Fantasy

Fans of epic high fantasy are a resilient bunch, having decided long ago to reply to detractors of the genre with, “You read in your world, I’ll read in mine.”

Cephrael’s Hand is Book One in a series called A Pattern of Shadow & Light and is the first novel by Melissa McPhail. Our story is set in the mythical realm of Alorin, three centuries after a massive war which almost wiped out an entire race called the Adepts. A three-continent map of Alorin is included, as are a Glossary of Terms and Dramatis Personae.

I consulted the front matter […]

Book one of the Portals of Destiny is The Chosen, and Shay Fabbro takes reader to five planets with distinct environments, beings, and cultures.  From their prophetic scrolls, the Gentrans know of the horror of the Mekans, planet-invading machines that remove all minerals and resources, essentially killing all inhabitants and rendering a planet lifeless.  And they are coming.

The Gentrans, a water-dwelling race whose description brings to mind a soft, multi-colored sea horse, see hope in a small group of individuals on each of four other planets — Earth, Volgon, Astra and Kromin.  Prophets on Gentra guide the Masters, […]

First impressions are vital with self-published books, especially first novels with few user reviews. Unexpected Destiny has a fairly bland cover, rendered unfortunately dark and murky by Lulu’s printing process on the copy I received. The interior layout is mostly professional-looking, with a few odd formatting choices (most notably in the way non-human dialogue is set, which is not only strange, but inconsistent). Typos are mercifully few, and though I did notice a slight increase the farther I got into the book, I’ve seen much worse in mass-market paperbacks from top publishers.

But I don’t expect you really care that […]

Am I having another morphine dream? Did I slip into a coma? Where am I?

Interesting start to a book about Lazrina/Maya, who finds herself dead and speaking to her spirit guide Zachariah. From this point on, Lazrina/Maya finds herself in a place where she must now revisit all her past lives and live through the lessons each one has to teach her. This is the place between lives where she will review her past and learn her lessons.

She has four lives reviewed in this book; Ancient Egypt, Sparta, Ireland/Viking Invasions and England at the time of the Black […]