Review: "the beautiful and the dark together"
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 2, 2013
The Ripple Trilogy Books 1-3 by Cidney SwansonFirst of all I really enjoyed this set of books; a lot. For me it took off right at the beginning and then just kept me running at a steady pace all the way through. The writing is superb, well crafted characters with an exciting though measured even pace that kept me right there with Samantha and Will.This seems to target young adults, but I didn't let that sway me. In fact I was doing my usual cleanup of my kindle app on my PC when I recalled I hadn't downloaded this one and so I did and usually to do that the book gets opened so my eyes started scanning the page and I was hooked.Apparently from the reviews there are some few rare people who seem to escape that hook, but I can't for the life of me see how.In the Rippler we start with Sam our on the river rafting with her friends when the unthinkable happens. Sam has this problem where she just sort of vanishes like the invisible girl in fantastic four comics. She's been hiding it and she'd had some unusual trauma, the death of her best friend and her mother in an accident so she's been withdrawn up until now, which means that this vanishing trick is not going to help her much. Everyone except for Will has missed her vanishing act and they all somehow think she fell out of the raft so they all have a moment of panic.With everyone running around Will talks to the invisible Sam trying to get her to make herself visible again while no one is watching.  Of course it's puzzling to Sam how Will knows this and how he seems to be so calm about it. Will and Sam are already friends and this is going to bring them closer or tear them apart, but it is definitely going to have some impact.We soon find out that Will has secrets of his own and that both of them are going to be in a lot of danger. They have special abilities that people are going to want to take advantage of.One small comment about this story.Neo Nazi plots, characters with special abilities, siblings or parents who have passed away often under mysterious circumstances, and evil people who want to kill or control the special ability group. The themes and subplots are all familiar ones to this genre although Cidney Swanson has added a few ripples of her own to make it unique. But always with these types of stories what becomes the most important is the writing style and the crafting of characters. In those two I was extremely impressed.The dynamic between the group around Sam and Will drive the story and the plot is driven by revelation of the evil through old journal entries present often through the eyes of the followers of the master mind of all the evil.The Cameleon continues the story with further explanation of what is really happening and the danger that it poses to not only our main protagonists, but also to everyone they care about.Will and Sam struggle  with the best way to use their abilities to stay out of trouble and with the struggle of the growing relationship between them.Finally Unfurl brings things all to an exciting dramatic conclusion that you will just have to read once you read the first two. At least that's how it was for me. And it doesn't disappoint. Each book builds on the previous and each one is better than the last.Young Adults and even Adults who like the SFF should enjoy this and anyone that likes all those comic characters with their special power and angst should enjoy this. (Except they'll have to draw their own cartoon panels. And that seems to be one complaint of a fellow reader about these types of books.)I loved it and I'll likely be reading a lot more of Cidney Swanson's work.J.L. Dobias