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Project E.D.E.N.
by B. Mauritz
"I would let you take me through a million nightmares if it meant that I could have one dream with you."
Cedric wanted to dream of being a normal seventeen-year-old boy, but instead each night he is forced to walk through others' dreams-and nightmares. Moving from one place to the next with the only family he has ever known, he finds himself in Savannah, Georgia. His responsibility has always been to stay invisible, which becomes complicated when he meets a girl with an even more electrifying life than his own.
Our Thoughts
My husband is the sci-fi reader, so this is his review:
Pros:
Project E.D.E.N. has fantastic SciFi elements - think X-Men meets Dark Angel, meets Inception, meets Heroes, with a little bit of Charmed thrown in (powers tied to emotions). Superhuman powers, covert government operations, and DNA experimentation. All elements for a great read!
Unfortunately, this gets buried in the high school romance.
Cons:
There are a lot of inconsistent character developments, including Cedric's almost complete idiopathic neuropathy (not being able to feel physical sensations), i.e. a large gash in his arm. Yet at the beginning of the next chapter, he muses on how he loves the feel of the parchment against his hand. Further on, he describes a person's cheek as feeling clammy from a light touch. Sapphira has virtually no control of her powers. As the story progresses we learn their powers are tied to their emotions. Anytime her emotions run high, such as when making out with Cedric, she loses control and unintentionally zaps him. However, at the highest emotional point for her in the novel, she suddenly can keep her powers completely in check and fight off an obviously well trained soldier with her 2-3 weeks of martial arts training.
Questioning his existence, he learns of his birthplace, Initium. The city of Initium is a secret government project that contains a utopian society that has evolved without the help of Mother Nature. Cedric finds that for every answer he receives, there are only more questions. He isn't sure if he has time to learn about history's best-kept secret before the known world is destroyed in the secret city's quest to control the future.
Project E.D.E.N. is available on Amazon, Google Play, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple ibooks. Follow Project E.D.E.N. on Facebook and Twitter, and follow Mauritz on her website, Pinterest, and blog.
Biography
B. Mauritz was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and now resides in Atlanta, Georgia. After graduating with a B.A. degree in psychology from Kennesaw State University, she pursued her passion for writing science fiction. Project E.D.E.N. is her first book and the first of the Project E.D.E.N. series.
Our Thoughts
My husband is the sci-fi reader, so this is his review:
Pros:
Project E.D.E.N. has fantastic SciFi elements - think X-Men meets Dark Angel, meets Inception, meets Heroes, with a little bit of Charmed thrown in (powers tied to emotions). Superhuman powers, covert government operations, and DNA experimentation. All elements for a great read!
Unfortunately, this gets buried in the high school romance.
Cons:
There are a lot of inconsistent character developments, including Cedric's almost complete idiopathic neuropathy (not being able to feel physical sensations), i.e. a large gash in his arm. Yet at the beginning of the next chapter, he muses on how he loves the feel of the parchment against his hand. Further on, he describes a person's cheek as feeling clammy from a light touch. Sapphira has virtually no control of her powers. As the story progresses we learn their powers are tied to their emotions. Anytime her emotions run high, such as when making out with Cedric, she loses control and unintentionally zaps him. However, at the highest emotional point for her in the novel, she suddenly can keep her powers completely in check and fight off an obviously well trained soldier with her 2-3 weeks of martial arts training.
The big, bad betrayal is foreshadowed so often, it comes as no surprise; it's easily predictable from approximately the middle of the novel.
Poor choice of outdated language, completely undermining the enormity of scenes. For example: Cedric, a 17 year old boy, has just witnessed through his girlfriend's dream one of her foster parents nearly raping her. The best Cedric can come up with is "that man almost took away your innocence". I can't imagine any 17 year old boy saying it in quite that way.
The characters are so flat you really have no feeling one way or another about them.
The prolific and unnecessary use of the word "that" permeates the novel.
Again, the elements are there and it could become a good series, but the writing style needs some serious refining. In regards to a sequel I would likely read it moreso to see the evolution of the author's writing style than the actual story.
