Test Pilot's Daughter: Revenge [Kindle Edition]

Steve Ward (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Test Pilot’s Daughter: Revenge is the first title in a series featuring a gutsy female genius who fights injustice in a fast paced thriller. Molesters and pedophiles be warned, don’t mess with Christina Matthews!

Review from the Editor’s Desk of Harper Collins: Test Pilot’s Daughter is exciting, original and a real page-turner. It is extremely well plotted. The author’s familiarity with flying lends his action real veracity and texture.

Ranked number 1 out of 8,000 books on Harper Collins’ Authonomy website November, 2009.

Romance, adventure, murder and revenge, Christina Matthews does it all. An obsessed fly-girl with the Right Stuff and True Grit finds love in the oddest place, the cockpit. A beautiful and brainy college girl born with jet-fuel in her blood is haunted by a gripping family tragedy and the violent murder of her best friend. The only thing she truly fears is sleep. Tortured by nightmares, this test pilot’s daughter has to find a way to save her sanity or die. Mike Clark, call-name Lazer and a real Top Gun, looks to be the best kind of therapy.

With dreams of becoming an Astronaut-Commander, Christina struggles through heart-stopping perils in the cockpit and crash-lands on a deserted island. Without hope for rescue, she concocts an oddball plan to return survivors to civilization.

Risking her future at NASA, Christina delivers on a promise to a dying friend and faces her evil nemesis in the sky. Only by overcoming deep-seated fears can she exorcise her ghosts and pursue a lifelong dream of flying in space.

Will true love conquer Christina’s curse, or will she auger in?

Note from the Author: If you enjoy this novel, make sure to check out the sequel, Test Pilot’s Daughter: Dead Reckoning and follow Christina Matthews into space.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After a career in laser science and spacecraft research, Steve Ward spent the last decade writing, editing and flying. He teaches Creative Writing at Brenau University and edits novels freelance. With one book published, Holy Enigma, University Press, he won writing awards from Writer’s Digest and NASA Innovations. Amid many articles published in technical journals, both of his fiction books are adventures in aviation. He lives on Lake Lanier at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Gainesville, Georgia, USA.

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 313 KB
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0035WTNSK
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,513 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #52 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Family Saga
  • #64 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Family Saga

More About the Author

After a career in laser science and spacecraft research, Steve Ward spent the last decade writing, editing and flying. He teaches Creative Writing at Brenau University and edits novels freelance. With one nonfiction book published, Holy Enigma!, Hamilton Books, University Press of America, Inc., he won writing awards from Writer's Digest and NASA Innovations. Amid many articles published in technical journals, both of his fiction books are adventures in aviation. He lives on Lake Lanier at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Gainesville, Georgia, USA.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Christina, the junior Wonder Woman, July 29, 2011

By 

J. Chambers (Georgia, United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Test Pilot's Daughter: Revenge (Kindle Edition)

Note: This review was originally published on Red Adept Reviews on March 8, 2011.

Overall: 3 stars

Plot/Storyline: 3 stars

Christina was like a junior Wonder Woman - she skydived, scuba dived, and flew airplanes like an experienced pilot after only a few hours of instruction. If the girls were a little younger, and if the more violent scenes were rewritten or deleted, the story would be appropriate - perhaps even inspirational - for younger teenagers, but the story just wasn't believable enough for me.

The first third of the book, which followed the three girls from age eleven through high school, wasn't that interesting and served little purpose. There were dead ends such as the chapter where Jessica's abusive stepfather Roy beat her mom senseless, broke down Jessica's bedroom door, and tried to rape her. Jessica had telephoned Christina to help her, so Christina rushed over and stopped Roy by threatening him with her shotgun. But there was no follow-up, no calling the police, no mention of the stepfather after that. And there was very little mention of any of the girls' parents, it's almost as if they raised themselves.

About halfway through the story, the action picked up and the story got more interesting when the three girls entered college. Christina started flying lessons, Heather became romantically involved with an older man, and Jessica studied old Spanish archives to locate sunken treasure. The three girls were now living their dreams. During a summer break, they embarked on a trip to the Bahamas on a treasure-hunting expedition that ended in tragedy. And this is where it really got too unbelievable for me. Christina showed flying skills that only a veteran pilot would have, even though she had not even earned her pilot's license. Her instructor had told her that she was the best student he had ever taught, but it was too much of a reach to believe she could fly planes as expertly as she did in the story.

The story had too many convenient coincidences (such as an uncharted island being right where you need it) and implausible events (such as Jessica pinpointing sunken Spanish treasure that had eluded professional treasure hunters for years).

I do have to say that the scene where Christina sought revenge on the culprit responsible for the Bahamas disaster was quite satisfying, even if it was a bit improbable.


Characters: 4 stars

Christina, Heather, and Jessica were the main characters, and the author did a good job of developing them as flesh and blood people, even if their emotions didn't always seem realistic to me.


Writing style: 3 stars

The author's writing style was generally good, but the emotions and the dialogues of the story's characters were not very realistic at times. After witnessing the sudden, violent death of a close friend or relative, most people would be devastated and in shock. These characters, however, got over tragedies quickly and moved on.

If you're going to have your characters engage in specialized activities, an author should be familiar with those activities. There were some glaring errors in this regard. For example, while skydiving for the first time, Christina "pulled the ripcord and tossed it to the side." I've skydived, and you don't toss the ripcord away, for two reasons: (1) it could kill someone on the ground, and (2) ripcords are not cheap to replace. She also pulled the ripcord at 1,000 feet, which is well below the minimum altitude for opening your parachute. Trust me, you get yelled at for things like that and get banned from a drop zone.

Later, when Christina was taking flying lessons, she goes up with her instructor in a "Citborea," an aerobatic aircraft. I think the author meant a Citabria.


Editing: 2 stars

The book was in serious need of editing and proofreading. I found quite a few grammatical and punctuation errors, and misspellings were found every few pages. A few examples: "ought" for "aught," "ware" for "were," "ya'll" for "y'all," "brake" for "break," "waist" for "waste," "metamorphous" for "metamorphosis," "depravation" for "deprivation," "choral reef" for "coral reef," and so on.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Feel Good aviation novel, March 29, 2010

By 

James P. Morgan "jp49" (Joliet, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Test Pilot's Daughter: Revenge (Kindle Edition)

I have to admit for $0.99 it sounded like a good book, so I gave it a try. I enjoyed the story and the character development, to me the characters were very believable and like-able. The plot moved quickly and grabbed me and forced me to read into the wee hours. The plot isn't complex, there's no secondary plot to try and confuse you, it's just a good story. This book just keeps you interested, especially if you are a pilot or interested in aviation. This is a good, fun to read novel. I'm looking forward to Steve's follow-up novel to be released soon.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fast paced...satisfying story, January 30, 2012

By 

Johnny Collins "JC" (Gainesville, GA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Test Pilot's Daughter: Revenge (Kindle Edition)

The opening chapter is probably one of the best I've read. It draws the reader into the book and compels him or her to read the whole story in order to discover how things work out. The book includes basic flight training, an emergency landing on a deserted island, a confrontation with hijackers, and a short field takeoff during an approaching hurricane. This page turner is a most satisfying read!