Heir to Power: Book 1, by Michele Poague {Book Review}

Synopsis:


The colony of Survin has been hidden for centuries, protecting an ancient religious artifact called the Healing Crystal from men who would steal or destroy it. Kairma, heir To The Crystal, Is destined to mate with the handsome Naturi and become the leader of the reclusive colony, but she is too young to realize the peril soon to arrive. At sixteen, Kairma is too young to realize many things ....Kairma would rather go spelunking with her brother and his best friend than study ancient medicine and religious laws, but the discovery of a tomb containing ancient artifacts leads Kairma to question her religion And The true nature of the Crystal. 
To further complicate Kairma's ascent, a childhood illness has left her resembling a nearby race of men both hated and feared by the people of Survin. Because of this, Kairma's younger sister Kinter, who is in love with Naturi, believes she is the rightful heir. Disease and infertility have decimated Survin, but bigotry and religious laws forbid the introduction of new members so things heat up when a traveling archaeologist stumbles upon the reclusive colony and introduces a powerful new weapon. Forced into a larger world, The Survinees discover they hold an object of unimaginable power, a power other men covet, a power that might save or forever damn the human race.






My Review:


This novel is nice and thick, with a warm inviting cover.  It just screams, Read Me!


The author creates a society which is very different, yet intriguing. Human nature always has a way to repeat itself, and I found acceptance and familiarity.   


The characters are very distinct, and well-rounded.  
For instance, Kairma, is rough around the edges, and yet she is in line to be the next heir, a very important position.  As I discovered, she may not seem to be the right suit for the position,  but she really is.  
And  her grandmother is a meek, yet very good leader.  
There are many other characters I enjoyed as well. Proague did a very well is writing  distinctly about each personality.


This novel is a great read; good for teens and adults alike. Fantasy, adventure, a bit of romance, and depictions of the history of the people, and mystery. 


Heir to Power, the first novel in the Healing Crystal trilogy, is full of story. It gives a vast and rich premise to what will come, but holds its own.  This novel definitely left me wanting to continue the saga, but I was satisfied with what this first novel brought to the table.  Heir to Power is a very well-written story by Poague.






A sneak peek...the Prologue:


The sound of snow melt dripping off the clay tiles of the roof and splashing into muddy puddles woke Isontra well before dawn that early spring morning.  She was drenched with sweat from a torrent of nightmares that had distressed her for the fifth night in a row.  Surrealistic images, never clear enough to understand, haunted her. She never considered herself precognitive as her great grandmother had been, but the dreams seemed significant in some alien way she couldn't grasp.


 Rubbing the grains of sleep from her eyes, she listened to the stillness enveloping the Chancery.  Unlike herself, her extended family slept peacefully.  Sitting up in her bed, her steel gray eyes heavy with sleep, she stared into the blackness of her suite, the smell of pine and clover tickling her nose.  She shivered.  The room was cold; the embers of last night's fire only a memory in the hearth.


  While listening to the mournful cry of a snowy owl, the old woman tried to make sense of the latest dream.  Images of her granddaughter's pale blue eyes, wide with fear, distressed Isontra.  The dreams were likely based on her apprehension concerning the stranger currently housed in the small colony she ruled.  Shaking off her anxiety, she reached for the rabbit-fur robe on the chair beside her feather bed.  Wrapping the heavy garment around her thin body, she got up to light a taper.  The howling of a lone wolf reminded her she needed to send out hunters to ensure her people wouldn't  be overrun with predators by this next spring, and feared this might be an omen of an even greater danger, a danger yo the granddaughter who must be prepared to assume the role of Vice Miral at the harvest Seridar.


  At sixteen annums, Kairma was little more than a child, and a child with the handicap of being very different from the rest of her people, Isontra sighed, knowing that being different was only one of the many difficulties she would face as heir to the Healing Crystal.


  The colony of Survin was once strong and healthy, but a deadly plague had decimated the small village several annums earlier, reducing the total number of inhabitants to just over one hundred and thirty.  Isontra worried the colony wouldn't have a sufficient genetic pool to continue, but religious law forbade the introduction of strangers.


  Isontra's nights had grown uneasy since the stranger, Trep, had arrived.  She knew it was a sign of change, and felt it was the one she had been awaiting her entire life, but it carried with it some unfathomable terror.  This stranger could be the answer to our prayers or the end of the life we know.  Then again, maybe these are one and the same.


  Laws had been broken in the past- sometimes to the benefit of the colony and sometimes to its detriment.  Now it was up to Isontra to decide which, if any, laws would be broken today, and which unpopular decisions she would lay on Kairma's shoulders to be defended time and time again.  The young girl who was being groomed to become the colony's leader could not divorce herself from the decisions of the thirty Mirals who had served as Healers before her.


  The candlelight threw heavy shadows on the rich bur-oak paneled walls Isontra made her way to the finely carved pine table and began to write. She usually put off writing in the daily Ogs until she had drunk several cups of terrid, but there was no way she could go back to sleep now,  She didn't want to wake the rest of the household, so like many Mirals before her, she quietly recorded the events of the previous day as the sun crept into the narrow mountain canyon.


ATD 797-3-21.  How can I tell my people how different our lives will be, that is, if we survive?
  




Click here to purchase Heir to Power.








About the Author, Michele Poague:

My parents lived in Denver in 1956 and often went home for the holidays. My uncle Jim was totally freaked out driving 500 miles, in the dead of winter, through Nebraska farm land, with a woman who could go into labor at any minute, so I was born Michele Rae Jeffryes in Newman Grove, Nebraska.   

I grew up in southwest Denver with 5 sisters and a brother. Of course in the 1960's, that meant somewhere near 1st and Federal. Now southwest Denver is closer to Chatfield Reservoir. I was fifteen when I was spirited away by my mother and stepfather to the strange land of Sioux Falls, SD, where I wrote my first short story. It was a paranormal romance about the ghost of a man's first wife trying to kill his second wife. Like so many things teenagers write, it was never meant for publication.  

After college, when I was twenty-one, I moved to Las Vegas for six years where I worked in the Bar & Night Club business, and then returned to Denver in 1984. I like the weather here. 

I had read the Dragonriders of Pern, and Anne McCaffrey made writing look easy. It wasn't. In the 80's and 90's I didn't have the time to write because I had a house to remodel, a career I had to invent, and a world to change through politics. As a fundraising director I wrote and designed convention brochures, and while working for Shotgun Willies, I wrote training manuals and ad copy. I'm still employed with Shotgun Willies, but my work leans more toward management and accounting now.


Heir to Power is the first book in Michele's Healing Crystal trilogy.


Michele Poague's website