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Embellished (Chronicles of Orian Book 1)

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to live inside your favorite video game? Karen Glista’s novel, Embellished, the first novel in The Chronicles of Orian trilogy, takes us on a wild ride with a story about teens who find themselves inside the world of the M.M.O.R.P.G. game, The Battle of Orian. While playing the game during a lightning storm, Bekka, Travis, and Matt are suddenly transported into the antiquated world of Orian. Bekka, a teen suffering from a rare genetic disease, finds herself fully healed from her earthly ailments and rises up the royal rankings. Meanwhile, her brother, Travis, and his friend Matt continually search for an escape back to Earth. Their only hope for escaping this world is finding the only other human from Earth, also trapped in the game, before they’re all killed by dangerous creatures.

Embellished is so much more than a fantasy/paranormal romance with a fair amount of compelling, steamy scenes. Embellished transcends genre boundaries through incorporating elements of adventure, suspense, and gruesome battle scenes. What makes it even more exciting to read is the development of its deeply complex characters and intricately woven plot with twists that’ll leave you gasping.

The novel opens with a group of teens playing The Battle of Orian on a stormy night in Texas, when lightning strikes their home and catapults the teens into the world of the game. Little do they know that their real-life bodies on Earth are rapidly deteriorating. Luckily, they know how to defeat evil spiders, bears, and violent Vadarcs, a sub-human species.

While the novel begins by focusing on Travis, who becomes the leader of the group, the perspective shifts to his sister, Bekka. She starts as a somewhat timid, soft-spoken individual, as her body on Earth was ravaged by the rare Marfan’s disease, but once she begins to find her voice, Bekka truly blossoms into a bold, outspoken, and open-minded heroine. I thought that it made the story so much more compelling to give Bekka these strong character traits, since it added suspense to the decisions she had to make.

Glista does a great job of capturing the inner feelings that any person would have when faced with a love triangle. Bekka befriends Atharia and even becomes betrothed to Atharia’s brother, the devastatingly handsome Vallas. But during a harrowing attack, she and Atharia are taken captive by a belligerent Vadarc tribe. After she meets Zandar, a half-Human Vadarc who exudes masculinity and passionate sensuality, Bekka wonders if she can ever go back to her life with Vallas again. She has the chance to choose between Vallas and Zandar – attracted to the different qualities within both men, she is torn between her desire for passionate, romantic love, or for safety and security.

Glista also masterfully incorporates multiple themes that add multiple layers to the novel. For example, Bekka discovers that there are deeply entrenched discriminatory practices between the Humans and Vadarcs, and after learning the history of the Vadarcs, Bekka begins to preach open-mindedness to her Human friends.  I thought this was an extremely vital and current theme to have as it relates pretty directly to racial issues within today’s world.

As the first novel in the Chronicles of Orian trilogy, Embellished provides a bit of closure at the end, but it’ll definitely be interesting to see what happens to Bekka, Travis, and Matt in the next installment.

Pages: 302 | ASIN: B01M5BZVQ1

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Pages: 271 | ASIN: B01H8WPPNE

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Paroxysm Effect






Pages: 296 | ISBN: 1523449233

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A World Where Magic Is A Natural Force

Ryan Grimbly Author Interview

Ryan Grimbly Author Interview











Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website

Call of the ConjurerIn the shadows, Just out of sight, A hidden army fights a secret war. In the autumn of 2003, a few remarkable soldiers from across the world are brought together. Each hasa a special gift, and they are to be initiated nto a world of magical modern combat. Captain Calbert Mason is their instructor. He is a Conjurer; one who can summon and control ethereal monsters. As the recruits confront their new powers and the monstrous enemies they will encounter, Mason must ensure their safety throughout the training programme, confront a vengeful ghost from his past, and see that the recruits survive their first mission against a rival, deadly Conjurer.

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It Just Kind of Happened











Author Links: Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads | Website


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The Family That Went to War

The Family That Went To War3 StarsThe Family that Went to War is both a family memoir and a history of the people of the state of New South Wales, Australia. The author, Gordon Smith, gives a well-documented account of six members of a family from Cootamundra, NSW, who enlisted into the First Australian Imperial Force (1st AIF) at the onset of World War I. His research in historical archives, newspapers, and memorial societies is well done. The accounts of war and details of each man’s deployment presumes that he also had their war diaries and letters from home to draw on for detail.

The Commonwealth of Australia was still a young country, having formed a federation just over a decade previous. Australians still regarded Britain as their mother country, and when war broke out, Australia’s Prime Minister declared support for Great Britain and formally entered the Great War. Six members of the author’s family enlisted to fight the German army. He tells each man’s story with informative passages about the region they are in, the larger picture of the war that raged around them, and then brings it back down to the trenches where the soldiers fought. Smith’s details regarding ships, armaments, shortages and hardships, and other details of the soldiers’ experiences in Egypt and France will be of great interest to readers fascinated by World War I or the contribution of Australia to the Great War.

One such detail is in the account of Austin Schofield’s experience at Gallipoli. A water shortage, bad weather, and devastating losses motivated the British combined forces to evacuate. In order to safely evacuate, they used subterfuge to trick the Turkish forces into thinking they were still there.

Periscopes were to be propped up, and every effort was to be made to create the impression that the trenches were still fully occupied. … When it was time to finally abandon the trenches, Austin was to help set up some remote firing devices to fire some rifles to keep the illusion that the trenches were occupied. Some rifles had string tired to the trigger and a candle burning until it reached the string. The rifle would then fire.

Though the author writes with detachment, the stories of these soldiers in the midst of historic battles give a glimpse into the life, and death, of Australian soldiers. I was particularly interested in the account of William Power, fighting on the Western Front at Fromelles France. The losses to the Australian forces were described as, “the worst 24 hours in Australia’s entire history”. Though the account is given in a very matter-of-fact manner, it’s hard not to sympathize with the Australian soldiers.

The biggest drawback of this book was a simple case of bad editing. In one case, the name of an Egyptian city is spelled three different ways on the same page. Punctuation is inconsistent and made some passages difficult to understand and hard to follow.

Overall, I think the author has done a fine job documenting both his family history and military history. Despite the dry, academic tone of the account, there are moments of humor and humanity that shine through.

Pages: 92 | ISBN: 9781310378010

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Review: Into Darkness by Richard Fox

Into Darkness 2star



Pages: 309
Published January 16th 2013 by Triplane Press
ISBN13: 9780991442911

Find more on Richard Fox on GoodReads

Review: Point Apocalypse by Alex Bobl

Point Apocalypse 3star

Point Apocalypse is a fast paced techno thriller filled with nonstop suspense and action that only lets up to deliver a meticulous description of the fictional world of Pangea. Pangea is a prison world where Earth sends its worst criminals. One shipment of criminals includes Mark Posner a former soldier, but Mark slowly learns that he is not a prisoner. He is on a mission; a mission that will change both worlds. Earth has been sending people to Pangea for years and a community has emerged that brings some semblance of structure, but otherwise it’s a world where everything is hazardous to your health and only the strongest survive. Mark must navigate his way through this world and find a traitorous general that is plotting to destroy Earth so that Pangea will no longer be subservient. But things are not what they seem and while Mark is fighting off cyber-troopers, and hired guns he learns of a shocking truth that moves the book in a whole new direction. Point Apocalypse focuses on action and world building while character development and dialogue seemed not to be an important factor. I found myself not really sympathizing or connecting with any of the characters as they all were either spouting generic lines of dialogue or fighting off characters that were introduced as a bad guy a few sentences ago and then were killed off. What really nagged at me was that the writing was constantly discursive and circuitous (ask your English teacher what those words mean). But all that aside I constantly felt like I was hurtling headlong toward a dramatic ending and I couldn’t wait for it to come. If you don’t care about character development or eloquent prose and care more about super charged sci-fi action then this book is for you.

Kindle Edition, 258 pages
Published March 16th 2013 by Sky Bridge

Find out more about Alex Bobl and his books at his website

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