Beneath the Surface: The Lost Boy (Vol 1): An unwanted life is born from a traumatic death. Out of painful grief for the tragic loss of their beloved mother, Sean angrily blames and abandons his baby brother in the forest. He runs away hunting to escape his sorrow, never realizing the full consequences of his heartless act. The mysterious Queen of the Forest finds the child crying piteously and cannot resist comforting him. While she holds the tender child lovingly in her arms, she gazes into his future, but upon witnessing visions of horrific events, she steals him away into the Otherworld to protect him. When Sean returns and finds Erren gone, guilt consumes him. His repentant mind opens up enough to see his mother’s spirit telling him, “The forest took him.” Sean begins his noble quest to find his lost brother and to right the wrong he had done, unaware that his determined search is awakening his latent telepathic gift. He has a spiritual crisis as the forest becomes haunted with voices condemning him for his thoughtless crime. There is an unseen battle of wills as the mystical Queen Elaya tries to stop the guilty one from taking her little boy.
Excerpt:
Sean was like a foxhunter poised upon his horse with his hounds all around him, waiting for the blare of the trumpet to set him loose after the fleeing fox. Despite his doubts, Sean’s quest had taken him over into a realm where logic seemed to hold no sway and he was now as bound to his chosen task as if the magic of the mythical Wild Hunt had caught hold of him. With her last words, his dead mother had pulled back her bow like the great Celtic Goddess of the Black Forest, Abnoba the Huntress, and had launched her eldest son like a shining arrow of hope into the dark forest to find her little boy.
My Beneath the Surface all began as a simple paragraph in my autobiography. I wanted to put a small note in my book about the daydreams I had when I was a teenager. That paragraph grew into a chapter, so I took it out of my autobiographer and worked on that instead. That chapter grew into a book, into two books, into three, four, five ... and now I have an entire saga of about 10 books! It all started with a single paragraph!
AMAZON.COM
(SECOND EDITION KINDLE)
Compelling Sci-Fi Fantasy April 10, 2013
Format:Kindle Edition
I received a copy of this book for honest review. `Beneath the Surface: The Lost Boy' is the first part of a series and tells the story of two brothers, Sean and Erren, and the impacts they have on each other's lives.
This book has been very carefully thought out, and the author goes to great lengths to show the detail she has gone into to create the world her story takes place in. There are maps, a prologue that tells how the story came to be, and an introduction which details important past events of the world within the story. If you enjoy this kind of detail there is plenty to get your teeth into here. If on the other hand you prefer to skip straight into the story, in my opinion you would not be lost without this information.
The story gets off to a reasonably slow start with an introduction to Sean and his family, but this set up is essential for what comes after. The story really takes off when Sean makes a terrible mistake that will change his brother's life and in turn his own. There is a lot of emotional depth here, I really felt for the characters and what they were going through. The heart-breaking moment that changes Erren's life is particularly emotionally charged. The tension really wracks up from this moment forward, making for enormously compelling reading.
There is an interesting mix of science fiction and fantasy in this novel. I would probably say it felt a bit more like a fantasy novel than sci-fi with the Forest Queen, elementals, etc. If you like poetry, there are some verses entwined within the story.
At the end of the story there is an epilogue which tells some of the things that are going to happen in the second book. I personally would have preferred not to have read this, so if you're anything like me and want a surprise I would advise against reading the epilogue. There is also an appendix where you can look up various things that may have had you stumped while reading (Abbreviations, etc).
All in all I would say this was a very well planned out book with a captivating and emotional storyline. The extra material was a bit of an information overload for me but the story itself was fantastic.
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