Review Tour + #Giveaway: The Electric Girl by Christine Hart @chris_a_hart @GoddessFish

 

The Electric Girl

by Christine Hart

GENRE: YA / Magic Realism / Sci-fi

BLURB:

Polly Michaels is trying to forget that her mom has cancer. She keeps busy at school and plods through a normal social life. Until a freak electrical storm and a unicorn appear in the orchard next to her house.

Sy’kai wakes on an orchard floor to the smell of rotting cherries and wet earth. She doesn’t know where she is—or what she is—but she knows something is hunting her.

Polly recruits her friends to find the mysterious creature she saw from her window while Sy’kai, a confused shape-shifting endling from another dimension tries to piece her mind back together. Once the human girls find Sy’kai (whom they nickname Psyche) the mystery unravels and the danger facing all of them comes into focus.

A gritty struggle ranges throughout the girls’ rural hometown and in the wild terrain around it. All while two questions hang over their heads. Can an alien deliver a miracle for a human mother? Can a group of teens defeat an interdimensional demon?

Excerpt:

Sparks cut the space in front of her, dancing in a lacy ice and sapphire ring. If I can close the portal with him inside, it won’t matter what we leave behind or where I land. Trapping Nur-gahl was nearly impossible because Sy’kai needed her wits about her to close a portal. If she closed it too quickly, Nur-gahl would be left behind, free to devour an entire world, unchallenged by beings not capable of understanding what he was let alone the depths of his hunger, his fury. With every new passage her brain grew increasingly muddled by the energy expenditure and the instant intake of information—the new world and all its life being taken in at once. Her only chance to weaken and then destroy Nur-gahl was to find a world at the moment of its death, with nothing left for him to mimic. Sy’kai focused every molecule of her consciousness on finding this elusive destination. Her electricity stretched into a clumsy oval as a window to the unknown tore open. Energy exploded outward. Fresh, sweet air rushed at her, filling her lungs with relief.

But this new world was far from barren.

“I smell a feast on the other side! Go ahead, jump in. I am right behind you, ssssister!”

Rage flared in Sy’kai’s core. She risked a glance back and saw the dark silhouette of a gargantuan, monstrous creature racing toward her. She faced the portal again and plunged through.

Heat and light devoured Sy’kai’s flesh as the fissure enveloped her. What will I be on the other side? Please, please, let this be the final shift, she thought as the vacuum of the portal crushed her entire being.

Nothingness.

And then she was spat out from the portal, into the dark of night. Atoms pulled other atoms into minute clusters as millions of electric implosions sucked matter off the ground and out of the surrounding terrain. Pure instinct flowing from a primal mind scanned the landscape for a blueprint of sentient life. A mental tentacle scraped and slurped, hungry for material until it finally latched onto something in the distance and made its decision. Another explosion crackled behind her elemental brain, but the sound hardly registered in the morphling’s still-forming body.

Gray matter coalesced, bone materialized, and muscles knit themselves around the skeleton as it built itself from nothing. White light and raw energy found purchase through four glowing hooves. Delicious soft gas kissed her forehead, a body part that felt somehow heavy. Light hovered overhead, illuminating the way forward through dark leaves and moist dirt.

Brightness flooded the field ahead of her. Moments later, as her eyes adjusted, she sensed another life form somewhere inside the light. Instinctively, she walked toward a face she couldn’t see. A slight figure, a willowy bipedal creature with orange-red hair slowly came into focus. And the morphling brain, still crude with instinct and ability, reached out telepathically to evaluate this opposing alien heartbeat.

She turned back to the trees then as she felt the heat of another uncontrollable transformation taking hold.

My Review:

One night Polly Michaels is looking out her window when she spots something strange running around in the Cherry Orchid behind her house. Not sure of what she saw or even if it is dangerous or not Polly recruits the help of her best friends to help her look for this strange creature.

What they find is a shape-shifting endling from another dimension who's name is Sy'kai. Not being able to pronounce the endlings name they give her a name of their own, Psyche. They soon learn that their new friend is not from this world but another dimension entirely.

When she awakens Psyche realizes that she doesn’t have all of her memories. But there is one thing she remembers is that she did not come through the portal alone, no something or someone evil came through with her and now it is hunting her. This creature has plans to kill Psyche and everyone on Earth. Psyche plans to do everything in her power to stop him before he can of course.

Polly lost her father in an accident a long time ago and now she is about to lose her mother to cancer as well. When Polly first meets Psyche and learns that she is from another dimension and that she has powers she then asks Psyche’s help to save her mother. The girls make a deal with Psyche, they will help her hunt down this other creature if she will save Polly’s mother.

I loved the relationship Polly and her friends had. I loved how close they all were and how they would jump in to help each other out no questions asked or even without a conversation first. With knowing this it came as no surprise to me how quickly they all decided to help a strange creature from another dimension. They all had a heart of gold with their light always shining through and bright.

The Electric Girl was a fun and short read that I enjoyed tremendously. Although I would love to know more about Sy'kai and her homeworld and her abilities. I hope to learn more about Sy'kai and her world in future books. About her life before she started to travel to a different dimension. I would also like to know about the other places she has visited in other realms or dimensions.

If you are into sci-fi or creatures from other realms or dimensions then I believe you are going to fall in love with The Electric Girl! One-click your copy of The Electric Girl today to begin this epic magical journey with some amazing characters and their new friend!  

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Christine Hart writes from her suburban home on BC’s beautiful West Coast. She specializes in speculative fiction for young readers. Her stories feature detailed real-world landscapes as a backdrop for the surreal and spectacular.

Christine’s backlist includes YA, NA, and MG titles, including the speculative trilogy The Variant Conspiracy. Her debut YA, Watching July, won a gold medal from the Moonbeam Children's awards in the mature issues category and an honourable mention from the Sunburst Awards.

Christine holds a BA in English and Professional Writing, as well as current membership with the Federation of BC Writers and SF Canada.

She works as a content and communications specialist for a technology studio in Vancouver. And when not writing, she creates wearable art from recycled metals under the guise of her Etsy alter-ego Sleepless Storyteller. She shares her eclectic lifestyle with her husband and two children.

Learn more about Christine and her books at www.christine-hart.ca.

Buy Link:

Amazon

The book will be $0.99. 

Giveaway:

$15 Amazon/BN GC

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning.