Summary:

The Elves have come down from the sky in their ships, their countenances full of light and their bodies, power. But they rule over us humans with iron fists, and without mercy.

Vampires stalk the streets, lurking in shadows and the cover of darkness. Their lust for blood is never sated, and the nights are filled with the screams of their victims.

I’m just a street rat, a trash picker. I didn’t expect him to choose me. The Prince of Elves could have anyone, so why me?

Even as my heart sings at the elf’s close proximity, I still love the boy who left me, disappearing into the city’s corrupt underworld. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.

Stars reign. Rebellion brews. And with my already uncertain future disintegrating into chaos, I don’t know who to turn to, or who to trust.

Goodreads

Thoughts:

I went into this one with little to no expectations and wound up enjoying it. I think it helped that the author is great at writing characters and the world was unique and interesting. Also I’m a sucker for certain tropes when it comes to romance.

This book is set in a world sometime in the Earth’s future. Earth has been through some stuff, of which we don’t know all of the details yet. But it seems society has somewhat broken down and this is the remnants. The city is what was once Seattle, but it’s probably not very recognizable in its current state. It’s run down and broken and full of danger. It’s in this city in which we find our main character, Stella, surviving. She picks through the trash looking for interesting things to sell so she can pay rent on her tent-like apartment and also get money for her brother’s medicine to help prevent his seizures.  I love post-apocalyptic societies, and while I’m not sure that’s what we’re seeing here yet it’s along those lines…it’s definitely a very run down future.

Then we’re introduced to the Elves. They’ve arrived from their own planet, on a mission to restore the Earth as humans have done a pretty bang up job destroying the planet. So the space Elves are kind of like the fairies in Ferngully (did I just date myself?) except along with magic they also have technology. Because they came from space. They’ve established their headquarters here in this run down city and declared they’re now in charge. The people that live there are afraid of the Elves, afraid they’re abducting humans and doing experiments on them. There are all kinds of rumors.

Eventually, of course, Stella winds up getting captured by the Elves while breaking into Elf HQ to go dumpster diving. It’s here that she winds up meeting the Elvish Prince Eldaren. Of course he’s super hot and great at seemingly everything except for expressing emotions. The Elves are seen as cold and calculating but I think it’s just their culture, similar to Vulcans from Star Trek. Through circumstances Stella ends up as a prisoner, sort of, of the prince–but it’s more complicated than that and I don’t want to give too much away. Anyway, this is a perfect set up for the romance in the book, which is what I was most interested in other than the whole vampire thing. So, yeah. There’s a bit of a love triangle (kinda sorta) as Stella is still hung up on her old boyfriend who left her when he became addicted to a dangerous new drug. But Eldaren is alllll about Stella. I really enjoyed watching him try so hard to learn what Stella likes, what humans do compared to Elves as far as ‘dating’ and such. I admit I’m a total sucker for these types of characters and romantic plots because there’s just a tiny bit of a Beauty and the Beast thing going on here (even if the ‘beast’ is super hot….).

So, vampires. Yeah, they are also vampires in this book, although they don’t show up until later (I started to wonder at one point if they would). I have to say, I really loved this take on vampires and how they’re related to the space Elves. At first I didn’t think these two things would work well together, or that the author was adding too much (space Elves and vampires?!), but due to the world building it all makes perfect sense.

As far as negatives, I don’t have a whole lot to talk about here. It is very trope-y at points (even if they were ones I love, mostly) and sometimes I wondered about Eldaren’s motivations given his unique bond with Stella–would he have been so compassionate otherwise? But these are smaller things, really. The only other thing is that it ends on a point where you’re really going to want to read book two right away. It’s not a complete story whatsoever. Which is stated upfront in the description but I’ve read a ton of series and most books in a series don’t end so abruptly like it’s part of a longer book just split into two parts. So, I’ll be picking up book two as soon as I can. Obviously.

Honestly, thought this was a quick and fun read overall, glad I decided to pick it up, hope things get expanded a bit more in the next book. 3.5/5 stars.