Bonnie S. Calhoun is Owner/Director of Christian Fiction Blog Alliance, owner/publisher of Christian Fiction Online Magazine, Northeast Zone Director for American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), and the ACFW ‘2011 Mentor of the Year.”She love to write, but it doesn’t make her happy unless there are the three B’s…body count, blood, and blowing things up. She also have mad skills at coding HTML, and website design. And she live in a log cabin in the woods with fifteen acres and a pond full of bass, though she’d rather buy fish at the grocery store. Bonnie shares her domain with a husband, a dog, and two cats, all of whom think she’s waitstaff!
Her sites are:
https://www.facebook.com/bscalhoun
https://www.facebook.com/bonniescalhoun
https://www.goodreads.com/BonnieSCalhoun
http://www.pinterest.com/bonniecalhoun/
https://www.youtube.com/user/BonnieCalhoun
ABOUT THE BOOK:
In post-apocalyptic America, Selah Chavez is crouched in long grass on a shore littered with the rusted metal remnants of a once-great city. It is the day before her eighteenth Born Remembrance, and she is hunting, though many people refuse to eat animal flesh, tainted by radiation during the Time of Sorrows. What Selah’s really after are Landers, mysterious people from a land across the big water who survive the delirium-inducing passage in small boats that occasionally crash against the shoreline. She knows she should leave the capture to the men, but Landers bring a good price from the Company and are especially prized if they keep the markings they arrive with.
Everything falls to pieces when the Lander Selah catches is stolen by her brothers–and Selah wakes up the next morning to find the Lander’s distinctive mark has suddenly appeared on her own flesh. Once the hunter, Selah is now one of the hunted, and she knows only one person who can help her–Bohdi Locke, the Lander her brothers hope to sell.
With evocative descriptions of a strange new world that combines elements of scientific advances, political intrigue, and wilderness survival, Bonnie S. Calhoun weaves a captivating tale of a world more like our own than we may want to admit.
You can read Tremors, the prequel to the series for FREE on Amazon HERE.
If you’d like to read the first chapter of Thunder (Stone Braide Chronicles), go HERE.
MY REVIEW:
Thunder is the first book in Bonnie Calhoun’s new Stone Braide Chronicles published by Revell. The story takes place along the east coast of the United States approximately 150 years after The Time of Sorrows when the earth was nearly destroyed by nuclear war and the resulting volcanoes, tsunamis, etc. Some humans survived the holocaust and some even thrived but their world was a strange one with stark contrasts. Many of the humans worked hard for their daily needs using fairly primitive methods while others lived in comfort in a scientifically advanced self-contained city in The Mountain. One would think that after such an apocalypse, people would learn to get along but human nature never seems to change and the practice of defining a person’s worth by their race or where they lived was as common as ever. In this fractured world, Selah was on the verge of becoming an adult and could not wait to prove herself but woke to find that everything she believed about her life was a lie.
Bonnie’s writing style is easy going and held my interest throughout the book. The plot moved along at a good pace and held plenty of adventure, mystery, and conflict to keep me engaged. The characters were well developed and exhibited believable actions and change as the story progressed. Although I found Selah frustrating at times, her behavior was typical of a person her age – eager to prove themselves an adult but not enough maturity to pull it off.
I did enjoy the book although I will be the first to admit that this genre is not among my favorites. I also confess that I still have plenty of unanswered questions, particularly about exactly who the Landers might be. I am hoping for more details in Bonnie’s next installment and hate that I have to wait so long to read it. Overall, Thunder is an excellent adventure and should be read for pure enjoyment rather than trying to analyze it too deeply.
