day proceeds and it is perfectly awful. Nobody likes him. He gets beaten up by meathead bullies who steal his silver locket, the only keepsake he has of his mother. Halfway through the day a mysterious raven begins to spy on him. It follows him all the way home where it transforms into Taggerty Puck, an imp who shares an accent with Lucky the Leprechaun.
But instead of clovers, blue moons, and tasty red balloons, Taggerty brings us the revelation that Eaun is not human. He is a Changeling, a faerie child who has been abandoned in the human world. All his feelings of alienation and abandonment are justified with this knowledge and despite some misgivings, Eaun now sets out to seek his true nature and discover his magical heritage.
This journey makes up the first third of the book and has the best pacing. Eaun is exposed to a strange new world, filtering it through his own mundane experiences. Taggerty is a fickle and unreliable guide, leading to moments where Eaun finds himself lost and alone. He doesn’t have any magic and can’t rely on anything but his street smarts.
I was entertained, although I found myself wishing the author had mixed in more moments where the faerie realm met ours. I would have liked to have seen Eaun draw from his prior experiences as well. There was a scene where he found himself hungry and alone in a park. It could have been a really interesting moment. Maybe Eaun could have tried shoplifting and been caught. Or he could have gone exploring and encountered some wild magic. Instead, the incident is brushed over without much interest.
Unfortunately this portion of the story ends too soon. Eaun is soon after reunited with his people and told exactly who he is and what is expected of him.
“There is much you wish to know and much we need to discuss so I propose we play a game. You will find we fae rather like our games and I think you will catch on to this one rather quickly. It is akin to twenty questions, with each of us asking in turn, only the trick is to get more out of your answers than you give away with your questions. By virtue of your status as guest I shall of course yield to you the honor of offering up the first question.” (Kindle Locations 1129-1132).
It’s info-dumping at its worse, taking all mystery out of the plot and replacing it with pure tedium. Not only that, but it jumps straight into a training sequence where Eaun learns to control his l33t p0werz. He learns he has the power to sense death and is taught to form spiky anime swords out of shadow. No kidding.
I opened my eyes and found a wickedly curved and serrated black blade in my hands, bleeding shadowy tendrils. Even though I had been picturing this very sword to find it physically there was startling. And the sword felt eager in my grip; no hungry, like the darkness had been waiting for this opportunity to come forth and seek life. The dark blade was as eager for blood as the goblin that had wielded it on the big screen had seemed. (Kindle Locations 1628-1631).
The best moment in this was Eaun being forced to work in a soup kitchen and scrub macaroni off a pan. It’s a mundane task that would have been beneath him when he was just a scruffy foster kid, but nothing has really changed. If anything, he’s expected to take on more thankless tasks now that he’s of noble faerie blood.
The third act drops the ball completely. For some reason, the faeries decide they must send Eaun on a quest to find the Tomb of Merlin. (Apparently it’s to save the world? I’m not clear on how.) He picks two teenaged companions and is whisked, unsupervised, across the Atlantic via first class air travel. He stays at the Ritz in downtown London, eating $10 candy bars out of the mini-fridge. Then there are some trials & tribulations that Eaun does almost nothing to solve. His companions do literally all the work, solving a series of children’s clues and pinpointing the tomb any 5 year old could have found. Bad things happen and the book is over.
If I’ve made the ending sound abrupt, then I have done my job correctly. It’s a rushed ending and does not match up with the strong pacing it had in the beginning.
It also burns this idea that faerie life exists on the fringes of human society. When he first meets his faerie kin, he’s housed in a homeless shelter. But when he goes on a quest, they book him in a five star hotel? It doesn’t make any sense. And worse, it’s a missed opportunity to do some clever world-building by comparing British fae to their American cousins.
Now stepping back from the plot, there’s one other issue that I’ve tried hard to keep from the rest of the review. I wrote that while Eaun has a strong POV, I did not always find it appealing. The truth is I want to punch the little prick in the face.
When I was 11 years old, my mother had a family reunion. All the kids were dungeoned off in Grandma’s basement. Of course there was plenty of entertainment since my grandma was rich. We had a damaged pinball table. A box of broken crayons. And a bunny-eared television that picked up snippets of Gilligan’s Island, but only when I forced my little brother to stand on his tiptoes and hold up the antennae.
At that point my mom was still trying to force a family bond between me and her horrible relatives. She saddled me with my know-it-all cousin. Michael was two years older than me, so obviously he was smarter and better at everything. Compared to his wobbly stick figures, my art was shit. And his witty views on why brown people should be deported were hilarious, so he must have been funnier. I was only 11, so I was just an immature baby.
I spent eight hours with Michael while he spouted off every stupid and hateful comment in his head. Even during a children’s supper of endless Capri Sun and chicken tenders, he just would not shut up. He would chew and talk and spit out bits of french fry while he went on and on about how it was the teacher’s fault his grades sucked. He was oppressed! People just didn’t understand him!
And that’s the kind of character Eaun is for me. An insufferable douchebag that I can’t leave and can’t ignore. He has the humble beginnings of Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker, but his petty attitude means I don’t give two shits about his troubled past. It’s almost as if the author was actively trying to make me hate Eaun.
…Ah yes, a new school and I had almost managed to forget that little gem. No wonder I hadn’t wanted to wake up. New year, new family, new school, same ol’ Eaun though. Eaun the un-wanted, Eaun the nameless, Eaun the about-to-be-ridiculed-all-over-again.Shawn (Eaun’s foster brother), now a sophomore at Moore’s Southeast High, was to drive me to this wonderful new school in his fabulous new toy, hence his desire to be on time for once in his life. What do you want to bet his folks don’t buy me a vehicle for my sixteenth birthday? (Kindle Locations 102-107).
…You know what they say: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. I want my first impression to say ‘I don’t give a flying flip about my impression’ and just possibly ‘stay the heck away, it might be contagious.’ (Kindle Locations 149-151).
…my assigned lab partner couldn’t seem to sit far enough around the table from me. Pity really, if she hadn’t been so totally Emo, and if she wasn’t giving me the ‘what a freak’ face every time she was forced to look my way, I might have found her highly attractive. (Kindle Locations 364-366).
Note: Eaun and company have just checked into the Ritz and been brought up to their room.
…He (the bell hop) was still looking at me expectantly and I was starting to think he might be a touch queer in the head – how dense could he be? He had been quite the sycophant on the way up and as he gave us the grand tour of our suite, but I suspected even then that all his pleasantry was because he was expecting to receive something in return. Little did he know he was barking up the wrong tree; I might be the nominal leader of this gig but I didn’t hold the purse strings.And besides I don’t tip people who are just doing their job. You want a tip from me you do something special and without expectation. (Kindle Locations 2419-2424).
Fuck you Eaun. Fuck you.
There is a healthy dose of misogyny as well. Only a handful of women exist in this book and the majority of them are identified first by how sexually appetizing they are for Eaun. There’s only one female character that doesn’t set off his hormones, and she’s a shriveled tree lady dressed in rags. It upsets me that I can’t tell if this is part of Eaun’s character or if this stems from the author’s viewpoint. None of IraDean’s female characters have strong personalities, none of them are in positions of power, and one of them attempts to literally seduce Eaun.
I’m almost tempted to read his other book and try to match up the morals, but there are so many other unknown books, it would be totally unfair to them. I'm a philanthropist first.
This book definitely had its moments, good and bad. There were some strong action scenes that were enjoyable and some moments where I thought the mixture between the paranormal and human worlds were done right. I think there was some structure here that could have been great with a little more work.
And while I’ve gone on an outright rant about how much I dislike the protagonist, I’ll admit I’m not the target audience. When I was 15 years old, breaking out in zits, crying for no reason, getting bullied for reading Star Wars novels, screaming at my parents for shit I can’t even remember, I might have liked Eaun more. I told off a salesperson once for being too friendly, that’s what a cringy asshole I was.
So despite how critical I’m being, there could be an audience for this. You might like it. If you are over the mental age of 18, I would suggest finding something else, because chances are you won’t understand the protagonist. He’s just too special. It’s your fault you don’t get him. NO DAD, YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP. YOU KNOW I HATE MEATLOAF. YOU MADE IT ON PURPOSE. I HATE YOU. I’M GONNA GO LISTEN TO RADIOHEAD AND CRY. JUST LEAVE ME ALOOOONE.
My Rating 3.5/10 Stars
Changeling: Of Light and Darkness is available on Kindle Unlimited.
I wanted so desperately to chalk her up as your typical blonde cheerleader bimbo; which in the least might have allowed me to write her off as not worthy of my attentions, thus saving my crumbling ego and doubtless my sanity, but I couldn’t help but notice her blue-light-special pink Tinkerbell t-shirt and her non-designer ripped jeans that just didn’t fit the stereotype. Cheerleader Barbie wouldn’t have been caught dead in the outfit, not that it wasn’t an awesome outfit mind you. (Kindle Locations 952-955).
Heh, ok.
“Oh, you have a Puck? I thought faery bondage was outlawed ages ago.”
Coming from her as it did the word bondage set off fireworks in my overly imaginative hormone saturated teenage mind. (Kindle Locations 965-967).
Holy shit, why.
She was every inch of every high school boy’s wet dream, right down to the tippy tip of her tiny manicured toes and the outrageous way she flaunted it all. (Kindle Locations 2180-2181).
Mm. Okay go on.
