​In Sisters of the Perilous Heart, author Sandra Vasher crafts an intriguing adventure tale set in a low tech medieval culture on a remote, alien world, sprung from Earthly explorers of the far future. Using a clever scientific premise, she creates two conflicting future “races”, Mortals and Immortals, and a well-thought-out “magic” system based on the source of their differences.
Against this backdrop of science fantasy, Sisters follows the perilous journeys, both geographical and emotional, of two diverse groups of characters who are drawn together and then separated by events as they unfold around them. Most primary characters are well-drawn, and the reader will come to care about what happens to them; others are less defined. Author Vasher’s writing is crisp, and her dialog is both believable and true to character. Her scene-setting is sparse at times, leaving more to the reader to fill in than might be wise, but the plot and narrative flow well.
Sisters in intended to be the first book in the Mortal Heritance series, and as such both stands alone well and yet does leave the reader wondering what will happen next. Something of a coming-of-age journey of one of the main protagonists brings a minimal romantic aspect to the story, which may be expanded on in future volumes. Excerpts from fictional works such as diary entries, reference books and scientific journal articles provide some insight into one group of characters who are never revealed in any detail, but the reader could be left wondering about the true reasons the protagonists are in conflict with them. One hopes this is intentional on the author’s part and will be clarified later in the series.
But Sisters is mainly about adventure, conflict both armed and unarmed, magic, royal intrigue, and the beginnings of a culture’s race for survival.

Rise of the Phoenix by T. Isajanyan is filled with beautiful description of the bronze age. The story is epic, a little slow at times, but builds a great world. There is a nice balance of the seers predictions, fate, and still some unexpected surprises for the reader.

The epic heroic tale stars Hayisi, Arme, and Hayadusta. Working the plot down to the final plot and fate of Arme and Hayadusta works well.
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Rise of the Phoenix is written moderately formal, which is fitting of the style and period. This helps bring you into the novel and give you a better feel of the time period. More character development would be nice as at times their development feels more superficial. Long blocks of narration do well at explaining the world, but slows she book down at times. 

   Murder creek starts with an unsolved disappearance. Toss in one journalism student, and you get an totally unexpected ending.
   Murder Creek is a slow novel, working towards building up to one final reveal. It follows a journalism student working on her final project who decided to focus on Murder Creek and a cold case surrounding one women. 
    The author, Jane Suen, uses short chapters which helps build tension, move the story along, and makes for a nice read when you need to be able to put the book down often. 

​Opera would be proud of you!


​This book holds a lot of good information for us up at the last-minute people. Five Morning Routines of Highly Successful People (FIVE) touches on health benefits, meditation, and planning. It’s an easy and fast read. The author touches on the routines of famous people such as Opera, Obama, and Will Smith, and how their daily routines help them through the chaos of their daily lives. FIVE also is not too technical and keeps it at an easy level anyone can understand.