Book Review: Entanglements
Posted by tmycann on Mar 8th, 2012 in indie, Review | 2 comments
Once again my Twitter addiction paid off for me: on February 20, @prmason reminded all her followers: “Entanglements (a full-length urban fantasy/paranormal romance) FREE for only a few more hours at Amazon.” I hadn’t actually read any of her other work, and I always enjoy a good urban fantasy, so I wandered over to Amazon and downloaded the eBook.
Naturally, I ran out of time for a week or two (and it really is easy to forget the various eBooks you’ve downloaded in various formats for various readers), but then I had that trip. And its concomitant hour and a half of being trapped in a plane. So I poked through my phone looking for some kind of entertainment to while away the enforced idleness, and discovered this… again.
The blurb for this book was so vague I didn’t even know the protagonist was a teenager until I started reading. So the whole young adult thing that I had been trying to wean myself off of crept up on me without warning:
She was driven by love.
He was bound by duty.
Together they were swept through a vortex to a world of danger.
Still, it was enjoyable. Mason caught the angst of being a teen in the midst of horrifying drama (I certainly classify a father’s madness as true horror!) and peer drama (will he date me, won’t he?) with a deft hand. Kizzy is a complex character who plays with the perception of “sullen teenager” while having real reasons to be one. One of the truly endearing early scenes caught the age’s tentative approach in such true-to-life fashion I had my own flash-back (minus the whole texting thing, which still seems… foreign… to me):
“If you want to go on a date, I’ll take you.” Franky’s pale face went bright red with a blush that seemed to start at his forehead and seep down to disappear into the collar of his shirt.
“Franky, you’re like a –” I swallowed down the word brother. “I like you. But we’re just friends.”
Now I knew what the word crestfallen meant. His face actually sagged.
My phone pinged and I glanced at the face. A text from Petra: I might as well be living in Siberia with no boyfriend and no best friend.
The book is written in classic three-act form and does a good job building a through-line based on solid science (fiction?) regarding alternate realities, wormholes, and the things that connect us to each other. In fact, the author introduces us to a basic science lecture about relativity and wormholes during an argument (that they shouldn’t be having during class) among Kizzy’s friends. The way the two opposing conversations are overlapped is a nice foreshadowing of the ultimate message of the book and speaks to the author’s commitment to her themes.
There were a few points where Mason pushed the unreality just far enough that I surfaced from my suspension of disbelief (and noticed a typo or two), but generally I would classify this as an enjoyable merging of sci-fi and fantasy appropriate for both young and adult audiences who like seeing the bad guy get outmaneuvered and the happy ending we all wish we could have had for the tragedies of our lives. For a measly $2.99 at full price for the eBook, you will definitely be entertained for the several hours it takes to embrace a world where a human’s blood is the key to unlocking a portal between worlds, and all the complications that will introduce into space- and time-lines.
2 Responses to “Book Review: Entanglements”
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Sounds like an interesting read!
Thanks so much. You are kind for giving my book such a lovely, and thorough, review. : )