Review by Anne Walker Blogs -- The Elf Brief
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- Latest Review: "The Elf Brief" by Jordan David
Review by Anne Walker Blogs -- The Elf Brief
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Elf Brief" by Jordan David.]
1 out of 4 stars
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The Elf Brief Book One of the Magi Charter by Jordan David
Fiction – Young Adult
Follow along with Noel Night as he transitions from a reference clerk to the assistant the for the new Santa to being the head of his own brand-new department. Learn about the inner workings of the North Pole as Noel learns them with Santa Nicolas along with how to fly the reindeer as the most important night of all draws increasingly closer.
As the book begins we find Noel waking up almost too late for a very important meeting with Santa Cristo. He quickly finds out that he is not in trouble but has been tapped for a very important assignment – to help the new Santa transition from life as a regular human to life as Santa Claus. Noel even gets to help on the biggest night of the year.
Jordan does a great job in showing some of the inner workings of how the North Pole is run; from the factory making the toys, the mailroom reading all the letters to how the warehouse stores and helps distribute all the toys on one night. I love how the different color of the hats tell you exactly where they work – red is for factory, green for warehouse, gold for messenger/administrative, and blue for the elusive first contact department – and that some of the symbols of Christmas are used as the symbols for some of the different departments. Jordan also does a great job with showing how you tell the different ages of the elves, even though they all look like children under the age of twenty or so. The storyline has a good flow to it and even though the names of some of the elves seem a little cheesy (best friend Spices, Golden Ball, and Blizzard just to name a few) the characters are well developed and does an okay job with showing what is going on rather than just telling us
The biggest problem I have with this book is the very obvious lack of any professional editing or proofreading. If either one of those had happened then I do not believe there would have been so many sentence structure problems such as “with-in and with-out the walls” would have read better as “inside the walls and outside the walls” or “both inside and outside the walls.” One of other problems I found was the use of the word “since” when in all instances “sense” would have been the correct word to use.
Other problems I noticed were the use of hyphens when not supposed to (with-in and wit-out are NOT hyphenated words) and breaking up words that are not meant to be two or three words (newcomers, nonetheless). Also using the wrong form of the word (absenting instead of absently), as well as using what can only be described as a texting version of the word congratulations. There is never a need to abbreviate a word in a story unless it is in the way a character talks – i.e. Spices walked up to him and offered his congratulations. Versus “Hey, Congrats on that new job, Noel! You’re gonna do great!” Spices yelled over the loud music at the festival. One other thing was using the using the wrong word when meaning something else – incite should be in sight, immerge should be emerge, japs when meaning jabs and waste when meaning waist. While some of these might seem a little nit-picky, as writers it behooves us use the correct word for the correct meaning otherwise you might find that your jap friend will be jabbing you in the waist with his waste from lunch.
Unfortunately, even with more books in this series, I give this book a 1 out of 4 stars due to the lack of editing and proofreading that would have caught 99.999% of the mistakes that I have listed.
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The Elf Brief
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1 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
The Elf Brief Book One of the Magi Charter by Jordan David
Fiction – Young Adult
Follow along with Noel Night as he transitions from a reference clerk to the assistant the for the new Santa to being the head of his own brand-new department. Learn about the inner workings of the North Pole as Noel learns them with Santa Nicolas along with how to fly the reindeer as the most important night of all draws increasingly closer.
As the book begins we find Noel waking up almost too late for a very important meeting with Santa Cristo. He quickly finds out that he is not in trouble but has been tapped for a very important assignment – to help the new Santa transition from life as a regular human to life as Santa Claus. Noel even gets to help on the biggest night of the year.
Jordan does a great job in showing some of the inner workings of how the North Pole is run; from the factory making the toys, the mailroom reading all the letters to how the warehouse stores and helps distribute all the toys on one night. I love how the different color of the hats tell you exactly where they work – red is for factory, green for warehouse, gold for messenger/administrative, and blue for the elusive first contact department – and that some of the symbols of Christmas are used as the symbols for some of the different departments. Jordan also does a great job with showing how you tell the different ages of the elves, even though they all look like children under the age of twenty or so. The storyline has a good flow to it and even though the names of some of the elves seem a little cheesy (best friend Spices, Golden Ball, and Blizzard just to name a few) the characters are well developed and does an okay job with showing what is going on rather than just telling us
The biggest problem I have with this book is the very obvious lack of any professional editing or proofreading. If either one of those had happened then I do not believe there would have been so many sentence structure problems such as “with-in and with-out the walls” would have read better as “inside the walls and outside the walls” or “both inside and outside the walls.” One of other problems I found was the use of the word “since” when in all instances “sense” would have been the correct word to use.
Other problems I noticed were the use of hyphens when not supposed to (with-in and wit-out are NOT hyphenated words) and breaking up words that are not meant to be two or three words (newcomers, nonetheless). Also using the wrong form of the word (absenting instead of absently), as well as using what can only be described as a texting version of the word congratulations. There is never a need to abbreviate a word in a story unless it is in the way a character talks – i.e. Spices walked up to him and offered his congratulations. Versus “Hey, Congrats on that new job, Noel! You’re gonna do great!” Spices yelled over the loud music at the festival. One other thing was using the using the wrong word when meaning something else – incite should be in sight, immerge should be emerge, japs when meaning jabs and waste when meaning waist. While some of these might seem a little nit-picky, as writers it behooves us use the correct word for the correct meaning otherwise you might find that your jap friend will be jabbing you in the waist with his waste from lunch.
Unfortunately, even with more books in this series, I give this book a 1 out of 4 stars due to the lack of editing and proofreading that would have caught 99.999% of the mistakes that I have listed.
******
The Elf Brief
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Like Anne Walker Blogs's review? Post a comment saying so!
Latest Review: "The Elf Brief" by Jordan David
