{Synopsis} –Fourteen-year-old Breena Taljain’s dreary existence in the slums of Purgaire comes to a sudden end when a chance encounter with a criminal mastermind known as the Patriarch goes horridly wrong. His assault on her for refusing to pay for her mother’s addiction leaves her comatose and teetering on the edge of life and death.
Galbrecht Atalir is a washed-up doctor struggling to overcome his inner demons through alcohol and aggression. He never quite recovered from the unsolved murder of his family seven years prior. When he discovers Breena as his newest patient, he knows at once that the Patriarch is the one who eluded him for almost a decade.
The medicine Galbrecht gives Breena draws her into a heavenly paradise. When it ebbs away, though, the recurring trauma plunges her into treacherous hinterlands. There, Breena must learn to find power in courage, hope, and love to overcome fiends of hatred bent on permanently ending her existence.
With justice burning in his heart, Galbrecht begins a race against time to seek out the Patriarch in the underworld before Breena loses her struggle against the ever-darkening terrors of her mind….
{My Thoughts} – Breena Taljain, this is one character I can relate to. She is fourteen and she is forced to live in poverty because her mother is a drug addict. Her mother steals her funds to feed her habit. Bree has to get a job just to attempt to keep herself feed and clothed. The place she lives is a run down unsanitary situation that should from the description be condemned and the whole building should be burned to the ground. Eventually Bree has a run in with her mother’s drug provider and he beats her senseless and leaves her to die all because her mother has not paid him. I’m not sure why that became Bree’s issue but it did. She ends up in the hospital and this is when things get strange.
Bree is in a coma, but she is also in another world. She has been saved and rescued by her father. She is alive, she is completely healed and she is able to live her life freshly and newly. However, the person that saved her has other plans for her. It is unclear if this has been the plan the entire time, however, Bree is left feeling betrayed, forgotten and like she means nothing to no one accept her Beloved.
This sets her off on an adventure, one that can be clearly defined as sensational. It makes her think, it makes her grow up beyond her years, it makes her have to fight for what she wants and believes in. This book was remarkably well written. I am looking forward to starting book two when I have some free time. This is one of those books that will definitely stay with me.
Final Conclusion: 5 Star Rating.
