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NuminU'ia The NuminU'ia Series A A Radda 9780991637904 Books

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NuminU'ia The NuminU'ia Series A A Radda 9780991637904 Books

I have always loved Fairy fiction, but I have to say this one takes the cake!! I love how different and unlike any other that I have ever read! This series really pulls you in and puts a whole new spin on the world of fairies! I Loved it!!!! The characters become so real with personality I found myself crying and laughing out loud with each new adventure. I would recommend this book to anyone young or old!! And I can't wait to read more from this up and coming author.

Mandy Sylak :)


Tags : Numin-U'ia (The Numin-U'ia Series) [A. A. Radda] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. For centuries, the faeries have used their secret portals to wreak havoc on Elvendom. At last, determined to crush the sinister creatures who plague them,A. A. Radda,Numin-U'ia (The Numin-U'ia Series),Indrinia Press, LLC,0991637909,Children's BooksAll Ages,Fantasy & Magic,Juvenile Fiction Fantasy & Magic,Science fiction (Children's Teenage)

NuminU'ia The NuminU'ia Series A A Radda 9780991637904 Books Reviews

The biggest problem for writers is to have them draw you in from the get-go. There was no problem here. A dynamic command of language coupled with enticing descriptions of creatures, places, and best of all...situations, kept me going strong. What an imagination this A.A. Radda has. Grab hold.
I really enjoyed this story of elves and faeries. The world is the author's own creation and it's rich and colorful and deepens the further into the book you go. There's an innocence and playfulness that is so refreshing, with vibrant characters and lot of fun adventure.
One of the greatest things about reviewing books is that it gives me opportunities to meet authors at book conventions. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d have a chance to meet the likes of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, or J.K. Rowling before I got this job. Now I get to see them every six months or so, and each time I’m able to walk up to them, tell them just how terrible I think their work is, and stroll off with a grin on my face while they’re left weeping with joy that I provided my feedback. I think it’s just a matter of time before they invite me to lunch!

Of course, this is completely made up. I’ve never been to a book convention that featured anything but local authors, and I can’t imagine actual popular authors being happy if I were so blunt to them. But I can imagine Gilmar following this line of logic given that he seems to think battles are such a great way to make friends. And that brings us to A.A. Radda’s debut fantasy novel, Numin U’ia.

Let’s get this out of the way right now fantasy fiction is not something I consume very often. No, it’s not because I don’t enjoy the genre; in fact, some of my favorite novels are from said genre. The Neverending Story comes to mind, and though I loathe how formulaic the sequels became, I also enjoyed the original Redwall. The real reason that fantasy fiction is a rare treat for someone like me is just because it demands a lot of heavy lifting before things get interesting. For an ADD generation like mine, if it’s not going to grab our attention in the first twenty-five pages, it’s probably just going to sit on our shelves. Sadly, this is what has happened to most fantasy fiction I purchase. Even though I know there’s a huge potential payoff after the first hundred to two hundred pages, there are just so many more options available in fiction or other entertainment mediums that are likely to suck me in faster. Consider that the closest equivalent we have to fantasy fiction in the medium of video games—Japanese role-playing games—abandoned the slow opening in favor of openers that are much more cinematic and intense nearly two decades ago, and since then they mostly haven’t gone back. After all, who has time for world-building when your customers have attention spans shorter than a TV advertisement? Much better to give them adrenaline first and then try to flesh things out later. Further consider that the aforementioned Neverending Story, despite holding me for long stretches and entertaining me in immense ways, took me at least half a year to read through completely.

In light of all this, I have two decidedly unsurprising factoids to share. The first is that it took me more than two months to get through the first 130 pages of Numin U’ia. I believe this happened because of the many other things I had on my plate, from jobs to games to living circumstances. Of course, I cannot say this completely excuses the narrative, as a good narrative usually overcomes these distractions for the average reader, and as such, there is probably something lacking a little in the opening chapters. Radda makes a valiant effort in bucking the traditions by giving a prologue that is mostly soft, followed by a chapter that gets the action underway within the first fifteen pages. In typical fantasy fiction, there’s some kind of fast prologue where a battle is underway followed by an introduction to our primary protagonist as s/he goes about normal life and then starts a journey, so it’s nice to see the order reversed here. Combined with the overall high quality of the writing, I very nearly got myself completely sucked into the story, but it just didn’t quite work. I suspect this was partially because my mind needed time to wrap itself around the world it was being introduced to, which I count as a part of the “heavy lifting” many readers have to go through. The dynamics between the faeries and elves, as well as the unusual tone, took a little time for me to get used to. Then, on a whim, I sat down to read more of the book a week ago and doubled the amount I’d read in a single day. From that point onward, I read through a good 30 to 60 pages every other day or so and finished it rather quickly. So there’s obviously something good here that Radda latches on to, even if it took me a little time to appreciate it.

There were also a lot of times when my mind wandered off, generally in the middle of descriptions. Indeed, description is something that I suspect gives many fantasy novels their hefty weight, even as the number of events within those seven hundred pages doesn’t warrant said length. Fortunately, Radda doesn’t overindulge in description very often, if at all, keeping the pacing brisk enough that I didn’t want to walk away from the story even after it lost my attention for a few minutes.

The second unsurprising factoid I have to share is that since I’m not well read when it comes to fantasy fiction, I don’t know what twists have already been tried within the genre boundaries. As such, what I perceive as “unique” or “original” might not be anything of the sort. However, I have no interest in belaboring this point because I believe Radda deserves a lot of credit for what she’s done here. To me, it feels like she found a way to walk a tightrope in terms of tone and content that I suspect other authors would find difficult. Because Numin U’ia feels like a book that’s trying to function as a traditional high fantasy at the same time that it’s making fun of the genre. The requisite quest is described as little more than an errand, and it is given to the most dimwitted of the main characters, Gilmar. While this isn’t necessarily unusual in fantasy fiction, what is unusual is that Gilmar doesn’t actually grow or change much as a character until the very end of the story. So instead of growing into his larger role—as the typical protagonist in an epic would do—Gilmar continues to seem like a clueless fool who’s just along for the ride. Meanwhile, his brother, Alastair, is described as an incredible warrior and leader, infinitely more capable of undertaking a quest than his brother. Yet Alastair is too busy trying to hold onto a captive faery princess that his sister insists on treating as a royal guest. It’s like the two brothers were accidentally given the wrong tasks to complete.

And that’s just the overall goofy framework. Within that framework are numerous instances of humor and parody. There is a character that could almost be described as a love interest for Gilmar, but she’s so spoiled and obnoxious that even her beauty doesn’t make her appealing to anyone. The faery princess, Ravaniel, demonstrates a similar attitude, but manages to charm some of the elves into avoiding a jail cell during her captivity. Even Alastair angrily relents and allows Ravaniel more freedom…which humorously leads to her escape, and a multi-day journey to try and get her back. A vague sort of father figure assists Gilmar in his quest, and then realizes a mere day later that he should have gone with him, deciding to just up and leave in spite of the responsibilities to his station. The king of the faeries demonstrates a greater propensity for ADD than a three year old watching TV. All of these silly happenings make the story seem like a light-hearted parody of fantasy epics, yet they never completely eclipse the significance of the narrative or its epic scope.

Altogether, Numin U’ia ends up being a rewarding treat, but there are a couple things Radda should consider when writing the proposed future novels in this universe. First of all, if you’re going to end your plot threads on a cliffhanger, it should probably be done in a way that makes us eager to read the next part. Gilmar’s quest is handled correctly on this front, but Alastair’s journey just kind of stops after he discovers his next destination on page 267. From there, the rest of the story is all about Gilmar. It feels a little like Radda either ran out of ideas for Alastair’s story or simply forgot about the other plot threads. Naturally, I expect the next book will continue all of the plot threads, but if Radda was really going to end Alastair’s thread where she did, then I think she should have found a better way to parcel it out so we’d read about it within the last 50 pages. Instead, for some reason, she stopped it 150 pages before the end of the book.

The other thing I feel the need to criticize—and it pains me to say this—is the story’s tone as it relates to character development. Don’t get me wrong; the characters that Radda drew for this book were mostly interesting and developed nicely. The problem is that I can’t help wanting to qualify the previous sentence with the phrase “for fantasy fiction.” In my personal experiences, fantasy fiction has more to do with the worlds and the adventures than with the characters. It’s about sword battles, perilous journeys through dangerous landscapes, and mystical creatures. Consider the Redwall books, where the late Brian Jacques filled his narratives with 30 to 40 characters. This volume of characters ensured that nearly none of them were developed very extensively, leaving the focus of the stories on the adventures, the battles, and the tone. Consider Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth, which has been criticized for a lack of deep characterization. In my opinion, Radda does a better job than Jacques or Goodkind at characterization, but it’s still not quite on par with characters in the angst-ridden stories of Jodi Picoult or Gayle Forman, nor would I say they contain quite as much depth as those in many (though not all) Dean Koontz thrillers. As I’ve been hoping to see fantasy fiction imitate other genres in order to revitalize its relevance, this is a bit disappointing.

It’s understandable that Radda went in this direction given that the book is sort of a love letter to the epic adventures of old like Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, but the bigger issue is that the tone Radda went for might have actually interfered with the chance to properly develop her characters. The amusing bouts of humor that keep the adventure light-hearted are not what I would call forced, but sometimes I felt like the story’s desire to remain unserious overrode the tendencies of the characters themselves. For example, *SPOILER WARNING* Alastair spends most of his initial journey as a hard-lined commander who treats Princess Ravaniel like a genuine prisoner and continues to display distaste and frustration at his sister’s rather empty-headed tendency to treat the faery like a friend. But for some reason he eventually acquiesces and gives the faery some space, leading to her alleged escape and his quest to get her back. This rather silly development results in multiple weeks of wasted time as Alastair travels the countryside, following what is more likely to be a series of coincidences than a genuine trail. Because of the story’s unserious tone, it is hard to tell whether this is supposed to be adding dimension to Alastair’s character, if it’s just Radda indulging her humor, or both. Perhaps it would be best to summarize my criticism in this manner when you’re making a story’s tone silly, it can be hard to distinguish character development from something that’s just a joke. Ultimately, because of this admirable attempt to defy genre conventions, I feel that the characters in Numin U’ia are not able to rise above the depth of characters from other books in the genre.

Most of this is really just quibbles about genre conventions, though. What’s really important here is whether a book is fun to read. For the most part, “enjoyable” is exactly what Numin U’ia was for me. It left me wanting more, which is why I intend to pick up the sequel and review it as soon as I can. It’s not exactly a steak dinner, but perhaps that’s actually for the best. After all, a properly cooked steak tends to fill up my stomach, whereas a bowl of popcorn like Numin U’ia is something I could eat several times every day.

GRADE B+
What a wonderful story! A.A. Radda makes everything she writes about truly come alive. The book sparkles with energy from the Prologue to the last page, and I can't wait for Cairns of Numin-U'ia to come out!
Alyssa is a young, new writer with talent and creativeness akin to seasoned authors. She develops her characters delightfully and draws the reader into a fantasy land that allows complete and total escape from present day. Her books are truly entertaining and a great pleasure to read.
I have always loved Fairy fiction, but I have to say this one takes the cake!! I love how different and unlike any other that I have ever read! This series really pulls you in and puts a whole new spin on the world of fairies! I Loved it!!!! The characters become so real with personality I found myself crying and laughing out loud with each new adventure. I would recommend this book to anyone young or old!! And I can't wait to read more from this up and coming author.

Mandy Sylak )