Review: I really did love it!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 17, 2013
I was given a copy of this book by the author in exchange for an honest review.I am an Ann Gimpel fan - you know that if you read my reviews and I freely admit that she has never written anything I haven't thoroughly enjoyed. So when she offered me this book to read and review of course I jumped at it sight and knowledge unseen. Well this a post-apocalyptic, dystopian, Earth after a disaster and how the survivors survive and fight for their planet from invaders book. I am not really a fan of that type of book - AT ALL! But I have complete faith in Ann that what she writes I will like. She has written magic, shifters, contemporary military/covert spy endeavours, dragons that wake up after nearly 300 YEARS and I have enjoyed them all. Some more than others - obviously - but not one of them disappointed. And once I got into it and met the characters and got the whole backstory straight neither did this. *whew*A gifted writer can take any scenario and write about it, using their personal style of creating and introducing the characters, slowly building the world with just enough information to understand the setting but not so much that you aren't curious about what "that over there" is or does or.... Ann Gimpel is a gifted writer in my humble opinion. She made me continue to read when I wasn't sure. She made me like the characters once they opened up to me. She even made me care about the fight for her Earth from the Dark Gods and the Lemurians. And by the end of the book (which  I admit took way too long to read cause stupid real life kept getting in the way) I was asking when book #2 will be ready. Yeah ME ASKING FOR A POST‑APOCALYPTIC sequel. Crazy, huh?It took me a while to warm up to Aislinn but I think that was as much my apprehension of this "genre" of book as it was the way the character herself was very walled‑off and closed to all human contact when we first meet her. She sounds like a callous, unfeeling, scrounging for anything she can find first and hide kind of person - exactly the way you fear all humanity will be when it truly comes down to you or me. When there are no good choices only "the lesser of evils". However, slowly as the book progresses and we see the state the world is in and hear why there are so few humans left, we begin to understand the attitude of "me only" has literally become self‑preservation because there isn't enough food or wood for fires or safe places to sleep. And letting someone in is as likely to get you killed as it is to break you when they are killed by whatever horror they faced that day. How would I react and who would I become if I had to find a way to survive in a world like that. How do you go from a college student on vacation in Bolivia with her parents to a young woman who saw her father brutally murdered in front of her and had to run from him to save herself and her mother. A young woman now alone, who has MAGIC? and is fighting the bad guys on behalf of the not‑so‑bad guys who invaded her world and killed her mother? I know my body and my sanity would not make it.This book manages to blend a complete urban fantasy, dystopian, action‑packed, do or die, every choice is a bad one so just choose and live through it with a true romance between two people who are stuck in a hell not of their own making. It amazes me how she manages to carve out little, tiny slices of happy or even joy and insert them into their crazy, mixed‑up, are we going to die today? lives. But she does it and does it in a way that it belongs there. The relationships that are forged, not only the romance between Aislinn and Fionn, but all the relationships between the humans and gods and animals, become necessary for life in this crazy, scary world.Once again I stand in awe of the creation that Ann Gimpel has made and given to us. Now seriously, when is book two out?