Review: Ties of Family
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 21, 2014
This book was originally published under Kurt’s Frontier on Invincible Love of Reading.Synopsis:Humanity has been playing with things it doesn’t completely understand and has created its own worst nightmare. Humanity has been playing with genetics and created a race of hybrid beings that are part human and part animal. Humanity’s price of peace with the hybrids is a Lottery administered by the human church and government and a council of hybrids. Humans are randomly selected and sent to the hybrids as breeders and laborers.Into this unjust system comes Lilith, a girl who is the product of a union between a human woman with strong ESP powers and a hybrid. Lilith has come looking for her twin, Laydon. Befriended by a Maltha, a dragon hybrid female and Geoff’tan, a wolf hybrid, Lilith begins to explore her powers. The dragon hybrid male, Aamon, holds her brother and plays a dangerous game of subterfuge to test Liliths powers. The lottery system that has been set up is meeting resistance. With many powers moving, the twins are wild cards in the struggles to come.Review:Jennifer Fales has written a story where the individuals, and ties of family are set against a powerful and corrupt system. Using a paranormal/science fiction format reminiscent of the late Andre Norton, she creates a dark world of political maneuvers and treachery. This is a novella length story that could have easily been expanded into a full novel. The plot structure is fairly strong. However, the back story covered in the Preface might have been better worked into the body of the story. This could have allowed the author to develop the story further. As it stands now, the reader may feel that the story is rushed in a way that has nothing to do with pressures on the characters. Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable story, and I look forward to reviewing the sequel, Sleight of Hand: Shadow Games.