Happy September everyone! This month I will be reviewing Fall of Venus by Daelynn Quinn. I found Daelynn and her book on Goodreads, and I’m glad I did. You can find her on her website, Daelynnquinn.com, or on Facebook. Follow her and give her your support!

What would you do if you woke up, and everything you knew had changed? The people you loved, gone. Your memory altered. You wake up in a strange place, not knowing how you came to be there. You immediately find yourself fighting for your life, and your best chance for survival comes in the form of a stranger, one who is in the same predicament.

Fall of Venus by Daelynn Quinn, follows the events of Pollen McRae, a twenty-year old woman who finds herself facing the unknown. The story seems to be set in an undetermined future, as the world is facing the consequences of a global catastrophe, specifically global warming at an unprecedented rate.

Survival has meant the forced relocation of the population into underground bunkers every summer, to escape the scorching temperatures. There is a war with a southern country, one in which Pollen has lost an older brother. She has also lost an infant child in the recent past.

When she awakes at the start of the novel, Pollen does not know where she is, or why her clothes are in tatters. She is sore, scratched and bruised, and she discovers a tattoo on an insect on her face. Soon our heroine finds herself in mortal danger. As she tries to flee from her unknown assailants, she befriends a guy by the name of Marcus, who sports the very same tattoo. Like Pollen, he has no memory of how he came to be there. Their immediate thought is to survive.

The world appears devoid of life, including animal and even insects. The only life they encounter is the band of outlaws determined to kill them. As they try to piece together what had happened, they find that most of the world’s population is dead. Her only family is Evie, a niece who is in the prison camp Pollen escaped.

Pollen’s only goal is to save her niece, while dodging those who want to kill or capture her. Why were they prisoners? What happened to the populace? Could this be the first cataclysm which signals the end of the world? Is survival even possible?

Daelynn does an outstanding job of bringing the reader into her story. You see a horrific landscape, scarred beyond recognition, beyond man’s ability to heal. There is love, but also sorrow of an unimaginable scale. There is selflessness, but also an incomprehensible level of greed, love of power and money, and possibly the desire for control, one with a reckless disregard for the sanctity of life

There’s an immediacy in this book, as the problems that culminate in the story are horrifyingly familiar. Wars and the fears of a pandemic, environmental and climatological disasters are ever-present on our collective minds. We live with the pervasive greed of those in power. Could we be looking at our own future?

I started the book not knowing what to expect, but I finished the book excited, impatient for the next one to come out. I have never read the final paragraph of a story and been more sorry to have it end. With a few words at the close of the book, Daelynn brought the whole of her novel to an exciting resolution, one that is poised to launch what promises to be an epic saga. I could never have guessed at the ending, but I gasped with recognition, marveling at the tale she created.

Fall of Venus is the first book in a trilogy. The second book, Crimson Return is set to publish on the 8th of this month. On the 8th and 9th, Venus will be available for free download via Amazon. I cannot recommend this book enough!

List of Book Reviews
October’s Review – My Not-So-Ordinary Life
August’s Review – Minutes Before Sunset