Acquired Book By: I am a regular tour hostess for blog tours via Cedar Fort whereupon I am thankful to have such a diverse amount of novels and non-fiction titles to choose amongst to host. I received a complimentary copy of “Ian Quicksilver: The Warrior’s Return” direct from the publisher Sweetwater Books (imprint of Cedar Fort, Inc) in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
My connection to the author: Underneath my review, I talk about what I appreciated about the tone of “Ian Quicksilver” wherein I disclosed I had a conversation with the author whilst I was writing this post. The only part of the novel I spoke about was about appreciating the tone, as we talked about our mutual compassion for foster children and other things that two like-minded souls can talk about when conversing together. I didn’t feel the convo was a conflict of interest even though I was still writing up my review. If anything, it felt quite lovely to have the chance to talk to the author about unrelated subjects and finding that we had a bit in common. In other words, the conversation did not influence nor affect this review.
Interested in Reading:
On one level I wanted to read this novel because I’m a Prospective Adoptive Mum (who wants to adopt a sibling group of boys) and thereby, I am quite curious how foster children will be represented in fiction and as a whole how their inclusion will be handled throughout the novel itself. Equal to that curiosity, I happen to love YA Fantasy! No more apparent than if you read my Serial Overview of the Leland Dragons series by Jackie Gamber (or caught my 100s of tweets recommending it to everyone on Twitter!) Let’s face it, some series endeavour themselves into your soul, and Leland Dragons for me is one of those series!
I have taken up a small residence inside Children’s Lit for several moons now, as I do blog about my re-entrance back into Children’s Lit each chance I get. It is my hope after my relocation I can spend more time on devouring the Middle Grade and Young Adult authors I’ve been selecting as my own personal batches of choice for ‘next reads and must reads’ alike! Some of them I want to sample to see if I can fit inside part of the realm of where YA & MG readers regularly hang out OR if I truly am a bird of my own feather who likes to dig inside MG & YA by stories that might go overlooked by the masses. I tend to yield to thinking I’m the latter — let’s face it, I’ve never read what was popular, I’ve held myself to seeking what felt favourable to me to want to experience rather than opting for a book everyone else was already jonsing to flirt over. (in other words, I’m not a ‘fangirl‘)
I decided to take a chance on Ian Quicksilver (as I previously took a chance on An Uncommon Blue) because I keep trying to find more Literature for Boys, as it would be nice to know some books to tell my future sons about which books they might enjoy reading. I’ve found a few, but I know I’ve only just begun to uncover what they might gravitate towards!
I admit, I haven’t read the Percy Jackson series, mostly as I was considering reading it, the films came out and the trailers alone scared me silly! lol
One series I am eager to introduce to one of my nephews (as he’s Middle Grade age) includes “The Dragon in the Sock Drawer” and “The Dragon in the Driveway”, which are part of an inventive dragon series by Kate Klimo. I also read the first book in the time travel museum series that starts with “The Sixty-Eight Rooms” by Marianne Malone. I love reading Children’s Lit, and dedicated a page to it on my blog, where I highlight books I read during my own childhood as much as books I am discovering now.
Finding wicked quality stories who are fused with characters both the child and the Mum can rally behind is a bit of a quirky balancing act, but this future Mum and present day Auntie is attempting the impossible because her parents instilled such a catapult of readerly joy in her own childhood, she wants to give her own (future) children the same benefit of bookish explorations she was given herself.
Ian Quicksilver: The Warrior's Return
by Alyson Peterson
Source: Direct from Publisher
Skinny nerdy foster kid Ian Quicksilver from Puckerbrush, Nevada, has just discovered an unsettling truth - he is the last warrior prince of Bankhir. And the fate of his home planet - and the entire galaxy - depends on him. Well, him and Arianna Hernfeld, the hottest girl in school. He needs her help and her magic to stop a sociopathic magician bent on galactic domination.
The problem is, Arianna doesn't remember anything about their past, and all of this galaxy-saving, spell-breaking stuff has to happen by Ian's sixteenth birthday. Which is only five days away.
Get ready for an action-packed, laugh-out-loud book that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Witty and perfectly paced, this is one adventure story you'll have to read to believe.
Places to find the book:
Also by this author: The Cursed Dagger, Author Interview (The Cursed Dagger)
Series: Ian Quicksilver
Also in this series: The Cursed Dagger
Published by Sweetwater Books
on 12th May, 2015
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Published By: Sweetwater Books (@SweetwaterBooks),
an imprint of Cedar Fort, Inc (@CedarFortBooks)
Available Formats: Paperback, Ebook
Converse via: #IanQuicksilver
About Alyson Peterson
Alyson Peterson lives in a mountainside gully –of all places– in northern Utah with her neurotic, shed-tastic dog, two ninja kids, and superhero husband. She spends her time painting, breaking bones at her Martial Arts class (mostly her own) and reading as many books as she can get her hands on.
Meeting Ian Quicksilver | Not your average foster kid:
Ian is a straight-forward bloke who tells you exactly how it is without a pause for the brevity of his life to settle on your conscience because he’s accepted where he is and what his life has been like at this junction of his teenage years. He’s a resourceful teen, not giving into peer pressure but rather, is the kind of teen who likes to stand-up for those who might get picked on instead. Despite his appearances and self-admitted lack of having any redeemable quality about himself, Ian charms your heart into standing with him because of his honesty. The quirky bit to him is that despite the hiccups and adversities, he finds a way to make it work for him.
Ian has a sixth sense awareness about things, except he doesn’t quite understand yet that he has a gift for observing what is hidden from view by most his age. He’s a bit more clued in naturally due to how he feels as though he’s living outside the social structure of his peers, but by being removed from them, he’s expanding his world-view on other things.
His hindrances for being physically active from asthma is writ well and true to how breathing can wreck your physical wellness and your courage to be more than who you are in instances where stamina and strength are needed. I noted a lot of knowing realism in Peterson’s depictions of Ian’s asthmatic attacks as my Mum grew up with the breathing disorder and Ian’s experiences were a match to my Mum’s. Most of Quicksilver is a step outside the contemporary world but when I find Peterson grounding her characters with real-world issues it feel as if you could take up residence because of the detail attentions to the world-building.
My Review of Ian Quicksilver: The Warrior’s Return:
Mobile home parks can be a lovely place to grow up or they can resemble the kind of park Ian is living in where the attention to maintaining the place is a bit more rundown than it needs to be. Ian has foster parents who care more about the subsidy checks in the mail per child they take in than the actual raising of the children of whom they are entrusted. Anyone who is seeking to adopt out of foster care knows about the dichotomy of differences between foster parents, but on a certain level it was a bit difficult to read how adverse they were to everything around them.
At school, Ian’s ability to blend out of sight continues as much as his vexation for being the sole person no one wants to have around for his lack of physicality and self-starting motivation. Ian is the typical boy who hasn’t yet grown comfortable in his own skin and is seeking acceptance across different levels of where his insecurity torments his self-esteem. When he uncovers a hidden truth about himself and a world which feels more like a figment of his imagination than a real-life place to visit, Ian finds his ordinary life is being re-aligned for an all-stakes adventure where life itself is precarious in the balance.
Enter the newfound reality of being a long-lost son of a King from a world known as ‘Bankhir’ whose sisterly bond to ‘Garfel’ is about to become a delicate race against time. The rulers of both decided the only way to save their worlds and to restore peace were to cast out two of their own into a world far removed from their societies intensive war, vying a hope towards re-setting the peace when the boy and girl return home. Only these are not ordinary planets like Earth or even Saturn, no these two are co-dependent on each other due to how the magic of their powers are generated and controlled.
Quite a heap of a ‘welcome to your fifteen year’ the time before you cause mortal consequences to your family and the kingdoms of your past! There is an elusive magician named Silivus who created the time warp travel option for Ian and his mysterious Garfel princess. The science inside Quicksilver plays on a few principles of Astrophysics but to me, the swirl and flush idea felt more like black hole science than a quantum slingshot. The residue effect of travelling in this manner is having your memories a bit wonkified from their normal settings of remembrance. Ian only regained a partial amount of his whereas Arianna (the missing Princess of Garfel) has a clean slate – as in Silvius altered her ability to keep long-term memories.
The way in which Peterson puts Ian and Ari (she has a particular way of being; especially in how she’s called by name) together at school is quite believable because she created circumstances that a boy might conceive to get close to a girl. The observational sixth sense I mentioned about noticing in Ian earlier came full circle when he started to focus on Ari; he noticed things about her personality and her character’s presence that others are simply blind to seeing. He understands her in a way that I think surprises Ari and also, puts him in a better light than he might have been originally.
Ari on the other hand starts to bloom into her shoes in regards to finding the confidence to own her uniqueness and re-set this stage of her life to embrace the whole of who she is by the encouragement of Ian; the unsuspecting friend who walked into her life at a time where she needed a friend the most. This interesting metamorphosis she is undertaking is quite keen to watch emerge because although Ari isn’t as shy or timid as she might be mistaken for she also has a limited understanding of what her gifts can do. Being in a family who would prefer to cast out her gift completely from their point of focus I believe is what hindered her the most; she should have been encouraged to understand the full scope of her abilities rather than to try to stunt them from coming out.
The Warrior’s Return has a lot of undercurrent themes running into the narrative arc and giving readers a bit of an insight on how our differences are not meant to divide us but unite us. We’re different from each other because we each have something unique to contribute to the whole. It’s how we choose to focus on our strengths and embrace our faults is a mark of our character as much as it is a growth of maturity. I appreciated seeing how Peterson took two characters who were on the fringes of ‘coming-of age’ and instilled in them a grounding sense of who they could be simply by observing how someone else ‘saw them’ and understood them in a way they hadn’t felt would be possible.
Peterson gives her readers a wicked keen treat by inventing telepathic writing as a mode of communication when people are out of sight but not out of mind. I won’t say more about it because I don’t want to spoilt it for you, but let’s just say it takes telepathy to a new height of curious possibility! I also love the elements of TK (telekinesis) she’s knitted into the story inasmuch as the electrical hypersensitive paragifted capabilities of Ari’s hidden talent. This last element reminded of why I was wicked excited to read The Last Gatekeeper by Katy Haye. When it comes to manipulation of energy and sources of energy story-lines can jump into a mecca of interesting realms, because how energy can be shifted between stability and instability has the most intrigue for a reader. To gain access to a power source where energy in it’s rarest form can be harnessed and then re-distributed or altered to a level of power that is controllable to the person whose gifted with the talent is inspiring narrative. It’s also the cross-bridge uniting Fantasy with Science Fiction fusing it’s own new genre of ‘Sci-Fantasy’. (or in other words, Jorie’s newest sub-genre of interest!)
Your entreaty into Ian Quicksilver’s life ends on a cliffhanger because this is the first story in the series, but as far as cliffhangers go, this is one ending where I felt a bit more uplifted by where we leave off with this introduction. Normally, I am not akin to liking cliffhangers, as anyone whose read my review on The Golem and the Jinni will know that I am not a fan of ambiguous final chapters. I was a bit surprised there was a bit of a turning point to where this nearly exited ‘fantasy’ and went straight into ‘heroic bloodshed’ in the ‘Swords and Sorcery’ section of the genre. Blessedly for me, Peterson held back most of the graphic bits to where only a superficial level remained. Blessed beyond measure, truly! What you leave with is an overwhelming sense of urgency and a nail-biting wonderment about how Warriors, Magic Keepers, and Magicians are going to settle the score between them. My interest is piqued. Now if only I knew when No.2 was going to be released!
On the writing style and tone of Peterson’s Quicksilver world:
Initial remarks of feedback to the author were about my appreciation about how I like the way it’s toned, paced, and set. I like how it’s being written & how Ian is grounded in the opening chapters of the novel. It isn’t often I get to interact with an author ahead of a review or whilst a review is in-progress, but sometimes paths can cross quite serendipitously. I wanted to expand on what I was referencing because it reminds me that I still need to make amends with another author as due to personal reasons I never wrote a follow-up to a previous review. (my next #BookishNotBookish will explain)
For me, one of the key ingredients for Children’s Lit is the methodology of how the author fuses the reader into the world by the choices they make in how the tone of the narrative is read. In the past I have outed authors for creating such a dark undertone as to eclipse out all possible light from soaking inside which is one of my greatest pet peeves for Children’s Lit; specifically YA. I don’t mind stories of adversity but the margin of what I consider YA vs Adult is quite a different line in the sand than the genre eludes.
One author who went the extra mile for her readers is L.G. O’ Connor who penned Trinity Stones both for adult and young adult audiences; the latter of which releases Autumn 2015! My impressions about Trinity Stones was in direction reflection of the adult edition; at which time the YA version was barely a whisper of a thought. Again, my next #BookishNotBookish will be addressing this wicked sweet news for readers inasmuch as my reaction as a book blogger who loved the ‘world’ the author created even if I couldn’t accept it as it was previously written.
What I look for in a character’s voice and the narrative compliments are a believable factor of realism in how the character is articulating his or her environment and life. I want to find dialogue, word choices, and phrases that not only befit the time setting but the age of the character themselves. I do have disagreements about the ‘language’ teenagers use in books, as this was one reason I opted out of reading a second book in a series for review. My personal stance on vulgarity is widely blogged, tweeted and known about amongst those who cross my path and/or follow my bookish thoughts. All stories where I find vulgarity are threaded through my blog, however, if I took a direct offense to the language and how it was used I wrote a ‘Fly in the Ointment‘ on the post itself.
What I appreciated about Peterson is her exclusion of strong language and opted instead to take a sociological-psychological approach to understanding Ian. She writes with a true focus on where he is right now as far as his maturity and development, but also, on the internal struggle for acceptance on self-image, self-esteem, and self-confidence. The kinds of issues most teens face but it’s how she wrote about them that endeared me to the novel’s heart because she’s approaching it with a mindfulness about how boys view the world vs how boys view themselves. This insight I know is intrinsic to the author as she’s a Mum of boys, but evenso, I think she might have understood them even if she weren’t!
Rather than subjecting Ian and the novel itself to a cruel level of intensity (such as I found in Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress by Sarwat Chadda) she uplifts the reader with a plausible sequence of events that a younger reader can find attachment too due to how believable it is justified. It’s hard to put into words what makes the difference, but if your a regular reader of my blog, you’ll know by reading my reviews because within the context of my reviews you will always know *exactly!* how I feel and what I am thinking about when I read a story. And, this includes the books on my ‘naughty short-list’ via my Children’s Lit main archive page!
For me, a novel’s tone is as dearly important as it’s message!
On why I love reading serial fiction | and why you should read Alyson Peterson!
Peterson has set-up this world as a series from almost the first moment you meet Ian and his foster family, because of how she’s layered the reader into the world at the very beginning. You get a proper sense of what is going to be happening but without the details muddling your appreciation for how it will start to unravell and unfold. Anyone who can have such conviction of imagery on disillusioned foster parents and the role in which they play being similar to Matilda’s parents, is someone who understands how to set the drama into the back-story but allow the character to step forward out of the disparity.
It was last May when I first discovered Cedar Fort Publishing & Media when I came across Uncovering Cobbogoth and since I read that novel, I’ve been itching not only for more installments of Cobbogoth (which thankfully are being written! as I’ve kept in touch with Ms Clark!) but I’ve been seeking another author who could write a world for young adult readers OR adults who read YA (such as I) to sink our teeth into their world! Picking up The Warrior’s Return, I felt a murmur of excitement, would this be the day I find my next series?!
Even before I reached the concluding chapters there are were a few truths I knew:
Ari has to have one *incredible!* back-story!
There is far more to Corbin than meets the proverbial eye.
The Warriors Return is like walking up to a precipice and only seeing half the world.
Yes! I found my next Cobbogoth! Happy reader!
Cobbogoth is going to be a wicked long series + I have a smidge of advanced knowledge Ian Quicksilver is at least three books strong right now! Therefore, read happily, dear hearts! More is coming!
Shh! you know the double circles & sword!? Shh! It’s a wicked awesome tatt! Now you *know!* there has to be more to it than a mere tattoo, eh?! Inquiring minds will surely hope so!
Did I make you curious about The Last Gatekeeper!? Read my Introductory piece about it on my Sci Fi Experience blog post. However, I am on the blog tour upcoming this July 2015!
This Blog Tour Stop is courtesy of Cedar Fort, Inc.:
Visit the Virtual Road Map of “Ian Quicksilver: The Warrior’s Return” Blog Tour:
Find out which Sweetwater & other Cedar Fort books
I am hosting in 2015!
Visit with me again soon!
Reader Interactive Question:
Truly curious: what method of tone do you appreciate in your YA readings!? And, what kinds of adventures do you appreciate in YA Fiction!? Why do you appreciate seeing characters take-on a ‘quest’ & gain growth out of their journey?
SOURCES: Author photograph, Author Biography, Book Synopsis and Book Cover of “Ian Quicksilver: The Warrior’s Return”, Blog Tour Badge and Cedar Fort badge were provided by Cedar Fort Publishing & Media and used with permission. Ruminations & Impressions Book Review Banner created by Jorie in Canva. Photo Credit: Unsplash Public Domain Photographer Sergey Zolkin. Post dividers badge by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets were embedded due to codes provided by Twitter. Jorie Loves A Story Cuppa Book Love Awards Badge created by Jorie in Canva. Coffee and Tea Clip Art Set purchased on Etsy; made by rachelwhitetoo.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2015.
Tweets in regards to “Ian Quicksilver: The Warrior’s Return”:
{ favourite & Re-tweet if inspired to share }
#currentlyreading | #IanQuicksilver Bk1 #YALit w/an epic #fantasy realm expanding exponentially Part of the opening reminded me of Matilda
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) May 25, 2015
@MuseInks I just read about you in @crzywritergrl‘s #IanQuicksilver Acknowledgements! :) What a small, small world it is, truly! :) *Hallo!
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) May 25, 2015
@crzywritergrl Wow, seriously!? :) I thought that was what inspired Ian to relate his world the way he was?! #YALit https://t.co/EHm3QJkiZB
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) May 25, 2015
@JLovesAStory Nope!! I love Matilda, but that wasn’t the inspiration at all!
— Alyson P. (@crzywritergrl) May 25, 2015
#currentlyreading | #amreading #IanQuicksilver a not-your-typical #fosterkid w/in a #youngadult #Fantasy He’s on this EPIC adventure! :)
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) May 25, 2015
#currentlyreading | #amreading #IanQuicksilver | #youngadult Ancient magic, planets in jeopardy, Earthly high school woes, & an adventure!
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) May 27, 2015
I happily devoured #newbook of #YA/#youngadult (http://t.co/4vfzqQe0Wp) due to impressive world-building & depth of potential back-stories!
— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) May 27, 2015
Comments via Twitter:
@JLovesAStory @SweetwaterBooks WOW!! That was quite the review! Thank you and… wow!
— Alyson P. (@crzywritergrl) May 27, 2015
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