Child of Destiny
The Genesis Continuum, Book #1
By Dr. George H. Elder
ISBN# 1621650003

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi

Kara was born into the Labateen tribe with a defect, a birthmark on her head that her tribe considered to be demonic.  Labateen rituals would require her mother to have killed her at birth, but instead her mother chose to hide the birthmark by dying her head until her hair grew long enough to cover it.  But during a ritual when she turned 14 that required her head to be shaved, everyone discovered her mother’s treachery.  Her father killed her mother and exiled Kara from the tribe.  She lived alone in a cave until the day she came upon a strange spacecraft while out hunting and it changed her life forever.

Kara attacked the craft, but nothing penetrated it.  The occupants, Anita and Ezra incapacitated her.  They studied her while she was unconscious and gave her new memories and knowledge so she could communicate with them.

Anita and Ezra are from different planets and they are looking for the seeker that can help save the universe from the entropy that is devouring the stars and planets.  They landed on Kara’s land by accident, but when her former tribe attacks they are forced to take her with them and she becomes a vital part of their mission to save the universe before all is lost.

I want to start out by saying that I am NOT a fan of sci-fi or of end of the world kind of storylines so this book is waaaayyy out of my comfort zone.  I decided to try it anyway and hoped to be pleasantly surprised.  I’m sad to say that I wasn’t.

I found this book very hard to read.  Whenever Anita was trying to explain things to Kara, especially the different cultures it felt like a really boring history lecture meets Star Trek.  The words sounded like nonsense and everything was just weighted down with information, too much for me to even process.

Then there is Kara.  She is a primitive cave woman type of person.  I understand there being a little bit of  me Jane, you Tarzan type of monologues at the beginning, but I really didn’t expect it to last the entire book.  I think making the savage of the group that doesn’t understand hardly anything that’s going on the main character of the series was a huge mistake.  I just couldn’t relate to her and found the writing seemed just as archaic as she.  And I got so tired of everything out of her mouth being something about it being “God’s way”.

Then we get to the illustrations in this book.  I don’t understand why a book geared towards adults would have pictures throughout it anyway.  Then, you look at the pictures and throughout most of them all you see is naked Kara because she doesn’t like to wear clothing because it makes her itchy *rolling eyes*.  To me the pictures look like something a 13 year old boy would doodle in his notebook and show all his friends while they rose into a fit of giggles.

I hate writing a review that is so negative, but there was nothing I liked about this story.  And I know this sounds harsh and maybe even a little crass, but in my opinion this book seemed like the author wrote a screenplay for a really bad aliens attacking the world porno that got rejected so he decided to take the sex out and make it into a book instead.  But he decided to keep the naked cave woman around who’s searching for the well-hung (and no the book never says he’s well-endowed) warrior to save the day.

I wish the author all the best, but if you haven’t already, I wouldn’t even waste my time on this one.  I’m actually frightened to know that there are already two more installments to this series in the works.  I hope the writing improves, but they are books I have no intention of reading.