~Sale Blitz~ Ascenders Saga by C.L. Gaber ~ with Trailer, My Reviews, and more!
Title: Ascenders Saga
Author: C.L. Gaber
Genre: YA Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Hosted by: Lady Amber's Reviews
& PR
Blurb:
These high school kids are now caught in a strange
“in-between” zone where life hasn’t changed very much. In fact, this special
teen limbo looks a lot like life in a quaint Michigan town complete with jocks,
popular girls and cliques. "There are even cheerleaders in death,"
Walker observes. It's not a coincidence that the music teacher is a guy named
Kurt who "used to have this band." The drama teacher, Heath, is crush
worthy because back in his life, he starred in some superhero
movie.
Principal King explains the rules -- there are none. Why?
You can't die twice.
There is no homework. No tests. No SATS. You're just there
to learn because the human brain isn't fully formed until you're 24.
By the way, you can't get hurt physically, so race your
Harley off that hillside. But falling in love is the most dangerous thing you
can do ...because no one knows how long you'll stay in this realm or what's
next.
"Losing someone you love would be like dying
twice," Walker says.
* * * * * *
Walker Callaghan has just arrived at the Academy after a
tragic car accident. “Is this heaven or is this high school?” she
asks.
She finds out her new life is a bit of both as she falls
in love with tat-covered, bad boy Daniel Reid who is about to break the only
sacred rule of this place. He's looking for a portal to return back to the
living realm.
He needs just one hour to retrieve his younger brother who
strangely never arrived at The Academy. Bobby is an Earth Bound Spirit, stuck
at a plane crash site that took both of their lives as their rich father piloted
his private jet nose-first into a cornfield on Christmas Eve.
Walker loves Daniel and risks it all to go with
him.
Have they learned enough to outsmart dangerous forces
while transporting a young child with them? Can their love survive the
fragmented evil parts of themselves that are now hunting them down as they try
to find a way back to the middle?
At the Academy, you learn the lessons of an
after-lifetime.
My Review:
My
absolute favorite part of this book is that it’s DIFFERENT. Comparing it to
something else I’ve read would be difficult, because I haven’t read anything
else like it. I had already started
recommending it to friends when I was only halfway through the book. I didn’t need to know how it would end. I
already knew it would be good, and I was right.
My best way I’ve been able to describe it thus far is that it’s sort of
an afterlife Divergent, but not as serious all the time. It even had fun additions of ‘special guest
stars’ that were their teachers in high school.
The author didn’t directly tell you who they were most of the time, so
as a reader, we got to guess who it was by their description (and the fact that
we knew it had to be someone that was dead, because…afterlife and all).
You
would expect in a book about an afterlife high school with no rules, and barely
any parents, that there would certainly be some teen angst issues. There
is. But it’s surprisingly well
balanced. There’s not too much because,
well, they’re dead. So, being in an afterlife high school, they realize there
are much more important things to worry about, and they’re all on a more even
level, since they can have whatever clothes, etc. they want. Of course, there are the few that just can’t
let go of their ‘before’ attitudes, but there has to be some of that in every
life to keep things interesting. On top
of that, they can take whatever classes they want, learn what they want and
when they want, and never know when or how they’ll ‘move on’. It’s certainly a well written change in
perspective that quite honestly made me take a closer look at MY life and
what’s really important.
The
kids that were really bad in their previous life? There’s a place for them too. It’s much like a jail, but so much more. And
they CAN feel things, and DO have rules.
But what I like, is that the author doesn’t make their futures certain
either. They still have time to change
their own paths – if they choose.
For
both the good and the bad kids, the author tells their ‘death stories’ from
their own perspectives – how they got there.
There is not ONE story that didn’t fully move me. Ms. Gaber’s writing is so powerful, and makes
you FEEL in so many different ways throughout the book, that I can’t say enough
how much this book should be read.
The
ending was really great also, because it’s set up perfectly for the next book,
and doesn’t kill you with a horrible cliffhanger. Most things you would want wrapped up from
this book were, with just a bit of a teaser of what was to come next.
Blurb:
In the Midst—a place for those
who die young—there are no rules except one.
And Walker
Callaghan, dead at seventeen, just broke it. She briefly revisited her earthly
life . . . and the punishment is eternal. Longing for her rebel love interest,
Daniel Reid, Walker finds an ally in Cass, whose attraction to her is as alive
as he is. “Life is short,” he tells her. “I’m banking on eternity. With
you.”
In the second
book of the Ascenders Saga, a realm-jumping journey takes Walker and Daniel
back to life again when they search for something buried in history. They team
with students from several other schools in the middle realm including a place
for teens born with oddities. It’s home to the Claires . . . beautiful,
ruthless, and quite dead seventeen-year-old quads who each have a different
clairvoyant gift.
Can Walker survive another
adventure of an afterlife-time—or will she find herself on the downside of
eternity?
My Review:
5 out of 5 stars!
I absolutely adored the first book in this trilogy – this I was
not silent about. Because of this, I was
super scared to read the next one. What
if it wasn’t as new and exciting? I
immediately knew this was not going to be a problem as soon as I started
reading!
One thing I really like about this book is that once again, it’s a
true novel. It’s not a book that was
broken up into 3 more books to make it a longer series and sell more
books. And with as much as what goes on
in this book, this author very easily could’ve done this. Instead, she created a novel that once again,
was nearly impossible to put down.
One of the things I like the most about this book and the previous
book, is that Ms. Gaber created an entirely new world – the afterlife world –
yet made this incredible balance of keeping it much like the world we live in,
with small tweaks that make it more heavenly – literally. Like everything we like about this world, but
the pressures of money removed, or being able to learn without the pressure of
grades. Not only that, but it’s not just
simple “heaven” as a whole – it’s a young adult level, with few adults. The key here is the hints the author gives
about the adults, and why it’s them that are there. If you pay attention to the clues, you may
recognize the majority of them, and why the kids are more than happy with these
adults guiding them.
As for the young adult characters, not all of them are perfect
either. We learned a little in the first
book that there are other kids in other “schools” nearby, but for different
reasons, aren’t allowed to interact with the majority of the other kids. There
are little parts of proof, but mostly rumor.
In this book, we delve deeper into who these kids are, and why – even details
of how – these kids are separated. And
WOW! I won’t give anything away, but the
creativity that comes out in this book with each character, place, and story is
incredible!
I would say that in this book, the absolute best part is learning
about the new characters, and the very cool way the author shares each of their
“death stories”. Again, it’s hard to
give detail without giving away too much, but the character creativity is
fantastic! The “freaks” that they only hear rumors about in the first book? Oh
my goodness!! There’s SO much more to them! I couldn’t get enough of the individuality
of each and every character. And as
noted in the blurb for the book, there’s another character that’s heavily
involved in Walker’s life still – and he’s still alive. Just when you think you know everything about
his involvement, bam! Another shocker!
And I think in book 3 there’s a heavy potential we’ll find there’s even
more to him – even more to ALL the characters.
This book was so incredible in the way it was written to feel like
a major build up to a bomb that’s going off in book 3, and I CAN NOT WAIT! Not only to see what will happen, but what
else there is to know about these characters. I think we’ve only scratched the surface getting
to know them. Book 3 can’t come fast
enough!
CL GABER is the author of
ASCENDERS, the first book in the ASCENDERS saga. She's also the co-author of
the YA book JEX MALONE and the sequel due in 2016. Muggletnet.com, the
world's largest Harry Potter site, did a rare review of a non-Potter book and
called Ascenders, "a book we wish we could read over and over again."
Book 2 in the Ascenders Saga will be published in spring, 2015. A trailer for
the book series contains original music by Roger O'Donnell of the iconic rock
band The Cure and was produced by Orian Williams ("Control,"
"Shadow of a
Vampire.").
Author
Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CLGaber
Buy Links:
Ascenders -
http://amzn.to/2iSgzAj
Excerpt from Ascenders:
INTRODUCTION
I was there. And then I was gone.
My mother gave me no notice that we were
relocating.
Suddenly, we had just moved without all that annoying
planning and packing. Somehow my clothes were thrown into boxes with shoes that
were missing mates. Someone had packed my books and CDs, and had even reached
under my bed into that secret hiding place I counted on to protect my
treasures; like the iPod loaded with the best and worst of everything from
Nirvana to the Stones, plus my lucky green rabbit’s foot—because you just never
knew when you would need a little extra
luck.
My mother must have remembered the family photo album
because there it was on our brand-new living room coffee table that I passed on
the way to my very own bedroom and a bed I had never slept in a day in my
life.
It was strange because we could barely afford to pay the
rent each month, let alone buy something as nice as a hand-carved oak
table imported from someplace far, far away. When I had looked, the tag didn’t
say from where. It was just
imported.
It was one of those times when you go from A to Z so
fast that you hardly remember any of the in-between. Or as I—Walker
Callaghan—senior at Kennedy High School in suburban Chicago and news editor of
the school paper the Charger liked to say,
“Maybe it’s not about the happy ending. Maybe it’s about the story.”
Flopping onto my new, handsome, four-poster bed with
lovely little tulips carved into the wood, I thought it was so unlike my
mother, the master planner, to do something this off-the-cuff. My mother was a
woman who made a battle plan to go to the local 7-Eleven for
almost-expiration-date milk. Even weirder was the fact that we had moved
farther away than anyone imagined. A lot
farther.
“So run this by me one more time, Mom,” I shouted. “I
must have been heavily medicated or feeling really sorry for myself. We moved?
You pulled the trigger. Bang-bang—relocation?”
I didn’t give her time to
answer.
“A new school in my senior year of high school?” I
called out to her on a murky, cold winter morning on Burning Tree
Court.
Even though I was letting the heat escape and Mom had
always said we didn’t live to “support Commonwealth Edison,” our old electric
company, I still opened my bedroom window wide and found that the air drifting
in was stun-your-senses Arctic cold. It smelled green and fresh outside and
those dense marshmallow patches of white fluff in the sky could only mean
serious snow because they were roasted dark on the
bottom.
I tried to shiver, but couldn’t. I was perfectly warm
despite the window and the fact that I was wearing faded jeans and a well-
washed blue cotton tank that read: Normal People Scare
Me.
In true dramatic fashion, I couldn’t resist needling the
one person responsible for our fate, our new house, and everything
in it that was unknown and strange. “Mom, new school. Senior year. I’ll have no
friends here. Are you trying to kill
me?”
Without knowing how or why, I was now enrolled in this
elite- sounding new school called the Academy, which sounded quite upscale and
serious to a girl whose educational pursuits consisted of a generic
public-school education outside of a big melting-pot city, where you were either
rich (if you were lucky) or you were normal (if you were like everybody else).
Our family worked hard at being desperately
normal.
“Great, it will be a bunch of rich, stuck-up snobs who
will hate me—and cheerleaders. There are always cheerleaders. They’re
like cockroaches. You can’t get rid of them,” I concluded, yelling from my new
room to hers, which was somewhere down a hallway that I had never really
navigated before.
“I hear it’s quite fancy,” Mom called from her room. “A
Callaghan going to a private school. Imagine.”
I didn’t have to imagine it as I was living it. Of
course, I didn’t know it at the time, but when I had asked that
question, Madeleine Callaghan, my mom, the mover and shaker in my
life, had cringed and then cried hard into a brand-new washcloth she didn’t
recognize—the thick kind we could never afford. The weeper was the one who had
given me the odd-for-a-girl first name, which was her maiden name before she
married my father, steel worker Sam Callaghan. We weren’t just blue-collar, but
faded blue-collar from clothes that had far too many seasons of washings. In
our family, the rule was “Don’t throw it out unless it’s
dead-dead.”
Running my finger along the smooth wood of my expensive
new dresser with the intoxicating just-cut-tree smell, I ducked down on the
ground to read the label on the bottom. Imported from R-19877. Really? Did we
win the lottery? And what was with the secret spy
code?
“Honey, please, I’m begging you,” Mom answered after
appearing in my doorway. “For once, let’s not do the Diane Sawyer investigation
act. I can’t do twenty rounds of questions. Not today.” Her voice sounded thick
like she had a cold, so I closed the
window.
“There is no need to insult Diane who probably doesn’t
even have a dresser this nice,” I
replied.
“Walker, let me make you some breakfast,” Mom said.
“Everything is always better after a little oatmeal and orange juice. You’ll
see.”
2.
Back home in suburban Chicago, Principal Amanda Stevens
was toying with the loudspeaker at Kennedy High School. It was time to make an
announcement that drifted across her desk once or twice a year (every year)—and
it always pulled her heart right out of her chest. She couldn’t dwell on
herself, but had to think of her students. Many of them knew this girl from her
work on the school newspaper. What would she say about her? Principal Stevens
went through the usual lines in her head: It was a terrible shame. A waste. A
tragedy. It was all those sentiments that meant nothing really because they
were just words.
This was a heart ripper—dead at seventeen. Good night,
Irene.
Ms. S knew that she better just do it. So she clicked
the on button on the PA system, took a deep breath, and said what needed to be
said. Nothing more. Nothing
less.
“I regret to tell the student body that we lost one of
our own last night. Walker Callaghan, a well-respected senior and news editor
of the Charger, has
died.”
She released the on button and grabbed for a bottle of
extra- strength aspirin, wishing there was something stronger. Then she clicked
the PA back on again. “Of course, counselors are available,” she
added.
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