The Changeling’s Journey by Christine Spoors
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Ailsa is dead. Leaving Morven the last surviving changeling in the village. Everyone knows it is only a matter of time before she too is dead. Desperate to find out why the fairies steal human babies, and to save her own life, she leaves her family behind, travelling north into the fairy kingdoms with her best friend.
They soon find that making their way through vast magical forests, across kelpie-ridden lochs and over seemingly endless mountain ranges is more than they were prepared for. Despite the countless evenings spent listening to stories about adventures, fairies and magic, they find themselves out of their depth. Fighting to stay alive.
Meanwhile in the fairy kingdoms, Princess Freya of Culhuinn struggles to cope with life now that her love has been taken from her. Whilst Queen Euna of Norbroch spends more time lost in her memories than she does ruling her kingdom.
One changeling’s journey to save her life will alter their world forever.
The Changeling’s Journey is clearly heavily inspired by Scotland and this can be seen throughout the villages and locations we visit, the language used and descriptions of the world. The world building really allows you to feel like you’re travelling with our characters through the fairy hills and lochs which makes you think you’re on your own little adventure.
The story includes 3 intriguing POV characters who are all women and very different in their background and actions. Morven is a changeling, who suffers with pain and shortness of breath with extended activity (although this doesn’t stop her planning a hiking trip to the fairy hills!). Euna is one of the two queens of her country with her sister, who’s clearly got a lot of trauma to work through. Then we have Freya who’s a fairy princess with an awful father to contend with as he steals humans and puts them to work in his castle.
We do meet a few will o’ wisps and kelpies, but i wish there was a bit more magical/magical creatures throughout the story. It felt very focused on humans and fae that look a whole lot like humans and unfortunately very little description outside of fae having better healing capabilities for how they’re different.
All our POV characters showcased well written friendships and family-like bonds. In some cases like Euna, this is her sisterly relationship with her sister Aelwyn, whereas Freya has a more chosen family bond with William and Mae but both work well to showcase the ties of family and loyalty. I loved how characters can be written to be close platonic friends, and only platonic too with Morven and Glenn – whilst still showing physical and mental effection between them. Showing healthy relationships throughout, whilst also showcasing some not as good ones too.
Something that I didn’t enjoy as much is Euna’s POV chapters used flashbacks too often. These often showed off her lover from 10 years ago, but I don’t think it added more to the story having these in and we could have been told about him in another way. Also (and spoilers alert for the next line) Euna’s aversion to humans is not because of betrayal or distrust but because she loved one and they died… so her hating humans and imprisoning them on sight doesn’t quite make sense.
The book itself points out that Morven and Glenn don’t actually do anything in the story, but are bystanders that happen upon it as it happens. This makes a lot of the chapters actually pretty pointless, we could have just had two POVs of the two fae kingdoms, or even just the one POV of Freya and her kingdom.
Talking of Freya’s POV, I wish Nieve had been fleshed out more as a side character as there was a whole human’s rising up sub-plot which has no POV . Nieve becomes a key play in this sub-plot but we only see Nieve right at the start when she’s a romantic interest for Freya we really don’t get much info, motivation, hows or whens for all of this. It would have been an amazing edition to get this fleshed out fully.
The writing style can be quite basic, and as a debut self-published book I think it could have benefitted from an editor having a once over. I think the book could have focused purely on one POV (and probably it should have been Freya’s) in order to better pace the story, and go into more depth in the issues of the king and humans fighting back.
Overall it’s a quick and fast read, with an interesting premise of changeling’s and it is a standalone fantasy novel which gets wrapped up by the end. However there’s definitely some issues which can make it a bit slower to read.
Positives of The Changeling’s Journey
- Inclusion of Changeling’s in the story
- How friendship and family bonds are written
Negatives of The Changeling’s Journey
- Poor pacing and story could have been less POVs
- Writing style can be quite simplistic
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