Just look at that gorgeous cover! You can tell a story alone just through that cover.

Then you crack open the book and it becomes a struggle to continue after a few chapters. I was looking forward to the merge of scifi and fantasy concepts. The premise is interesting, but things just become so convolutedly explained that you start to completely lose interest.

I think Awakenings wanted to be a lot of things, and it was overly ambitious. I easily was able to put this book down and reach for something else that was faster paced and more exciting.

In a land tortured by plots, inner fights and secret revolutions, there are people who strive to make things right. In every generation, a handful of people are born with special abilities around time and space. Keeping their abilities secret from the rest of the world, they strive to gain knowledge and give it to the world. In this difficult time for the Kingdom, Arol, a young man and a temple assistant, will realize he is different from the rest of the world. Along with his friend, Zorn, he will try to find the truth about his life and abilities. Meanwhile, the Kingdom is in a dangerous position, and every hero is going to have to decide what their part will be in the land's future.

Awakenings is a fantasy book with a very interesting concept. The time and space bending is a very good touch, and the concept is thoroughly explained in the book. And that is both very interesting and a bit too much. When the explanations about the hero's abilities begin, it is very useful to have things explained by the author. However, his explanations tend to get too long and far too thorough, at the extent that I, as a reader, had already assumed the author was a physicist, even without having read the biographical note yet.

The book had a very strong beginning, providing the reader with a very interesting first chapter, grasping their imagination. Unfortunately, the story didn't continue being as alluring. There were a lot of descriptions that exceeded the average size, thus making it tiring at times to follow through. I strongly felt that the plot was in need of more dialogue and less internal monologue.

The world of the book was very well and thoroughly constructed. However, the names were, at times, too ambitiously created, thus making it difficult for the reader to remember it and follow along.

All in all, it is a very interesting concept. However, the book felt like it didn't quite reach its true potential, and it was in need of more editing.

I just found this confusing.
Too many names and sentences that were far too long.

I enjoy fantasy books, so this book is right up my alley. This is a book about a young man, Arol , and his friend , Zorn, who work at the Sacred Temple. When strange things begin happening to Arol, Zorn takes Arol to meet his uncle. Later, Arol is introduced to Bernarro, who will help him understand what has been happening to him and learn more about the magical gifts he may have. There is a lot of political intrigue as well as within the church. And then there’s a group of rebels, fighting for their cause and shaking things up. I found the book interesting and will picking up the next book in the series when it is available.

This book is an excellent merger between science fiction and fantasy. So why the three stars?

Well, the beginning really drew me in, although I did find the use of adjectives to be a little excessive. Or maybe not the adjective use so much as the wording in general of some sentences seemed to be overcomplicated for some reason. I can't quite pinpoint it, but the writing style was a little disruptive for me at times. Anyways.

I was able to overlook this because the characters Arol and Zorn were interesting to me. The world itself was also very interesting. In the first couple chapters we are put into this world where experiencing what I equated to earthquakes, with Arol trying to piece together a strange phenomenon where time and space seemed to slow. Right away I'm interested in why, but where the book kind of takes a turn for me is that I was hoping for more magic fantasy and this went more science fiction. combined with political corruption. You might really like this, it was surely interesting and fresh for the genres. The way the author uses space and time bending really made this book stand out to me.

If this story focused on Arol more I'd have given it more stars. Arol was by far the most interesting character for me. However the author starts to bring in more and more characters and by the end I felt like this book was just a set-up book to build the worlds and introduce a bunch of characters that will be more relevant later. That's fine, but then this book started to fall flat for me. It just started off really strong and fell flat for me around the middle.

I'd still suggest it because if you love science fiction, you will probably really like this. I'd just wait for the other books to come out so that you can get through this and into what I'm hoping is the real meat of the series.

I think the idea of this book is great, I just can't get in to it unfortunately. It's not a book that fits me.

What an absolute delight this book was! I recently joined NetGalley and this was one of the first books I got from there. As soon as I read the summary, I was interested and I requested it without a second thought.

I had never even heard of the author or the book itself but I am glad that I took a chance on this because this book is such a fun and fast read. The author absolutely knows his world and the lore and he never overdoes it. The world-building (which is very important to me) was brilliantly done, too. The details are just enough that we don't mind reading about them and they are properly scattered throughout the book. The characters and the plot was pretty awesome too!

One of it's absolutely interesting plots was the time and space manipulation shown throughout the book. I have always been an absolute sucker for fantasy and a fantasy book involving time and space, wibbly wobbly timey wimey shenanigans? Sign me up! I loved the way the whole matter was handled in the book and I can't wait to read more about it in the future books.

It was very easy to get into the book and that's one of it's plus points, I think. It's not terribly long-winded at the start and it stays that way. There was so much happening across the book and sometimes it was a bit hard to catch up (but that's mostly because I wanted to read more about Arol, to be honest.). It's not a terribly long book and it kept me interested throughout.

I can't wait for the next books in the series.