#BookReview Piercing the Fold by Venessa Kimball #amreading #books
Piercing the Fold by Venessa Kimball
3 out of 5 Black Cats
This book may not be in print anymore.
Piercing The Fold (Book 1) By Venessa Kimball is the first book in a young adult science fiction series about a girl named Jesca, who starts developing strange powers and having disturbing dreams. She can run fast; she can hear the thoughts of other people, and she has no idea why until her professor at college tells her a story about a scientist named Sebastian and how he used Einstein’s theories to open wormholes to other worlds. Jesca learns the Earth is not as it seems and alien forces are working to accomplish their own ends. Jesca must train to become a guardian and help protect the Earth.
The scientific parts are handled well and sound plausible, and I enjoyed the connections to the past. Did I go look the science up to check if it’s factual? No because I felt it was written well enough, even if the science isn’t correct. I can suspend my belief and enjoy the story.
Piercing the fold has an interesting plot, which kept me reading despite some mechanical issues.
The kindle formatting is handled professionally and the cover beautiful, great job on these details. The book starts out in first person from Jesca’s point of view. It stays that way about sixty-five percent of the book, then without warning, it changes to third person to characters the reader has not met yet. The sudden change jars you out of the story. It’s almost like the reader has accidentally picked up a different book by accident. Some sort of warning of the change would help, such as having parts. The first sixty-five percent could be part one with a large page saying part one. Then when it’s time to change to third person with new characters, the reader would get another page saying part two. This would help the reader to expect a change.
We stay with the new characters in third person for a while except one chapter written in first person from Xander’s point of view. At first, I thought this chapter was Jesca. It took a while of reading to figure out it was Xander. Then Jesca comes back in the picture. I expected the chapters in her point of view to be in first person because that was what was established in the beginning chapters, and other character’s point of view in third person, but that’s not what the reader gets.
The reader experiences random switching from first person to third person between different characters within the same chapter at times. The switching is confusing and unnecessary. I think it’s done so the reader can get the view point of both Jesca and Xander at the same time, but the switching confuses the reader. I found myself stopping and going back to double check whose view point I was in. I think these sections of the novel would work better staying in one person’s point of view for the entire chapter and staying in first person for Jesca and third person for everyone else. Romance readers may be used to head hopping, but science fiction readers won’t like it.
The idea behind the story is excellent and developed well, but I didn’t like the back story being dumped on me over several chapters in a row about twenty-five percent of the way in. It might be better to work the back story in as the info is needed instead of all at once, or find a way to shorten it to one or two chapters. At the beginning, the reader is presented with a back-story dump, too, that I think could be cut or shortened significantly as well, again we can learn the beginning information as the story unfolds.
The book could use another pass to get rid of redundancy. Whole paragraphs have sentences all starting with ‘I’ and could use some variety by changing the structure of sentences. Furthermore, there are sections that basically say the same thing that could be cut. For example, “I am physically incapable of answering him, literally. I can’t get myself to push the words out of my mouth.” Both sentences are right next to each other and say the same thing. One of them could be cut.
I see a love triangle forming between Jesca, Xander, and Nate near the end. I hope the author concentrates the next books on Jesca and Xander’s relationship and drops the Nate story line somehow. The conflict of the two being from alien worlds that are at war with each other is a more interesting avenue to explore. The two hot guys want the same girl triangle approach is being overdone. I can always tell when a writer has read Twilight because they try to relive the Twilight love triangle in their books.
In closing, although I do think Piercing the Fold could use more editing, I did enjoy reading it and was surprised at the science angle of the book. Hard Core Science readers may not like this book, but readers who like paranormal romance will enjoy this science fiction romance. Despite some structure problems, I think this book is a good read.