Once Upon Another World (Book One of the Salak'patan Series) by Shiva Winters
The title and the cover almost had me thinking 'fairy tale'.
Once I dove in feet first it was more like Zelazny's Amber series and Farmers Tier series rolled together and given a special Shiva Winters touch. Raven Sinclair is a powerful character well matched by his counterpart LeShana, who is not only lovely but also as powerful and kick-ass as Raven.
Suffice it to say, I loved this book, It's a five star novel with a few hick-ups. Depending on the copy you have there could be a large number of grammatical errors. There has since the first print date been an edit that fixes many of those. I can live with some of this in dialogue- no one speaks perfectly all the time. This book is offered free, but it's nice to see that even with the free there is an effort by the author to improve.
The story starts with Raven on Earth trying to keep his group of special people safe from those who might exploit them.
Enter LeShana and possibly more people who want to take advantage.
It takes a while for Raven to trust these people, but it's important not only to him but to them because he has a past with them that he's not aware of.
The overall story- the plot the theme and the character development are all pretty solid. And though it seems this might be the least favorite of the Authors choices of her own work I think it's a great starting point to begin the series.
As it stands Once Upon Another World is a well packed novel with a fairly tight plot that has plenty of twists to keep the reader guessing. It also demonstrates some skill in world making that Shiva should be proud of. She has a writing style that I was comfortable with, it seems to be consistent and improves as the series progresses.
This is an awesome first novel and a fantastic series of books.(Although I believe it's a first for the author only in this genre.)
If you like the Zelazny novels or the Farmer series you should enjoy this series.
J.L. Dobias