I have a lot of respect for the longevity of Terry Brooks’ career, but this was unreadable. Bizarrely stilted writing, a narrative suffocating from the lack of anything remotely new, and worst of all, a completely and offensively unconvincing female lead. (Hot tip: Young women don’t refer to themselves as “a young woman” in their internal monologues, and no woman thinks or talks about rape the way Brooks’ protagonist does. I could go on.)

To say the characters are one dimensional would be giving it to much credit.

I’ve made it through 53% of this book and can’t to any farther. The internal monologue of the main character is constant and distracting without adding any insight or value. Read a paragraph, skip the next 6 and you are still perfectly in tune with the story. I do not believe that Terry Brooks wrote this.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Random House - Ballantine for the ARC. This is my honest review. Child of Light is a fast-paced YA fantasy adventure that winds its way through a number of interesting locals in a world that I'm excited to continue to learn more about. The Fey home of Viridian Deep is the kind of place you wish you could really visit, the villains and their mysterious alliances are endlessly intriguing. For me, the world and its lore are the strongest part of Child of Light, and that makes sense for an established fantasy author like Terry Brooks. The story follows Auris, a 19-year-old girl who escapes a goblin prison and finds her way to the world of the Fey. The book has a central amnesia plot line, so to say much more would spoil a lot of deliberately paced reveals, but the narrative never flags and bounces pleasantly between daring escapes and daily (magical) life. However, for all the strength of the world presented here, the characters that inhabit it are the weakest part of the book. The main character's motivation seems to be largely rooted in moving the plot of the novel forward, rather than the other way around. She's never content, even when it feels like she should be. At times, the book explains this away with her being led by her mysterious Inish. Auris also begins to develop feelings for Harrow, the Fey boy who rescues her in her initial escape, so quickly that it at the beginning it feels very forced. The first internal comments about these feelings happen when she is still in the throws of surviving the horrible ordeal of her escape and at the same time being introduced to the fantastical world of the Fey people. I think the central romance would have played much better if it had happened more gradually. In the end, Child of Light is an easy read that transports the reader into a magical and intriguing fantasy world. It's held back a bit by some two-dimensional character motivations and a romance that starts too soon, but it's still a fun, breezy adventure in a world that I want to know more about, and I will absolutely be back for the sequel. 3.5/5