SEABORN - A Bit of a Curve Ball

Yay! Blogger finally provides an image widget that actually has a built-in link! No more having to make them myself! Therefore, you will see more Featured Debuts around here. Yes, I'm a bit lazy, sometimes. I know perfectly well how to code in HTML; I'm just hate doing it. That's why this blog doesn't have three columns, much as I'd love them.

On to SEABORN. I'm enjoying it very much, and just finished with chapter 14 out of 38. The chapters on Corina, the poor girl who got taken over by the sorcerer Aleximor, have been action-packed and riveting. Things are a bit slower with Kassandra, who is rather languidly moving toward her goal of taking on her grandfather.

Howard introduces some wonderfully unique concepts here, such as the bleed, which is a way of passing magical power from one generation to another. I don't want to give any of it away, but I loved the idea. Also, Kassandra is the Wreath-Wearer, which I'm terribly curious about, and the details are being fed to the reader at a great hungry-for-more pace.

Until I got to just past 1/3rd of the way through, I had nothing to complain about. That's when I got slammed with an unexpected gross-out scene. This shady character showed up and was going to do something truly dispicable. However, we hardly got a chance to begin to hate him when he is dealt way in a horrific manner that nothing in the previous chapters prepared me for. It would be as out-of-place as dislocated eyeballs would be in Willow. You know, Willow had some gross scenes. But nothing like displaced eyeballs. And you don't even what to know what happens to those displaced eyeballs. Or maybe you do, if you like that sort of thing.

Happily, the next chapter is where we finally got to meet the Seaborn historian, Michael Henderson!

SEABORN - Opening Chapters

I've been interested in reading SEABORN by Chris Howard for quite some time, and I knew within a few chapters that I wanted to cover it as an as-I-read-it review. Now that I'm 75 pages into the novel and on Chapter 10, its time to get started.

I can tell that I'll be covering Chris's online endeavors along with his novel. He has two blogs with a lot of gadgets. He's been to India, which I find fascinating because I've been there as well. (I wish I had gone there when I had a digital camera!) He also is an artist.

But on to the novel. Here is the cover blurb:

There is a world deep under the sea, a kingdom that has endured thousands of years without the modern world knowing it exists. Those who dwell there are the SEABORN

Kassandra is the Seaborn king's granddaughter--the one he wishes he'd killed when he'd had the chance. She comes from the sea, but she has spent her whole life in exile on the surface, learning to control strange and frightening powers she barely understands. But now she's ready to declare war on the murderous king.

Corina Lairsey is a scuba-diving Californian who has freed herself from a controlling relationship...and finds herself in another. Only this time, Aleximor, an ancient Seaborn sorcerer, is literally inside her head and wearing her body. Corina must strive for control of her self, fighting against time as Aleximor trades pieces of her life away in exchange for power over the path between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Aleximor wants revenge for his 400-year imprisonment and his dangerous machinations threaten to destroy both young women and the world of the Seaborn.

The first few chapters set up the events described in the blurb. It begins with Kassandra wandering along a road at night, apparently coming to terms with a power she has over the water, and with voices inside her head. These voices have names and personalities . . . and they call her "my lady."

On the other side of the country, in California, Corina is going for her weekly scuba diving trip. She is a cellist, which means she is a character just designed to engage my interest. She has also just went through a nasty break-up. She goes diving and while under the sea, she encounters Aleximor.

Aleximor is startled to find that the person he took over is not one of the Seaborn. He struggles to get used to his new body, before he kills her through his ignorance. In the meantime, Corina has become a prisoner in her own body, aware of everything that Aleximor is doing, but unable to do anything, herself.

Each chapter heading has an excerpt from various works, some of them the fictional journal of Michael Henderson. I'm hoping we get to actually meet him. It is an interesting device by which the author is able to feed the reader dribs and drabs of the intriguing history of the Thalassogeneis--the Seaborn.

I actually got a bit further than this, but I still seem to be in the midst of the action, so I'll blog on that for my next entry. So far this is quite an engaging read. The writing is polished and lyrical and the pace is relaxed without being plodding. I'm looking forward to reading more and I'll be very surprised if I don't finish it over the weekend.