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Austin discovered, at the young age of ten, that fairies aren’t exactly what the fairytales made them out to be and that blood tastes a lot like honey. Now, as an adult, he struggles to balance his public life with the one he’s so desperate to keep hidden. After a deadly camping trip and an unexpected connection, Austin tries to change his ways. Will he be able to keep his secret or will his world come undone? In this exciting interactive adventure, the body count is up to you. Are you ready?
Nina Soden, author of the Blood Angel Series and the SECTOR C Series, is an indie-author who specializes in urban fantasy. With her newest novel she takes readers on an interactive adventure like nothing they’ve ever read before. She is excited to be stepping out of the Young Adult genre with this novel, but warns readers there are some violent and graphic scenes, but nothing she wasn’t comfortable with her mother reading.
Choose-your-own-adventure makes a comeback in The Friar’s Lantern.
An eccentric scientist tells you he can read your mind and offers to prove it in a high-stakes wager. A respected college professor exacts impassioned, heat-of-the-moment revenge on his wife’s killer – a week after her death – and you’re on the jury.
Take a Turing test with a twist, discover how your future choices might influence the past, and try your luck at Three Card Monte. And while you weigh chance, superstition, destiny, intuition and logic in making your decisions, ask yourself: are you responsible for your actions at all?
Let me start by saying that I received a free copy of this book for my honest impartial review… That is what I mean to give here.
WRITING (★★★): Lets first address the fact that Hickey has chosen the
very difficult task of writing a “choose your own adventure” style novel. This
concept allows the reader to make decisions throughout the story which then
determine the path the characters take. I grew up reading choose your own
adventure stories as a kid and have loved them ever since. In fact, my current
work in progress is also an interactive adventure novel. If I’m being honest,
the main reason I agreed to read and review The Friar’s Lantern is because I
wanted to see how he tackled the meticulous mapping of his story threads. His
method, I believe, was very different from my own. This is an ambitious novel
structure for any author and the fact that he successfully completed his story
is impressive.
As for the quality of Hickey’s writing, although
it is clear that he is extraordinarily articulate, I felt that some of his descriptives
felt forced. Many of his sentences were so long that by the time I reached the
end of the stringed together adjectives, I forget what it was he was originally
explaining.
“…The stadium, Ozymandian on the bitumen shore, is beset
to the north by woodlands, and here the hard blacktop, the steel girders and
thick slabs of concrete devolve into dirt and dead yellow leaves and broken
branches overhung by untrimmed trees and dotted with tangled bushes. The little
laboratory remains as a mere afterthought, its wearied face shrouded by the
sallow, emaciated branches of a willow tree, devoid of leaves even now in
mid-May, the tree dead or dying as its limbs sag down on despair to scratch the
top of the building.”
Unfortunately,
because of the wordy writing style, I think I enjoyed the idea of this novel
more than the actually story itself.
STORY (★★★★): The concept of the story is intriguing…
How do our choices effect our outcomes and do we really have free-will? The main
problem I had with this story, aside from the wordiness of the sentences, was
the ending. It felt rushed… or rather pre-determined as if he wrote the book
knowing the concept and the ending. With the “choose your own adventure” style,
I felt that there should have been something more. I didn’t feel as if my choices
were really leading the story, it was more that the story was leading my
choices.
CHARACTERS (★★★): Honestly, as the reader, you are the main character. With that said, I imagine trying to include any sort of arc or character development had to be hard for the author. The character doesn’t really seem to grow or change throughout the story. However, it does provide for the wonderful opportunity, when reading the story for the second time, to make different choices based on the previous outcome.
AUTHOR BIO
Greg Hickey is the author of the INDIES Book of the Year-nominated novel Our Dried Voices and an award-winning screenwriter. He is also a former international professional baseball player and coach and current forensic scientist and endurance athlete. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Lindsay.
Check out my YouTube channel and the video
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And in 2235, the last members of the human race traveled to a distant planet to begin the next chapter of humanity.
Several hundred years after their arrival, the remainder of humanity lives in a utopian colony in which every want is satisfied automatically, and there is no need for human labor, struggle or thought. But when the machines that regulate the colony begin to malfunction, the colonists are faced with a test for the first time in their existence.
With the lives of the colonists at stake, it is left to a bright young man named Samuel to repair these breakdowns and save the colony. Aided by his determined friend Penny, Samuel rises to meet each challenge. But he soon discovers a mysterious group of people behind each of these problems, and he must somehow find and defeat these saboteurs in order to rescue humanity.
Nina Soden 