The story has an interesting premise: Elves exiled to Australia and setting up shop there. Only problem is that the execution is not up to the premise and there has already been a problem with the updates. A two-month hiatus happened between the third and fourth chapter. There are only five chapters so far.

Raina is a Sidhe living in exile in Australia. Why she was exiled has not been revealed, but Cian, another elf, mentions that she’s very powerful and could level the country. Not much has been revealed at all about the protagonist. She doesn’t need much food or sleep and can do magic, but doesn’t like scrying. Why? I have no idea, but she kicked the welcome wagon out of her house because of it. The plot is very slow moving with ponderous attention given to mundane actions, such as feeding the cat and burning food.

The site looks nice. I like the banner image, the color scheme, and the text is easy to read. Comments are allowed, and the author has set up a forum for even more interaction. I’m not sure about the character tag cloud, but it doesn’t detract from the look. I’ve just never seen the appeal of them.

What ultimately hurts Moondust is a litany of flaws with the storytelling. POV is weak with it shifting loosely between characters. A firmer grounding in Raina’s POV would help immensely. The dialogue is stilted and unnatural. Grammatical and punctuation errors abound, and the prose is clunky with run-on sentences. I’m afraid this story needs a heavy rewrite to make it better, which I hope the author considers because there is potential here. The idea is sound, but the execution needs help.

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