The Prism of Ashlai is the story of a young girl (Ashlai) on a quest to find seven broken shards of the Prism of Ashlai and put them together to save a kingdom, while trying to find herself along the way.
To be honest, I was not a big fan of this book. I did not think it was a bad read, and i think the storyline has a lot of potential, but certain aspects of it just didn't go over well in my opinion. I admire the journey Ashlai takes, but during the first half of the book I almost forgot she was there. I didn't feel the connection to her that main characters need to make. She didn't talk much, and while I get that quietness was part of her character, it didn't leave enough dialouge with her actively participating. I kept hoping for a romance to happen to get her to be more involved in the story, but it held off until later in the book, and I was surprised at the partner. The boy, Aryl, was a big part of the story, but during the long stretches when Ashlai faded to the background, I thought he was going after a different character, a girl named Mandolin, another person helping in the quest for the shards. I was to the point of thinking Ashlai wouldn't have a love interest by the time they started leaning toward each other.
The action scenes were described very well, and the use of powers was a very interesting part of the story, but only in the scene when one of the characters "dies" did I feel that quest was difficult. Yes, they got attacked several times, but it seemed over very quickly, and they always got out of it. As ruthless as the antagonist was described, I expected a much more intense and rough journey.
Though I found many things lacking in this story, it did have its good points. I thought the family relationships were very believable and liked the scenes involving Ashlai and Gailea. Towards the end of the book, Ashlai was finally more involved in the story, and the time she spent at the front of the story wasn't bad. I think overall I just felt this could have been more. The ground work is there; there just needs to be more built off the groundwork. All in all, it is an ok read, but there is a lot of potential there to do better.