Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsGood Introduction
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 22, 2023
*****Spoilers*****
Good introduction to Matti's story with some familiar thrown in. It's been a while since I read Val's series and her adventures with Sindari and Zav as well as Willard which was good because it allowed me to be suspicious of them along with Matti who has no love for the military. She's a part dwarf house flipper whose father is in prison, captured by the military and whose mom is dead, all when Matti was 4. She's not permitted to visit her father per the military so she's unable to determine by the eyes of an adult if something else was going on at the time. I'm any case, Matti does have her dwarf mom's hammer which is not only magical in nature as Matti finds out, but indestructible, at least that she's been able to tell so far as she bashes enemies over the head regularly and also uses it in her demolition work. Matti purchased a home to renovate and encounters Sarrlevi, an elf assassin who's looking for Matti's mother and believes that she's alive. An arrogant elf assassin helping Matti so she can help him find her mom. The prior home owner was zealously guarding the home due to a tunnel dug deep and winding under the floor of the basement through the city. It was the hiding place for a magical cylinder with power allegedly equivalent to a nuclear reactor. Magical beings are therefore attracted to the fixer upper and Matti gets into several battles as she fights off the magical to keep them away from the home she's renovating. Along the way, Matti accepts a job offer as a contractor for the military, gets to battle with Val and Sarrlevi, adventures to a different realm via portal, valiantly leaps into trouble to save her friends, and starts unraveling some of the cookie crumbs that might lead her to her mother's last known whereabouts since Matti doesn't believe her mom is still alive but has some old pictures and a story that her mom was the first daughter and heir to the dwarf kingdom.
The book was a page turner and kept me interested throughout. I wished that the author took more time to delve into certain things as opposed to skimming the surface and moving on. The emotions were absent for me as well, I couldn't really get worked up about Matti or her friends, even as they all faced some kind of danger. I'm not sure if it just wasn't emphasized or if I missed it but outside of stacked and short, I'm not sure I know what Matti looks like. I was also unconvinced with the budding something-situationship that's going on with Matti and Sarrlevi, at least from this one but we'll see what comes in the next one.
