Nil and Volant both study magic at a prestigious academy, but they do so in different ways. Where Volant is a Natural, someone who can manipulate an elemental force innately, Nil is a Learner who, with the proper training and will, can manipulate a type of magic called "skill," and interestingly enough, it seems that anyone can become a Learner if they are dedicated enough, even Naturals like Volant, though they end up losing their in-born magical abilities if they do.
While Nil and Volant became fast friends during their early years in the school, they come from very different backgrounds. Volant belongs to a race of skyship nomads who have had a history of pirating and Nil's people come from deep woods where cities are built in the branches. Despite these differences, the two found kindred spirits in each other, the least of those similarities being their tendencies to step a little outside the law when it was deemed necessary.
After a small heist to help fund their next term at the school, Nil and Volant end up learning of a series of apparently accidental deaths that have some unexpected connections to each other. Urged to leave the city, the two strike out on a cross-country trek that will show the reader pretty much every corner of the continent that A Leaf and Pebble takes place on, all in the hopes of staying ahead of their pursuers and hopefully figuring out exactly what they walked into.
It's clear that Monroe has spent a lot of time and effort in the world-building side of this book. The different lands that Nil and Volant travel through are populated with a diverse and interesting group of people, each with their own noteworthy history and culture. On top of that, the magic system described in A Leaf and Pebble looks to be fairly well-defined, with enough flexibility to let the magic users perform some interesting feats, but with the necessary restrictions to keep magic from being a deus ex machina to help everyone get what they want. Unfortunately, there are some serious storytelling issues with the book that can't be ignored.
In the hopes of making sure the reader sees every facet of the world he developed, Monroe has penned a story that puts his two characters on a tour of those lands. Unfortunately, it feels very forced. With maybe one or two exceptions, neither Nil nor Volant are responsible for where they are going. When they decide on a direction, they are quickly swept up in events that change their course, and the few times they do break away from the strange current that is pulling them all over the place, it isn't long before another force intervenes and points them somewhere else. On top of that, most of the time, the two characters don't even really do anything. There are times when they fight, but there are many more instances where someone else intervenes on their behalf to help them get out of trouble. It's these areas that really weaken the overall story that Monroe is telling.
And then there are the more technical issues. There are grammar problems that range from missed punctuation, the wrong words used (though this wasn't frequent) and even some jarring changes in the voice of the book. The story generally has Nil as the narrator in first-person, past tense perspective, but there are times when it switches to present tense and other times when it goes into third person perspective. I kept finding myself jolted out of the adventure when I would run across one of these unexpected changes and it made some areas of the book hard to get through.
I enjoyed the world and characters that Monroe has created and I see a lot of potential in A Leaf and Pebble, but there is a lot of room for refinement within these pages. I am interested to see how the events that happen in the final chapters affect Nil and Volant in the second book of The Learner Trilogy, but I also hope that Monroe can get a few more eyes on the book to help give it some extra polish before he publishes the next part of the series.
