#BlogBlitz Storms over Babylon by Jennifer Macaire

Today it’s my turn on the BlogBlitz Storms over Babylon by Jennifer Macaire. It’s historical fiction with time travel.

Enter the Giveaway below to Win a $10 Amazon gift certificate (Open INT)

About the Author

Jennifer Macaire lives with her husband, three children, & various dogs & horses. She loves cooking, eating chocolate, growing herbs and flowering plants on her balcony, and playing golf. She grew up in upstate New York, Samoa, and the Virgin Islands. She graduated from St. Peter and Paul high school in St. Thomas and moved to NYC where she modeled for five years for Elite. She met her husband at the polo club. All that is true. But she mostly likes to make up stories.

Follow @jennifermacaire on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Goodreads, Visit jennifermacaire.wordpress.com or about.me/jennifermacaire

Buy Storms over Babylon

About the book

The Time for Alexander Series Book 4

From the scorching plains of Persia to the opulent city of Babylon, Ashley and Alexander continue their sensuous and passionate journey through history.

Alexander the Great is now king of Persia and Greece – but his reign will be short. Time-travelling Ashley knows when her husband will die. She’s determined to cheat Fate and save Alexander and her children, even if it brings the gates of time crashing down. Following Alexander on a tour of his new kingdom, she plans her moves and bides her time. She must, however, convince Alexander to abandon his crown and his kingdom.Review

This is the fourth book in the Time for Alexander series. You can read it as a standalone, however a lot of references are made to events of the previous books, so I think reading from the beginning is probably going to be a more satisfying reading experience.

Time-traveller Ashley has hitched her ride to Alexander the Great. I’m not sure why she is travelling in time, something which is probably more of a focus in the first books. What I do know is that she has to adhere to the rules or she will be whipped back into her own time.

Don’t change history. Do not actively try to change or manipulate an outcome or event that she knows will happen. Not an inch or a minute, and yet how can that be true when she is already manipulating time to serve her own purpose. On top of that she has become part of history by inserting herself into the life of Alexander and having children with him. Hmm does that mean she was always part of history or is she changing it bit by bit?

It definitely makes you want to get your own ticket to travel time. It also makes me want to start swotting history just in case I end up needing to thrill the past with my predictions of the future. Like Ashley, I’m not sure I could avoid changing history. Saving lives or killing the bad guys, but then you also have to live with the repercussions of the butterfly effect. That doesn’t seem to apply to this scenario though.

It’s historical fiction with time travel. Macaire takes history, shoves it into a bag and shakes it about, then drops it out again like a bunch of runes. She messes, perhaps even destroys history a little, but in a ‘as long as it’s a good read’ kind of way. I’ll admit it made me laugh.

Buy Storms over Babylon at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Accent Press; pub date 14 Jun. 2018. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Accent Press. Buy at Kobo. Buy at Barnes and Noble.

Enter the Giveaway to Win a $10 Amazon gift certificate (Open INT)

a Rafflecopter giveaway *Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

#BlogTour The Space Between Time by Charlie Laidlaw

Today it’s my turn on the BlogTour The Space Between Time by Charlie Laidlaw. It’s literary fiction, combined with a extraordinary thread of logic, mathematical theory, astronomy, physics and theorem, which flows throughout the story.About the Author

Charlie Laidlaw was born in Paisley and is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. He has been a national newspaper journalist and worked in defence intelligence. He now runs his own marketing consultancy in East Lothian. He is married with two grown-up children.

Follow @claidlawauthor on Twitter, on Goodreads, on Facebook, Visit charlielaidlawauthor.com

Buy The Space Between Time

About the book

There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth…

Emma Maria Rossini’s perfect life begins to splinter when her celebrity father becomes more distant, and her mother dies suspiciously during a lightning storm. This death has a massive effect on Emma, but after stumbling through university, she settles into work as a journalist in Edinburgh.

Her past, however, cannot be escaped. Her mental health becomes unstable. But while recovering in a mental institution, Emma begins to write a memoir to help come to terms with the unravelling of her life.

She finds ultimate solace in her once-derided grandfather’s Theorem on the universe – which offers the metaphor that we are all connected, even to those we have loved and not quite lost.

Review

It reminded me of the work of Benjamin Constable – the way reality is speckled and fragmented and driven by the imagination, which results in singularly individual experiences and memories. No one memory is the same even when the event is experienced by multiple people simultaneously.

In this case it leaves the reader wondering what is fiction, what is fact or more importantly what is it that Emma wants to believe and perhaps wants others to believe. Towards the end of the book, as the truth of her situation becomes more apparent, the read flows into an introspective narrative. It completely flips the narrative of the first half of the book.

The reader then becomes aware that the story, up to that point, is told from the subjective point of a child. A child who perhaps wants to remember her life a certain way instead of remembering the reality of it. She romanticises the negative aspects or brushes them away as if they are annoyances. Daddy is never there because he is very busy, as opposed to he isn’t there because they aren’t a priority and he doesn’t care. Mommy gets annoyed and flustered sometimes, as opposed to Mommy is sad, depressed and suffers from anxiety.

It’s literary fiction, combined with a extraordinary thread of logic, mathematical theory, astronomy, physics and theorem, which flows throughout the story. I loved that aspect of the story, in fact the grandfather was my favourite character.

Laidlaw is the kind of writer you have to take the time to enjoy. This isn’t a quick fix or read. Every nuance of the story opens up a separate avenue to explore and examine, especially in the second half, because the reader has been given the rest of the information in the first half, ergo the second is the missing variable, which allows us to solve the equation.

It explores the emotional fragility of Emma the woman, due to the trauma she endured as a child. Laidlaw examines depression, anxiety and suicide from a the viewpoint of a spectator. Then as the spectator becomes the person who has to learn to cope with mental health issues. The result is a fascinating read.

Buy The Space Between Time at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Accent Press Ltd; pub date 20 Jun. 2019. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Accent Press.