Reading Luna: La Cite Maudite by Elodie Tirel

I haven’t quite finished off the Trilingual Hobbit Reread yet, but I’ve been itching to progress with my French reading. And so as of today I’ve started reading a book called Luna: La Cité Maudite, by Élodie Tirel. This is a Quebecois YA-level fantasy novel, which I’d heard about via cow and which I picked up in paperback when Dara and I visited Montréal in 2012.

This is also the book which, when I bought it in Renaud-Bray, got me the amused commentary from the clerk about how “you know this is for children, right?” And I told him that was absolutely fine, because I was trying to learn French and I thought it’d be a good way to practice. He told me he did the same for English.

And as you can see by the cover, there’s a silver-haired elf girl riding a wolf here. In addition to this art just being lovely, it amuses me by reminding me of Clearbrook from Elfquest.

This will be the first I’ve tried to read anything in another language without having an English translation handy, so yeah, this is going to be fun. I started reading it slowly today, and was pleased to discover in the prologue that while I couldn’t pick up on all the language, I did get enough to realize that the character being described was a young elf who’d been enslaved by the drow along with her loyal servant, that she was forced to live underground and sorely missed living on the surface, and that ohnoez!, she’s about to have a baby.

Which tells me that while I have a long way to go yet with French reading comprehension, I can at least pick up on the basic details of a story. Which is very promising indeed.

Bonus too that this series is actually available electronically for the Nook. We’ll have to see if I like this one well enough to buy the rest!

ETA: Oh hey the series is also available for digital purchase via Kobo. This will require looking into, given that I do have a Kobo account set up to support Third Place!

Also: looks like the series has an official Facebook page here, and an official site here. Though be warned that the official site does launch music, before you click!

And wow, this series is up to twelve books!