Speculation Press (Trade Paper), ISBN: 09671979537
What do you call a book that chills your blood, takes you to a possible future, and makes you believe the impossible can actually happen? Project Resurrection fills that bill for me. Ah, but you ask, "What genre is it? Science fiction? Fantasy? Or what?"

The closest I can come is speculative fiction that successfully blends science fiction, fantasy, New Age, shamanism, reincarnation and some elements I cannot name. Whatever label it bears, the book rates as superb, excellent, and downright chilling -- and not just in setting and subject matter.

In 2013, in the frozen wastes of Alaska, scientists work to reanimate cryo-preserved (frozen) dead. Unbeknown to the scientists, their efforts rip through the barrier separating life and death, and steal souls from the living.

An empathetic healer and a descendent of a tribe of Inuit sorcerers with an evil reputation, LaNaya Seville, the project's physical therapist, walks the path between the physical and astral worlds. None of her training prepares her for the havoc the project creates. The process draws humans, body and soul, through a vortex linking this world to the next, tearing holes through the barrier between them. Guarding the rift between the worlds, an age-old evil feeds on the energy of the victims and grows in strength.

Can LaNaya use her psychic gifts to close the deadly rift, or must she sacrifice her own life to save humanity from extinction?

Complex, battling her own dark side, LaNaya develops into a strong, memorable heroine in an action-filled, fully realized world of a future that could be. The support characters and the villains, the tone, the diction, the glimpses of shamanism, the project, the action, and the setting mesh together forming an original and exciting plot.

Speculation Press seems to possess an eye for the really great books, and Project Resurrection adds new luster to their growing list of "You-just-gotta-read-this-one" books.

Patricia Lucas White

Patricia Lucas White's latest historical novel, To Last a Lifetime, was an Eppie finalist for 2003. To Last a Lifetime and two of her fantasy romances, the Sapphire Award-winning A Wizard Scorned and The Godmother Sanction, can be ordered through Hard Shell Word Factory. Her recent contemporary, PS, I've Taken a Lover, is available from Lionhearted Books.

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