Location: Germany
Member Since:
April 05, 2012
Kristiane Elsner
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Smashwords book reviews by Kristiane Elsner
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Pandora's Key
on May 05, 2012
Note: The author, Nancy Richardson Fischer, was kind enough to give me the means to obtain a free Copy without any requirements attached. ------------------------------------------------------------ "Pandora's Key", Book 1 of "The Key Trilogy", is an awesome blend of Greek culture and the Supernatural. It is a unique approach on Greek mythology, mainly about the "Olympian Gods" and their secrets they left behind for humans. Evangeline is your average teenage girl of today. She just turned sixteen at the beginning of the book and got a very special gift from her mother. A necklace with an antique key which is a heirloom given from daughter to daughter at their sixteenth birthday. After that, everything changes for Evangeline, her best friend Raphe asks her out, her mother suddenly gets ill and her godmother Samantha betrays her in the worst way possible. What is a girl supposed to do when her daily life is falling apart around her. She fights to stay above the water, of course. Especially, when Evangeline finds out that she is a descendant of Pandora and the key charm actually openes Pandora's Box. There are other side characters who play an important role for the story development with Malledy leading the way as an archivist with a fatal disease, Samantha as the leader of Pandora, Melia as her childhood friend and finally Raphe and Dr. Sullivan. Each gets it own space and I hope to learn and see more of them in future installments. In the meantime, Evangeline strains to stay strong through the whole book. She tries even harder to understand what is happening, but can't really grab the significance of everything until the end. The various people around her attempt alternately to use or help her and it is difficult to say which aganda each person is following. That makes the Story all the more interesting since there is no saying what happens next. The final conclusion brought the Side story for this first book to a solid end, despite many open threads for further books. However, I found the end still a bit rushed. That is mainly because Evangeline's sudden acceptance of her role in a crucial moment. There is an interior monologue where she reflects again why she has to accept her fate which made it somehow alright for me once more. This minor matter doesn't change the fact, that this book is great and I will look out for the next installment.