Review: “The Lucent Sylph,” RJ Conte

Pros: Enjoyable little story
Cons:
Rating: 4 out of 5

RJ Conte’s Lucent Sylph: A Short Story is a brief tale–the sort of thing there wasn’t much market for before people could put up small ebooks at low prices. I can’t go into a huge amount of detail on it because, well, it’s a short story–going into much detail would spoil it.

Anyway, there’s a portal that opens that brings strange beings into our world: Lucent Sylphs, glass-like ‘faeries’. Their world needs gold dust, so the sylphs are selling themselves into slavery in order to send gold dust back to their world. They become coveted pets, but they never last long. They absorb the emotions of the person they’re bonded to. Too much love and their hearts burst, killing them. Too little and they grow gray and lifeless.

Lucas never wanted to have a Sylph–he doesn’t want that kind of responsibility, and he knows his emotions are too strong to keep the Sylph safe. Still, through a series of events, he ends up having to take in a Sylph in order to keep her alive–something that he finds to be even harder than he thought it would be.

I’d classify this as a YA (young adult) story. It has plenty of interesting information on the Sylphs–why they need the gold dust, why they come into our world and allow themselves to be enslaved, and so on. Lucas is the somewhat typical young man who wants very much to do what’s right, only to find out it’s a lot harder than it seems.

For an inexpensive short story I think this is a fine read, and I enjoyed it.