Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Surviving Serendipity-Jacquelyn Sylvan

Surviving Serendipity
Jacquelyn Sylvan
Quake, Jan 2008, $14.99
ISBN: 9781590805862

June lives a nice comfortable middle class life as she approaches her twenty-first birthday. She expects a little celebration with her friends Ashleigh and Shannon, and her fiancé Kyle, but nothing life changing. She is disappointed that Kyle could not get out of a late meeting.

However, when a somewhat tipsy June enters her unlit apartment after designated driver Ashleigh drops her off, someone wearing purple pants that belonged in a Johnny Depp swashbuckler or a genie is in her kitchen. The stranger abducts her although June has no idea why as she has no one can pay a ransom to free her. She quickly realizes no one she knows has the technology to pay a ransom as her kidnapper takes her across the galaxy to on the planet Thallafrith where she is the only surviving member of the royal family that has ruled the kingdom of Prendawr. Her people expect Princess June to use the magical skills she did not know she had to save the day. With the guidance of Halryan the sorcerer and the nearly extinct blue warriors, June feels so unready to fight the evil that is destroying her new old world.

This is a fabulous young adult sci-fi novel that is much more complex than the above paragraphs describe as the heroine learns how relative truth is to the beholder. Everyone seems to have a personal agenda while interpreting events to foster the achievement of that objective regardless of side effects on others. June is great as a displaced person wondering how she fell through the rabbit hole from being a young American whose worst fear is butt growth to being a world savior mage with enemies who want her dead. SURVIVING SERENDIPITY is a superb story as June just wanted a little excitement in her life.

Harriet Klausner

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