Athena

Attacked by a cloud of crows intent on tearing holes in her and removing a prophetic manuscript pages from her person – Fable is tossed into a cross dimensional struggle that could throw two universes into a dark age at best, or apocalypse at worst.

Huh, hold on.. Lets roll this back a second…

Nondescript Fable is a mess. Her Aunt has been murdered, Her Fiance is kaput. Her job sent her packing. She crosses the country, leaving her life in New York City for rainy and dismal Portland Oregon in an effort to mourn and put her Aunt’s affairs in order.

Greeted in PDX by the FBI, the Feds advise her she is on a short list as a potential next victim in a string of disappearances. They also fear that she is in danger by the same Killer who violently shuffled her Aunt from the mortal world. A shade of her Aunt Celeste passes cryptic messages to her in daydreams and fever visions. Fable enters a trance in which she describes the future in written detailed form.

Fable is a teenager in a thirty year old’s body, slowly coming to terms with the lifetime of memories that she herself gave up to protect the world. As she learns more about her past and becomes more knowledgeable of the future, she herself becomes clearer (both mentally as well as the view of her that readers have) and more powerful. Born to be the inspiration that drives the world, this is the way of a Muse. Readers are brought into the story with zero knowledge and learn the details of a dual world history as the plot unfolds.

There are some characters I wanted to hold under water with my foot till they stop squirming. There was one or two I would drink a beer with and gladly play some shuffleboard. I even wanted to slap the hell out of the main character a couple of times, similar to that scene from Airplane where the entire plane occupancy lines up to slap sense into a hysterical woman… Fable needs some tough love, and I believe my take on this was the desired effect I believe was being pushed to readers…

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Readers should note that I am a friend of the Author, I read this book not only for my own amusement, but as a favor to her. This does not change my review of the novel however. I am hyper critical of every self published book I read, This one is no exception. As a self-published book, readers should take it in stride that occasional typos may exist. In reading the book, I also found a couple timeline issues which were minimally distracting but would be easy for the Author to address in future revisions. In other words, it is by no means perfect, but the plot line is strong and easily held my attention.

It should also be noted that this book has a teensy bit (read: a lot) of sexual tension. If you are uncomfortable with the description of a cock under taut stretched denim, you may not be down for this novel. From the other aspect, if you are interested in a solid fantasy story that will age well as the follow up novels are released, this could be a good match.

Athena, author of Murder of Crows is planning a large scale series detailing the Story, the driving force behind human (and Centaur, Lamia, Avian and other) existence. I look forward to the follow ups.
… (mehr)