Windchaser

Romance and strange, elemental powers light up Dallas’ debut YA fantasy.

Five years ago, Whitnee attended Camp Fusion, a summer camp for disturbed youth in Texas. She had lost her father, but at Camp Fusion, she gained two best friends: Morgan and Caleb. Now, the three friends are returning to the camp, not as campers, but as mentors to young children who, like themselves, are facing traumatic events in their lives. Camp Fusion is bordered on one side by the Frio River, which campers are forbidden to cross. Returning to the camp predictably resurrects painful memories for Whitnee, and she begins to have strange dreams of her father and the other side of the Frio River. Together, Whitnee, Morgan and Caleb cross the river, accompanied by two young campers, Kevin and Amelia, who blackmail their way into accompanying their mentors. Across the river, they fall through the ground and find themselves on the mysterious White Island, a place of elemental powers and the peculiar tribes who wield them. Gabriel, a young man with power over fire, finds them and acts as their guide when conflict begins over Whitnee, who mysteriously has power over not one but all four elements. The novel’s main strength lies in its character relationships and the human concern they show—although even in this, the seemingly never-ending chain of male love interests who fall for Whitnee over the course of the book can feel excessive and clichéd. Unfortunately, the romance doesn’t make up for the slower pacing of the book’s first half set exclusively at Camp Fusion. Events on White Island dramatically improve the pace, and Dallas shows some true inventiveness with the inhabitants’ elemental powers.

A flawed but earnest tale of magic and romance that deals with the great distance between pain and recovery.