SPOIL FREE SUMMARY
Nick can travel to other worlds and suddenly finds himself in one. Roddy lives in one full of magic, and ruled by not just a King but a Merlin. She soon discovers a plan to take over the Islands of Blest by planting a Merlin. But Roddy is determined to stop it, with help from her friend Grundo, as well as a grandfather she has never met. Meanwhile Nick intends to seek out a powerful magician he meets on accident. But doing so means crossing worlds to find him.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Roddy and her family follow the progress, working for the King. She is a page and is always on the move. She has decided its her job to protect Grundo. He is her only friend.
Grundo is a few years younger than Roddy. He spends most of his free time with her, as he has no other friends. He is quite abused by both his mother and older sister.
Nick is the adopted son of a man from our world. He desires to cross over from his world to another, and knows this is possible because he came from another world originally.
Romanov is a powerful magician who resides on a plot of land with portions of his house being from different time periods. Or was it universes?
Grandather Gwyn is some sort of powerful being. It's not really explained why or how this happened.
PACING
The pacing of the story is slow. If I had less patience I would have put it down. Important facts are not revealed in any clear way that would create suspense. In fact I was left confused at many points.
TWO STORIES COLLIDE
The majority of the story is actually two stories, Roddy's and Nick's. They seem completely unrelated in the beginning. Eventually Nick meets Roddy and I didn't even know it was her at first. He describes her appearance, but it had never been described before so I didn't know it was her at all.
Then when we see the same story from her perspective, it barely feels like the same scene. Instead of a scene from two different perspectives where we learn something from the character telling the story, it felt like two confusing events that had nothing in common.
THINGS LEFT UNSAID
Nick reveals amazing truths about himself. He is not from the world he lives in. He actually came from another, where magic was real and he was a child of royalty. But he abdicated and somehow ended up here and was adopted by a couple. This seems like it would be a whole story in itself. But we only get a few paragraphs here and there.
I had so many questions. How old was he when he abdicated? How was his relationship with his family? Was he scared about leaving everything behind? Did his adopted parents know that he came from another world? Because later on Nick says his dad doesn't believe in anything supernatural.
How did his mom die? Was he close to her? Did he get to know her well before she passed away?
But none of these issues are addressed and I am left feeling that I am reading a sequel to a book that I missed. To be fair, this is the second in a series. But the summary of the first book seems to have nothing to do with Nick. Perhaps he is a side character?AN AWKWARD ROMANCE
Nick things Roddy is cute the moment he sees her. And when they meet again, he tries to comfort her when she is shocked by a revelation about Grundo. He hugs her and she pushes him away. It just seems so out of the blue. Roddy is merely an acquaintance and yet he thinks he should embrace her? It felt like the author was trying to hard to show a relationship was forming between them.
OUR VILLAINS
Sybil, as well as the new Merlin and somebody named Sir James are the bad guys. They are not in the story much nor is their motivation clear. I never learned much about any of them. They seemed like an afterthought. There is also a man called the Prayermaster that is briefly in the story. He has to do with Romanov being sent to kill Nick. We don't really know why.
TOO VAGUE
There are certain aspects of the story that are vague on details, or they give them, but not just right away. Only after four pages, on the very bottom of the fourth page did I learn that Roddy was a girl. There was no use of the word “she” or “her”. Nor any behavior described that could obviously point to a girl telling the story.
When Nick sees the panther again, I was left wondering how that was possible. Did he cross over into another dimension, like he had earlier? Or did that panther get to his dimension, somehow? I never understood and nothing was explained.
And then suddenly Nick has left the world he initially crossed into and is on something called a “Dark Path” and he has to do three good deeds in order to leave it. I don't know when he got there. Was this just another part of his ability to travel to other worlds? It isn't mentioned when this happens. It just happens, and I was left wondering why nothing was ever explained.
HER WORLD FELL APART?
There is scene near the last portion of the book where Romanov notices that Grundo has a glamour on Roddy. He admits he put it on her when he was three, so she would look after him and baby him. Roddy freaks out, saying something along the lines that the foundation of her world has fallen. It was so overly dramatic, and so unlike the rather blunt and boyish Roddy that I couldn't take it seriously. Not only that, but she never really confronts Grundo about it nor does he apologize. The story just moves on and we assume they heal or get over it.
A GIFT FROM A WITCH
Roddy is sent by her grandfather Gwyn to go somewhere. We are not told why. And eventually Grundo asks why too. By then I was already confused. Turns out a long dead witch has decided to leave Roddy her knowledge (Witches have to leave their knowledge to someone). So Roddy ends up with it. But I had to wonder why. Why was she worthy of it? Had no one else ever come upon the site? Did she show a propensity to magic that she was unaware of. Roddy is surprised about the incident, but not that she was chosen. So this isn't explained.
Later, when she visits her grandmother she shows a unique ability regarding magic. But until then there wasn't any hint that she was special. There didn't seem any hints planted beforehand.
JUST A DREAM?
Nick manages to cross over into another world, but persists in thinking it is a dream. Even after he meets Romanov. I kept thinking there was no way he was that stupid. After all, he knows all about magic and other worlds. But he can't figure out this is real? It felt inconsistent with a characters with such knowledge.
DRAGONS, LIZARDS & GHOST PEOPLE
Grandfather Gwyn mentions that dragons are real and Roddy thinks he's nuts. One ends up revealing itself, but we never understand if there were records of dragons in the past, or why it was a secret. How did the people of Blest become so ignorant?
It's kind of just thrown into the story, like many things. They're is never a moment where I read something and recognized it as a crucial part of the story. A puzzle piece, as you will. Everything just felt like we were going off on a tangent. And if we were lucky it might tie in to the story later on.
Toby, a minor character mentioned seeing ghosts and having the woods talk to him. It sounds insane but no one even asks him about it. It makes no sense. Wouldn't they want to know what he saw?
We end up hunting down a bunch of fire salamanders that have something to do with Toby's mother's magic club. While Toby's father is a member of secret group of rebels who use them as a source of magic.
We learn that there is a female version of the Merlin, called the Lady of Governance. There are people who are cities.
Roddy's Grandmother and Aunt are sexist to men and ignorant of how their own magic works.
We use a goat to track down Romanov...for some reason.
It felt like an unorganized mess where the editor had given up trying to edit.
The things that were supposed to be important were impossible to tell because there was just too much going on all at once.
CLIMAX
The group attempts to free an imprisoned group of people (including Roddy's parents and the original Merlin). Then Roddy faces Sybil and the other conspirators. She uses her ability to raise the land (not quite sure what that means); the white dragon shows up; some Little People show up and drag off some bad guys. Maybe to kill them? Who knows.
CONCLUSIONS
The abundance of problems with this story overwhelms me.
Things that sounded interesting and crucial to the plot were completely neglected, mentioned in a paragraph when a chapter would have been preferred. While things that should have been mentioned in a paragraph took pages up.
And I never quite felt like I understood how anything worked or why it mattered.
The story is full of detailed descriptions of different worlds, and yet it never feels relevant to the story. Why did I need to see the many layers of a strange city? Why did I need to see the people on top of it and their embroidery? Why did Nick need to meet a panther? It had nothing to do with him, not after he saw it a second time.
Neither Nick or Roddy feel like real people. Their histories are neglected and they don't seem to have real relationships with anyone. Let alone with each other, while a romantic relationship is forced.
I give “The Merlin Conspiracy” one and a half stars. Maybe a good editor could have at least made the story coherent. Then I would have forgiven the lack of character depth.
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