The Elf Tangent (Part 1 - Overview)

Hello, all. I hope your week is going well.

As mentioned last week, I first became aware of today’s title back in January. I was interested in seeing what Buroker would do with a clean fantasy. Additionally, as mentioned in the Fire and Fang review, I was drawn to this book by tone. I’ve been rather harsh about the quippy humor that saturates that series, yet it isn’t inherently a bad element to have. I was hoping that a lower-stakes story might pair better with that tone.

And … yeah. It does.

Let’s get right into it.

STATS

Title: The Elf Tangent

Series: N/A

Author(s): Lindsay Buroker

Genre: Fantasy (Romantasy)

First Printing: March 2022

Publisher: Self-published to Amazon

SPOILER WARNING

Mild spoilers for The Elf Tangent will be included throughout this review, through I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers will be confined to clearly labelled sections.

Heavy, unmarked spoilers for the other Buroker series we’ve previously covered, Magnetic Magic and Fire and Fang, will also be provided as necessary for comparative analysis.

STRUCTURE

This review is going to have 4 parts, which will be releasing on Wednesdays.

• Part 1 (Today)

  • Premise

  • Rating

  • Content Warning

  • Genre

• Part 2 (Wednesday, June 17th)

  • Plot

• Part 3 (Wednesday, June 24th)

  • Worldbuilding

  • Character

  • Romance

• Part 4 (Wednesday, July 1st)

  • Prose

  • Tone

  • Theme

PREMISE

From the Amazon product page, we get:

As a princess in the impoverished kingdom of Delantria, it’s Aldari’s job to look pretty, speak little, and marry a prince.

Studying mathematics and writing papers on economic theory in an effort to fix her people’s financial woes? Her father has forbidden it. With war on the horizon, they must focus on the immediate threat.

Reluctantly, Aldari agrees to marry a prince in a neighboring kingdom to secure an alliance her people desperately need. All is going to plan until the handsome elven mercenary captain hired to guard her marriage caravan turns into her kidnapper. His people are in trouble, and he believes she has the knowledge to help.

But with an invasion force approaching Delantria, Aldari’s own people need her. She must do everything in her power to escape the elves and make it to her wedding in time.

Never mind that her kidnapper is witty, clever, and offers her a challenge that intrigues her mind even as his easy smile intrigues her heart…

Aldari can’t let herself develop feelings for him. To fall in love and walk away from her wedding would mean the end of her kingdom and everyone she cares about.

Reaction

This is one of those premises that is very broad-strokes but falls short in the specifics. Aldari’s efforts to escape the elves are very short-lived, wrapping up around the halfway mark. The threat of her country being invaded is also treated as a background detail in much the same way as the ongoing war within Poromiel was handling in Iron Flame and Onyx Storm. We simply aren’t given enough to build an emotional connection to Aldari’s homeland, so every time the threat to said location is brought up, it comes across as an artificial effort to boos the tension.

Rather, the story focuses almost entirely on the danger faced by the elves and Aldari’s growing attraction to her kidnapper. This works well enough as the premise to the Romantasy. If you are here for that specific aspect, you’ll probably be happy.

RATING: 6/10

The Elf Tangent is an enjoyable read. The romance isn’t anything groundbreaking, but it is functional; the fantasy adventure isn’t complicated, but there’s a comfortable charm in the straightforward narrative. This is a story that makes simple promises and delivers on them.

One of the things I like about this book is that it corrects (or, I suppose, preempts) issues that I’ve been seeing in other books. There is the aforementioned matter of the lighthearted tone. Buroker’s quippy dialogue works really well in this story, building up the characters and their dynamics rather than undermining the emotional stakes of the plot. However, there’s also the matter of how Buroker handles social commentary. While I don’t think Buroker was necessarily trying to say anything about our modern world, there were a handful of time where my immersion broke because Buroker introduces elements that make less sense within the narrative than they do as the author turning and nudging the audience. You all know I’m not a fan of this sort of thing, yet I’m happy to acknowledge that Buroker does it far better than most writers.

Up until the end of the book, I was strongly considering an 8/10 rating. What ultimately brought the rating down was the plot. Much like the later Magnetic Magic entries, Buroker tries to do way too much within the pages she has allotted to this story. There’s a subplot that, while it could have been a perfectly fine novel on its own, ends up crowding out the main plot. The result is a very rushed climax that doesn’t pay off certain ideas established earlier in the story, and then the subplot itself has been resolved with an exposition dump at the end of the book.

On the whole, this is a perfectly fine Romantasy read. If you are a Romantasy fan, or just a Buroker fan, I think you will enjoy it. I just wish it had been streamlined a bit to better fulfill its potential.

CONTENT WARNING

The content here is fairly standard for a Buroker novel. There’s violence and death, to be sure, but it isn't gory. Swearing is also kept to a minimum.

Now, on the matter of it being a clean Romantasy, there’s nothing pornographic (or even just general explicit) in terms of sexual content. However, that isn’t to say that there isn’t sexual content. Aldari’s older sister is very sexually active (something I will dissect when we get to worldbuilding), and she speaks to Aldari about sex in the same manner that characters in the Empyrean talk to each other about it. Unlike that series, though, this choice doesn't feel needlessly crass. Aldari’s virginity is being contrasted against her older sister’s body count. This interaction therefore serves as efficient characterization. And since this book doesn’t have graphic sex scenes, the interaction actually has some punch to it, rather than feeling like oversharing.

GENRE

Romantasy

The backbone of this story is a Fantasy narrative: Aelie being abducted by an elf to help save the kingdom of the elves from a magical calamity. The Romance, though, is a little less cut-and-dry.

There is a single moment within the narrative where the relationship between Aldari and the mercenary captain actually influences the events. This point about about two-thirds of the way into the narrative. Absolutely every decision made by both Aldari and the captain before and after this point would play out the same regardless of any romantic chemistry between them. That being said, Aldari’s growing feelings for the captain serve as the emotional core of the narrative, and the buildup of those feelings is what leads to the aforementioned moment of influence on the plot. So while calling this a Romance is almost as tenuous a claim as calling the Empyrean a Romance, I do think this one limps over the line.

Clean

This one really depends on which definition of clean one is applying.

There is no pornographic content. There are no sex scenes. There isn't even any sex that occurs between characters during the story. So yes, in that sense, the book is clean.

However, if we use the broader definition, referring to a lack of excesses on sexual content, gore, or swearing, then no, this book is not clean. Even discounting the way Aldari’s sister casually (and crudely) discusses sex at the start of the book, the way sexual elements are handled is excessive. It honestly enters the same territory as what we saw with the handling of nudity and “offspring” in Magnetic Magic. Aldari’s attraction towards the mercenary captain reads less like innocent yearning and more like buildup to a sex scene that Buroker cut in the final edit. The way nudity is handled (both in creative destruction of Aldari’s dress and in a scene where the captain is naked under a sheet) reads like it is supposed to be tantalizing.

Within the context of the modern Romantasy landscape, it is obvious Buroker meant the first of these two definitions. I am happy to agree that she fulfilled her promise. Just don’t take that as an endorsement to share this book with children.

I EXPECTED MORE MATH

Next Wednesday, June 17th, we’ll dig into the plot of The Elf Tangent. This is a story that is fairly straightforward, with no overwhelming issues in either concept or execution. Unfortunately, Buroker tries to do just a little too much within the pages she alloted herself for this story, leading to aspects of the narrative feeling underdeveloped. A casualty of this is a payoff that was set up but not delivered: Aldari getting to use her character-defining mathematics skills to save the day.

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