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lisonfaye's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
mary_soon_lee's review
5.0
This novella is a prequel to the Chronicles of Elantra, taking place seven years before the first novel. I liked it very much indeed. I note that I think this will have more impact and be easier to follow if you read the start of the series first.
4.5 out of 5 found stars.
About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).
Spoiler
Switching between several points of view, the story shows Kaylin, age thirteen, meeting other characters in the series for the first time. Here is where her found family begins. And the family that she finds--Caitlin, Teela, Clint, Marcus, Lord Gramarye--moved me considerably. There is considerable darkness in the plot, but the compassion of the older characters for Kaylin offsets it.4.5 out of 5 found stars.
About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).
adamrshields's review
3.0
I am not going to bother reviewing this on my blog. It was a free exclusive on Audible and no longer available. You can get it in a short story collection, but not as a stand alone.
It is a prequel to the Chronicle of Elantra series. This was put out by Harlequin's Luna (their fantasy imprint) and if I had known that I probably wouldn't have listened to it. But it doesn't have any romance in it. It is a simple and decent novella about a 13 year old that gets adopted into the police force in a fantasy world. She has some special, but unknown powers and together with the others they are see that there are a series of child murders.
The description suggests that she is set up as part of a sting operation in a child prostitution ring. But that is not accurate. There were children, they were sold into slavery and then murdered, but no sex involved.
I am mixed about whether I want to read more. Honestly the imprint scares me a bit. I don't mind a bit of romance (I read all of the twilight books), but harlequin is not known for high quality writing. And the fact that this is a prequel with absolutely no romance, and the first book starts 7 years later when she is all grown up makes me a bit wary. If I find it cheap or in the library I might try the first.
It is a prequel to the Chronicle of Elantra series. This was put out by Harlequin's Luna (their fantasy imprint) and if I had known that I probably wouldn't have listened to it. But it doesn't have any romance in it. It is a simple and decent novella about a 13 year old that gets adopted into the police force in a fantasy world. She has some special, but unknown powers and together with the others they are see that there are a series of child murders.
The description suggests that she is set up as part of a sting operation in a child prostitution ring. But that is not accurate. There were children, they were sold into slavery and then murdered, but no sex involved.
I am mixed about whether I want to read more. Honestly the imprint scares me a bit. I don't mind a bit of romance (I read all of the twilight books), but harlequin is not known for high quality writing. And the fact that this is a prequel with absolutely no romance, and the first book starts 7 years later when she is all grown up makes me a bit wary. If I find it cheap or in the library I might try the first.
tracey_stewart's review
3.0
I was never able to make a dent in the first "Cast" (Chronicles of Elantra) novel; the wild variety of races defeated me, I recall, and I wasn't grabbed thoroughly enough to care enough to try to figure out who was what and what that meant. (Also, the fact that there is an avian race and also a law enforcement group called the Hawks, but the avians (Aerians) aren't necessarily Hawks and the Hawks aren't necessarily Aerians. That took adjustment.
A sort of similar hurdle in this audiobook (audio novella) is a very odd decision to show the main character, Kaylin, taken under the wing (though not literally) of an administrative assistant of the Hawks: Caitlin. (At least I don't think it's literal; I don't remember it being specified that Caitlin is human. Which is interesting considering that the others' races are talked about frequently.) On paper, that might be all right given different first initials. Orally, they're – obviously – almost identical, and if it wasn't for the very different character voices used it would be a mess. And this was, as far as I can find, exclusively released as audio. I think the characters were established already, but it's still very odd.
Because this was an audio, and I admit to not researching too deeply, my character name and race spellings may be wildly erratic.
The voices … Caitlin sounds prissy, which is not how the character is described. Kaylin sounds petulant at times when it's extremely inappropriate. I have a problem with the Leontine, Marcus, being Jamaican. Or maybe it's Bahamian…. I can almost understand the extraordinary accent, so completely different from the others': the voice being shaped by the muzzle… I think it would actually be kind of fun to listen to, under other circumstances – in a Terran setting, say, when the character would actually be from some tropical isle. But it dredges up a mental image from somewhere of a cartoon lion wearing flip-flops, a Hawaiian shirt, and sunglasses. I don't mind the character; I mind having that picture in my head. Almost as bad is when the Wolf Captain Neal shows up; he's a Cockney (and I keep picturing him as lyncanthropic with perhaps a soft plaid cap. I think Marcus's accent is supposed to relate to his race; I don't know what the deal is with a sudden Londoner in the midst of all Midwest US accents, but it was bizarre enough that I have no idea what the character said for quite a while, as I've been too distracted by the pronunciation.
I honestly don't know whether I like this story or not. There are some interesting ideas; the world seems interesting, if under-explained in some aspects. There are three basic ways to introduce a reader to a new world. There's the Malazan Method, in which the hapless reader is given a shove off the ship of reality into deep water, no lifeboat, no flotation device, to try to kick off her shoes and tread water and not drown or succumb to hypothermia. Nothing is explained, no allowances are made for the fact that the reader is not in fact living in the writer's head and can't know more than she's told. Then there's the opposite, for which I'm sure I'll think of an example later: not only is there a lifeboat and a Mae West, the reader is gently assisted into the lifeboat while it's still on deck (where it remains), and provided with further inflatables from water wings to a rubber ducky, and handed a lovely box lunch. The reader is assured that the sky is blue and the grass is green, and if there are new races or concepts no detail is too small to be included to make sure that the reader's image is precisely what the author sees in his head. The happy medium is a rare and wonderful thing, allowing the reader to find her own lifeboat and put together her own survival pack, and learn her way around the oars and whatnot naturally.
"Cast in Moonlight" leans toward the Malazan Method, though with maybe a pair of flippers and a small can of shark repellent thrown in. The races are introduced one by one, but either Sagara is more interested in the Leontines or she felt they warranted more detail: the sergeant is one of the only ones I have any real clear image of (though it is unfortunately Dreamworks). I don't know if the Aerians have other bird-like attributes. I have no idea what the Barrani are supposed to look like – neo-traditional elves? – or the Fa-alani (Tha-alani? Can't find it, even on Michelle West's blog), apart from some kind of mind-reading stalks on their foreheads. And why are the Barrani specifically so hateful to Kaylin? It's mentioned many times that in the fiefs where she has always lived, if you saw a Barrani you ran for it, but it's never explained what would happen if you didn't. Are there more races? What does it mean that someone is a Dragonlord – is it the head of some group like the Hawks and the Wolves, or … a dragon?
The language throws me a little. This is obviously somewhere else entirely, with both magic and technology and with at least four other races besides humans. But the narrative and dialogue are laced with very 20th - 21st century-US colloquialisms ("pissed off"; "I'll bet"; "who was that guy"; "big sucker"; "crappy" weather). And in several places the narrator makes a little editorial remark – along the lines of buildings being described as "too damn tall". If it's supposed to be Kaylin's point of view, that's the only really personal touch to it; otherwise the narrative voice is neutral. It's frequent, and it's odd, especially for a 13-year-old girl, even one from the streets. A related issue: there are a couple of occasions where characters engage in little side chats while something major is going on in the foreground, which annoyed me in two ways: I wanted to return to what was important, and also I was irritated with the characters for being distracted (and distracting me) from what was important.
Kaylin smacks a bit of Mary Sue in that she is adopted immediately by the Hawks, despite frequent protests that they have no use for a young girl, and she more than holds her own and evinces some unexpected and very useful talents along the way. People listen to her who shouldn't listen to her. In fact, it seemed like the text would just finish describing a character who would never in a millennium listen to a barely-teenaged girl, and then suddenly a few minutes later all is going just as Kaylin suggested. On the one hand, it is drummed into the reader's brain that she is only a 13-year-old stranger, known for mere hours: a completely unknown quantity – but on the other she is treated consistently as if she has been a member of the team, the "family", for a long time. (This is even glancingly addressed, as a couple of other characters express astonishment that she has only been with them a day. She is not an endearing child, and this instantaneous glomming-on is not quite believable.) In the end, the way in which the story is – somewhat – resolved is jarring, and I thought not properly dealt with; without spoilering, Kaylin goes through something she should not bounce back from immediately, but seems to do just that. And, in the end, I'm really not sure I like her, or the world she moves through, enough to hurry into the books.
A sort of similar hurdle in this audiobook (audio novella) is a very odd decision to show the main character, Kaylin, taken under the wing (though not literally) of an administrative assistant of the Hawks: Caitlin. (At least I don't think it's literal; I don't remember it being specified that Caitlin is human. Which is interesting considering that the others' races are talked about frequently.) On paper, that might be all right given different first initials. Orally, they're – obviously – almost identical, and if it wasn't for the very different character voices used it would be a mess. And this was, as far as I can find, exclusively released as audio. I think the characters were established already, but it's still very odd.
Because this was an audio, and I admit to not researching too deeply, my character name and race spellings may be wildly erratic.
The voices … Caitlin sounds prissy, which is not how the character is described. Kaylin sounds petulant at times when it's extremely inappropriate. I have a problem with the Leontine, Marcus, being Jamaican. Or maybe it's Bahamian…. I can almost understand the extraordinary accent, so completely different from the others': the voice being shaped by the muzzle… I think it would actually be kind of fun to listen to, under other circumstances – in a Terran setting, say, when the character would actually be from some tropical isle. But it dredges up a mental image from somewhere of a cartoon lion wearing flip-flops, a Hawaiian shirt, and sunglasses. I don't mind the character; I mind having that picture in my head. Almost as bad is when the Wolf Captain Neal shows up; he's a Cockney (and I keep picturing him as lyncanthropic with perhaps a soft plaid cap. I think Marcus's accent is supposed to relate to his race; I don't know what the deal is with a sudden Londoner in the midst of all Midwest US accents, but it was bizarre enough that I have no idea what the character said for quite a while, as I've been too distracted by the pronunciation.
I honestly don't know whether I like this story or not. There are some interesting ideas; the world seems interesting, if under-explained in some aspects. There are three basic ways to introduce a reader to a new world. There's the Malazan Method, in which the hapless reader is given a shove off the ship of reality into deep water, no lifeboat, no flotation device, to try to kick off her shoes and tread water and not drown or succumb to hypothermia. Nothing is explained, no allowances are made for the fact that the reader is not in fact living in the writer's head and can't know more than she's told. Then there's the opposite, for which I'm sure I'll think of an example later: not only is there a lifeboat and a Mae West, the reader is gently assisted into the lifeboat while it's still on deck (where it remains), and provided with further inflatables from water wings to a rubber ducky, and handed a lovely box lunch. The reader is assured that the sky is blue and the grass is green, and if there are new races or concepts no detail is too small to be included to make sure that the reader's image is precisely what the author sees in his head. The happy medium is a rare and wonderful thing, allowing the reader to find her own lifeboat and put together her own survival pack, and learn her way around the oars and whatnot naturally.
"Cast in Moonlight" leans toward the Malazan Method, though with maybe a pair of flippers and a small can of shark repellent thrown in. The races are introduced one by one, but either Sagara is more interested in the Leontines or she felt they warranted more detail: the sergeant is one of the only ones I have any real clear image of (though it is unfortunately Dreamworks). I don't know if the Aerians have other bird-like attributes. I have no idea what the Barrani are supposed to look like – neo-traditional elves? – or the Fa-alani (Tha-alani? Can't find it, even on Michelle West's blog), apart from some kind of mind-reading stalks on their foreheads. And why are the Barrani specifically so hateful to Kaylin? It's mentioned many times that in the fiefs where she has always lived, if you saw a Barrani you ran for it, but it's never explained what would happen if you didn't. Are there more races? What does it mean that someone is a Dragonlord – is it the head of some group like the Hawks and the Wolves, or … a dragon?
The language throws me a little. This is obviously somewhere else entirely, with both magic and technology and with at least four other races besides humans. But the narrative and dialogue are laced with very 20th - 21st century-US colloquialisms ("pissed off"; "I'll bet"; "who was that guy"; "big sucker"; "crappy" weather). And in several places the narrator makes a little editorial remark – along the lines of buildings being described as "too damn tall". If it's supposed to be Kaylin's point of view, that's the only really personal touch to it; otherwise the narrative voice is neutral. It's frequent, and it's odd, especially for a 13-year-old girl, even one from the streets. A related issue: there are a couple of occasions where characters engage in little side chats while something major is going on in the foreground, which annoyed me in two ways: I wanted to return to what was important, and also I was irritated with the characters for being distracted (and distracting me) from what was important.
Kaylin smacks a bit of Mary Sue in that she is adopted immediately by the Hawks, despite frequent protests that they have no use for a young girl, and she more than holds her own and evinces some unexpected and very useful talents along the way. People listen to her who shouldn't listen to her. In fact, it seemed like the text would just finish describing a character who would never in a millennium listen to a barely-teenaged girl, and then suddenly a few minutes later all is going just as Kaylin suggested. On the one hand, it is drummed into the reader's brain that she is only a 13-year-old stranger, known for mere hours: a completely unknown quantity – but on the other she is treated consistently as if she has been a member of the team, the "family", for a long time. (This is even glancingly addressed, as a couple of other characters express astonishment that she has only been with them a day. She is not an endearing child, and this instantaneous glomming-on is not quite believable.) In the end, the way in which the story is – somewhat – resolved is jarring, and I thought not properly dealt with; without spoilering, Kaylin goes through something she should not bounce back from immediately, but seems to do just that. And, in the end, I'm really not sure I like her, or the world she moves through, enough to hurry into the books.
lassarina's review
4.0
A delightful prequel to the main series, showing how Kaylin became part of the Hawks and how she grew up into who she is now. I really liked the formation of her relationships with Caitlin and Marcus and Clint, and how she came to be so attached to Teela and Tain.
librovert's review
3.0
A free download from Audible.
Cast in Moonlight has all the makings of a fantasy - regular humans, cat-people, bird-people, mind-readers and magic - but none of the execution to make it great.
I suspect it might have more meaning to a reader of the series to come back and read Kaylin's origin story. As a newcomer to the series, however, it didn't do anything to get me interested in the series.
Audiobook: Khristine Hvam was an average narrator. I wouldn't specifically search for books narrated by her, but I wouldn't avoid them either.
Cast in Moonlight has all the makings of a fantasy - regular humans, cat-people, bird-people, mind-readers and magic - but none of the execution to make it great.
I suspect it might have more meaning to a reader of the series to come back and read Kaylin's origin story. As a newcomer to the series, however, it didn't do anything to get me interested in the series.
Audiobook: Khristine Hvam was an average narrator. I wouldn't specifically search for books narrated by her, but I wouldn't avoid them either.
dana_dew's review
4.0
Cast in Moonlight is a novella that serves as a prequel to Michelle Sagara West's Elantra series. It's a bit of a police procedural set in a world of high fantasy. I stumbled on to the series and have been hooked ever since.
My review pertains to the audio version narrated quite wonderfully by Khristine Hvam. (Yes, she affects different voices, inflections, and cadences of speech for different characters. This happens to be one of the reasons I enjoy her as a narrator --- Apparently, though (having read other reviews) this puts some people off. As with any audio book, I suggest people check out the sample first to see if a particular narrator is to one's liking.
As to the story:
Having already been somewhat familiar with the series, I found this story to be quite a treat. It was fun seeing a different viewpoint and seeing Kaylin Neya as a true kittling/ 13-year-old girl before she became a Hawk.
Having said that, even though this story is technically a prequel (of sorts), I'm not so sure that it works as well if you aren't already familiar with the characters and the complex world of Elantra. I'd probably rate it 3 stars if I didn't already have a connection to the characters. But since I do, I'm giving it 4 stars.
***********************************
If one is looking for the written story, it can be found in the Anthology HARVEST MOON (collection of 3 short stories/novellas by Mercedes Lackey, Michelle Sagara, and Cameron Haley)-- or -- if you have a Kindle you can purchase the individual story separately on Amazon.com. I'm not sure about other e-readers/platforms.
My review pertains to the audio version narrated quite wonderfully by Khristine Hvam. (Yes, she affects different voices, inflections, and cadences of speech for different characters. This happens to be one of the reasons I enjoy her as a narrator --- Apparently, though (having read other reviews) this puts some people off. As with any audio book, I suggest people check out the sample first to see if a particular narrator is to one's liking.
As to the story:
Having already been somewhat familiar with the series, I found this story to be quite a treat. It was fun seeing a different viewpoint and seeing Kaylin Neya as a true kittling/ 13-year-old girl before she became a Hawk.
Having said that, even though this story is technically a prequel (of sorts), I'm not so sure that it works as well if you aren't already familiar with the characters and the complex world of Elantra. I'd probably rate it 3 stars if I didn't already have a connection to the characters. But since I do, I'm giving it 4 stars.
***********************************
If one is looking for the written story, it can be found in the Anthology HARVEST MOON (collection of 3 short stories/novellas by Mercedes Lackey, Michelle Sagara, and Cameron Haley)-- or -- if you have a Kindle you can purchase the individual story separately on Amazon.com. I'm not sure about other e-readers/platforms.
drakean8's review
3.0
had to listen to this book twice to fully grasp the plot. definitely would like to see how the official first book goes. so the author has at least hooked me for one more book.
planetarypan's review
5.0
Oooo... a prequel starring a young Kaylin and giving us that piece of her early history at which other books only hinted. Okay, the history has been more and more fleshed out, but this early story is wonderful. I ached for Kaylin many a time as she found herself in very unfamiliar surroundings, dealing with crazy complicated situations. And knowing other parts of her history in the Fiefs, I am amazed at her ability to survive. Sagara has truly given us a gift with this novella, which lets us see Kaylin's first meetings with all our favourite Hawks.