Tuesday, January 3, 2017

When Our Worlds Collide - a Dystopian gem with a Greco-Roman vibe

Happy New Year, commies and fellow Deplorables!

Nothing instills hope like a good Dystopian/Apocalyptic novel. Today's guest is Kellie Wallace, who has become a frequent flyer on my blog. She's here today with a new release When Our Worlds Collide.

Synopsis:
As one city’s fate hangs in the balance, a woman’s destiny is about to be determined…

Amira Frost is forced to watch her home be invaded by the warmonger state, Argos. Divided into multiple class zones, the city’s once peaceful existence is threatened.

When an opportunity arises for Amira to get close to the General, she accepts with the hope that her new position as his personal food taster can help reclaim the municipality, but she is pulled deeper into his regime than she initially anticipated.

For every controlling force, a resistance is born…

The Ravens’ elusive leader, Grayson Roe, has one goal—to lead the resistance to victory against the barbaric military. Dedicated and ruthless, he sets out to use Amira to their advantage by offering her a proposal she's unable to refuse. Nothing will stop him from regaining control over his city and its people—not even the dark haired beauty whose loyalty seems questionable.

A city threatens to fall and a decision needs to be made…

As the battle rages, Amira is caught between two opposing forces and reevaluates her allegiance when her loyalty is tested. Her home is under attack, her friends and family are dying, and she is faced with a grueling decision that has the power to save or bring down an entire city.

When worlds collide, she must choose between saving her home or surrendering to the one man who threatens to destroy it all—including her.


My thoughts:
I have been following this young author's work for a number of years now, and I've read all of her books. She has produced a string of stimulating, extremely readable and memorable stand-alone novels. Her two topics of choice are WWII historical romances (with the emphasis on historical/military versus romance) and Dystopian/apocalyptic. It seems that every Tom, Dick and Harry writes Dystopian novels nowadays, and the quality is all over the board, with literary merit often compromised in favor of action. Dystopian fiction is a concept fiction. Just as sci-fi and horror movies do not require big name Hollywood stars to stand on their own, as long as the premise is good, same applies to Dystopian novels. One does not expect elaborate literary experiments in a Dystopian novel. But Wallace elevates her fiction a few notches above, because she does invest into character development and literary crafstmanship. "As Our Worlds Collide" has a distinct Greco-Roman vibe, as the characters and places have names that seem to be taken out of Greco-Roman mythology. But that's not the only ethnic pantheon that the author taps into. For instance, the protagonist's name is Amira, which means "princess" in Arabic. There is also a character named Vesna, which means "spring" in Russian. If you are into foreign languages, mythologies and world civilizations, you will enjoy this novel at a new level.

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