Review: Night of Essences of Phoenix and Serpent by Jennifer Jiménez

Title: Night of Essences of Phoenix and Serpent
Series: Nonutopians
Author: Jennifer Jiménez
Publisher: CreateSpace
Length: 242 pages
Publication Date: April 8, 2013
Available Formats: Kindle Edition, Paperback
Source: The author asked me to review it
My Rating: ★★★☆☆
Get it @: Amazon | Goodreads

Book Description:

“What brings you inside: the aroma of the coffee. What lets you out: the most pure and intimate aroma never sensed before—the…”

Twenty-seven is a perfect cube, being 3^3 = 3 × 3 × 3, but for engineering professor Vanora, it’s something else. When Vanora has visions of the creation of humankind, she strives to leave behind a legacy of hope through an unusual book, in which the upcoming evolution of mankind is described.

Twelve-year-old Valeria has the ability to descend into human bodies. She sees the future through Amrit’s eyes, a seventeen-year-old Puro Di Cuore girl. Amrit meets arrogant and evasive Ansel, who is always changing locations to hide his breed. They are destined to live a relationship against the rules.

In a laboratory near rock-crushing waves, Gustav and Juliette were created against an international prohibition. The nineteen-year-old clones are meant to be killed before compromising the security of their country. Someone connects them all.

I acquired this short novel right after the author asked me to review it from amazon while it was free of charge for a day or so. This story follows the lives of many people with different backgrounds, lives and problems. One thing unites them all, destiny. The book revolves mainly around the life of Vanora Candela a young Puerto Rican woman on the journey of finding herself. It takes place mostly in the beautiful island of Puerto Rico, although that is not the only place where the story develops.

All in all I love the tale presented in this novel. The reason I give this 3.4 star is because although it’s a great story I think it needs to be worked on a bit more. The descriptions of settings, moods, ambiance, etc. was brilliant, I felt like I was literally being transported into Jennifer’s mind while she wrote this. The only thing that kept me from actually loving the book as a whole is where the emotional part comes in. Maybe it’s just me, but I just couldn’t find myself experiencing the same things as Vanora did. Yes, the feelings and emotions were described, Vanora experienced them quite vividly, but I didn’t. I felt more like I was watching a movie than reading a book. I felt that it lacked the whole sucking-the-reader-in-and-putting-them-in-the-characters-place draw that I love so much in books. The reason for this is because most of the time Vanora explained what she was feeling, if she was sad she said that she was, well thought actually, if she was excited she said that she felt so wonderfully excited and such and she would describe what she was feeling instead of actually feeling it. Also the book ended far too quickly for some questions to be cleared up. It felt more like this book, as a whole, was an introduction to the series that precedes it instead of being an all-out novel. I’m not sure if I’m explaining myself well here.

The book is an excellent quick read. One thing I absolutely adore about the book is that I have never been interested in my heritage or roots so to speak and the moment I started reading this book I got really interested in Puerto Rican history. Although knowing me that won’t last long but still, it’s nice to want to learn about where you live after ignoring it your whole life.

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