This is the hardest book to rate, because it tries to do so many good things, yet also fails at other things, and it's not quite like any other book I've read recently (possibly ever). It's described as a fantasy, and yes, there are elves and mermaids and trolls and such, but it isn't really about the fantasy at all; you could have substituted other human races/cultures for these mythical creatures and the story would have been the same. And yes there's a little magic, but really not much and it doesn't affect the story. What this is is a story of a 13 year old boy going away to a military school, essentially - one that happens to exist in the "borderland", a parallel world that only some people can see and cross into. The border guards defend this land and our protagonist Elliot is recruited into their training program - but as he's a complete pacifist and a bookworm, he focuses on the council track as opposed to the fighting track. the council track has clearly been sadly depleted and ignored in the previous decades and the border guard are solving everything by fighting wars and glorious violence, which Elliot deplores.

Anyway, how to even explain the story? Partly it's Elliot trying to find alternatives to the different wars by writing better treaties and actually learning about the enemy. It felt like there was a huge opportunity here to explain how a corrupt core of the Guard are apparently deliberately undermining peace by excluding the Council and writing intentionally unfair treaties that will actually cause more wars - but this is only ever kind of touched on sideways, never actually addressed or explained. There's also lots of illustration of how it's better to learn about other cultures than just kill them, but again this is never entirely explicit, nor do we ever see the border guard or the society in general actually learn from Elliot's lessons.

Partly it's Elliot finding friends and love for the first time - as an unloved child with no friends in the "real" world, this is a fresh chance for him, and he befriends a gorgeous elf girl called Serene and a handsome heroic boy called Luke. Elliot's had a pretty unhappy childhood, ignored and resented by his father after his mother left them, and there was a lot of potential to enjoy his growth and new friendships - but unfortunately he is an utter, utter asshole for the entire book. Not just sulky and prickly, but deliberately rude and hurtful to everybody to the point I cannot understand why either Serene or Luke could possibly have considered him a friend. There's a difference between a grouchy character you can like, and a character being a deliberately hurtful jerk, and Elliot is definitely and unmistakably the latter and I spent the entire book wanting to slap him silly.

And partly it's an LGBTQ romance, very sex-positive and trying to be feminist, with gay, straight, and bi relationships included, and I was rather surprised to find actual sex scenes (both gay and straight) in a YA book at age 16, but I guess this is 2021 now and The Kids These Days? Anyway it wasn't badly done, just surprising. The author spends some effort making sure consent and respect and such are made very clear and discussed positively. The feminist parts were a bit hit or miss though. The author takes elven culture and flips all the worst gender stereotypes on their head for elves, so Serene is constantly talking about how men are the weaker sex and only good for nurturing children and are too emotional and have tender hearts and must be pure and chaste flowers and all sorts of overblown tropes like that. It does illustrate clearly how ridiculous these stereotypes are, but it also ends up making Serene, and all the elves, every bit as bad as the misogynists that the author is clearly trying to lampoon, so I'm not entirely sure if this succeeded as well as was intended.

The overall outcome of Elliot's love story was predictable basically from the first chapters, which could still have been a fun read waiting for it to unfold, except that as mentioned he's such an utterly nasty jerk that it was really hard to believe it or feel he deserved it in the end. So yeah ... very unique book, tried to do a lot of very good and interesting things, but didn't entirely hit the mark I think. I was torn between giving this a 3 and a 4 stars and probably 3 stars is what it deserves, but I went for 4 because it's trying so many good things and has such good intentions, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. Probably would not reread however, once was enough and Elliot is just too annoying.