The Beginning of the End: Book One

The Beginning Of The End:Book One by Michael Edward I strongly suggest first reading a bit about the author here and perhaps check the author information at Amazon.[...] [...] :: That's just to prepare you for his style. I liked the story. I love science fiction and it had some elements of that. It did have a bit of horror, which I'm not so much a fan of. Redeeming quality here being that the Draken Sword leaves a mark and drains life but doesn't make a mess. The story starts-possibly somewhere far in the future. Heather has no memory and someone is trying to help her as she struggles. The help is in the form of Mind Traveling to the past. We're not told how this is done. She Mind Travels to Seaborn where it gets a little disorienting as we get acquainted with somewhere close to a dozen people and then quickly Mind Travel through Dasha. Dasha has learned Mind travel from Ikron, a being who seems to be in her mind or something, and now we learn that it's accomplished using another person, Perry's, memories. This takes us way into the past to visit the birth of Dasha's Grandfather, Jason Writer. There's a bit of a scary scene where it almost sounds like his mother thinks she's giving birth to the anti-christ. As it turns out she and another person die that night and she has left instruction for her son. For some reason Jason's dad waits until he's eighteen before giving him these.(and never reads it himself.) The same night 5 dark energy forces have been brought to Earth, these seem to be Ethin's warriors or some such. We leap forward again to Jason as a teenager. It takes a while to build up some steam from here. We have to get acquainted with everyone. Mostly because a lot of people will die. This is one of those slaughter fest type stories, which is where the horror part of the story is. There's a back story-or another story within the story within the story that talks about another world or universe where Ethin was a great warrior who was defeated by an army of people in some sort of betrayal. Feeling a need for revenge Ethin has a plan that involves coming into our world and preparing his new army. There's some sort of restriction to what he can do here and there is a time limit so things start to move quickly as our heroes try to stop him. In this first time limit segment Ethan is limited to the specific area with a specific body count to generate the next phase. Jason is integral to the task of stopping Ethin. There were rough spots here for me because there was a lot of jumping around from person to person. The point of view seemed to go beyond being in Perry's memories. This seems to be so that we get to know someone up until they are ended. And that's a bit of an oddity in this book- the word kill seems to have been replaced with end. I've no idea why- maybe this is something to do with this genre. Of course there are several books to this so not everything gets resolves, but its filled with some interesting ideas and strange world building. It doesn't always command my attention though I will want to finish the saga-it might take me a while to get to it. But, part of that is because I have a lot of unread stuff in my kindle. J.L. Dobias

The Beginning Of The End:Book One by Michael Edward I liked the premise of this book. I liked the internal story. I would have loved to be able to say I loved this book- but I can’t. And, I do understand that there is a certain kink in the method of this writer- I just think that someone reading this should come prepared. It might just be me, so take this with a grain of salt. After all, I watch movies with similar genre element, but not too many times do I read books of this genre. There were several things that started out as little annoyances and just kept building into grating elements. First I’ll give some back ground on the story. We start with Heather, who seems to have had an accident or something and has lost her memories. Then there is a disembodied voice that tries to help her through her panic as she becomes aware of memories and realizes she has a brother and she thinks something is wrong. The voice tries to calm her and then proceeds to say that she’s going to go on some sort of mind travel journey into the past to obtain a full picture of something that will help her. Then, apparently in the mind travel, we are at Seaborn a quaint community that seems to be quiet and sheltered. When we arrive, there seems to be something which is going to cause a stir in their community. We start with a group of youths Dasha, Jorn, and Kasper. They are concerned about their friend Maggie and her father Orloff, something is wrong but they are afraid to approach the adults of the council. This is where two of the problems start for me. And, again it might just be me, but there are several-not all-but a lot of times where it looks like contractions are avoided. Now I know some people don’t like them in some writing, but it began to sound a lot like a certain android we will not mention. There were a few contractions, but many times the lack of them showed up in dialogue and sounded stiff and unnatural. The next thing is that it begins a rather annoying trend that works into the entire novel. This could be a device for part of how this Heather is seeing things but it’s still annoying. We begin head hopping back and forth between the three each time we get the full thoughts and emotions of these people and its like some hot potato game. When they link up with the adults it hops over to them quickly. Now we have Karen, Savannah, Jackson,Gordon, Orloff, Tracy and Perry. It seems that Orloff’s wife and daughter are missing. And soon we find out that Dasha has been communicating with some voice in her head that takes the name Ikron. Ikron has been taking Dasha on Mind travels and now, using Perry’s memories, is going to take her to her grandfather’s birth. This feels like that mirror in a mirror thing starting here. Now its Dasha watching(maybe Heather watching Dasha watch) and we go to Carol and John Writer, Doctor Holfman, and Tom Brady. Carol is nineteen pregnant and frightened. Doc is getting prepared to deliver her and everyone is excited. Carol starts ranting about it being a mistake to have the child suggesting they should have aborted it. At the time of birth the lights go out and when they come back on there is one baby and 5 dark clouds of energy. It’s difficult to say if Carol delivered all of that but that’s the suggestion. Carol declares that Ethin is here and the room grows cold and Sheriff Tom Brady acts like he’s gone mad. A strange person shows up and in the end only John and Holfman and the baby-Jason- are left alive. Fast forward to when Jason is a teen. The cast of names grows exponentially. We get to know some of them dearly and the head hopping begins to get thick though I think I understand it’s purpose. This novel is like some of my old favorite movies; Aliens, Terminator, all the night of the living dead. People are going to die and it seems we’ll be in many of their heads at the time that that occurs. That means we’re introduced to all of them even some that would seem minor just for this privilege. This is the hot potato of death. Well, its just a hot potato for a while until the terrible five show up.Of course these five are somehow related to Jason. And Jason is the only one who can do whatever must be done with Ethin and so they are out to get him but they also have to rack up some soul points by killing over a hundred people. Only they call it end or ending them. They do this seemingly quite freely using a weapon that causes no excess blood. This is okay with me because I hate those descriptive bloody scenes anyway. So, other than Jason don’t get too fond of anyone. Now, I really do like some of the basic idea here. There’s a parallel or alternated universe where Ethin has been defeated by his enemies, so he is going to come to Earth and prepare for a comeback. This somehow involves having only a small pocket opened into our world that can only be expanded after a specific amount of ‘ends’ to the inhabitants. Jason’s mother has left him some information that will help him which his father has so sparingly left till just this very last moment to give to his son. There’s even a part where things get so bad they have to get away quickly and somehow leave the book with all the clues, so they have to come back. All this time we’re doing head hopping, even into the head of very minor characters that we’ll get to know long enough to watch them die from an up close and personal place. So if you like those breathtaking seat of your pants thrillers that show you everything-except this time for the blood and gore- this is the story for you. It has, I think four books, and I do want to know what happens. Maybe even find out how Ethin and his cronies decide, which people have value- what that means- and whether that means they are safe from ending. For me this was a bit difficult reading- I’d expected it to be the wholesale slaughters that would stop me-it turns out there were other issues. Maybe most everyone else can get past my issues and enjoy the nifty plot and the excitement. I still need to find out why Heather had to hop to Dasha who had to hop to Jason through Perry and how Perry’s memories manage to do that wild head to head hopping. Since Jason seems to be Dasha’s grandfather I guess we can assume he will make it through the four books. Or at least most of them. By all means visit the author’s website to get some insight to his process. Sural