The Elf Tangent (Part 2 - Plot)

Hello, all. Welcome back to the review of Lindsay Buroker’s clean Romantasy, The Elf Tangent.

This part will assess the ins and outs of the plot. If you’d like to read the overview, please see Part 1. We’ll hold off on the worldbuilding, characters, and romance until next week. The analysis of prose, tone, and theme will wrap things up the week after that.

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

Rating: 6/10

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 Romantasy series by Buroker that we’ve previously covered, Fire and Fang, may also be provided as necessary for comparative analysis.

PLOT

The Elf Tangent has three plot threads in total: the main plot (Aldari being abducted to aid the elves) and two subplots. I like the concepts for all three, and there’s not a lot about their execution that I take issue with. Buroker had some solid ideas and made the most of each of them. What holds the plot back is that she tried to do too much within the page count she gave herself to work with. Some things had to be undercooked for the sake of time.

Main Plot: Abduction and Aid

As promised by the premise, the elves who escort Aldari who her wedding seize the opportunity to abduct her. The reason for this is because the elves have figured out that Aldari is a mathematical genuis, having followed her various publications on mathematics and economic theory. They want Aldari to help them unlock an ancient ruins that they believe holds the key to saving their land from the Twisted, energy vampires that seek out magical energy (and, consequently, have collapsed the elves’ civilization).

Aldari makes only two attempts to escape the elves before wholeheartedly agreeing to help them. This does make the escape drama feel a bit pointless, since nothing ends up coming from it. That said, the shift in objective isn't contrived. It is rooted in Aldari’s growing attraction for the mercenary captain. So while the escapes didn’t move the story forward, phasing them out of the story shows Aldari’s development.

For the most part, I think this story is fine. It's a solid backbone for the narrative, giving things a definite sense of direction. It also justifies Aldari and the mercenary captain spending time together to bond and build their relationship.

Was this meant to be a twist? (Heavy Spoilers)

Buroker baits the audience with the mercenary captain’s backstory throughout the novel. This is a rare moment where I think the execution is fine but dislike the concept.

For context, the mercenary captain is known as Captain Hawk. (Due to the overlap between his name and the main character of The Tidestone Chronicles, I will refer to this character as simply “the Captain”). Aldari notices early on that the Captain doesn’t really seem to be in charge of the mercenaries. Rather, his lieutenant Setvik, is the one giving the orders to the other mercenaries, whilst butting heads with the Captain and only begrudgingly obeying his commands. Then, throughout the story, we get progressively more unsubtle hints about how close the Captain is with the royal family.

Obviously, the Captain is a prince. This twist is so obvious that I actually forgot that it wasn’t spelled out in the premise. This is very cliché.

I think Buroker did a good job with setting up and paying off this twist. There is nothing objectively wrong with it. Within the concept of the wider Romantasy landscape, though, I’m a bit disappointed by the concept itself. Seems like time could have been saved by not making a big deal out of this mystery.

Write What You Know

After reading this book, I am convinced that Buroker does not have a background in either economics or mathematics.

I don’t meant this as shade on her. I’m not an expert on these things, either. There’s also evidence on the page that she at least tried to research these subjects. For example, when commenting about the whaling industry (more on that when we talk about the theme), she acknowledged the economic factors that could make it hard to bring about social change, and she also referenced numerical sequences when showcasing Aldari’s skills.

The issue is that the entire reason this stort happens is that Aldari is meant to be a mathematical and economic genius. The elves need her for this precise expertise. One would assume that the puzzles safeguarding this ruin would be mathematical challenges.

Only … they aren’t. All of puzzles are logic puzzles. They are puzzles that have numbers for their answers, but still, just logic puzzles. And the logic of these puzzles are based on the history and ecology of the elves’ kingdom. The elves shouldn’t have needed Aelie to figure these things out. If anything, given how fast she figures these things out, it really seems like the elves should have cracked the code a while ago.

Again, no shade at Buroker. There was only so complicated and specialized that she could make the puzzle without losing the audience, and if she’s not an expert in this field, upping the complexity would just increase the odds of making a mistake. It’s just that, after building up Aldari’s skills, this was a disappointing payoff.

The Betrayal Subplot (Heavy Spoilers)

From the moment Aldari clocks the hostility between the Captain and Setvik, she worries that Setvik will kill the Captain, then dispose of herself and her bodyguard (since she also picks up on Setvik not liking the abduction plan). This worry intensifies when the Captain grows sick during the trip to the elves’ kingdom. Aldari suspects Setvik of poisoning the Captain, while Setvik accuses her of the same crime. The middle of the story is taken up with this mystery.

It is ultimately revealed that the Captain was poisoned by members of the an elvish religious sect who see the Twisted as divine retribution of ancient elvish hubris. They want the effort to defeat the twisted to fail. This group also sabotages Aldari’s and the Captains’ efforts to access the ruins near the climax.

I love this idea. It generates additional drama and tension - from the immediate mystery the Captain’s failing health, and the clash the results between Setvik and the Captain aftwards - while revealing greater depth in the world. This makes the story more interesting …

… but it also eats up valuable pages that really could have been used to flesh out the climax.

The finale in the ruins is just so rushed. None of the puzzles after the first have any weight to them. And while part of this might have been Buroker trying to keep the puzzles within what she knew, there’s also a sense that she is hurrying to make up for lost time.

What’s particularly frustrating is that most of the explanation I gave in the second paragraph of this exciting was exposited after the climax. The cult is introduced before the climax, but their machinations were not revealed in full until the very end of the book. It makes their inclusion feel like an afterthought.

I feel like Buroker either needed to cut this subplot, to give the main plot more time and attention, or else to make the book longer so that she could flesh both out more. These were both good ideas. They needed more time to work effectively.

The Looming Invasion

The arranged marriage and the threat of war that compels it are mostly a backstory detail. Aldari is motivated to escape from the Captain not just for her own freedom, but because following through on this marriage will grant her kingdom the military support needed to protect their own sovereignty. I think this works fine as setup for a motivation. It would have been nice if it wasn’t restated so many times, yet that's really more of a prose issue.

Where I think Buroker miscalculated was when she applied tried to ratchet up the tension in the climax. Right as she is about to go into the ruins, Aldari receives a message that her has been invaded. She has a moment of guilt and panic as she realizes that her choice to aid the Captain instead of accepting an earlier out to go get married has cost her kingdom the military alliance they needed. It's meant to be a heavy moment.

Unfortunately, there wasn't any weight to this revelation. I think what Buroker did is fine for justifying character motivations. However, when Aldari is already juggling the fate of a civilization while trapped in a camp surrounded by vampires, news that another civilization we’ve barely been shown might have to pay taxes to someone else really doesn’t carry the same weight.

Final Thoughts on the Plot

The plot of The Elf Tangent is honestly quite solid. It’s overstuffed nature is honestly the biggest issue, to the point that Buroker could probably have addressed the other issues if she’d just cut the betrayal Subplot and dedicated more time to fleshing out what's left. This is a story works well for a standalone novel.

CHEMICAL EQUATIONS

The Elf Tangent’s nature as a standalone necessitated that Buroker develop all the important worldbuilding and character details within a single story, rather than seeding in elements that could be fleshed out over many books. I’d say she did a fairly good job of this. The worldbuilding of this story is deep enough to make it feel like it exists behind the pages we read, and the character work if functional for the story being told. Best of all, she gives enough information to convincingly sell the relationship between the main couple. (The secondary couple, sadly, is a lost cause.)

That’s coming your way Wednesday, June 24th. Until then, thank you all for stopping by. Please remember to subscribe and share if you enjoyed what you read here. Take care, everyone, and enjoy the rest of yoru week.