Surviving Serendipity

By Jacquelyn Sylvan

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590805860
• ISBN13: 9781590805862
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Echelon Press Publishing
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.7" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Courtesy of Teens Read Too

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 bel

Wonderful Story

This was a great fantasy book. The characters were very well developed and i just loved them all. This is one of those books that you want to go on forever. I would definitely recommend this book to others.

Loved it!

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.

This is a fabulous young adult sci-fi novel

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

Surviving Serendipty

I loved it. The author paints such vivid pictures that you can see them very clearly. I enjoyed the strong female story line. I cant wait to read the sequel or better yet seen this on the wide screen.This is one author I will keep on my list of must reads.