The Forester II: Lost and Found by Blaine D. Arden

Title: The Forester II: Lost and Found
Author: Blaine D. Arden
Purchase at Storm Moon Press
Purchase at All Romance eBooks
Cover Artist: Nathie
Genre: paranormal, elves
Length: 36k words, novella
Formats: epub, mobi, pdf,

Blurb:

"The Guide mentioned puddles, but I envisioned lakes, deep treacherous lakes, and I was drowning."

One turn has passed, another Solstice is just around the corner, and having an illicit affair with not one but two lovers—smith Ianys and shunned Forester Taruif—is taking its toll on Truth Seeker Kelnaht.

If it isn't sneaking around to find some quality time with his lovers, it's heavy rainfall hiding traces of a missing stripling, or waiting for the elders to decide whether or not to set Taruif free.

And if that's not enough, Kelnaht fears that in gaining one lover, he might be losing another, as Ianys seems to be pulling away from them, and it looks like someone is, once again, trying to frame Taruif.


Review:

Well, after that blurb there’s just not a whole hell of a lot I can do to spoil it.

Lost and Found is the follow-up story to The Forester, reviewed here. This second stands alone reasonably well, since all pertinent relationships are explained within the text. That means a certain amount of repeating from the first book, but it’s kept brief and to the point. Some aspects are explained more fully, and I’m afraid those explanations cost at least one character some sympathy points.


A year after the events of the first story, Truth Seeker Kelnacht, our first person POV character and the only voice we hear, is seeking a youngster who’s lost in the forest. This quest took roughly half the book, but would have been wrapped much faster had Kelnacht stayed on task or used the capabilities outlined in the first book. His endless returns home to have sex and check with someone or other, in that order of importance, plus a negative retcon of the elves’ abilities, stretched the search out longer than I could maintain interest.

Taruif is a problematic partner because of his past: he’s been outcast from society for a crime that seemed tragically romantic in the first story. Here he explains more fully, and if I can find a way to word my reaction more gracefully than WTF I will edit it in. Sometimes the right word to use is No and to say anything else is either evil or stupid. The first time around it came across as an act of omission, here as an act of volition, and I actually yelled at my Kindle.

The interplay beween Ianys, Taruif, and Kelnacht is the best part of the story, but the world itself has been retconned to accept gay relationships and triads, so part of the sense of forbiddenness has disappeared. Not that it’s bad for elven society, only for story continuity.

The story arc is such that it remains for Ianys to reconcile his honor and his future with his past, so I anticipate a third section to wrap that up. Whether it will use the world building of book 1 or book 2, or some further changed society remains to be seen. Why the complete story arc wasn’t done in one book, given the lengths of the sections and the possibility for more consistent society building if it was all together is a mystery.

The first story by itself was fine, this one taken alone is okay, but the author broke her own rules. 2.5 marbles

The Forester by Blaine D. Arden

Title: The Forester
Author: Blaine D. Arden
Buy at Publisher: Storm Moon Press
Buy at All Romance eBooks
Cover Artist: Nathie
Genre: fantasy
Length: 18,600 words
Formats: epub, mobi, pdf,

Blurb:

Kelnaht, a cloud elf, is a truth seeker caught between love and faith. Worse, a murder committed ten days before Solstice reveals an illicit affair between two tree elves he desires more than he can admit: Kelnaht's former lover Ianys, who once betrayed him, and the shunned forester named Taruif, who is not allowed to talk to anyone but The Guide, their spiritual pathfinder. When Taruif turns out to be the only witness for the crime, Kelnaht has to keep Ianys from sacrificing himself and losing his daughter, while at the same time realising he'd gladly sacrifice himself to end Taruif's loneliness.


Review:

This short piece (novella?) packed quite a lot into the slender word count. We are introduced to the society of elves, who have a hierarchy and rules that cannot be bucked, and members of their society who cannot stay within the strictures.


Kelnaht is our POV character—he’s working with clandestine information and evidence detected by observation, magic, and deduction to find the killer of another elf. Suspicion falls first on Taruif, who has some scandalous tragedy in his background that caused him to be placed on the furthest fringes of this society. He’s an easy target—too easy, and Kelnaht refuses to be lured down the obvious path. The blend of magic and forensics was interesting: no wand waving and poof! the answers appear, but thought and legwork were also required to solve the murder mystery.

The elves’ society is extremely conservative and has tied itself in knots regarding the practitioners of certain specialties: the elders want to punish and ostracize, but they can’t do without the skills, and make proviso for getting the outcasts to keep serving the community. I found this very vexing, and the Guide, who knows all, sees all, talks to everyone, and says nothing about those conversations, seemed to be a good guy but definitely is helping the society have things both ways.

The coming together of Kelnaht, Ianys, and Taruif is complicated by personal history and by convention. Kelnaht has reason not to trust Ianys, and no particular reason to trust Taruif, and lusts after him more than actually knows him. It’s tough when one partner isn’t actually supposed to speak to anyone. The relationship is at its earliest stages here and will be developed further in the second volume of the series, which I plan to read soon. The three of them together are lovely, and the author isn’t reaching for too much, too soon, or too easily for them.

If I have issues with the book, one is the same problem the characters have with the way their society is structured: perhaps I am meant to chafe as they do. I’m still scratching my head over Taruif’s explanation of the crime for which he’s shunned. Where was the truth seeker then? This felt like a real gap in an otherwise well-knit plot. Kelnaht seemed a little absent in his own work—almost all the actual work got done by his apprentice.

I applaud the author for giving us a lot of worldbuilding in a tight space, and for showing us three lovers-to-be without pulling an HEA out of thin air. I’m looking forward to the next book. 3.75 marbles