Category: Science Fiction
Nightmares of the Queen by Jacqueline Patricks
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Deceived…Betrayed…Trapped…
Dr. Cass Baros discovered the truth of her dreams when she opened the wormhole. Though it cost her more than she imagined, it also gave her the love she’d been searching for with the Brajj, Jeamon. Meanwhile, as Jeamon continues to fight for his people’s survival, he remains unaware of who she has become.
Their love will be tested by betrayal and deceit.
The mysteries of the Brajj revealed, Captain Lewis and his remaining soldiers returned home with heavy hearts only to find more treachery.
Lewis’ strength will be tested.
And Ta‘mat–who wields the greatest power in the multiverse–needs their help.
Cass, Jeamon, Lewis, and Ta’mat are all trapped by circumstances beyond their control, created by their choices. Each want more than they have. Each have their part to play in the game of…
Ultimate Power or True Love?
[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook from the author in exchange for an honest review.]
Many books deal with revolutions, the overthrow of evil regimes and such but very few deal with what happens after. Nightmares of the Queen most certainly does and it shows in excruciating detail that sometimes people are not ready for change, no matter how bad the previous regime was. And the thing is, when you fight for freedom that includes the freedom to refuse to follow the ideals of the revolution and forge a new path for yourself. Jacqueline Patricks really doesn’t shy away from tackling heavy topics as we saw in the first book, Dreams of the Queen but I was still astounded with how she decided to tackle the aftermath of Cass ending the soul-draining practice of the Brajj. It makes sense, of course, but she really does it in a way that’s unflinching, that shows both the ups and downs of a post-revolutionary society.
As you can probably guess, that means Jacqueline Patricks had some pretty incredible world-building going on here. Of course the world of the Brajj just blew me away in the first book but here in the second book we get an even better look at it and the events surrounding its creation and survival. And now that Ta’mat has taken over Cass’ body, unbeknownst to poor Jeamon, the man Cass actually loves, we get to see things from the eyes of a founder of the Brajj world and way of life. Through flashbacks and conversations we slowly learn about the process and how Ta’mat created a world that was supposed to save humanity but ended up destroying it over and over again. I can’t really go into much detail about the world-building because it would spoil some of the major plot twists but needless to say, Patricks has created a fascinating world that is believable and realistic.
The characters in Jacqueline Patricks’ books are not always the most sympathetic but they certainly are interesting, which is far more important. Cass herself fights a battle throughout the book, struggling to regain control over the body that Ta’mat stole from her. Jeamon is being bossed around by Ta’mat thinking she’s Cass and wondering whether he really was in love with her to begin with. Lewis is having a heck of a time adjusting back in his post-Brajj life on Earth, especially considering that although he spent only a couple of weeks in their world Ta’mat accidentally sent him ten years into the future. So now the military is on his case in a major way and when Ta’mat decides to come to his version of Earth things get very interesting very quickly. Even the most unsympathetic characters like Ta’mat have realistic motivations and make you really want to learn what happens to them, even if you think they’re horrible. Each character has struggles and triumphs all their own and they are what drive the plot.
While the characters certainly drive the plot, Nightmares of the Queen is every bit as action-packed as you would expect. There are plot twists all over the place once more but this time the stakes are even higher for everyone. Whether they’re fighting for their existence, the person they love or for their own selfish reasons, the four main characters drive the plot in new and unexpected directions. Although you may be able to predict some of the plot twists, you definitely won’t see some of the major ones coming and that makes the book all the more exciting. All of this is helped by the fact Jacqueline Patricks is a master of suspense, starting out slowly in the beginning and just ratcheting everything up to an unbearable level by the end. Of course the book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger but enough of the questions from the beginning of the book were resolved that although you’ll definitely want the next book, you won’t feel like you’ve learned nothing. The cliffhanger will make you all the more eager for the next book, Destiny of the Queen, which is scheduled to be published sometime this year.
If you haven’t read the first book I can’t recommend it enough. It really will just blow you away with its unique world-building, amazing characters and masterful pacing. If you loved the first book, you’ll definitely love this second book. Sometimes second books drag on and on and accomplish nothing but Nightmares of the Queen is the furthest possible thing from that stereotype. Really, just pick up this series. You won’t regret it.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
The Apollo Academy by Kimberly P. Chase
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Take off with this dynamic, thrill-seeking, sexy New Adult Science Fiction series debut. Welcome to the exclusive Apollo Academy, where Aurora is about to discover that achieving her dream is only the first step towards her future.
As the heiress to Titon Technologies, eighteen-year-old Aurora Titon can have whatever she wants—clothes, expensive gadgets, anything money can buy. But all she really wants is to escape her pampered, paparazzi-infested life for the stars. Becoming the first female pilot to train as an astronaut for the exclusive Apollo Academy is exactly the chance for which she has been waiting.
Flying is everything she ever dreamed, her best friend also got into the Academy, and the paparazzi is banned from campus. Everything would be perfect, but for her unreciprocated crush on a fellow student, the sexy astronaut bent on making her life hell, and the fact that someone keeps trying to kill her.The most important education doesn’t happen in the classroom…
[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
I’ll admit that I was a little wary about requesting anything described as a “sexy New Adult Science Fiction series debut”. I haven’t read much New Adult fiction but my experiences have been mixed with it to say the least. However, I’ve requested a lot of books from this publisher Escape Publishing and I’ve liked every single one so I decided to give it a chance because of the rest of the blurb. In the end I’m so glad I did.
Aurora Titon is an heiress to a technology empire built on the backs of the poor, who indulge in virtual reality classes in order to escape the reality of their dying world. She knows that her father’s business practices have been unethical to say the least and so she’s determined to make a difference, to do something worthwhile with her life. As a child she discovered that this was flying but the problem is that the very exclusive Apollo Academy has never had a female pilot before. Aurora could obviously bribe her way in with her dad’s help but she wants to earn her spot as a pilot. Once she’s there, things really got interesting as she tried to gain acceptance and respect. Of course the instructor, Sky, seems determined to make her life a nightmare while someone seems to be trying to kill her. This sounds like a pretty typical futuristic mystery story but it’s Aurora’s character that makes her really stand out. She’s determined to earn her place at the Apollo Academy but in the beginning she also shows a bit of her spoiled background. As her skills build and she learns more about the Academy’s mission, she becomes just a little bit more humble and more likely to reach out to people to try to understand them. Aurora wasn’t a horrible person at the beginning of the book but she did change for the better by the end.
One of the things I enjoyed other than Aurora’s character was the realistic love triangle. My regular readers know that I hate love triangles with a passion but this one between Aurora, Zane and Sky was actually realistic and relatively believable. Zane tries to keep things between himself and Aurora platonic because he has a bad background that he’s trying to overcome but the attraction between them is undeniable. At the same time, the Academy’s golden son Sky is also hiding his own secrets, including his attraction to Aurora. When someone keeps trying to kill Aurora, it was really gratifying to see the two men actually work together with minimal masculine posturing; they put aside their differences. What a novel idea! I don’t want to give too much of the plot away but let’s just say that every character is hiding something and it gets pretty interesting when the cards they’re playing close to the chest are revealed.
Other than the realistic love triangle (those words are almost an oxymoron, I know) what really surprised me was the world-building. When you picture a ‘dying world’ you’re probably picturing a Hunger Games-esque starving world where everything is filthy and falling down. That’s not necessarily untrue in Chase’s world but she also makes a point of contrasting that with the better sections of the city, which are experiencing shortages but aren’t yet in critical mode. The earth is running out of resources and it’s the Apollo Academy’s mission to train astronauts in order to set up colonies on other planets as well as mine those planets for critical resources. Again, I don’t want to give too much away but let’s just say not everyone is super excited about humanity expanding its horizons to the rest of the solar system.
My only real quibble with The Apollo Academy is not the plot in general, but rather the ending. When you’re about halfway through and learn that someone is out to kill Aurora, it’s not hard to guess which student or students it is/are. Kimberly Chase makes it pretty clear who is the likely villain and unfortunately she goes with that likely villain as the actual villain. Most of the book has interesting plot twists and turns but I found that the ending was very predictable. Of course in real life you get scenarios like the one in the book where it’s the obvious suspect but I would have liked to see a better developed villain. Other than that, this is a fantastic debut for the author. The characters are three dimensional and believable, the love triangle is actually realistic and the world-building was pretty darn good. I’d definitely recommend it if you think the blurb sounds interesting.
I give this book 4/5 stars.
September Sky by John Heldt
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
When unemployed San Francisco reporter Chuck Townsend and his college-dropout son, Justin, take a cruise to Mexico in 2016, each hopes to rebuild a relationship after years of estrangement. But they find more than common ground aboard the ship. They meet a mysterious lecturer who touts the possibilities of time travel. Within days, Chuck and Justin find themselves in 1900, riding a train to Texas, intent on preventing a distant uncle from being hanged for a crime he did not commit. Their quick trip to Galveston, however, becomes long and complicated when they wrangle with business rivals and fall for two beautiful librarians on the eve of a hurricane that will destroy the city. Filled with humor, history, romance, and heartbreak, SEPTEMBER SKY follows two directionless souls on the adventure of a lifetime as they try to make peace with the past, find new purpose, and grapple with the knowledge of things to come.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook from the author in exchange for an honest review.]
One of the things that I’ve noticed about time travel novels is that oftentimes the protagonists will try to change history but will usually fail. But what if they succeeded after a fashion? John Heldt explores that far more interesting possibility in September Sky as a sort of side dish to the main course: the journey of Chuck and Justin in the past in a bid to find a purpose in their lives.
As with John Heldt’s Northwest Passage series, his new American Journey series has one thing that really stands out: its characters. He’s able to create fascinating and realistic characters that can be strong but are also very human because they have their weak moments. Chuck has problems reconnecting with the son he ignored because of his career while Justin has problems coping with his latest romantic debacle and the fact that he doesn’t even really know his dad. Both of them can be incredibly selfless like Justin in the last huge event in the book but both can be selfish because they fall in love and want to take the women they love back to the future when they leave, assuming that their time is far better. What will they do in the end? The answer may surprise you but when I look back on their actions, it completely fits in with how they developed and grew as characters throughout the novel. It’s a rather satisfying journey to see two directionless men find love and possibly even a purpose in life. Chuck and Justin as well as Charlotte and Emily all stick out to me as memorable characters. And even though the book focuses on the journey of the two men, Charlotte and Emily are both three dimensional characters with problems, motivations and strengths of their own; they’re not just there as romantic subplots.
Of all the things that surprised me in this book, I think the world-building was the most surprising. The Northwest Passage series had time travel in various locations, yes, but it was never really explained in all that much detail. Here in September Sky we actually meet someone who has harnessed the power of time travel and can go back to the past at will (with some important limitations, mind you). We get a sort of explanation of how it works which was actually quite satisfying even if it’s not exactly the most scientific ever; it’s based on science and is completely speculative. Still, it was actually fascinating and a main source of conflict for Justin and Chuck because they had to have their individual ‘keys’ back to the future or else they would be stuck in 1900 forever.
The plot was not very fast-paced in the beginning but the characters and the events were so interesting that it didn’t matter. As the novel goes on, however, the pacing just keeps increasing until you just can’t put the book down. And trust me when I say that John Heldt certainly hasn’t lost his capacity to surprise his readers. Just when you think you know how things are going to happen, he throws a wrench into the works and you’re left guessing until the very end of the novel. These plot twists don’t come out of nowhere, however. When you look back on how the characters develop and how their actions tend to drive the story it makes sense. It’s just hard to see the twists when you’re reading September Sky the first time around. And trust me when I say that this is a book you’ll want to read over and over and over again. It’s just that good.
Here in September Sky, you have everything that you can ask for in a time travel novel: a little bit of science and imagination, some romance, great characters and an unpredictable plot. You can’t ask for anything more! Even though the book has a satisfying conclusion, if you’re like me you’ll be left eager for the next installment in the series to see how John Heldt is going to get his other time travelers into the past. Will we meet our mysterious professor again? Or are there other people out there who know more about the past than they’re letting on? I can’t wait.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
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Dreams of the Queen by Jacqueline Patricks
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Dr. Cass Baros is haunted by dreams of an alien world…
…and will do anything to find it.
Relentlessly, she works her science team–along with her co-project leader and fiancé, Dr. Julian Saunders–in order to create the first lab-contained wormhole. Their boss, Dr. Janson, has a secret agenda. He adds a military contingent, which expands their six person team to twelve and increases tensions between the members. Egos will clash, agendas will cross, and their worlds will be undone as they travel through the wormhole.
The team, unable to return home and facing numerous dangers–conflicting desires, burning suns, cannibalistic monsters–is plunged into an adventure beyond their control. They struggle to unravel millennia old secrets in an alien world where nothing is what it seems. While Captain Lewis’ leadership strengthens, Cass deals with her destiny as the Brajj queen, and the Brajj, Jeamon, questions his lifelong beliefs and loyalties.
Cass and her team wrestle with her royal status to the Brajj, while being tossed between love and betrayal, genius and madness, and a jealousy frightening enough to cause the destruction of worlds.
*Rated Mature 18+* Science Fiction/Romance/Adventure/Aliens, zombies, romance, some time slipping and a wormhole all wrapped up in a mystery! (Serious sci-fi with a mature romance, violence, language, and some gore–this is not a fluffy bunny)
[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook from the author in exchange for an honest review.]
Dreams of the Queen is one of those books that you intend to sit down and read a few chapters but then you realize it’s three in the morning and you’ve just finished it. It really sucks you in and doesn’t let you go. I have to say that in my nearly three years of reviewing I have never read a book as unique as this one by Jacqueline Patricks.
Sure, on the surface it seems like Patricks has cooked up a pretty conventional “follow the wormhole to an alien world” story but it’s really anything but that. The alien world is far from what it initially seems and there’s intrigue lurking around every corner. No one (and I mean no one!) is as they seem in this story and everyone is hiding something: from Cass hiding her dreams from Julian, from Julian hiding the fact that he has a much darker side and all the way up to the Brajj king and his trusted lieutenant Jeamon. When you compare it to lots of other stories, the characters aren’t the most sympathetic but in Jacqueline Patricks’ dark imagined world they are. More importantly than being sympathetic, they are all very interesting characters. You may not like all of them, but you do want to find out what happens so Dreams of the Queen ends up being a psychological thriller as much as it is an action/adventure novel.
As for the world-building, wow. I really can’t describe things too much without giving away some of the plot twists, but the alien world Cass and the others land on seems to be a pretty stereotypical medieval-esque fantasy world. When you get down to the guts of it, that’s far from true however. The alien world hides it secrets well, even from its supposed queen. One of the more fascinating features of the world was the zombie-ish creatures that attack the living out in the forest while the Brajj contingent brings Cass and the others back to the city. They act like zombies, they look and smell like zombies, but they’re not the zombies that we really know from conventional stories. They really do have a much more fascinating background; they’re not just there for the scare factor.
The characters and the world-building had a pretty high wow factor, so how was the plot? Well, it was spectacular. There’s really no other way to describe it. Just when you think you know something is going to happen, it doesn’t. You may be able to correctly predict a couple of the twists, but you won’t be able to predict the big, horrifying reveal at the end. And that’s not really me being dramatic—it is horrific. Jacqueline Patricks isn’t kidding in her blurb when she says it’s for 18+; trust me on this one. This is a very dark science fiction/psychological thriller that will leave you breathless. There’s never horror for horror’s sake, but many of the scenes in the book are nevertheless shocking. It really fits in with the darker tone the story takes as it winds on, drawing you into it until there’s no hope of getting out until you finish it.
Like I said, I can’t really tell you much about Dreams of the Queen without giving away some of the amazing twists and turns that you’ll want to discover for yourself. All I really can say is that the plot is not all that it seems, the characters are highly unique and believable and the world-building will wow you. If you get a chance, go pick up this book. It’s not for everyone, but if the blurb or my review has intrigued you I highly recommend it.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
The Rebel Trap by Lance Erlick
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Voices in sixteen-year-old Annabelle Scott’s head aren’t God or signs she’s going mad—yet. Despite being a Mech Warrior recruit, she rebels against her female-dominated régime by not only refusing to kill Morgan, a handsome boy she’s attracted to, but also helping him escape.
Annabelle’s commander gives her auditory implants and contact cameras for an undercover assignment to investigate her corrupt police captain. Morgan hacks the implants to plead for her help in freeing his brother. As a pawn in a bigger game, she wants to help Morgan yet needs to discover the link between an attempted assassination of her adoptive mom, her police captain, and the geek institute that holds Morgan’s brother. Can she do so without falling into a trap that could destroy her family and get her killed?
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook in conjunction with the blog tour in exchange for an honest review.]
The Rebel Trap is the sequel to The Rebel Within but is actually the third in chronological order in Lance Erlick’s rebel series. (Although within the book universe it’s actually book #2.) Thankfully for me, you don’t have to read the first installment about Annabelle to understand this book. It seems that the whole series is quite self-contained so that you can start at the end like I did or start at the beginning.
What I really liked about the book was the characters. Of course your impressions of many of them are biased because you’re seeing them largely through Annabelle, but I like how Lance Erlick gave us insights into people around the main character, including her sister Janine and her adoptive mother. But of course Annabelle was my favourite character. She’s tough and determined to succeed in life but there’s a slight hitch when she gets auditory implants and contacts that allow her commander to see and hear everything she does for a mission. There’s a lack of privacy and then there’s having your boss see and hear everything you do.
Still, she finds a rather interesting way around it as Morgan constantly hounds her to help him rescue his little brother. And that really showcases the complexity of Annabelle: she wants to help Morgan’s little brother because she knows imprisoning young boys and men for their gender is wrong but at the same time she needs to root out the corruption taking hold in her society. Did I mention that she’s also caught in a little power war between the commander of the Mech Corps and the commander of the police? Like all teenagers, Annabelle does angst a fair bit, but unlike some her angst is completely deserved at this point so it’s not actually annoying for the reader.
The only thing I didn’t really like about this book was the repetitiveness of the plot. It seemed to follow a pattern: Sam would tell Annabelle not to do something, she’d do it, Sam would be happy because she discovered new evidence against Commander Voss and Scarlatti. This was sort of understandable the first few times because Annabelle was figuring things out and really blundering through the whole ‘subtle’ part of the missions, but it got kind of annoying after the fourth or fifth time. Unfortunately, this constant repetition made the plot kind of predictable. I knew how it was going to end and I saw pretty much all of the twists and turns because of course everything Annabelle tries to do as an intern cop is made to trip her up.
Still, despite my dislike of the whole repetitiveness of the thing, the plot was at least reasonably fast-paced. It was slow enough for Lance Erlick to develop his characters properly but not so slow as to bog the reader down. Not all of the characters’ motivations are clear in the beginning (although you can probably guess if you try hard enough) so it does keep Annabelle and the readers on their toes until about the middle of the novel where the motives become clearer.
The characters really are the strength of The Rebel Trap, though, so even if the plot was totally awful (which it really isn’t) I would definitely recommend this book. They’re ambiguous enough to be real but not so ambiguous that you feel like their actions come from nowhere. It’s a delicate balance and Lance Erlick does it well. So if you’re into dystopias with flipped societies (women are superior in this one as opposed to men), then I would recommend The Rebel Trap to you.
I give this book 3.5/5 stars.