Review by Sci-Fi Kingdom -- The Elf Archive - Book Two o...

[Sci-Fi Kingdom]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Elf Archive - Book Two of the Magi Charter" by Jordan David.]

---

3 out of 4 stars

---

Share This Review

---

The Elf Archive is the second novel in Jordan David’s nine part Magi Charter series, and is the follow-up to his earlier book, The Elf Brief.

In similar fashion to its predecessor, The Elf Archive has a good pace, with a fun story that rolls along nicely. Almost five years have passed since Noel Night helped Santa Nicolas to take over at the North Pole Complex, but not all of the elves are happy with the new management. The former Head of the First Contact Department, Mistletoe Green is secretly plotting to have Noel banished from the North Pole, and reinstate some of the older rules and regulations that work more in his favour.

Meanwhile, with the Summer Solstice fast approaching the elves are busying themselves with preparations for the Annual Reindeer Games, a series of events and contests, designed to amuse and entertain the North Pole’s inhabitants, and give many of the elves a rare opportunity to display their unique skills.

However, as if Noel Night didn’t already have his work cut out with his new, and very solitary, position as Head of the recently created Historical and Preservation department, along with competing in the Reindeer Games with his best friend, Spices, Santa has also asked Noel to help him find a wife. This has some rather awkward and adventurous results.

Noel is also determined to locate and prove the existence of an old, boarded up library within the North Pole Complex. There is quite a debate about the existence of such a building, but rumour has it that the library did exist, but was boarded up and closed a long time ago. Can Noel succeed in his mission?

Firstly, I would like to take a moment here to point out the lack of research that went into the Football Game date between Santa and the third candidate for Mrs. Claus. It is clear that the author is not English, and has little knowledge of the country, when he discusses the details of the football match. There is a huge error here where Jordan David describes a Manchester team as being local, and playing at their home ground in London. Manchester is an actual city, in the Northwest of the country, over a hundred miles away from London, and is therefore not local to the London area. It seems to me that the author just picked out two English football clubs from off the top of his head and dumped them into his book, instead of taking the time to research accurate information, suggesting laziness and a lack of professionalism.

Much like the first novel, I really loved the crazy, but rather fitting, elfish names such as; Cider Eggnog, Spices Seasoning and Penny Copper who is the Head of the Finance department, and let’s not forget my favourite character the Caretaker, a talking Polar Bear who gets even less air time in this novel than he did the last, much to my displeasure.

There are also still a large number of annoying spelling mistakes and missing words throughout this book, and while I love this unique series from Jordan David, I feel that I can only rate his latest novel at 3 out of 4 stars as a result. With better proofreading and the elimination of silly errors using proper research, the Magi Charter novels would undoubtedly be much more successful. This has the potential to be a fantastic series, if the author can just iron out those tiny little kinks.

******
The Elf Archive - Book Two of the Magi Charter
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon

Like Sci-Fi Kingdom's review? Post a comment saying so!