When Thomas Hunter is shot by an unknown assailant, he falls into unconsciousness and wakes up in another world. A world where evil is contained and where good reigns. Unfortunately, he wakes up in a black forest, where the evil is contained.
He soon escapes the forest and meets the people of the land. Only they already have an opinion about him. They think that he lost is memory and has been dreaming out the histories, meaning Tom’s world. They tell him that their world is the real one, not the other.
When Tom falls asleep in Other Earth, he wakes up on Earth and tells his sister about it. She, of course, tells him that Other Earth isn’t real; that Earth is the real one, he is only, dreaming about Other Earth. Tom is confused, as is the reader, about which world is right. That issue is not resolved in this book.
Tom continues to fall asleep and wake up in the opposite world. He repeats this pattern over and over again throughout the book.
To throw a twist into the plot, Dekker combines the alternate world genre with a medical thriller. Raison pharmaceuticals is secretly developing the world’s most deadly virus with which they can wipe out the world. Tom finds out about this from the people of Other Earth because it happened in their history.
The whole concept of this book is extremely original, unlike any other series I’ve ever read. I believe I understand the meaning of the Circle and which world is the real one, but I could still be wrong since this is the first book of four.
The romantic subplot is actually necessary in this book. When Tom arrives in Other Earth, everyone has already decided that he is going to fall in love with Rachelle. Might as well get it out in the open if you’re going to have a romantic subplot. But this romantic subplot is actually necessary, after reading the end.
The characters are good and believable, something rare for this genre.
I didn’t see the end coming, believe it or not, but it is directly continued. We’ll have to wait and see about the rest, it’s hard to know what a series is going to do these days.

5 stars

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The subtitle of Skin is “don’t trust your eyes.” It couldn’t be more accurate.

The town of Summerville is about to be ravaged by three tornadoes a nearby storm has spawned off. When the tornadoes blow over, the entire town is covered in sand. There are only five apparent survivors-a police officer and four citizens. They are all being stalked by a killer by the name of Sterling Red, a man who wants to settle a past score with each of them.

As Red keeps telling them to do more and more things, life gets more and more crazier for the five survivors. Nothing makes any sense as it seems that Red is in complete control over their lives.

Trying to summarize the plot of Skin in a few sentences is nearly impossible to do. For one thing, it would take too long, and for another, it would ruin the highly original end.

But first things first. First, the characters are Dekker’s usual brand of imperfection. They all make mistakes and behave like normal humans would in this certain situation.

Sterling Red is another one of Dekker’s strange, almost comical villains. He acts almost like Marsuvees Black in a sense.

Even though things seem to become highly absurd and far-fetched in the middle, just stay the course and don’t give up on the plot. The end awaits you. Don’t give up even when it seems like the same thing keeps happening over and over again without explanation.

I couldn’t have come up with a better end than the end Dekker wrote. It surprised me and delighted me at the same time. There wasn’t a single plot hole at the end. Every unexplainable aspect was explained.

Not only was the end surprising, but it was also imperfect. There are several key character deaths, one of which I can’t believe Dekker did.

As usual with a Ted Dekker book, Skin is loosely connected with Project Showdown and the Circle. I heard someone else say that it was connected, so I assumed that Sterling Red was just another Marsuvees Black creation. Thank God I was wrong.

All in all, Skin is an example of Dekker’s inner originality that only comes out at certain times. I hope in the future that this originality will appear more.

5 stars

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Kemp McAvoy is living the hard life of a UCLA night nurse while his aspirations are to be an anesthesiologist. These aspirations were put to rest, however, when his residency at Johns Hopkins was rejected because of drug abuse. Now, he lives with his girlfriend and her “loony” daughter from a previous marriage. Kemp is tired of being strapped for money. He wants to be free. The opportunity presents itself when he is assigned to monitor an aging movie star who was the victim of a car accident. She has been put into a medically-induced coma to prevent her brain from swelling, but an “angel” by the name of Kemp McAvoy is about to lower her drug dosage slightly and appear to her with a message she is proclaim to all the world. With the help of her agent and a struggling publisher, they will write the ultimate bestselling book about her experiences in the coma. But little do they know that they are tangling themselves up in their own web-all because they practiced to deceive.

Tim Downs is back. That was my first thought when I finished his latest release. He has returned to his land of originality after being exiled to typical island for too long. Through superb characters and a highly original plot, Tim has written himself a second five star novel.
Kemp is one of the most imperfect leads I have ever met. This is probably because he has an underused personality. He rivals Nick Polchak for one of the best leads ever developed. I cannot think of a single character in this plot who does not have a personality. One of the best things about the character department is that there is no real villain. If anyone is a villain, it’s Kemp. Tim Downs already proved that his character developing skills are exquisite, but he did not stop just because he has now become popular. He is truly a master of characters.

The plot is most similar to Deceived by James Scott Bell, yet it is unlike any other plot. It is a highly underused plot style I call Deception. It begins with an elaborate money-making scheme and becomes more and more complicated as more people get involved, making this book more of a comedy than any of Tim’s other books. The dealing and the scheming don’t end until the book ends. While this book does not have a smashingly original end like that of Chop Shop, the entire book is a constant; it is wholly original rather than partly. Not only is there nothing wrong with this book; there are also many things right about it.

In short, Tim Downs is a man to be reckoned with because his writing career is far from over. No, he is only getting started with the great impression he will make on Christian fiction.

5 stars

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Jenny Lucas has returned to her sleepy North Carolina hometown with her only daughter to reveal to her family two horrible secrets. One, her daughter’s biological father is the son of man Jenny’s father hates most in the world. Two, she is dying of a widespread cancer in her body and she needs to know who will be taking care of her daughter when she’s gone. Naturally, her ex-boyfriend and his wife make a play for her on the basis of biological connections. Jenny’s father and grandmother immediately fall in love with six-year-old Isabella, while Jenny finds herself falling for their hired hand. Jenny knows she cannot allow herself to fall in love when she’s so close to death, and she has other things on her mind. Little does she know that she will have to cross an ocean to find the answers she wants.

Gina Holmes writes an unforgettable and unashamed debut dripping with originality. The stage was already set-her lead was dying-yet she resisted the temptation of miraculous healing and wrote a five star debut novel.

The end is not the only amiable quality this book contains. I cannot think of a single key character without a personality. Jenny, Isabella, Jenny’s father, Jenny’s grandmother, Jenny’s ex-boyfriend and his wife; even Jenny’s love interest is not a perfect male lead. There is no real villain in the story; it is simply a book about the end of one’s life. Gina has already proven she is a master of characters, a quality that some veteran authors cannot seem to grasp.

Many plot cliches are defied in this novel. Characters who are portrayed as bad aren’t really. Characters who are portrayed as good aren’t really. In the end, there is no real romantic subplot. The tale is told through the mournful eyes of Jenny in a voice reminiscent of Mary E DeMuth. The end is the icing on the cake, not only because of Jenny’s end, but because of the realistic end to Isabella’s custody case. With this end, Gina proves that she is not afraid to take the step toward complete originality. I hope other new authors follow her down this path.

I look forward to what Gina will do in the future. I expect nothing else but originality now that she has set the bar so high.

5 stars

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Fourteen-year-old Ella Carmichael’s corpse has been discovered buried in the woods. The suspect is a cyber stalker who found and kidnapped Ella as a result of her constant status updates on GrapeVyne, a social networking sight. Upon her sister’s death, Krista Carmichael becomes obsessed with stopping the stalker before he kills more girls by becoming another person through GrapeVyne. Unfortunately, the stalker captures two more girls and kills one of them. The one who escaped thinks she can give the police an accurate description of the killer. David Carmichael, the girls’ father becomes obsessed with finding the killer’s face in public when he hears this. Ryan Adkins, founder and president of GrapeVyne is going crazy over his company’s bad publicity and begins doing all he can to stop the stalker from striking again. Soon his path crosses with Krista’s and the two of them join forces to stop the killer, but first they must discover his fake identity on GrapeVyne, which is not a simple task. While all this is transpiring, the killer is still on the loose…

Terri Blackstock crafts a realistic case addressing the dangers of Internet social networking, an interesting issue to me, because I know people like some of the characters in this book who constantly tell their friends what they’re doing and where they are on such social networking sites. This begs the question: whose fault is it if you are kidnapped by a cyber stalker-yours or the website’s? Terri explores this issue from different sides throughout the plot all while crafting an interesting case. Unfortunately, despite the good foundational idea, this book misses the Elite List because of borderline characters and typical suspense elements.

Krista, Ryan, David, and the others are all imperfect characters, yet without personalities. Not a single character in this book is perfect or is better than the next, yet Terri failed to take her characters to the next level by giving them personalities. Krista is the closest character to having a personality, but it is not finished. David is also an interesting character mostly because of the original role he plays in the plot. He is not an elderly grandfather character who spouts wisdom throughout the entire plot, thank God. His role is interesting and underused. The villain is probably the worst character because of his sheer normalcy. Most authors are not creative with their villains, allowing them to be monsters rather than people. Besides under-developed characters, the villain is Terri’s biggest character problem.

There is a very low-key romantic subplot, one of the more background ones I have ever read. However, it is so insignificant to the plot as a whole, its very existence is unnecessary. But there are worse problems that this. The unfolding of the case is realistic, filled with dead ends and mistakes. This book could have been Elite minus full characters had Terri eliminated the showdown scene cliche or at least had a key character die as a result. Since she did neither of these things, the plot’s rating suffered along with the character development’s rating.

All in all, Predator is not a cheap suspense plot because it departs from some cliches. But the cliches it does not depart from end up to be its downfall. Terri Blackstock has potential as an author; she just needs to work out the kinks.

3 stars

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