My Tangled Skeins Book Reviews

Earth’s Requiem

Earth Reclaimed, Book 1

By Ann Gimpel

Publisher: Musa

ISBN: 978-1-61937-652-6

Release Date: 10/4/13

Genre: Urban Fantasy/Romance

101,000 words

Resilient, kickass, and determined, Aislinn's walled herself off from anything that might make her feel again. Until a wolf picks her for a bond mate and a Celtic god rises out of legend to claim her for his own.

My Review:
★★★★☆

This book took me a little while to get into, but after I was into it I read it in no time flat. I really enjoyed the different types of magics that are used in the story and the bonds that are formed with the animals. I really felt for the characters, especially Rune. He made my heart ache, he was so sweet and sad.

Aislinn is pretty kick ass and I admired her strength and determination. She seems to take everything that is thrown at her in stride. I know I would never be able to adjust to the type of things she has to. Finding out my lover was a Celtic god would definitely throw me for a loop.

I felt myself really starting to hate the gods in this story and couldn't wait to see what would happen throughout the book. I can't imagine having to choose between two evils like the people of the world had to when the gods arose, arrived, or whatever it was they did. On one hand you have the evil beings that seem to take joy in killing and breeding and killing some more, and on the other hand you have their enemies who are not really much better. What would you choose to do, fight the darkness? Or just give in to it?

I recommend this book to anyone that likes a good action/adventure story that includes gods, fighting, magic, sex, and lots of violence.

This book is definitely meant for adults. It contains crude language, violence and sex. Enjoy!

Book Description:

Aislinn Lenear lost her anthropologist father high in the Bolivian Andes. Her mother, crazy with grief that muted her magic, was marched into a radioactive vortex by alien creatures and killed. Three years later, stripped of every illusion that ever comforted her, twenty-two year old Aislinn is one resilient, kickass woman with a take no prisoners attitude. In a world turned upside down, where virtually nothing familiar is left, she’s conscripted to fight the dark gods responsible for her father’s death. Battling the dark on her own terms, Aislinn walls herself off from anything that might make her feel again.

Fionn MacCumhaill, Celtic god of wisdom, protection, and divination has been laying low since the dark gods stormed Earth. He and his fellow Celts decided to wait them out. After all, three years is nothing compared to their long lives. On a clear winter day, Aislinn walks into his life and suddenly all bets are off. Awed by her courage, he stakes his claim to her and to an Earth he's willing to fight for.

Aislinn’s not so easily convinced. Fionn’s one gorgeous man, but she has a world to save. Emotional entanglements will only get in her way. Letting a wolf into her life was hard. Letting love in may well prove impossible.

Guest Post:

What is POV and Why is it so Important?

Quite simply, POV stands for Point of View. For fictional authors, the POV character(s) is whose eyes the story is told through. Though it can be challenging to tell a story this way—because the reader can't know anything the POV character doesn't—it provides unparalleled opportunity to build a wonderful, three-dimensional protagonist that readers can bond with.

Characters are what make fiction. Readers take them to heart, live their stories with them and are sad when the book ends. POV is what accomplishes this. It's an author's primary vehicle to create effective storybook characters that jump off the page and into a reader's soul.

Long ago, I was taught you needed a minimum of 5,000 words between POV shifts. That standard has relaxed considerably over the years. It can be effective to have two or three pages of a POV shift to get another character's perspective into play. I've even done as little as a couple paragraphs tagged onto the end of a chapter if I needed to ratchet up the tension to help a reader want to move into the next chapter.

In my own writing, I've found it most effective to stick with three or four—or at the most five—POV characters in a hundred thousand word novel. While I haven't counted words between POV changes, I do try to have shifts between who's telling the story feel natural. Convenient plot twists tossed on the altar of an author's desperation to bring a particular outcome to bear stick out like a sore thumb.

I've been surprised at how many NYT Bestsellers I've picked up in the past couple of years where it's pretty clear either the author never learned about use of POV, or figures they've moved beyond the rules with their sales figures. Not sure about the rest of you, but I find it hard to read a novel when the POV bounces around. I feel like a spectator at a tennis match when I'm trying to determine whose head the author is in now. In one particular example that jumps into my mind, the author told the story from two first person POVs. It was nearly impossible to tell who the “I” referred to sometimes, which really detracted from the story.

Back in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, omniscient narrator was popular. I've tried to write that way as an experiment, but it distances me from the story. So I assume it has the same effect of readers. Bottom line is I love writing from a specific POV. It bonds me to my characters. And that's where it all begins. If the characters aren't alive for me, they won't be alive for my readers, either.

How do you handle POV in your writing? What’s worked best for you?

About the Author

Short Bio:

Ann Gimpel is a clinical psychologist, with a Jungian bent. Avocations include mountaineering, skiing, wilderness photography and, of course, writing. A lifelong aficionado of the unusual, she began writing speculative fiction a few years ago. Since then her short fiction has appeared in a number of webzines and anthologies. Several paranormal romance novellas are available in e-format. Three novels, Psyche’s Prophecy, Psyche’s Search, and Psyche's Promise are small press publications available in e-format and paperback. Look for three more urban fantasy novels coming this summer and fall: To Love a Highland Dragon, Earth’s Requiem and Earth’s Blood.

A husband, grown children, grandchildren and three wolf hybrids round out her family.

www.anngimpel.com

http://anngimpel.blogspot.com

http://www.amazon.com/author/anngimpel

http://www.facebook.com/anngimpel.author

@AnnGimpel (for Twitter)

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for free for review purposes. Regardless, all opinions are my own and were in no way influenced. I was not required to write a positive review.