Falling Upwards [Mass Market Paperback]

Kassandra Sims (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2007

NEVA JONES IS ON A QUEST
 
But she's not quite sure what she's questing for. A crow told her to take off all the iron she was wearing, a stag told her to get a lock of pale hair and a lock of dark, and an owl told her to jump into a lake.
 
Neva is a businesswoman in the New South, not a character in some fairy tale -- but she'll take on this quest if it means no longer feeling like she's going insane.  So she dives right into the lake and into a crazy dream-world where nothing makes sense, giants speak in riddles, surfers throw tea parties, and there's ocean as far as the eye can see.
 
One thing seems certain: the hottie she met on a business trip in Wales is here, and needs to be saved from living the cycle of a curse over and over. Neva's saved herself plenty during her thirty-one years; she figures she can save a dark-haired, blue-eyed Welshman by solving a bunch of riddles. And then, if this really is a fairy tale, they'll be together forever.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sims's sophomore effort (after The Midnight Work) is a fantasy romance that starts out slow, choppy, confusing and rooted for too long in the real world; once the story passes into its thoughtfully constructed through-the-looking-glass fantasy world, however, the pace and narrative both pick up and the "huh?" factor begins to work to the book's advantage. After businesswoman Neva Jones meets a gorgeous young man named March in a pub in Wales, she begins to have auditory and visual hallucinations, leading her to question her sanity. Once back home in Alabama, Neva is compelled by strange feelings and visions to dive into the murky water of her grandparents' pond. When she emerges onto dry land, she encounters talking animals, fairies and—strangely enough—her new acquaintance, March. Because of something that happened in that Welsh pub, Neva and March must fulfill a quest that takes them through realms populated by giants, jealous goddesses and a frat-boy sea god. Sims's incorporation of Welsh mythology into her fantasy quest is the strongest part of the book; by contrast, the burgeoning love affair between Neva and March never quite convinces. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In Wales on business, Neva Jones steps into a pub and inadvertently sets off a series of events that will involve her in a quest straight out of a video game. On that fateful day, she is inexplicably drawn to a tall, dark, and handsome March, although he is ten years younger than she is. She initially dismisses him as eye candy, but she has strange dreams about him. One especially weird experience is enough to send her home early to Mobile, Alabama. But geographic distance is no barrier, and the dreams and hallucinations continue. Neva thinks she is going nuts; then, when she jumps into a pond, she exits into another dimension, and there is March. It turns out that he needs Neva's help to lift a curse, and she becomes a hero. Paranormal romance fans will love Sims' fantastic and highly original novel. Maria Hatton
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Tor Paranormal Romance (April 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765355817
• ISBN-13: 978-0765355812
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 3.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,204,610 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Confusion in Wonderland, May 28, 2007

By 

Helen Hancox "Auntie Helen" (Essex, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Falling Upwards (Mass Market Paperback)

"Falling Upwards" feels a little like a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Arthurian legends. At 228 pages it's a shorter read than most books in this genre and the romantic element is a fairly minor part of the overall story which focuses very heavily on a quest that our heroine and hero undertake to free him from a geas.

Half way through this book I realised I still didn't have a clue what was going on. Neva Jones, a businesswoman from Mobile, Alabama, meets a strange young man on a business trip to Cardiff in Wales and after that experience nothing is quite the same. She initially thinks she might be going mad, as do some of her family, and eventually she resigns herself to going along with her strangeness and jumps into a pond as she felt an Owl was instructing her. From that point on the story is like Alice in Wonderland as Neva comes across stranger and stranger things (a talking crow, a stag that can speak in her mind, fairies, a princess, giants) along with the man she met in Wales, called March, now looking rather different. The author has a great turn of phrase in places, especially as Neva spends most of the book laughing at her experiences and thinking she's lost the plot. However for the reader it was sometimes hard going as it's never clear what's happening or where the story is going and cryptic comments abound.

There was quite a lot of unexplained information in this book (who were the women flocking around the Welsh man in the pub, for example) and the ending was left suitably vague in terms of the long-term prospects for hero and heroine rather than being nicely tied up. However it was well written and the descriptions of the strange places and people that Neva experienced were interesting. Unfortunately for this reader the impossibility of understanding the plot and the strange romance (more a result of propinquity than anything else) was unsatisfying.

[...].

2.0 out of 5 stars Uh, no., May 20, 2007

By 

AK "Bro" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Falling Upwards (Mass Market Paperback)

While on a business trip in Wales, Neva Jones meets an unusual man named March. Back home in America, she re-encounters him and learns that March is a man under a curse, living between the real world and the dream world, repeating a cycle of events in an unbroken chain, and this will continue until the curse is broken. What's more, she is his only hope of breaking free. Neva agrees to help and finds herself in a world where legends come to life and things are always more than they seem to be. She also finds she is now part of the curse and breaking it will win her freedom as well, and she is somehow claimed by a surfer dude who is a sea deity. Undaunted, she is determined to win this challenge, for both their sakes.

** Although the images conveyed by Ms. Sims' words are beautiful and the subtle humor she attempts to inject has charm, there's a lack of coherence to the narrative, making it hard to concentrate on what is happening, or to care about the characters. I hoped for something such as Charles De Lint creates in his pages, but it fell short. **

Amanda Killgore

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sort of modernizing of Alice Through the Looking Glass, April 5, 2007

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Falling Upwards (Mass Market Paperback)

Neva Jones is in Wales on a business trip when she meets the enigmatic March. From the onset she thought he was different though she is not sure why except that he seems to live in this world and somehow outside this world.

In sweet home Alabama, curious and attracted to March, Neva suffers from hallucinations that frighten her. Still she develops a hypothesis to overcome the limitations of her mind. On the other hand, March believes Neva is the woman who can lift the curse that has left him with one foot in a realm of dreams and one in the mortal plane. As Neva begins to believe that there is more to the universe than the physical plane starting with the metaphysical feelings of falling in love, she struggles with reality vs. illusion as she enters a realm in which her only realism anchor is March.

FALLING UPWARDS is a sort of modernizing of Alice Through the Looking Glass. The story line starts a bit slow and disjointed as Neva and March meet in a Welsh pub, but once she crosses over into a fantasy realm, the story line turns fast-paced and exciting as the heroine ponders whether reality means insanity. Fans who dive into that Alabama pond with Neva will enjoy her quest once she steps out of the water to meet fantasy species, talking animals and of course March.

Harriet Klausner