An Ominous Book: An underrated elf adventure

I'd like to write this brief post to put some much deserved publicity for an underrated elf fantasy series from an author named Charles Stuart. I was casually roaming on twitter when I bumped into an ad for his book series titled "Running with the Elves" and became immensely curious to read it.

I really enjoyed his book even though it's vastly different from my own. In Running with the Elves, his elf society is in cultural decay and the few remaining are for the most part youthful peasants that have little knowledge of their culture and heritage. It's a stark contrast to An Ominous Book where The Elf Kingdom is probably the wealthiest and most prosperous nation in the world that has to maintain tight immigration controls.

The two protagonists of Running with the Elves are Justin, a 17 year old human peasant and his best friend Finn, a young adult Elf in his 50's that occasionally visits Justin's village to barter mushrooms for other basic items. Finn trusts Justin well enough to invite him to a hidden cave in the forest where young Elves have secret parties. Justin ends up meeting the mysterious and beautiful Rannelia and instantly become infatuated. Finn however isn't pleased and warns him not to set his hopes too high because Rannelia is likely to break his heart.

Meanwhile Finn's father, the ever wise Eos who is a council member of his home village of Rille has the premonition that in a few weeks, a space ship with a mysterious alien race will return to bring any willing Elf and other magical races to an unknown place to save their species. All of the Elves have noticed the sun is changing and they are starting to lose their immortality.

While the Elves in the village have to choose between leaving their home behind to an uncertain rate or remain in Earth and become mortal, someone has been secretly murdering dark haired male elves. Finn, Justin, Rannelia, Eos and two other allied Elves Wen and Ryl must locate the culprit before the entire village is killed before the Star People arrive.

The first two books will be free for a few days, I'd highly suggest you take a look at them, write a much needed review and hopefully convince Stuart to write a third volume sometime because I'm vastly curious to read it myself. ;)