Shadow Fox by Ashley Barnard

"Jared Bruin doesn't know who he is. He remembers nothing of his early childhood before the age of seven when he was abandoned in a park in St. Louis, left in an unfamiliar world that terrified him. He knows only that he is driven to learn everything he can about swordplay and sixteenth-century combat.

Almost twenty years later, as he is battling a heroin addiction, suicidal tendencies and a violent affliction he doesn't understand, he is hired to teach swordplay to an enigmatic woman with secrets of her own, who somehow provides a link to his past.

Then a missing journal arrives that provides many answers to Jared's past, and in it another world is revealed, one of a Goddess, prophecies, elves, a devastating love triangle, and a war in desperate need of a hero."

Excerpt from book cover

This is the first book that I bought when I received my new Amazon Kindle and it would seem that hit gold on my first strike. Shadow Fox is a Paranormal Romance/Fantasy novel along the lines of Kelly Armstrong, Sherrilyn Kenyon and Kim Harrison. I can not express enough how much I really enjoyed this book. The story gripped me from the first page and putting it down at three in the morning was a real struggle. It is rare that a book holds my attention so well. I found myself totally in love with the characters and caring what would happen to them. Jared the main hero of this story often seems like his own greatest enemy but you can't help yourself feeling deeply for him. A deeply troubled and damaged individual with a drug addiction he is an unlikely leading character in a story so deeply steeped in romance, but this is much of his charm. The tale delves into the feeling most of us have had at one time or another, that no matter how bad our life is or how mundane, that some how we are different from everyone else, we are special and one day we will find out how.


Ashley Barnard has done a fantastic job in detailing her new world and her writing style is excellent. For a first novel it is a masterpiece and I believe that Ashley will become a name that is mentioned in the same breath as many of the greats in the Paranormal Romance genre. This is a first book in a trilogy and if the next two novels are halfway as decent as this one then this series will become a classic in its own time.


The book is published by Champagne Books which is a publishing house that I have not come across before. On the strength of this book I will be checking out other titles and authors in their range and of course I will share my findings here.


At the moment Shadow Fox is only available in the UK as an ebook but with luck we will see it on the shelves of our book stores soon. I urge you to give this book a go and if you like it then make some noise, either here or places like Amazon. Ashley is a new author that I think deserves our support so if you want to support a budding new writer then take a break from the familiar names and hunt out Shadow Fox.

5 STAR RATED









http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadow-Fox/

http://www.ashleyjbarnard.com/

http://www.champagnebooks.com