Nick Cook - Fractured Light: (Fractured Light Trilogy Bk1) - Mr Ripley's Enchanted Book Review

THEY UNCOVERED A THREAT TO EVERY PERSON ON THE PLANET.

NOW AN INVISIBLE ENEMY IS HUNTING THEM DOWN.

What would you do if you started to see something lurking in the shadows of our everyday world? 

That's the reality that Jake Stevens has been pitched into and now he’s questioning his sanity.

Jake’s been an outsider in his hometown Stoneham, England, ever since his life was shattered when his father's experiment into dark energy exploded, killing himself and many others.

When Jake witnesses a satellite crash-landing and starts to receive garbled messages that hint at a conspiracy, a chain of events is unleashed that will threaten the very existence of all life on Earth in a dystopian nightmare.

Can Jake, and the best friend that he froze out of his life, Chloe Haze, a coding genius who’s heavily entrenched with the underground hacking network, figure out the connections of the mystery that link all the events before it’s too late?

This book comes with the following warning: Watch the DARKNESS because the SHADOWS are coming for you. This is the first book in the Fractured Light Trilogy that has been recently self-published (August 2018). The overall appearance of the book is brilliant. In fact, the cracking book cover illustration by Ryan Schwarz featured in this year's book cover wars. Sadly, I see no accreditation to the artist in the book. Nevertheless, in my opinion, he has done an amazing job by making the book appealing to all potential readers. 

The reading experience is an epic sci-fi story which has been written with intelligence and includes some fantastic detail. This surely is down to the research and the author's passion for the subjects he has written about within the novel. I was very impressed (and even slightly thrilled) to enjoy this book as much as I did. I was instantly hooked from the first page and when I had to put it down, I felt like I needed to pick it back up again to carry on reading. I have not felt like this about a book for some time within the YA/teenage genre. 

The book for me is set in the here and now. Ordinary lives are found to be caught up in an extraordinary situation which could be reflected in our future advancements of technology/sciences. The plot is extremely imaginative; I loved the Artificial Intelligence aspect to the well-worked plot. It really pulled me into the story and sucked me into the world of stars and beyond. I loved the Tesla car scene - this was very creative and captured the essence of the story. 

The characters are really well written, especially Jake and Chloe. They felt like real teenagers as you could certainly relate to them. Their personalities definitely shone through and each personal backstory made the adventure more realistic. I was certainly engaged in the ongoing plot. The book certainly has everything that I love in it - bumps, scrapes, near misses and plenty of immersive action sequences. 

This is pure five-star entertainment full of exhilarating and non-stop action. It is littered with factual references and heartwarming character relationships. The book has a great ending to a fabulous story which leaves you feeling satisfied. It will make you want to read the next book in the series .... which is exactly what I'm reading now! The next book, Fading Light, has already been published so you can track down a copy now. It will make a great Christmas present and, at the same time, you'll also be supporting a self-published author.