From an Aurora Award-winning author comes the first book in a new portal fantasy series in which one woman’s powers open the way to a labyrinth of new dimensions.For Shawna Keys, the world is almost perfect. She’s just opened a pottery studio in a beautiful city. She’s in love with a wonderful man. She has good friends.But one shattering moment of violence changes everything. Mysterious attackers … everything. Mysterious attackers kill her best friend. They’re about to kill Shawna. She can’t believe it’s happening–and just like that, it isn’t. It hasn’t. No one else remembers the attack, or her friend. To everyone else, Shawna’s friend never existed…
Everyone, that is, except the mysterious stranger who shows up in Shawna’s shop. He claims her world has been perfect because she Shaped it to be perfect; that it is only one of uncounted Shaped worlds in a great Labyrinth; and that all those worlds are under threat from the Adversary who has now invaded hers. She cannot save her world, he says, but she might be able to save others–if she will follow him from world to world, learning their secrets and carrying them to Ygrair, the mysterious Lady at the Labyrinth’s heart.
Frightened and hounded, Shawna sets off on a desperate journey, uncertain whom she can trust, how to use her newfound power, and what awaits her in the myriad worlds beyond her own.
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Worldshaper by Edward Willett is the first book in the Worldshapers series. Shawna Keys day gets off to a normal start. Shawna is a potter who is opening her own shop and studio called Worldshaper Pottery. She notices these dark storm clouds in the sky that no one else seems to notice as menacing. Shawna is at the local coffee shop with her friend at lunch when men in black storm in with guns and start shooting. The man in charge comes up to her, touches her forehead and then the world changes. It is three hours earlier, but she is the only person who remembers what happened. Shawna returns to her shop where she is approached by a man, Karl Yatsar who explains that she is a worldshaper. Shawna is responsible for creating this world and he needs her assistance. Unfortunately, Shawna remembers nothing of her training or her past before she created this world. The Adversary is determined to go through world after world taking each worldshaper’s hokhmah (power to change their world). Adversary is bent on getting to Ygrair who trained each worldshaper and gave them their own world. Karl explains that Ygrair is injured and needs assistance. Karl has a mission and he believes Shawna is the right person to help him. Shawna and Karl embark on journey to find a portal to the next world and escape Adversary’s clutches.
Worldshaper sounded like an intriguing science fiction novel. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with Worldshaper (it was lacking). The Adversary wants Shawna and Karl tells Shawna to run. So, Shawn and Karl are on the run through the whole book. Shawna, supposedly, has great power, but she has no idea how to use it. If she does not shape things properly, there can be unintended consequences. We get to see what happens when Shawna does not think things through completely. Anytime Shawna questions Karl, he threatens to leave her behind to die. As for the Adversary, we can see what happens when power goes to one’s head. It seems like the author took ideas from different television shows, books and movies and then combined them into one book. The character development is deficient. The characters are never brought to life. The author took technology from real life and altered the names for the book (HiPhone for iPhone, National Bureau of Investigation or NBI for FBI, SteamPix for Netflix are a couple of examples). I know it is supposed to show how Shawna’s world resembles the original one (our Earth), but it just did not work for me. Worldshaper felt like a rough draft instead of a finished novel. Many details are repeated over and over (it was tiresome), while other issues are never addressed (Shawna’s memory for example). Edward Willett is a descriptive writer (scenery especially) which slowed down the pace of the story. I really did not need such a detailed description of each mountain, road, forest, car, etc. I do want to warn readers that Worldshaper contains foul language and extreme violence (very detailed). Worldshaper ends with a cliffhanger and we must wait for the next book to find out what happens next. I believe Worldshaper would appeal to a younger audience (late teens).