Review: Fallen Embers – Book One of the Embers Series by: Lauri J. Owen

Review: Fallen Embers – Book One of the Embers Series by: Lauri J. Owen

Title: Fallen Embers – Book One of the Embers Series
Author: Lauri J. Owen
Author Website: www.lauriowen.com
Genre: Paranormal romance
Publisher: Pearlsong Press
Price: ebook format: $9.95; Trade Paperback format: $19.95
Link to purchase

What I liked:  She wished she knew how to call fire. She strained, tried to remember what she had felt like when the fire came. She felt nothing. No spark, nothing.

Kiera pulled out from under his arm and turned to look at him. “What the hell are you saying? That I have to have sex with you?”

I loved him, I loved him, I loved him. Oh God, I loved him and he betrayed me.

“I have her ring!” Thesin bellowed, stalking toward the couch. “That bitch belongs to me tonight!”

After a while she came to the river. It was smooth and flat, and frozen solid. She stood in front of it. She wished that she could make her heart that cold and smooth.

“Kiera,” and now he sounded condescending, and she hated hit for it…, “no one can expect a man to limit his affections to one woman.”

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Kiera and her nephew Alex are transported to another land, another time, and another realm. In this strange and bewildering world, Kiera’s natural instincts for survival kick in as she scrambles to find the way back home. Finding herself without any modern day conveniences, Kiera has to summon a strength deep from within her to survive if she and Alex are to ever escape. After all it is back home where she must find a way to avenge for her sister Julia’s death for home is where the heart belongs.

Or will Kiera have to surrender her heart to this new land and to the men she feels at once both strongly attracted to and uncertain whether they can handle such a feisty female. Kiera must forge her own path in this version of Alaska that she could never have imagined. Will her spunky instinct and personality be her salivation or her greatest threat?

In Fallen Embers, the first book of the promising Embers Series, author Lauri J. Owen delivers a powerful homage to paranormal writing. Using a gifted combination of thoughtful cultural awareness, a determined heroine, and vivid descriptiveness, Owen gives readers an incredible journey into a world where Kiera must learn everything she can to get home safely. Fighting off armies and learning magic skills are not her only lessons. Kiera meets the dashing Laszlo who threatens to steal her heart; the heart that remains firmly fixed on her home and getting there.

Or is her heart seeking a new home?

Book blurb:  Was it the unnatural flame that transported Kiera and her nephew to an alternate feudal Alaska one snowy afternoon, or did the strange dog’s attack have something to do with it? All she knows is that now she and Alex are in an icy land ruled by a class of decadent mages who have enslaved the shapechanging, indigenous peoples. Kiera soon finds herself fighting to save three children from an army—and does so by summoning fire.

Before she can find her way home she must learn more about the local systems of magic and her own powers. On whose side should she fight? Whom can she trust—Marco, the young mage she saves, or fierce and handsome Laszlo, the slave captain of ruling Lord Vayu’s army?

Kiera’s path leads her deeper into Alaska, to joy and to heartbreak. Choosing to follow her heart may cost her everything.

Book excerpt:  A hammer pounded inside Kiera’s head. Her throat hurt and her mouth was dry, and she felt overheated and muzzy. She tried to turn but her arm cramped, and then her stomach churned and threatened to empty. A groan managed to find its way out, but she lay still and held her eyes closed. She breathed deeply, slowly, willing her body to settle. Was she hungover? What had happened? Why couldn’t she remember?
She heard the rustle of clothes and opened her eyes, then turned her aching head toward the sound. It was Alex, lying a few feet away on his back in the snow. She tried to puzzle it out. Why was Alex sleeping in the snow, flat on his back with his arm across his face? As if he felt her gaze, he opened his eyes and turned them toward her. He yawned.

Spots of blood stained the front of his blue coat.

Memories snapped back. She gasped and pushed herself up as fast as she could, looking everywhere for the dog, hands up, horse stance, breathing heavy, heart hammering, ready for its attack, but it was nowhere in sight. She turned in a fast circle to her right, then the opposite direction in a second, slow circle, looking carefully at everything. But everything was silent and cold and covered with snow. And no tracks. At least no new ones. A sketch of new snow had recently fallen, and it half-filled some animal tracks that meandered across the clearing, leading here and there, though none came near where she and Alex had lain. And none, she told herself with a swallow, were big enough to have been made by that big dog.

She blew a tremulous breath. Where was that damned dog?

And how bad was her neck?

By: Tammy Elizabeth Southin