Saturday, May 26, 2012

Review and Cover Analysis (5); Feyland: The Bright Court by Anthea Sharp

Goodreads description:
INSIDE THE GAME…

Jennet Carter escaped the dark faeries of Feyland once. Now, fey magic is seeping out of the prototype game, beguiling the unwary and threatening everyone she cares about.

MAGIC…

Tam Linn may be a hero in-game, but his real life is severely complicated. Still, he’ll do whatever it takes to stop the creatures of Feyland, even if it means pushing Jennet toward the new guy in school—the one with an inside connection to sim-gaming… and the uncanny ability to charm everyone he meets.

ALWAYS WINS…

Despite the danger, Jennet and Tam must return to Feyland to face the magic of the Bright Court—and a powerful new enemy who won’t stop until the human world is at the mercy of the Realm of Faery.


Feyland is a beautiful world, though dangerous and unpredictable. It is an amazing world created by Anthea Sharp, inspired by several other stories. I really love that Anthea actually researched Faeries and trolls, and the likes. I recognized many myths about the Fey, most that I actually learned from Melissa Marr’s “Wicked Lovely”. I’m just so glad Anthea didn’t go into this story blindly.

What I really love is the balance between fantasy and reality. The reality is set in a future year- obvious through the immense technology. The fantasy is set in Feyland- a mixture of the Dark and Bright Courts, filled with these amazing creatures. These two worlds collide thanks to a video game based off a book of legends. Set in a futuristic time period, it was great that the author created new words and abbreviations, because really, doesn’t the human language evolve all the time? (I mean, come on. We all know YOLO will be in the dictionary soon.) Not only is there new language, but the way the characters speak, it’s like they speak in riddles all the time. This doesn’t occur so much in the “real world” as it does in Feyland. I honestly came away from this book with all my thoughts formed into riddles, quite annoying, but amusing J

And the editing! My goodness, the editing was extraordinary, especially for a self-published ARC. As a book blogger, I tend to get a lot of ARC’s and mostly self-published books. A lot of the time, these books are edited poorly, and to a grammar Nazi like me, it freaks me out. But Feyland? Wow. I became almost desperate to find a typo. I finally found one- very minor, a misplaced comma. I nearly had a party for myself after finding that. Crazy, right? Don’t judge me. I actually feel like clapping for Anthea for such great editing, whether she did it herself, or someone else did. Or maybe crying at the beauty…

Okay, okay. The characters in Feyland are amazing. Jennet and Tam. *Cue the simultaneous “awwwww’s”*. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, so I’m just going to simply say, “finally.” Two people from completely opposite sides of the social spectrum, brought together by one game.

I know this has nothing to do with the quality of the story itself, but I really loved the PDF layout. Too many PDF’s I receive don’t have the paragraphs indented, and that annoys me. But this one had indentions! You can’t begin to understand how much that can affect a story’s enjoyability. And the convenience of the chapters- there was a table of contents, but instead of saying something like “Chapter one…….. 1” the chapters had hyperlinks to their actual start date. It just made the reading experience so much more great.

Honestly, I don’t have anything bad to say about this. Anthea Sharp is an incredible author who weaves magic with her words. I cannot wait until the conclusion to this series – The Twilight Kingdom- and I hope all of you go out and read this, or read the first in the series, The Dark Realm. You won’t be disappointed.
And now for the CA:


Wow this cover is gorgeous!

Just.. the color of the dress and the font, and how it goes with Jennet’s hair. It also reflects what the story is about- The Bright Court of Feyland. You know, bright, sunshiny colors. Definitely fits J

I love how, like the book, it seems like the reality is mixing with this computer game. That boundary is thinning out and you get a feel for that through the cover.

What is the best, though, is the way the artist brought back elements from the prequel’s cover. Like the computer- I’m pretty sure that’s in the same position. Yet, they changed the background and the girl and color and just made it SO MUCH BETTER.

This is an eye catching cover, with an equally amazing book that you must check out.

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