Customer Reviews

Stargazer (Oasis Series, Book 1)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Being the daughter of a murdering Circe witch who killed her father has hurt Lilly as much of upper society starting with her uncle blames her from the moment of her birth almost as much as her mother though Lilly was born after the homicide. Two decades later her uncle, Sovereign Alexander of Oasis still holds her culpable for his brother's death due to her mother's actions; still he assigns Lilly as his representative to the senate with war beckoning that could destroy the world.

Ravigans attack her ship and her bodyguard Krebb is killed. Desperate she frees a cyro-prisoner Phoenix, whom she already held a telepathic chat with, from his frozen cell that stated "Do not revive without authorization". The prisoner was to be dumped in the deepest known hole for murdering five Senate soldiers. He sees his actions differently as he was avenging the murder of his parents. He is an anomaly as an unprecedented male surviving descendent of the Circe witches, but agrees to protect Lilly. As they fall in love, they have doubts about the underlying reasons for the upcoming war and investigate how he survived the Circe witches when they kill male infants immediately.

STARGAZER is an exciting action-packed science fiction romance in which the worlds envisioned by Colby Hodge seem so real the audience will believe she is an ET from one of them. The story line hits hyperspeed immediately and never decelerates until the climax. The mystery of Phoenix adds depth on a personal level to this fabulous outer space tale that in some ways feels like a medieval historical tale as love and war are enhanced by trust and betrayal respectively.

Harriet Klausner

Stargazer is the story of Princess Lilly of the planet Oasis and a condemned murder, Shaun Phoenix.

Lilly is the niece of the King of Oasis, her father was the King's brother and her mother was a Circe witch. At her birth, her mother was condemned to die for murdering the King's wife and son, her father had died trying to protect the queen and her babe. As the King's last living relative, Lilly is heir to the throne.

Shaun Phoenix was raised underground on a planet that's surface was covered by poisonous gas, his parents were in hiding. They had been forbidden to marry, fleeing to have the life together and going in hiding. They were murdered when the leaders decided they wanted the planet the couple was living on, killed by the soldiers sent to remove them. Phoenix saught out each man who had murdered his parents and killed them, for this he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the darkest hole that could be found.

The couple meet when Lilly and her protector took transport undercover on a cargo ship. As Lilly enters the bay, she senses Phoenix and goes to stand before his cryo tube. She touches him mentally, then enters her own cryo tube, next to her protector. The death of her protector penetrates her sleep and awakes her to the the danger she is in, The ship is being attacked by the Ravigans, the enemy of her people. She helps Phoenix escape from the soldier trying to kill him and they flee to an escape pod, where they eject to safety. It is from here where their adventure truely begins. Are they safe? Don't count on it, enemies turn up at every turn and are people you would least suspect.

I refuse to tell you more, I don't want to spoil the story. You won't regret reading it and I know it will be on your read again shelf. I know I put it on mine.

Lily, niece of Sovereign Alexander, is the only royal on Oasis who can save her threatened planet and protect its natural resource from being plundered. During a secret mission to address the Senate, Lily boards a cargo ship to disguise her presence from the marauding Ravigans who've surrounded her home world. When the ship is attacked, and her bodyguard Krebbs is killed, she has no choice but to join forces with the only man on board who can save her life. What better person than a man guilty of murdering five Legionnaires? It doesn't hurt that his only other choice is imprisonment in the bowels of a prison planet. Yet, Lily's telepathic trip inside the prisoner's head shows her there is more to him than meets the eye. It begs her to answer the question--What kind of special secrets does Phoenix hold as the only male Circe ever left alive?

This is the fundamental question that spurs Lily and Shaun Phoenix on, through a labyrinth of political intrigue to save her planet and their lives. When they can no longer trust anyone except each other, their relationship jumps at warp speed to a whole new level. From their first meeting, they're connected by a special bond as Circe witches which allow them to enter each other's heads (and adds a surreal sensual realm during their intimate moments). By overcoming their emotional weaknesses and supporting each others individual strengths Shaun and Lily multiply their "natural" powers to uncover the secret plots brewing around them. Their adventures immerse them in a myriad of cultures and several planets are fleshed out in complete detail, including a blood lust gladiator fight to the death and snakelike creatures waiting to pounce underwater.

As Susan Grant noted in her praise for STARGAZER the novel does have connotation of Riddick and Star Wars. In fact, several times I caught myself reflecting back to various Sci-fi sources that could've inspired Colby Hodge's imagination. Even though some of the pieces reflect classic moments captured on film, the way the author has mixed and matched the elements is masterful. Colby Hodge has taken the best pieces and twisted them into a tail that is intricately weaved and fast paced enough to have readers racing to the end to discover whether or not the hero and heroine's epic struggle will truly have a happy ending.

Colby Hodge, better known as bestselling author Cindy Holby of "Chase The Wind" and "Windfall", is sure to attract a new legion of fans with her first science fiction adventure. From the haunting opening with Lily's psychic attraction to a helpless prisoner in cryosleep, Hodge/Holby takes the reader on a riotous ride through the fantastic realms of space.

The plot moves at lightspeed, easily introducing new characters and revealing new twists without a stall. Han Solo has nothing on charming, hotshot pilot Reuben, and the evil Circe invoke nightmares.

Although marketed as a fantasy romance by Dorchester Publishing, this novel really crosses genres. Fans of "Dune" and "Star Wars" will feel right at home in Hodge/Holby's galaxy, and her handling of the parapsychic realms draws favorable comparisons to Marian Zimmer Bradley's world of Darkover.

This adventure is not to be missed. If there's any flaw with this superb new series, it's the delay between the release of the future sequels....Five shooting stars!

Like most books I buy, it was the cover art that caught my eye. Little did I know that it was just a cover for a really great book. A page turner that I could not put down, the writer kept readers interested with the fast pace and interesting plot twists in the book. I was only disappointed to find out that this was Mrs. Hodge's first book. I can't wait for her next one.

Sorry, I'm just not terribly big on the whole inscest thing. It does little for me and quite frankly, I can't help but wonder about the editors who let it go.

Beyond the ick factor, this book was poorly written. There wasn't enough of the universe beyond the explanation of the grey-eyed Mary Sues, to give the reader much of a feeling about what was going on on a grand scale. Our heroine was just another pampered girly who did so little to stand out in comparison to the other pampered girlies in the genre that she was flat out forgettable. Our hero, the stereotypical rogue with a sympathetic past, was also so generic that he didn't do anything worthwhile to stick in my mind beyond the obvious gross out sex with a close blood relative.

Overall, this book was utterly lacking in originality and was nasty to top it off. I'd recommend it for fire kindling should you need to get the fireplace roaring this winter.

For those reviews who insist this book is a great read, I ask: Compared to what? I read a lot of romance and sci-fi and by any measure this book is sub-standard and not worth your time.

The entire plot of the book is given away in the first few pages. It seems there exists a race of people where some of their people are born with uniquely colored pale grey eyes. Those with pale grey eyes also have the ability to read minds as well as other mental abilities. All males born with pale grey eyes are put to death so that only women are allowed to possess these special powers. In the whole history of these people there is only one known case of a male allowed to live and that is the son of ruler from another planet who married one of these pale grey eyed women. Alas, she and her son disappeared shortly after his birth some 20 years ago and no one knows what happened to him. They only whisper that someday he will return to reclaim his birth-right.

Enter hero stage left. Phoenix is on his way to serve sentence for murder when he is freed by our heroine, Lilly who needs an escort. Lilly is the niece of the ruler whose son disappeared all of those years ago. She has the pale grey eyes and the mental abilities too because the ruler's brother also married a women from this same planet. Sadly her uncle is not that into her and she has been raised by her Father's advisor who couldn't love her more then if she was his very own daughter. Lilly is shocked to see that our hero, Phoenix has the same unique light grey eyes she does and also possess newly awakened telepathic powers. But it is just not possible because there is only one male known to have survived with those eyes. But who could he be? Dear reader, you must continue on through the remaining 98% of the book to unearth this great mystery.

Now there can be a certain amount of pleasure to be had by watching brain dead characters attempt to figure out what was apparent to the reader by page 10, provided there is something else of interest to pay attention to such as witty dialogue or interesting characters. Unfortunately this book falls flat on its face in those areas as well. The characters are all two dimensional caricatures who utter lines lifted straight out of Star Wars - a movie I might add which is known as much for its abysmal dialogue as its rousing story. The romance has zero development. Our characters are ready to sacrifice their lives for each other by page 50. The sex is not hot and in fact there is that whole yuck factor of their close blood relationship that actually becomes a plot point about 2/3 the way through. Or course the trusting reader assumes that will be resolved somehow and in fact the answer to that is quite obvious as well.

I give the book 2 stars mostly because for some unknown reason the sub-genre of futuristic romances is filled with particularly weak books and so compared to those this book is only below average. If I was to compare it to all romance books, I would give it one star. Since there is so much good stuff out there to read, I can't recommend this book to anyone and regret that I had the misfortune to purchase this book and so felt obligated to finish it. I hope to at least save some readers from making the same mistake.

I just finished reading Colby Hodge's Stargazer. It was entertaining, and I certainly liked the main characters, but something was missing for me. The story did have pieces of Dune and Star Wars and even the Chronicles of Riddick as mentioned in other reviews which is fine, but the plot just seemed a little to predictable at times. I didn't caught up in the romance aspect or the sci-fi aspect so much which just made me feel the book was "okay." Although I knew what threats the main characters faced, I was never emotionally invested enough in the story to feel the urgency or danger. If you love sci-fi romance, I'd recommend Susan Krinard's Kinsman's Oath and Star-Crossed. Susan Krinard's books are ones I read over again. This one may not stay in my library of books.

It's nice to see some sci-fi in the world of romance novels! Stargazer is an up-tempo journey into a beautiful new world, lush with scenery and dynamic characters. I was glad to find some characters to love and some characters that I loved to hate! Cliffhangers at the end hook readers for the next in the series.

There is an art to a good story teller or in today's world a good writer. One of the abilities they have is taking an over worked theme or plot changing it into something new and exciting and their very own story. Fairy tales some of the oldest stories around have been retold in amazing ways that are unique to the author.
This author didn't do that in this story.
I made myself read the whole book just to see if she would use The Chronicles of Roderick and Dune for her plot all the way through the book. <sigh> She did. I felt like i was reading a very badly rewrite of Dune with Roderick thrown in as a whoosified hero. If you like sci fi I don't recommend this book. Its way to unsettling to see an author not find her own way to make these two stories, she seems to have took her plot from, new and unique to her form of story telling.