The Elizion Shield

The Elizion Shield by Elizabeth Klein. Cover design by Etheric Tales. (Independently Published)  PB RRP $15.00. e-Book RRP $5.73   ISBN-13: 9798377222262

Reviewed by Debra Williams 

This huge tale is classed as dystopian and sci-fi. I would also hasten to add fantasy as well. A seventeen-year-old orphaned boy roams his desolate and desperate world, trying to survive. There appears to be no-one left after extensive mining has stripped the place of anything living, apart from wild animals known as jacks. There is no water or food, and his only way of deriving any moisture is to put out sheets of plastic at night to catch the droplets of dewfall. His days appear to be numbered, as he listens to the sounds of the heavy mining machinery tearing everything up in the distance. His world, Tara, has fallen, and there is another type of fall to come.

Into this world tumbles an angelic-looking creature known as a sky-born. She is a princess from a celestial city called Ataraxia and has a severely injured wing after fierce combat in the sky with another sky-born. She mumbles something about her sister. The boy, Fin, tries his best to help, and this is where the adventure, drama and life-threatening action begins. Just when it seems they are out of time, there appears to be a rescue of sorts. But all is not as it seems.

Summoned to Freya’s world to stand before her father, the king, he finds himself out of his depth and unable to share the truth of what has happened to Princess Freya. At the same time, the two worlds are experiencing devastating earthquakes, and both the sky-born and the apparent last Taran are at a loss to know why, or to do anything to assist.

Thus begins an epic drama of survival amidst great treachery and treason, disloyalty, and murder. There is a deep secret to be revealed. The Taran boy and a handful of Ataraxian hosts seek to find the mysterious Elizion Shield, which, legend has it, is the only way the two worlds can be protected and restored from the devastation of the arcane mining company known as Swarm.

Elizabeth Klein has crafted an engrossing tale, and I will certainly be keen to read the next book.

This book will be enjoyed by readers 12+ years of age, although there is some graphic violence involved.