Wednesday, December 24, 2014

The Doppler Affect

The Doppler Affect is written by Shawn H. Phillips and features several different POVs throughout the story.  There is an original Doppleganger aka Shapeshifter and a banker named Chris Sands. 
Dr. Phillips has created a story unlike any you have ever read.  His combination of scientific explanations of mythology in the fiction arena are astounding.  The characters are creative and original and each has their own agenda and fight.  Depending upon world views, the "bad guy" can shift from time to time.  Overall the changing points of view allow for a well-rounded vision of the playing field in the story.


My biggest complaints are that the timeline does shift forward and back to fill in the story and sometimes I would have to go back and forth to the dates to figure out what time I was reading about.  The POV shifts were easy to follow for me, but the timeline in the first third of the book jumped quite substantially, this was not an issue in the remaining parts of the book unless a large amount of time had passed.  It could have been a bit more seamless, if there was a specification of years passed since the last passage (such as 15 years later, 20 years earlier, etc.)  My only other complaint is that each character is so in depth, that it was almost too many main characters in such a short amount of page coverage in the last half of the book with so many additional characters added.  I LOVED all of the characters and their descriptions, but I had a hard time grasping many personalized identities about many of them.  I would have loved to have a bit more background and time spent getting to know the characters where appropriate. 

All in all, I felt as though this book was a great "pilot" for setting up the reader into a much larger scheme that is to come.  I definitely hope that Dr. Phillips will continue on with the amazing abilities and identities of these characters and the book definitely ended with a huge opening for a possible continuance of the story.  The character I would most like to explore more of would be the cross-breeds and Candice.  I was never able to full determine if the dark and light sides were all here or a mimicking doppleganger.  I also would have liked to see more of DeSean who seemed to disappear.  Ultimately I am left wanting more details, and hope to see these in the likely future installments of the story.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars for creative and originality.  There is a bit of a rushed feeling in the end, and I would have liked the pace to remain with the detail oriented feeling that was felt in the rest of the book.  The possibilities of all of the introduced characters and abilities are endless.  I highly recommend The Doppler Affect, especially if you are into fiction, paranormal/fantasy, sci-fi, mythology, romance, mystery, suspense, etc.  

*I did receive a copy of this book for free in exchange for a fair an honest review. 

**This is an 18+ novel as there are some graphic adult scenes. 

Monday, December 1, 2014

Tae Kwon Do Photos

I have never been so proud in my life to see how far my son has come in Tae Kwon Do!  He had the opportunity to get his pictures taken at the Team Chip Center (they only come around once every two years)  These pictures are from right before he tested for his Yellow Stripe Belt!  Enjoy!