Lara's Wanderings

Etania’s Worth is a Christian young adult fantasy fiction book that checks all the boxes for the genre’s stereotypes while, at the same time, being fun with a refreshing new spin on some important issues.

The story follows Etania as she learns about her new abilities Nuema, the world’s magic system, during an upheaval in her world’s government. She learns to follow Melchizideck, deal with her difficult relationship with her father, and navigate some romantic tension with her bodyguard. The fantasy world that Mrs. Elrich has created is diverse and interesting. The Christian allegory is thinly veiled with God the Father being called Deo and Jesus being called Melchizedek.  The Spirit gets to stay the same.

The main character is the teenage Etania, and she fits the whiney immature protagonist I have learned to expect in these kinds of books. Unlike some books, though, she starts to mature very quickly in believable ways. I appreciate that Mrs. Elrich did not have Etania yelling and screaming at everyone to add drama. That drives me nuts. Instead, Etania keeps much of her struggles inside while acting on her immature bias. I think this made the character much more relatable to me.

Another refreshing element was the focus on Etania’s relationship with her father. This, in particular, touched me the most. So many books will cover fathers and sons or mothers and daughters, but society often overlooks how important a father is to a girl. Etania’s father is not abusive or evil, but a very good man so caught up in his own personal war that he misses every important event in his daughter’s life. He is a man who strives to protect his family but ends up just leaving a big hole in their lives instead. This complex relationship between Etania and her father then affects both of their relationships with Melchizedek.

To me, this is what set this book apart in its genre and makes it a book I would strongly recommend. We often don’t see this kind of nuanced struggle in Christian fiction. Christians tend to be all good guys in Christian fiction or they aren’t Christians at all, just hypocrites.

As a parent, I can relate to Etania’s father in focusing so hard in one area of parenting while neglecting another. As a daughter, I also related to Etania in wanting a close relationship with her father. The author was very fair to both of them and the struggle between them was believable. I actually cried in a couple of places.

The love story in this book was not nearly as shallow as most young adult books. I was grateful that there was a maturing past the first crush stage and that by the end of the book they weren’t just running off to get married. The emotional “does he/she love me” mental dialog for both characters was tiresome for me, but that is because I am a grown woman who is married. I suspect that this would be relatable to teens, though.

This book is obviously the first book in a series, and I was extremely happy to see Mrs. Elrich do this volume right. She resolved the specific conflict that was the focus of this novel while showing us that everything was not done in the bigger picture. You are not left with a cliffhanger, but just a small lead-in to the next story. She doesn’t dwell on this lead-in but gives us enough to know it will be interesting. Because of this, I am more likely to read her next book.

Overall, this was a fun book from start to finish. I usually have some sort of suggestion or issue that I wish was changed for most of the books I review, but I like this book as it is. I have seen some reviewers take issue with how quickly the characters move through the world, but I see no problem with this. The world is at war and to have the characters dawdle just so you can show the reader all the world-building you can do is nonsense. This book is not gritty or dark, so don’t look for that here. It’s clean with no swearing, sex, substance abuse, or gory violence. It is a war, so of course, people are killed, injured, and such, but it is well within rated G range. I recommend this book for teens in middle school and up. It’s also a great light read for adults that want something clean with some good spiritual thoughts.

Check out my young adult fantasy fiction novels HERE for something optimistic and fun.

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