This trilogy is one of the most interesting fantasy series that I’ve read in a while. It is set in our world with a magical twist where the mage kingdoms sharing the space with the non-mage countries are hidden by spells and magic rendering them invisible to non-mages. In this world, we make the acquaintance of young orphaned elemental mage Iolanthe who lives with her teacher, Master Haywood, whom she loves dearly despite his many shortcomings. In an attempt to reactivate a batch of light elixir, Iolanthe summons lightning which hasn’t been done for ages. This signals her as the greatest elemental mage of her time to the Master of the Domain, Prince Titus, who has been waiting for her appearance for, according to his deceased mother’s prophecy, she is destined to help him topple the Bane’s tyrannic rule in Atlantis. However, at the same time, Iolanthe’s lightning also catches the attention of Atlantis. In an attempt to save her life and hide her, Titus gives her the fake identity of male student, Archer Fairfax, and enrolls her at the non-mage college where he is studying in London.
There are so many interesting things about this trilogy, but some of the things that I really loved about it were the large variety of spells and magic rituals in such a short series, the clever detail of the main characters, and the interesting conflict governing the story which is whether to work on fulfilling a prophecy or not. However, on the other side, perhaps some of the short comings of the length of the story were that some of the interesting secondary characters such as Master Dalbert, Wintervale, Amara and many others were not as well detailed as they should’ve been.
All in all, The Elemental Trilogy by Sherry Thomas is a great series which could’ve easily been lengthened and included many more adventures and a lot more character detail.
Originally posted on May 6, 2020 @ 4:42 am
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