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The Tracks We Leave: The Stepuli Chronicles: Book One
Paperback
Series: Stepuli Chronicles Duet, Book 1
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ISBN13: 9798986879413
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc
Published: Nov 11 2022
Pages: 310
Weight: 0.74
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc
Published: Nov 11 2022
Pages: 310
Weight: 0.74
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
Warning: Moderate to explicit violence, moderate language, and mild sexual situations.
What People Are Saying: Jan-Christian Lupander-Goodreads ReviewThis SF book has a refreshing twist; the extra-terrestrials are the heroes, and the earthlings the baddies.
It begins innocently with Stacia, a nurse, and her wolfhound moving across the continent from Florida to Washington to a new workplace and home. They soon find out the neighboring house is inhabited by Jack, a handsome young man, his younger brother, and their teenage sister.
What follows is what one could expect, but soon there are unwelcome overtones in the relationship between the neighbors. At the workplace, another set of problems disturbs the atmosphere.
After this inauspicious-sounding start, Maggie Maxfield skillfully weaves an ever-tightening web of tension and mystery around the main characters and their friends. By alternating between Stasia's and Jack's points of view, she makes it easy for the reader to engage with both and get pulled into the story.
There are no bug-eyed green monsters, only normal humans with human strengths and weaknesses. The exception is that some are not humans in a strict sense and possess unheard-of capabilities. By only gradually revealing those capabilities, the author makes them feel normal; there is never any strangeness associated with them. That results in the conflict here appearing no different from that in a more earthbound thriller. Quite an achievement by the author and a great plus for the book's readability.
However, events eventually turn sinister, and only full use of the hidden capabilities makes survival possible. The ending is dramatic.
The book's strengths are its excellent readability and a gradually introduced plot. The reader is slowly introduced to the alien's world, and the special talents thus become no more exotic than exceptional muscular strength. Its only major weakness is that it ends too soon. But with a sequel being in preparation, I'm sure that is a weakness most readers can live with.
My final advice: Get this book! Stasia is a woman unmoored. Abandoned as a baby, she has little sense of who she is or where she belongs in the world. Seeking the answers, she jumps at a job opportunity in Washington. There, she meets Jack, a mysterious neighbor who is raising his younger sister and brother. Stasia is charmed by the family next door but finds their walls may be too high to climb.
Jack is fighting against the mysterious US government organization trying to bury him and his family. Born to an alien heritage, he works against a corrupt treaty to raise his sister and brother the best he can. When a human neighbor moves in next door, he feels his families secret, and freedom, are threatened. Jack and Stasia soon learn their similarities may eclipse their differences. That they may be exactly what the other needs.
And the government will learn the unfathomable lengths both humans and aliens will go to for those they love. Trigger Warnings: childhood abuse, death of a parent, internment, medical trauma, mental illness, forced insemination.
After this inauspicious-sounding start, Maggie Maxfield skillfully weaves an ever-tightening web of tension and mystery around the main characters and their friends. By alternating between Stasia's and Jack's points of view, she makes it easy for the reader to engage with both and get pulled into the story.
There are no bug-eyed green monsters, only normal humans with human strengths and weaknesses. The exception is that some are not humans in a strict sense and possess unheard-of capabilities. By only gradually revealing those capabilities, the author makes them feel normal; there is never any strangeness associated with them. That results in the conflict here appearing no different from that in a more earthbound thriller. Quite an achievement by the author and a great plus for the book's readability.
However, events eventually turn sinister, and only full use of the hidden capabilities makes survival possible. The ending is dramatic.
The book's strengths are its excellent readability and a gradually introduced plot. The reader is slowly introduced to the alien's world, and the special talents thus become no more exotic than exceptional muscular strength. Its only major weakness is that it ends too soon. But with a sequel being in preparation, I'm sure that is a weakness most readers can live with.
My final advice: Get this book! Stasia is a woman unmoored. Abandoned as a baby, she has little sense of who she is or where she belongs in the world. Seeking the answers, she jumps at a job opportunity in Washington. There, she meets Jack, a mysterious neighbor who is raising his younger sister and brother. Stasia is charmed by the family next door but finds their walls may be too high to climb.
Jack is fighting against the mysterious US government organization trying to bury him and his family. Born to an alien heritage, he works against a corrupt treaty to raise his sister and brother the best he can. When a human neighbor moves in next door, he feels his families secret, and freedom, are threatened. Jack and Stasia soon learn their similarities may eclipse their differences. That they may be exactly what the other needs.
And the government will learn the unfathomable lengths both humans and aliens will go to for those they love. Trigger Warnings: childhood abuse, death of a parent, internment, medical trauma, mental illness, forced insemination.
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