Pleasant romance with humans (some with magic abilities) fighting magic creatures. I wasn’t wowed, but it was ok.

STORY BRIEF:
There are two kinds of humans, regular humans who farm, raise animals and have trades, and lakewalkers who patrol the land looking for and destroying malices. Lakewalkers have magic abilities. Malices erupt from the earth and make slaves out of nearby animals. It reshapes them into human form where they resemble zombie-like men called mud men. The malice has mud men capture humans to do work such as digging. The lakewalkers create special knives to kill the malices.

Fawn’s family and others make her feel small and stupid. Sunny is a local bully who has sex with Fawn causing a pregnancy. Fawn runs away hoping to find a job as a maid in the nearby town of Glassforge. Along the way she is kidnapped by a mud man. Dag is a lakewalker who has been following the trail of the mud man. He saves Fawn and then travels with her to Glassforge.

REVIEWER’S OPINION:
This was nice as a quest fantasy with a character-driven romance. Dag is a hero with no faults. He’s great at fighting malices and bad guys. He lost his wife. He lost his left hand in a battle. His body is battered with scars. I admire and like Dag.

I am sympathetic for Fawn. Home has been a painful place for her. Living with Dag on the road is a better life. She and Dag fall in love. He’s much older. She’s around 20. My only complaint is that the story seemed to drag a bit toward the end, as Fawn’s family prepared for a special event. There is a mystery about a knife which is not solved at the end of the book. Dag and Fawn will continue their journey in book 2 to solve the mystery.

DATA:
Story length: 361 pages. Swearing language: none. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: 2. Total number of sex scene pages: 9. Setting: unknown time before cars in a rural area called Oleana. Copyright: 2006. Genre: young adult fantasy romance.