Bonnie S. Calhoun: Storm

By Kelly Bridgewater 

Selah's mind and life are beginning to fracture. Can she complete the Third Protocol before it's too late.

As Selah and her companions mourn the loss of those who died in the Mountain, they are faced with a new threat. Selah must complete the Third Protocol before she fractures and loses herself completely. All clues lead to the West, but what will they find when they get there? The other side of the mountains hold unknown perils--volcanic ash, dangerous storms, and strange new settlements that could hold the keys to Selah's quest . . . or lead to her destruction.

The clock is ticking and Selah's abilities are growing--along with the list of those out for her blood. Selah must find the strength within herself to keep going and complete the mission for which so many have sacrificed so much.

But have she and her companions pinned their hopes on nothing more than a legend?

From Amazon

My Review:

I have followed Bonnie Calhoun on her Stone Braide Chronicles journey, and I have enjoyed the first two books in the series. Jumping right back into the third installment took a little longer to remember what happened in the first two books. But I remember what affected Selah and how she needed to hunt for the Third Protocol to survive, so I had a pretty good idea what I was jumping into when I picked up this book.

Like before, Calhoun knows how to jump into Selah's perspective and make me feel what she feels as she wonders how to save others with her blood. The writing is concise and realistic. I had no problem with understanding where I was as Calhoun described the different settings and the air machines that Selah and her family traveled around in.

As I mentioned before, I had a hard time jumping right into the action from the first page because I forgot what happened at the end of Lightning because it has been a while since I read that book. I had to pick up Lightning and flip to the last couple of chapters, than return to Storm. I had a problem with the plot in Storm. The story takes off pretty quickly with Selah fighting for her life, than it moves faster and faster, but then Selah and her family leave to Cleveland, and the story slows down drastically. She really isn't running for her life anymore. Selah is training to become stronger, so I had a hard time staying focused at this time.

Again, I meet up with Selah, the marked girl that some want to kill and others want to save. In this edition, Selah is more personable. She has a heart for the people who are living in these communities, especially the downtrodden and outcast of the community. I really enjoyed seeing Selah mature and worry about others more than herself. She impressed me with her skills and ability to nurture others. She reminds me of what I think a hero should do.

While the story is original and unpredictable, there really is no mention of God in the story at all. Fans of any age could enjoy Storm. Even though it is marketed toward the growing popular teenage dystopian novel, adults could enjoy the story too. I think fans of The Hunger Games would enjoy this novel and could see it being made into a movie.

Bonnie Calhoun did leave the ending up in the air, so there could be another book in the series. I'm not sure if there is or not, but it appears that Calhoun left the readers to guess.

With true end of the world issues, Bonnie S. Calhoun invites her readers back into the life of Selah and her family as they run for their lives in a post-apocalyptic world. I really hope this wasn't the last book in the series, but only time with tell.

I received a complimentary copy of Bonnie S. Calhoun's Storm from Revell Publishing and the opinions stated are all my own. 

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Bonnie S. Calhoun: Lightning

By Kelly Bridgewater

Description:

After she found her real father, life for Selah should have felt settled. But the horrors have just begun. In her broken world of toxic earth and tribal clashes, Selah must 
battle the forces of nature alongside those in the Mountain who are calling for her blood. Haunted by the pain of mounting losses, she forges on, seeking her lost family and 
uncovering new mysteries. But the ultimate betrayal of her own body may soon make her quest impossible as it becomes apparent that what has made her new could also drive her to a life of madness.

My Thoughts:

After reading Thunder by Bonnie S. Calhoun and truly enjoying it, I couldn’t wait for the next installment in her futuristic Dystopian Stonebraide Chronicles. This time around there is a prequel to cover the time period between Thunder and Lightning. It is entitled Aftershock. It is about fifty pages, so it didn’t take long to remind me of the key characters and the situations that were occurring.

From Amazon

I liked that Lightning picked up right around the time that Aftershock ended, and how Calhoun started the story with a dilemma where Selah needed to find her mother. It gripped my attention and took me away to another time, wrapped in chaos and confusion.

While on the journey to free her parents, Calhoun creates this fallen world with great detail. I could see the danger and the Air Wagon as it lurked through the woods. I really felt like I was there, running for survival along with the crew.

The main issue in Lightning centers on Selah wanting to find her stepfather, mother, and little brother. She needs to protect them and free them, so Selah travels through the woods and on the boundaries of Stonebraide, but ultimately has to go back into the dreaded mountain where she freed her father, Gale, in Thunder. Emotionally, Calhoun really doesn’t allow me to feel a connection with Selah. I know she wants to free the family that raised her, but other than that, I really don’t feel emotionally connected to her at all. A word of caution there are a couple of point of view shifts that occur on the same page. One minute, I was in Selah’s point of view than in jumped into Treva. Made me read this section again.

Once Selah enters the mountain, the story picks up in pace. One moment I am running through the Blue section, then crossing over to the Green section where I watch as Selah hides for her life. The last third of the book moved extremely fast, making me not want to put the book down. I really enjoyed how Calhoun placed timers at the beginning of each chapter near the end to hasten the dilemma’s urgency. The major event toward the end was unexpected and original. I liked how the story ends.

Even though I did enjoy Lightning, I had a few issues with it. The first two-thirds of the book dragged on and on. I didn’t see the point of them traveling around in circles on the time with a couple of encounters with troublemakers. None of the people they met really caused them any harm, even though Selah was a wanted fugitive. 

Second, when they arrived in the mountain, Calhoun has Selah run into Bethany, the scientist who causes a lot of trouble in Thunder, and now wants to destroy and use Selah’s blood. After an escape attempt from Bethany, Selah keeps running back into Bethany over and over again. I really wished Calhoun would have allowed Selah to run into different trouble. Why allow Selah to run into the person who wanted her dead a number of times?

Third, once in the mountain, I had a really hard time visualizing the surroundings. If I was inside of a mountain, then how are all these different colors or cities different from one another? What did they look like? Are they only different because of what work they do or the color of their t-shirt?

In true dystopian fashion, Bonnie S. Calhoun’s latest installment in the Stonebraide Chronicles Lightning features reoccurring characters and a fast paced last third of the book, but there are issues with detail while in the mountain and a villain who kept showing her face too many times too count. Even though this story was not my favorite of the two full-length novels and two novellas, I anxiously wait to see what happens to Selah and Bodhi in the next installment.

I received a complimentary copy of Lightning from Revell Publishing and the opinions stated are all my own. 

My Rating:  3.5 out of 5 stars 

Purchase Lightning

Bonnie S. Calhoun: Thunder

By K. L. Bridgewater

The latest rave in books and movies is the Young Adult dystopian stories, such as The Giver, The Hunger Games, and Divergent. With these books being made into movies, tons of younger children can watch these movies without actually reading the books. Teens and adults are flocking to the movie theater to watch these movies that show a world without any hope and controlled by the government. Whether the world kills a chosen person for sport or controls the emotions of its citizens. The fear of the government controlling its citizens is becoming more mainstream.

Why not jump on the bandwagon and create an Inspirational version? That is exactly what Bonnie S. Calhoun did with her latest book, Thunder. There is even a prequel for free on the Kindle entitled, Tremors.

Her story features a world that has been ravished by volcanoes, typhoons, tornadoes, and many other natural disasters. The world is a different landscape. A group of people hid in the Mountain when the troubles began. They have their own air system, and they are not allowed to leave the mountain to associate with the savages who have been harmed by the poison leaking into the air.

On the outside, Selah Rishon Chavez is betrothed to marry someone a month after her eighteenth birth remembrance. Selah doesn’t want to marry someone she has never met or loves. Her entire life she has seen her father capture “Landers,” a group of people who crash on their beach with markings on their bodies. The scientist in the Mountain pays a huge bounty for a “Lander” with the mark still on their body.

As the story begins, Selah wants to prove to her brothers and father that she can hunt too. She waits around on the beach for a Lander to arrive. His name is Bodhi, and he protects her from some bullies who wanted to rough her up. Then her two older brothers come and steal her prize. When Selah wakes up the next morning, she has the mark of the Landers on her collarbone, believing it was a prank by her brothers, she runs to her mother, but it won’t come off. Her mother explains her origin and more shocking information about her past and future.

Here begins Selah’s quest to free Bodhi and hunt for her real father. The story weaves in and out of the woods, a library, and on machines deep inside the mountain. All leading up to a daring escape from the mountain with an army of Landers who have been captured and prison by the scientist who performed experiments on the victims.

I read The Hunger Games when a friend loaned them to me and did not like them at all, but I actually enjoyed Bonnie’s version. It had killing of people, but it was more emotional for Selah. They didn’t just move on like it was common life. Bonnie made the characters more realistic with their emotions and how they acted.  Thunder also has romance between Selah and Bodhi, but the emotions are new to her, so we watch as she experience these odd feelings for the first time.

I hope they make Bonnie’s book into a movie, so the fans of Young Adult dystopia fiction know there is a more hopeful version out there. This was the first book in the series. The second book is called Lightening, which releases in Fall 2015.

I received a complimentary copy from Revell publishers and all the opinions are mine.