God help me, I tried to like Children of the First. It’s not without virtues. The prose is alright, spelling errors are few and far-between, and the story tries to set itself apart from the indistinct mass of college fantasy by tackling a non-human cast and racism as its major issues. The problem is that much of it falls flat, with a lot of tell and very little show.

I’m happy to admit up front that I despise college fantasy. I could go on and on about why, and how it fills me with despair that it’s managed to create its own little subgenre, but that’s not the point of this review. I’m also keeping my prejudices out of my assessment of this story. Children of the First makes a genuine attempt to pull away from the dross and deserves credit for that. It just doesn’t quite make it.

Take the racism angle. From the start of the story it’s stressed that there are a lot of tensions between the uncomfortably large number of races in the setting. However, we are simply told that these deep-rooted hatreds and sensitivities exist without any sort of context; we’re not shown why these feuds exist, or how they came to be, what caused them to last this long or how they have affected the separate cultures beyond a lot of posturing and casual violence. There seems to be no explanation for why all the races are allowed to mix freely in this college despite all these free-floating tensions.

The characters are . . . difficult. They’re not inaccessible by nature, and may even be likeable to some, but underneath the racial differences and the ridiculous names—which are replete with random apostrophes and capital letters—they act like utterly generic (human) teenagers. All the characters, even the adults, talk and act like humans with a few unusual words added in here and there.

Even the main protagonist, through whose eyes we are supposed to be seeing the whole story, suffers from this. In fact he managed to put me off the story within two chapters. Sha’anyr NacRae’vyr, as he is named, is a shining example of 21st-century virtues in a world that’s entirely unsuited to them. Despite having a childhood steeped in ancient culture and tradition, none of that seems to have rubbed off on Shawn and his upbringing is quickly put down in favour of feelgood teenage rebellion and racial harmony. There’s nothing for him to learn, no opportunities to overcome years of biased education or to see through people’s differences, because he already does all that right from the get-go. He always pursues the morally correct course of action according to modern Western values and doesn’t seem to have any real flaws to his name.

I can see Children of the First being enjoyable if you’re looking for a quick escape from reality and don’t ask too much out of it. I just couldn’t find any satisfaction in it.

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