Because I love to complain - I will start off with I HATE THE COVER! This author's Elfhome books usually have these wonderful illustrations (not always true to the book but then again I'm a complainer so what did you expect). However this is like a frat party gone bad cover. The guy with his hands in the air looks especially stupid.

The description of this book kind of confused me because it said it was short stories but the author must have turned the short stories into a longer narrative while interspersing some short ideas she had for stories that I'm not sure she will ultimately use. It's a behind-the-scenes look at the Elfhome's main story, which was really interesting. Overall, the book was really good.

For those of you who like the urban fantasy writer Wen Spencer and her Elfhome universe, I've written a short story set in it. I love Wen Spencer and I adore her Elfhome series. Five Days of Elf is my first ever piece of fan-fiction. I have never written it before - never been tempted - but Elfhome got the better of me.

I wanted to post my story where other Elfhome fans were sure to find it but discovered, to my surprise, there is no such site, no place where the fans of this writer congregate. Not even her own website: it doesn't invite communication, just serves as an information dispensary.

The only place where I found a couple of Elfhome fan-fiction stories is Fanfiction.net, but the stories there are at least 2 years old. No new ones.  

So I posted my story on wattpad. It is based on the Elfhome universe, but the characters and the plot are my own. In this story, Lisa, a film school student from Vancouver, Canada, attends a local Shakespearean festival, when a gun-toting terrorist starts a shooting spree. She could've been killed, if not for a young man in a gray turban who risks his life stopping the shooter. But the turbaned guy turns out not what he seemed to be.

You could read the story Five Days of Elf here.

I made the cover myself and I'm happy with it. The girl does look the way I pictured Lisa while I wrote her story.

This week's favorite is a divine urban fantasy. You don't get more urban that a Pittsburg junk yard and you don't get more fantasy than Elves. The multi cultural mythology combine with grand world making and a compelling love story make this a wonderful book that stays on my keep shelf. 

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Inventor, girl genius Tinker lives in a near-future Pittsburgh which now exists mostly in the land of the elves. She runs her salvage business, pays her taxes, and tries to keep the local ambient level of magic down with gadgets of her own design. When a pack of wargs chase an Elven noble into her scrap yard, life as she knows it takes a serious detour. Tinker finds herself taking on the Elven court, the NSA, the Elven Interdimensional Agency, technology smugglers and a college-minded Xenobiologist as she tries to stay focused on whats really important her first date. Armed with an intelligence the size of a planet, steel toed boots, and a junk yard dog attitude, Tinker is ready to kick butt to get her first kiss.

Review

Tinker is one of my favorite heroines ever. She is so herself. A mechanic and problem solver. A tomboy living in this strange world of a junkyard and magic dipping in from a fantasy world.

Spencer world building is lush and gritty and complete. Every character is interesting. The plot is fast paced and twisting towards a love story that is cold and hot all at the same time.

Our hero is an elf. He is neither good nor bad but he does respect and value Tinker.

The romance is more subtle but I liked it a great deal. I have reread this book many times.

I haven’t written a review in ages – nothing I’ve read recently was worth it – but finally, there is a book I want to talk about. Wen Spencer is one of my favorite fantasy writers. Her Elfhome series, which started with Tinker, resonates deep inside me. I love her multifaceted characters. I love her original world building. And this book fits into my love like chocolate fits a cake. Sweet and satisfying.

The book is a collection of shorter works from the author’s Elfhome universe. Some of those works are short stories. Others longer novellas. Still others are as brief as flash fiction or even drabbles. It is like the author wrote fan fiction to her own novels.

Some of them deal with the characters from the novels – their past, their side stories that didn’t line up with the main plots of the novels, and even their character studies. The author’s creative closet, so to speak, which is a rare treat for a reader. As I love most of those characters, my curiosity about them was insatiable, and the book fed it.

Other stories introduce new characters, but their tales are just as fascinating. Most stories in the collection happen in Pittsburgh, an American city stranded by a quantum physics accident in the parallel universe of Elfhome, the planet of the elves. That is where the bulk of the novels take place too.

Pittsburgh is a microcosm, a cauldron of the world’s conflicts and tensions and friendships. Its citizens come from all walks of life, from a hooker to a TV producer. Some are elves. Most are human. All of them are trying to create something better out of the haphazard maze of their lives in the war zone. Because there is a war going on the periphery of all the stories, a war between elves and their ancient enemies, a war everyone knows about, even though they try to live their lives as normally as possible.

However, the main theme of all the stories is not that war but the characters’ identities. Staying true to who you are often takes courage. Sometimes people who love us most are trying to change us, for our own good, of course, and many heroes in this collection grapple with relevant problems. Staying true to yourself, not conforming, takes them along the unexplored paths, the hard paths of being different. I enjoyed reading their stories and, as always happens between me and Spencer’s writing, I want more, even though the book is by no means perfect. It has its small share of glitches, and the writing is not as smooth or as polished as it should’ve been, but overall, it made me happy. 

The cover is horrible though, no connection to any of the characters in the book at all.  

I am addicted to this series. I've read it before and I know it's not the best series in the world but I love it all the same. The first book, Tinker, is one of my all-time favorites in the urban fantasy genre. Or maybe it is urban sci-fi.Or a combination of the two - a weird amalgam of quantum physics and magic. And according to Tinker, the protagonist and the girl genius, magic actually complies with the rules of physics and flows like electricity. She would know. She is an inventor after all. Even her transformation to an elf and her subsequent exposure to powerful magic didn't rid her mind of her first love: physics. She is still inventing, only now she uses magic instead of electricity, as she tries singlehandedly to drag the elves from their medieval sword-and-horse society towards the 21st century and computers.

The second book wasn't as good, but I loved it regardless. I wanted more Tinker. I wanted more elves, even the arrogant bastards that they are. I still want more. There is the third book, and the few days I had to wait until my library got it for me have been almost agonizingly painful. Talk about addiction. 

Fortunately, my wait is over. The third book, Elfhome, has finally arrived, and I'm going to the library now to get it. I can't wait.

I WANT MORE TINKER!!!!