Review: Interesting fantasy tale....
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 20, 2014
The author, AJ Nuest, gave me a copy of this novel in exchange for my review.One of the best elements of the time travel genre is that fish out of water adjustment that goes hand in hand with falling into another time. When Rowena falls through the veil and removes the key necklace, she loses all of her memory so we miss out on that period of adjustment but what Nuest does with her story is equally fun and engaging. No memories? Lost in a time where women are lower tier on the ladder (though the deity system is female based), learn to fight back. Measure up with the boys and then beat them down showing them that they’ll find no simple victim here. Rowena is woman, hear her roar.The beautiful thing about the way that Nuest writes her characters is that we knew that Rowana would be strong and adaptable all along. She lost her parents at an early age and forged a means of support in a field where really anything can happen. When Caedmon appears in her armoire she’s fairly pragmatic. Someone is clearly playing a trick on her and fun is her middle name so she’s willing to play along. It helps, of course that Caedmon is an Adonis who with repeat visits clearly becomes smitten with the woman in the mirror. We see it and we believe it. The hero worship in the novel does, at times, get to be too much but as romance writing goes Caedmon and Rowena are strongly entertaining and believable.Though a meaty 360 pages, the narrative flows well and the novel read quickly. There are storylines I’d like to see more developed such as the time Rowena is separated from Caedmon. There are blanks to be filled but “The Golden Key Chronicles” was written by bringing four previously released novellas "Rowena's Key," "Candra's Freedom," "Caedmon's Curse" and "Braedric's Bane," together and sticking to the rules of novella writing made the portions of the book periodical like and the shifts between quite smooth but left some questions unanswered. At the end of this novel, I would have loved to have known more and that is a very good sign of an interesting read.“The Golden Key Chronicles” features likable characters in interesting situations. If you like adventure, romance, erotica or time travel fiction, pick this one up today.