A. Sparrow

This is the sequel to the book "Xenolith" and continues the story of Dr. Frank and his search for Elizabeth, his believed to be dead wife who has actually crossed a trans-dimensional portal to another world. I enjoyed "Xenolith" tremendously, but confess to being disappointed with "Peregrin." In this volume the story gets too diluted, I believe, and that leaves the reader struggling to follow. Like a nylon rope beginning to unravel, the multitude of characters separates and so Sparrow tries to keep up with multiple stories at once. In addition there are new characters introduced to help resolve a plot that could have been, perhaps, better resolved in other ways. While I enjoyed Sparrow's writing and thought the plot was a good one, and even the confusion of multi-character story lines might have worked, but the conflict is not well resolved and I was very unsatisfied with the ending. While, I believe it was meant to build to a climactic battle which would thrust all of the characters back together to achieve victory (something reminiscent of the LOTR: Return of the King), the way Sparrow resolves it doesn't account well for all of the characters. This was very unsatisfying to me as a reader as I was seeking a bit more closure after following the story lines all the way to the end. A bit disappointing.… (mere)

A copy of this e-book was received from Member Giveaways Program of LibraryThing.

The story is one I have never run across before…it combines a man, Dr. Frank Bowen returning to Belize and searching for his wife, Liz who disappeared from there twenty years ago and then Frank falls into a new parallel world and encounters different warring factions from this new realm.

A huge distraction for me as the reviewer was all the typos and grammatical errors throughout the narrative. Adding to that was the switching from one group of soldiers to another and then back to Frank making the story hard to follow. The romantic aspect of finding his missing wife in this new parallel world was appealing but I felt that the ending of this scenario could have been fleshed out more.

Interesting read but still too confusing for me.

This book might be of interest to readers who are sci-fi/fantasy enthusiasts who are prepared for a complex story that explores travel between two worlds using xenoliths or stones.… (mere)

This book has an interesting premise, travel between worlds via xenoliths, or stones. However, it was annoying to read because of the typographical and grammatical errors. Also, there are so many different warring factions in the imaginary world that it becomes confusing. The shift in the story between the exploring groups and the original character was not clearly noted. I had several "aha" moments when I figured out which group was being written about and where they were. Unfortunately, I didn't have many of those moments about the actual storyline.… (mere)

This book was awesome! The author has an incredible use of metaphor that reminds me of a drink of cool water on a really hot day. The plot was also really cool, just because it was so unusual. The book's about a malaria consultant who is targeted to have his identity stolen by the most prominent assassin in west Africa. Instead, the consultant kills the assassin, but then is mistaken for the assassin and decides to impersonate him. Then his cat sitter, who unknowingly helped the assassins, decides to fly out to Africa to help him. It's a pretty sick book, I must say. I also loved that I got the book for free on my Kindle, which means that I can forgive the fact that it hadn't been edited for errors yet (not even spell-checked). The book's so good that it isn't a big bother though. I'd totally recommend this novel.… (mere)