About Me

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Marlan Warren is a journalist, novelist, editor, playwright, screenwriter, blogger, website designer, and publicist. She is the author of the fictionalized memoir, Roadmaps for the Sexually Challenged: All’s Not Fair in Love or War and the AIDS memoir, Rowing on a Corner. She reviews for Midwest Book Review. Marlan is also a filmmaker.
Showing posts with label Laren Bright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laren Bright. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

REVIEW: EINSTEIN'S COMPASS



My Roadmap Girl's Book Buzz is a "Stop" on Lola's Blog Tours today!

EINSTEINS'S COMPASS: A YA TIME TRAVELER ADVENTURE

This Young Adult Fantasy/New Age/Revisionist History novel cuts a unique niche for itself in YA literature by inventing a Hero's Journey with "Al" Einstein as the hero and his compass, a jeweled magical time traveling marvel.

Authors Grace "Christian Mystic" Blair (aka Grace Allison) and Laren Bright have melded some daring elements of Germany on the brink of Hitler coming into power with a young genius coming to terms with his brilliance, being Jewish among Nazis, and all the expected elements of a Hero's Journey (one shapeshifting dragon...an older wise Mentor...supernatural talisman...).

It is doubtful that kids of the 21st Century place as much weight on Albert Einstein in their thoughts as those of the 20th Century did, thanks to his atom-splitting discovery that led to the invention of the atom bomb. And even more likely that few these days ponder Einstein's roots and development into the genius that he became. I had no idea that he grew up a non-practicing Jewish boy in Germany and was in school just before Hitler came to power (Wikipedia provides further details on his fleeing to Switzerland and later ending up in the U.S., as well as his reluctance for his research to end up as a horrible bomb). 

One of the wonderful themes of Einstein's Compass is its own brilliant running theme of "The Split." In the tradition of contemporary fantasy YA novels, there is Good vs. Evil; Light vs. Dark, and the authors make creative use of these concepts as they affect all of us personally as well as politically...and in the world of physics.

Another running theme is Energy itself. The heating up of hands when energy is channeled...the Light it can produce...whether it is being channeled for the good of humanity or its destruction.

Meticulously crafted and beautifully told, Einstein's Compass is garnering awards left and right, and rightly so. Fun for adults as well as teens!