Jewels of Smoky Quartz by Anat Eliraz [SPFBO]

The Blurb:

A world ruled by force and magic. A game which could have a fatal ending.

She is just an ordinary woman – an emergency room nurse who practices martial arts in her free time.

Teleported into a harsh, strange world and sold into slavery to the fighters’ ring of Tur’an, she must use her wit and skills to survive.

On the brink of death, she wakes up in a strange room – only to meet one of her captors. Now, he acts as her protector.

Together they leave the city, but their journey will confront them with their own fears and deepest secrets.

And through it all, she finds solace in an old tune. Not knowing yet how it will impact her life – and the lives of everyone else.

Jared’s Review

Note: Unfortunately, this is a cut.

Jewels of Smoky Quartz features a nurse with a penchant for martial arts, who finds herself, without warning or explanation, suddenly pulled into a fantasy world. 

When Jane is attacked by strangers during a remote morning workout, she doesn’t hesitate to defend herself with her impressive knowledge of aikido. Although eventually (and rather unfairly) overpowered, her spirited defense – and unusual style – impresses the bandits. They’re nothing if not opportunistic: she may be worth something as a gladiator.

As Jane makes the trip to the arena as prisoner-stroke-baggage, she quickly realises that she’s no longer on Earth. The brigands. The clothing. The swords. The roving bandits aren’t speaking a language she recognises. Plus, there are clawbears. It only takes one clawbear to prove how far you are from home.

The trip to the arena, and the arena itself, are merely the first part of Jane’s journey. Over the course of Jewels, she finds, and tries to fit in with, various groups: her fellow gladiators, a travelling caravan, a community in a remote keep. Although she adapts to her new surroundings with suspicious ease, Jane’s only true connection seems to be with a mysterious stranger called Wisp. Initially encountered as one of the brigands, Wisp has an outsider past of his own, and he is also mysteriously drawn to Jane.

Jewels’ most compelling scenes are the most mundane. Jane trying to figure out the routine of the arena, for example. Her day to day struggles are resonant: not necessarily in the ring (where the aikido descriptions quickly become mechanical), but in the tension she faces at every meal, and every time she stands up to her loathsome jailor. Similarly, there’s something particularly engaging about Jane’s efforts to teach martial arts to the macho warriors of a friendly lord’s keep, and her persistent attempts to reassure people about the ‘magic’ of modern medical practice. These scenes and moments aren’t part of any greater quest, but they show Jane’s resilience. Perhaps most importantly, they’re empathetic: Jane is a fish out of water and she’s consistently underestimated. These small battles and tiny triumphs help make her a more relatable character. 

Unfortunately, that’s where the empathy ends. The hardest challenge of any portal fantasy is the moment where the character realises they’re no longer in our shared reality, and how they adjust to it. Jane is almost eerily phlegmatic. Although this is eventually – kind of – explained, her oddly sanguine approach to being dimensionally-shifted does make her seem a bit inhuman. Her connection with the real world, which is tenuous to start with, comes largely in the form of flashbacks. As these disappear from the narrative, the world-hopping nature of the conceit does as well, with the portal fantasy set-up fading into a much more conventional Chosen One narrative.

While the quieter scenes show promise, the bigger picture is less exciting. The reveals about Jane’s life, and background, and heritage, and quest, and destiny and (many other spoilers) all come along one after the other, and with little foreshadowing. One massive reveal even tumbles out of an acrostic – difficult to pull off at the best of times, but particularly hard when the prophetic poem is introduced on the fly. The final quarter of the book is one curtain-pull after the next, but they rapidly grow to feel more convenient than significant. Jane’s ‘final battle’ – and the resolution of her relationship with Wisp (who is dealing with his own rolling katamari of reveals) – don’t have any particular weight to them. They’re merely the latest in the rapidly accelerating sequence of announcements.

Some of Jane’s more ‘everyday’ activities stretch the imagination as well. The relationship with Wisp begins uncomfortably. Wisp’s gentleman-captor role is a familiar trope, and one that others may enjoy more. Jane has a mysterious, magical connection to him – which, coupled with the reader’s access to Wisp’s point of view – does take the edge off the discomfort. However, I found it difficult to get beyond the seriously imbalanced power dynamic (and language barrier). 

As mentioned above, portal fantasies are a difficult genre. At their heart, they’re about possibility: they’re about someone like us (gestures at fellow readers) getting the chance to become someone like them (gestures at characters in books). Jewels of Smoky Quartz is at its best when its protagonist remains one of the former, but she (too) quickly becomes something else.

To check out our other SPFBO 7 reviews and keep up to date on which books are still in the running, check out our SPFBO 7 Hub page here.