Crystal Heart (The Life Crystal Chronicles)

Crystal Heart is a young adult (swaying closer to young than adult) fantasy and Whitney Morris’ debut novel. It’s a straight up fantasy, kind of ‘80s in feel if I’m being honest. Think Labyrinth only no David Bowie.

Actually, that’s a pretty good analogy, so I’m running with it. The book follows two characters primarily: Mellissa Hail, who is your typical adolescent (Well, older side of adolescent at 18, but she acts younger) who is going to get plunged into a world she knows nothing about, and Greg who is a changeling sent out to track down the Keeper of the Heart (ie Mellissa) and bring her back to his world to seal the evil Kadon (Leprechaun). Back to the Labyrinth analogy, Mellissa reminds me a lot of Sarah in her love of magic and general childishness and immaturity and how she grows up (sort of) over the course of the novel.

There are some really cool things about this book and some things that were somewhat problematic.

Starting with the cool.

Leprechauns are bad guys! (Well, led astray guys anyway). I thought this was neat because you don’t see leprechauns in fantasy much and having them be an important part of the story was unique. Ditto changelings. Usually changelings are not good people and in this book, they are just another race. (More like shapeshifters to be honest than the traditional changeling that we think about).

There were definitely points where the writing shone and really worked well. I think the author really comes into her own when she’s doing romance (there were snippets) and dramatic battles (like super dramatic. Storm dramatic. I’m ok with this by the way).

And the general world building was very interesting. Lots of hints of other kingdoms and other beings roaming the other side of the Veil.

The flashbacks to her distant ancestor were cool.

I liked many of the characters – it took a while for some of them, but they grew on me. Though I would like to see them in action more (more about that in a minute).

Plus the whole thing with Stonehenge. *coughSpoilers so I won’t say anymore cough*

And this is the only book I’ve ever read that switches between first person (Mellissa’s parts are all first person) and third person (Greg’s are all third person). I’m still not sure how I feel about that, but I got used to it quick.

The book has one glaring issue though: the author fell into the classic trap that many authors fall into when they have a protagonist shoved into a world they know nothing about: telling, not showing.

There’s a lot of telling and not enough showing. Chapters are dedicated to training which is a lot of explaining things. This got tedious about two thirds in (it happened a lot) and it felt like a lot of it could have used a good edit and cut out. Frankly, about sixty odd pages probably could have been removed and the story would not have suffered for it. But it’s a classic trap: lots and lots and lots of authors do it, especially in the ‘person falls into magical world they know nothing about’ genre of fantasy. I mean, some of it was interesting, but a lot of it was not. And another part of the problem was that Mellissa can do too much magic. She felt kinda like Sailor Moon to be honest (and all the stuff about the crystals didn’t help that image, ha! Plus, her constantly sleeping in. Eighties again! Well, nineties for Sailor Moon, but you get it). However, since Mellissa doesn’t know anything, we spent a lot of time with Greg or Victoria (another character we needed to see more of!) talking, not doing.

In short, there are a lot of cool things that could have happened with this book and frustratingly, many of them were hinted at. The changeling city that we did not spend enough time in. Plant magic with trees that talk. The powers behind everything. The crystals and their origin. But a lot of this was either glossed over or simply talked about with no showing and that made my eyes glaze in points even though I really didn’t want them to.

There were a few other glitches here and there – spelling and grammar (hey, I can’t talk), and one weird point where I think a chunk got cut out because it made no sense (pg 211 on my Kindle. One of the characters says something about the lake looking restless, Mellissa says Freya couldn’t swim(?) and then the first one asks what her relationship is with the water. The whole conversation felt like it wasn’t supposed to be there because it made no sense. How does Mellissa know Freya couldn’t swim? Why would she even bring that up? Super weird and jarring). I think one more round of good harsh editing would have really made this book stellar.

Pros: Worldbuilding was interesting, changelings and leprechauns as important characters and I appreciate the nostalgic ‘80s/early ‘90s feel, though I don’t know if that was a) intentional or b) something that would appeal to anyone else, lol. Straight up fantasy and a light read all around. Bad guys are truly bad, good guys are truly good. Sometimes that’s nice. I have nothing against bad guys being truly bad. He even monologued!

Cons: Too much telling, not nearly enough showing. Some weird jarring parts that made no sense or were irritating. Far too many training chapters. Also, and this is just me, the will-they, won’t-they gets kind of old, especially since it flipped immediately to the ‘won’t-they’ side at the end for almost no reason that I could see. Again though, that’s me and that’s why I don’t read or watch watch-roms, lol.

Neutral: The first person/third person switching may bother some readers. I didn’t care, but others may find it annoying or off putting. I’m not exactly sure what the point was – why not have Greg also in first person? But ok, I’ll bite. It was unique.

Crystal Heart is the first book in the series, so I will be interested to see how the second one reads. It could simply be a debut novel thing and hey, we all have to start somewhere.