Jump Into an Otter-Wordly Experience in this Indie Shapeshifting Series!

Book Review: Petrified, Book 1 of The Keeper Chronicles

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Summary:

Thera, the Earth Mother, is under siege. Demons from other worlds sneak through magical portals and wreak havoc on earth. In response, she created the Keepers, a group of shapeshifters made in the likeness of the world’s most skilled predators, to protect her, and us. The fate of North Georgia hangs in the balance when an unknown menace with a new magic threatens to bring the Keepers to their knees. It’s up to Obie, the Keeper of North Georgia, and some unlikely allies to put an end to the destruction before it’s too late. What will happen when the hunter becomes the hunted?

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First Lines:

“Where’d you get this old beater anyway? It sounds Like it’s about to fall apart,” Holt said.

“That’s called character”, I said.

“Don’t get me wrong, Obie, I’m sure it was a nice truck at some point but it’s a little past its prime,” he said.

The old Ford groaned and puttered through the curves of the mountain roads, creaking at the joints like an old man straining to get up from his rocking chair. It was true it had seen better days.

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My Thoughts:

I picked up this gem at a Comic Con after speaking with the author for a bit. As always, I enjoy talking to other writers and the ones that I meet at these events feel like part of my own soul tribe. Ben Meeks was no exception and his pleasant personality and obvious passion for his craft convinced me to buy his book, which had a humanoid otter on the front cover.

The cover made me think of the Animorph series, an animal shapeshifting series that was published from 1996 to 2001, which is a series I never took the time to read as I was not in the targeted age demographic when they were published. I’ve never heard of a wereotter, but I found the concept intriguing and decided to give the book a try. I was not disappointed. In fact, I enjoyed this book so much that I awarded it with a Klorrie Cup.

Petrified is book 1 of the Keeper Chronicles, a beautifully written dark urban fantasy with plenty of unique characters, tons of action, and many humorous moments that balance out the more disturbing scenes of the story. Most of my followers know I rarely award Klorrie Cup Awards to the first book in any series, as many of them tend to be set up novels that serve only one purpose, character and world introduction. If every book after in that said series didn’t exist, that first book would not meet the typical criteria of being a decent standalone novel.

Petrified not only beautifully builds its setup for the rest of the series but also presents its own unique challenge to overcome, which has a climax and conclusion while still leaving plenty of open ends to feed into the future books of the series.

It follows the story of Obie, who is part of a group of servants to the earth mother, Thera, known as Keepers. Thera has given the Keepers the gift of shapeshifting into predatory animals for the sake of protecting herself and the inhabitants of the earth.

We see a vast array of characters come into play in the story, including demons, werebears who are members of a motorcycle gang, feisty nymphs, snobbish and territorial elves, and a lonely giant tortoise that disguises itself as an enormous mass of mountain land.

Thera herself is rather mysterious and seems moody and irritable throughout most of her appearances, but she is understandably concerned about a certain winged medusa-like demon who has taken possession of a powerful and dangerous grimoire (spell book for you common folk). The other characters are colorful and have plenty to add to the story.

I love the way Meeks portrayed the antagonist character! I’ve always found gorgons fascinating, and the gorgon villain in this story did not disappoint! The Keeper’s world is written beautifully to run parallel to the everyday life of northern Georgia and it’s fun to imagine that there might be a whole different reality in our world that happens right beside us every day while we are completely oblivious to it!

I don’t want to give away too much, so I’ll just finish by saying that as soon as I started reading this book, I couldn’t put it down! I can’t wait to read the rest of the series! Petrified by Ben Meeks is well deserving of my Klorrie Cup Award!

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Favorite Quotes:

In life you can’t expect everyone to operate at your pace. Sometimes you have to sit and wait for them to catch up and, if you’re lucky, those ahead of you will help you along.

If everyone waited until they were ready to do things, then nothing would get done.

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More from Ben Meeks!

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