Charlotte Kersten

Thrice-cursed bard and warrior-elf Tamsin wakes up in Elfland after what might or might not have been his death, healed and hale for the first time in millennia. Somewhat confused but not entirely unhappy with this turn of events, he sets off in the hopes of finding a way home …

A standalone tale of friendship, family, and fair Elfland.

Starting off 2025 with extreme elfiness… a positive portent for things to come, hopefully. This story is heartfelt in the extreme, but don’t go in expecting action of any kind and be ready to tolerate a lot of repetition in the writing.

The writing is the main thing I’m going to harp on here (oh my god I didn’t even conceive of that as a pun until I’d actually typed it oh my god). I think Goddard was trying something somewhat experimental, which I applaud, but it ultimately didn’t end up feeling effective to me. Particularly in the middle section, in which we learn what happened to Tamsin’s rival Klara while he was gone, the writing is extremely repetitive both in terms of what is happening and how it is described with the same limited phrases and imagery. I think this is meant to be evocative of the massive amounts of time passing and the repetitive grief that the characters are caught in, but the end result didn’t feel skillful enough to pull this off in my opinion, making it more aggravating than elegiac. In a 280 page book this was something I could deal with just fine, but if the writing style is similar in Goddard’s longer words like The Hands of the Emperor, I think I would really struggle. There are certainly some nice descriptions and turns of phrase, but I am inevitably going to compare Tolkien-inspired works like this to Tolkien and other authors who are similarly known for stunningly evocative writing.

Fortunately, everything else about this was a huge pleasure! I really like how the lore of Tamsin’s life is pieced together bit by bit until we have a clear idea of his full story by the end. All of the emotional beats towards the conclusion absolutely landed with plenty of impact, especially Tamsin’s beautiful reunion with his family and the revelation that his brothers were with him, trying to support him, as he wandered for ages. Despite the fact that he and Klara are only together on page very briefly, I also cared about their relationship. The descriptions of magic, music, history, and elven craft all contribute to the sense of a rich world that we’re just barely scratching the surface of, and which it will be a delight for Tamsin to explore anew.