Surviving Serendipity [Paperback]

Jacquelyn Sylvan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 31, 2008

The most that June expected for her 21st birthday was a night of fun with her friends, and maybe some flowers and a CD from her fiancé. She certainly didn t expect to come home to what should have been a dark, empty apartment, to find her destiny waiting for her...wearing bright purple pirate pants. Kidnapped by a sinister stranger and whisked off to a far corner of the galaxy, June discovers that her life on Earth has been a two-decade long lie, and that her true home is the troubled kingdom of Prendawr, on the planet Thallafrith. As if that wasn t enough to chase her back under the covers, June is informed that her duty, as princess and sole surviving member of the royal family, is to use her newly discovered magical abilities to save the planet from impending doom. Accompanied by Halryan, a sorcerer with a questionable agenda, and Koen, Minogan, Errigal, and Feoras, members of a vanishing race of blue warriors, June has no idea that she is about to embark on the journey of a thousand lifetimes, one that will surpass both her wildest dreams and her most terrifying nightmares.

Editorial Reviews

Review

June's story is one that is intriguing and mature enough to capture an adult's fancy, yet appeal to older teens as well. Earth myths and alien worlds are effectively blended into an easy to read tale that is both familiar and new. --Amanda Killgore, The Eternal Night UK

About the Author

Jacquelyn Sylvan, author of Surviving Serendipity, resides in Palmerton, PA with her husband Martin and their assorted pets. She graduated Pleasant Valley High School in Brodheadsville, Pa, in 1998, and left Northampton Community College in 2002 with an Associate in Journalism degree. Surviving Serendipity is her first novel.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Echelon Press Publishing (January 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590805860
• ISBN-13: 978-1590805862
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,108,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a fabulous young adult sci-fi novel, March 5, 2008

By 

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

This review is from: Surviving Serendipity (Paperback)

June lives a nice comfortable middle class life as she approaches her twenty-first birthday. She expects a little celebration with her friends Ashleigh and Shannon, and her fiancé Kyle, but nothing life changing. She is disappointed that Kyle could not get out of a late meeting.

However, when a somewhat tipsy June enters her unlit apartment after designated driver Ashleigh drops her off, someone wearing purple pants that belonged in a Johnny Depp swashbuckler or a genie is in her kitchen. The stranger abducts her although June has no idea why as she has no one can pay a ransom to free her. She quickly realizes no one she knows has the technology to pay a ransom as her kidnapper takes her across the galaxy to on the planet Thallafrith where she is the only surviving member of the royal family that has ruled the kingdom of Prendawr. Her people expect Princess June to use the magical skills she did not know she had to save the day. With the guidance of Halryan the sorcerer and the nearly extinct blue warriors, June feels so unready to fight the evil that is destroying her new old world.

This is a fabulous young adult sci-fi novel that is much more complex than the above paragraphs describe as the heroine learns how relative truth is to the beholder. Everyone seems to have a personal agenda while interpreting events to foster the achievement of that objective regardless of side effects on others. June is great as a displaced person wondering how she fell through the rabbit hole from being a young American whose worst fear is butt growth to being a world savior mage with enemies who want her dead. SURVIVING SERENDIPITY is a superb story as June just wanted a little excitement in her life.

Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, June 18, 2009

By 

TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Surviving Serendipity (Paperback)

June has faced her fair share of hardships in life, including the death of her parents, but when this story starts, life is going pretty well. Her best friends are taking her out to celebrate her twenty-first birthday, and although her hardworking fiancée is gone on business, he's just a phone call away. Everything seems perfect, until she comes home from a night out with the girls to discover a man dressed in strange clothes standing in her living room - a man who transports her to a world she can't remember, a world he tells her was once her home.

According to Halryan, June is the lost princess and powerful sorcerer of the kingdom Prendawr on the planet Thallafrith. Within a few short hours, she learns that her parents were not really her parents, and that her appearance itself has changed since she has returned "home."

June also learns that she's the only one who can engage in a quest to save the kingdom and the rest of the world from destruction by the insidious Eid Gomen, strange and menacing inhuman creatures with powerful control over magic and the ability to suck a world's life-force out of it if they are left unchecked. The only problem is that nobody asked June if she wanted the job of saving a world she's never really known.

After much explaining and convincing, June decides to go along with Halryan and his four companions, blue-skinned men from a race known as the Valforte, but that doesn't mean she has to be happy about it, and she's not the sort to keep quiet about something that's bothering her. Her no-nonsense attitude was sometimes frustrating, sometimes endearing, but always refreshing: here is a woman who takes things as she sees them, who has both the stubbornness to stand her ground and the grace to admit it when she might have been wrong.

For me, the personal turmoil caused by the events she must go through was the core of the story; the typical fantasy quest plot paled in comparison (although Sylvan puts a nice twist on the typical quest that I certainly didn't expect).

I also enjoyed Sylvan's portrayal of June's Valforte companions. Each of the four men gained a personality of his own, and whether they served the role of antagonist, helpmeet, informer, foil, teacher, or love interest, they played important roles in the story while still seeming like real people. I also appreciated the way that Sylvan dealt with racial tension between the Valfortes and the majority race of Andrians, instead of ignoring the potential for such conflict as many watered-down fantasies do.

While the start was a little slow for me, by the time I got through the first few chapters I was interested enough in the characters and their interactions to keep going. When the author dropped a bomb about a hundred pages in, I felt entirely justified in the impulses that had led me to read so far. Although this book follows a lot of genre clichés,

it twisted enough of them in just the right ways to make this an interesting and believable read.

I'd recommend it to anyone interested in fantasy, but also to anyone who appreciates characters who prove their strength in the face of great obstacles.

Reviewed by: Candace Cunard

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it!, June 26, 2008

By 

Vincent G. Keiper III (PA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Surviving Serendipity (Paperback)

I loved this book. A wonderful fantasy sprinkled with a little romance. Bringing all the mythical creatures and stories we've all heard about to life. I couldn't put it down.