The Hidden Stars: Overwritten and uneven

The Hidden Stars by Madeline Howard

A small band of wizards and warriors must find the lost royal child prophesied to end the reign of an ‘evil’, self-proclaimed goddess-empress. Adapting that main plotline from Willow, Madeline Howard’s novel The Hidden Stars further combines several Tolkien-esque elements (wondrously dexterous elves/fey; vastly powerful wizards; not nine but twelve misshapen servants of the villain) to create an initially promising but unfortunately disappointing fantasy experience.

Many fantasy plots have been explored time and again. What matters is the execution, and that’s where this story falls short. It opens with the birth of the promised child and her disappearance (or death) in a cataclysmic battle between a wizard and the empress’s servants. It then moves twenty years forward, to a time when the promised one has reportedly been sighted in a distant land. The good forces dispatch a small company to find her, racing, of course, against the evil forces.

A core problem is that, in the opening section, it’s never shown how the empress became so powerful or why she’s evil. We’re simply to assume she is both. Echoes of this problem continue throughout (perhaps because of the strange viewpoint shifts — a main character is not well established). In the way of characterization, telling is often preferred to showing, perhaps because there’s little of depth to show. In comparison with the characters from Martin’s A Game of Thrones or any of Guy Gavriel Kay’s novels, these are quite bland and stereotypical. (The wizards are calm and wise; the young heroine determined yet self-questioning; the half-elven prince amazingly agile and quick-witted.) The book’s cover is perhaps ironically telling: no characters shown, just a generic sea-serpent attack. Inexplicably, too, there is no map of the fantasy world, which is almost necessary, given the importance of travel. However, one can be found at the author’s website.

The above disappointments are only magnified by Madeline Howard’s writing ability. She can truly write well, often with wonderful clarity and beauty. However, she is perhaps a bit too enchanted with the high-fantasy storyteller’s voice and employs far too many adjectives, adverbs, and redundant descriptions. (She also changes tense in descriptions of places and is prone to telling instead of showing character behavior and feeling.) Stars is the first of a projected trilogy. My personal plan is to avoid the rest of this story and then see what Madeline Howard writes next as her talent, one hopes, continues to develop. Her potential is that strong.

Recommended as a library loan for fans of high-fantasy. Two-and-a-half disappointed stars.