The Spark Form Chronicles Collected Edition
LGBT Science Fiction
MDM Projects
March 11, 2019
592
An over the top performer guarding his companion’s right to life.
A genius programmer striving to retrieve her boss’s property.
An ex-mercenary sick of the abuse that she and her girlfriend receive.
A teenage girl desperately seeking to understand her past.
An old man intent on living on his own terms.
Five professional card players. Five reasons to fight. One thing in common: Their lives will be touched by the existence of the AI known as Carnival.
Review by Madison Davis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
After three starts, I was finally able to get through the entire book. The Spark Form Chronicles collection isn’t bad. So much happens in the first book, I got lost and had to re-start the next time to understand what was going on.
Matt Doyle didn’t write about a card game the way we know it. The story plays at the end of the current millennium. Consequently, the ‘world’ and its technology has developed. The society that was built is not really working, and the people are barely hanging on.
Now, I don’t want to give away too much of the story, just permit me to mention what I liked about the story, the plot, the characters, and what I did not enjoy about the book.
The book to me was an enjoyable read after I finally found my way into the story. I saw the talent of the author to lead me into his world. I felt the story, and I was within the book. I followed the plot, and I found the descriptions more and more detailed and easier to find myself within the games and the stories.
The characters were well developed, and each one had their own strength and purpose. They play fantastically together to build and continue the story. I couldn’t decide on a favorite character, and that is quite rare, I admit. Usually, I am quite fast to get my eyes on one character, but in these books, I found them all equally built and useful/necessary for the story and plot. That doesn’t mean they’re very similar. Each one is just simply unique within their own spirit and being.
There was quite some ‘magic & fantasy’ mixed into the plot and story. At first I was a bit bugged by that fact, but later on, I found it added quite some substance and explanation to the books.
What I did not like too much was the constant change of the POV. While I found it easier with each new book, it still made it hard for me to orientate within in the story and get used to the new point of view I had to look at the plot now. Once I got used to it and read easier and lighter, the POV changed again.
All in all, the author has created an interesting series with well-developed characters and a quite gripping story plot. I found the constantly changing POV disturbed my reading pleasure. That is the main reason for removing half a star.
Still, I would definitely recommend this series to any regular reader of Science Fiction.