So I've been really bad about this as of late. But if you've been following me on GoodReads, you've probably seen my growing set of reviews. I'm mulling on putting up a post about my own review policy, but I may leave that for another, rainy day.
Today, I'm going to highlight a series by a fellow indie author and one which I'm a stupid fangirl of. I really REALLY enjoyed J. Leigh Bralick's The Madness Project. I thought it was clever, it was well executed, and I'm anxiously awaiting the release of Book 2 of the series. Read my review of the book here
In the meantime, I read her other, already-published series, "The Lost Road Chronicles." I pawed through some of the reviews for the first book and I noted many of them were a bit harsh. Still, I really enjoyed TMP and wanted to add another three book onto my 25 books of summer (I may have to up that number as I'm already at 25% of my goal and it's only June 10th.)
The series itself is filled with aspects of fantasy, political intrigue, and a love story that is neither sappy nor annoying. Actually, that's one of the things I really think J. Leigh Bralick does well - her ability to slow burn a love story until you didn't even realize that you wanted them together. There's some issue in the first book with descriptions of scenes - sometimes I had to re-read a scene two or three times to fully figure out what just happened. But while the first book was just okay, the second one was really well done, and the last one was as well.
The series follows Merelin, who starts out on a quest she didn't know she had to go on, with a medallion that she got from the kind man down the street. Suddenly, she finds herself attacked by creatures and then sucked into another world with a stoic guardian. She and he travel across the land to get this medallion back to where it needs to go. To be honest, I found the ending a bit odd, but I may have to go back and re-read in the context of Books 2 and 3. Read my full review here.
The second book, Merelin has returned to her world and finds herself miserable. She thinks that going back to the other world is where she belongs, and that it will be all sunshine and happiness when she does. It's kind of a nice theme that resonated with me personally with my upcoming move back home, and I think that's why I liked it so much. Going back, though, she finds everything in chaos - thanks to her. This book leans more into the political intrigue realm, which was a nice twist on the series, and spent more time with characters that were only quickly introduced in the first book. Of the three books, this one was my favorite. Read my full review here.
The third book picks up right where Book 2 leaves off, and the introduction of a chaotic monster touched on in the second book. This monster makes everyone question what's real and who is really who. Things come to a head and Merelin is yoinked back to her world. She knows she's gotta go back, and this time takes (almost) her entire family to take on this monster that only she can see and who has infiltrated the political sphere. Read my full review here.
Much like with The Madness Project, I want to go back and reread this series because there was SO MUCH that it was hard to get everything the first go-round. Sometimes that works in the favor of the author, and sometimes it doesn't. The problem with Easter eggs is that sometimes you completely don't pick up on them until you know what they were leading to, and I think there was a lot of that in this series - which is nice because the series is complete.
I do, however, have to add one bit of negative feedback: Book 1 does suffer from a serious lack of description in a lot of the important scenes. I was so sucked into this book that when I hit these sections that it took me out of the book and I had to re-read. I also thought that the ending of the third book tended to drag a bit - it was like there were a thousand people standing around arguing (perhaps the author's intent). But the ending of the book - the actual ending-ending - was really well done and bittersweet as she said goodbye to some people and hello to others.
*Yes, yes, I still use Amazon even though they are apparently the big bad. Perhaps soon I will change my ways, but it's like feeling guilty for driving your car but you have no other choice.
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