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Primordial World #5
Primordial World: Book 5
This hostile world is their prison.Trapped, beaten, and on the verge of death, Ridley is running out of time. She finds an unlikely ally in Kira, a young survivor of the Twin Falls massacre, who is determined to keep her alive. Meanwhile, Seth leads a rag-tag group of allies on a dangerous mission to free her from Malcom's clutches.
The prehistoric world awaits.
Before they can save Ridley, they must navigate the perils of the ancient land. From rampaging Tyrannosaurs to giant crocodiles and deadly lightning storms, they face a journey like no other. Will they reach Ridley before it's too late, or will Seth lose his daughter forever?
Primordial World is part of the Primordial Universe and continues the story several years into the future. The first series is called Primordial Earth and can be read separately or as part of the collection. Click now for a heart-pounding sci-fi thriller filled with action, suspense, and unexpected twists – perfect for fans of post-apocalyptic tales!
The prehistoric world awaits.
Before they can save Ridley, they must navigate the perils of the ancient land. From rampaging Tyrannosaurs to giant crocodiles and deadly lightning storms, they face a journey like no other. Will they reach Ridley before it's too late, or will Seth lose his daughter forever?
Primordial World is part of the Primordial Universe and continues the story several years into the future. The first series is called Primordial Earth and can be read separately or as part of the collection. Click now for a heart-pounding sci-fi thriller filled with action, suspense, and unexpected twists – perfect for fans of post-apocalyptic tales!
238 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 10, 2024
About the author
Baileigh Higgins
97 books442 followersSouth African writer and coffee addict, Baileigh Higgins, lives in the Free State with hubby and best friend Brendan and loves nothing more than lazing on the couch with pizza and a bad horror movie. Her unhealthy obsession with the end of the world has led to numerous books on the subject and a secret bunker only she knows the location of.
Visit her website at www.baileighhiggins.com for more information on her upcoming projects, new releases, and giveaways. Sign up for her Newsletter and get your Free Ebook, Tales from the Apocalypse, today.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 15, 2024
Higgins combines the natural dangers of the prehistoric world with the selfishness and cruelty that can taint human interaction, creating a book that blends fast-paced action with depth of character.
Note: while the author is blessed with a spiffing surname we are unrelated.
This novel is the fifth in Higgins’ Primordial World series. Possible spoilers for the previous volumes ahead.
Hera, having managed to sneak in and confirm the women kidnapped from Twin Falls are alive, has made it back over the Tower’s wall but not without being seen, meaning a search party is close on her heels. After being left strapped to the whipping post as further punishment for her attack on Malcolm, the leader of her captors, Ridley is cut down by her new friend Kira. However, Ridley’s severe injuries prevent the two of them from reaching Hera before the guards surround them. Malcolm’s plan to use Ridley as a hostage has given her some protection so far, but with his rule based on people being too scared of the consequences to oppose him, giving Ridley the care needs to be sure she lives will seem like weakness. Meanwhile, Seth is leading an expedition back to the Tower to rescue Ridley but first must traverse miles of wilderness filled with prehistoric predators and other dangers.
This novel picks up Ridley’s story almost at the second it left off in the previous volume. While this does resolve the cliffhanger, this resolution is not the dramatic—and perhaps slightly unfeasible—escape for which pulp serials are known. Instead, Riley is not merely returned to imprisonment but left on the verge of death; thus the previous arc of her striving for ways to escape or endure is replace by one where her survival lies entirely in the hands of others. Fortunately, previous books have established enough of the Tower’s population and society that this is an engaging tale of how much different people are prepared to risk their own scant safety or resources to help someone, rather than a more simplistic portrayal of a protagonist living—or not—by chance or natural resilience.
In contrast, Seth’s tale opens as the expedition planned at the end of the last book prepares to set off. In addition to not sacrificing momentum by taking the reader through details of preparation that won’t impact events later, the uncertainty over exactly how long has elapsed subtly adds to the question of whether Seth’s expedition is going to get to the Tower in time. Higgins begins with a series of scenes from the perspective of Seth, Jessica, and Jara, about the moment of departure and initial travel through safer territory which serve both as a smoothly integrated reprise of the situation and as a skilled portrayal of the tensions within the group over Jara’s decision to betray Malcolm. After this initial more character-focused section, the expedition starts to encounter the significant natural dangers of the wilderness, adding fast-paced action and real danger, and further escalating the tension from the divisions by driving home how failure to all work together to their fullest could bring disaster.
Hera’s attempt to escape pursuit blends the same threat from the cruelty of humans that pervades Ridley’s arc with the harshness of unmarked nature that appears in Seth’s. In addition to being a tense and action-filled plot in its own right, this provides both a bridge between and contrast to the other narratives.
Having revealed more of the complexity of the Tower over the preceding volumes, Higgins brings the issues to the fore, escalating the dislike of Malcolm’s rule into an active attempt to overthrow him. Rather than simply make this a redemption arc for a lieutenant or a scrappy uprising, Higgins draws on the lesson of history that successful revolutions often turn into tyrannical regimes to raise questions of whether people who are best at using violence to change a situation are the best people to lead a society that wants to move away from rule by force.
After the desperate rush to save Rebel from serious illness and subsequent recovery that defined much of her previous arc, Rebel’s story picks up with her falling ill again. While those who have just recovered from a significant condition and those who are under great stress can have weaker immune systems, so this is not implausible, some readers might feel a slight sense it is reprising old ground. Given this thread starts later in the book, so doesn’t progress far, it might shake off any echo in the next volume.
Although Higgins does reprise events and perspectives from previous volumes, the plot and setting rest heavily enough on them that anyone coming to them fresh is likely to lack the context to fully feel the emotional resonance even if they can understand the objective situation. As such, it is unlikely to be a strong entry point to the series.
While Higgins includes an extract from the next volume at the end, so this is not intended to be the final book in the series, the ending is—save for Rebel’s illness—a clear enough resolution of the existing arcs that readers would be likely to feel it is an ending rather than merely a pause were it to be the final volume. Whether it would be the conclusion they would wish is a more personal matter.
Seth and Ridley remain consistent with their characters from previous volumes while sometimes displaying plausible new behaviours in response to new circumstances. As such, even with Ridley being less active in this volume, readers are likely to feel this is still a story about Ridley.
The other returning characters gain nuance and complexity but similarly remain consistent with what has gone before. This includes Malcolm who—while Higgins does not delve in the relativism of revealing he has a moral foundation for his actions—reveals enough of his transition to where he is that a reader might understand how his choices made him worse rather than him simply being an evil man.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I recommend it to those who enjoyed previous volumes.
I received a free copy from the author with a request for a fair review.
Note: while the author is blessed with a spiffing surname we are unrelated.
This novel is the fifth in Higgins’ Primordial World series. Possible spoilers for the previous volumes ahead.
Hera, having managed to sneak in and confirm the women kidnapped from Twin Falls are alive, has made it back over the Tower’s wall but not without being seen, meaning a search party is close on her heels. After being left strapped to the whipping post as further punishment for her attack on Malcolm, the leader of her captors, Ridley is cut down by her new friend Kira. However, Ridley’s severe injuries prevent the two of them from reaching Hera before the guards surround them. Malcolm’s plan to use Ridley as a hostage has given her some protection so far, but with his rule based on people being too scared of the consequences to oppose him, giving Ridley the care needs to be sure she lives will seem like weakness. Meanwhile, Seth is leading an expedition back to the Tower to rescue Ridley but first must traverse miles of wilderness filled with prehistoric predators and other dangers.
This novel picks up Ridley’s story almost at the second it left off in the previous volume. While this does resolve the cliffhanger, this resolution is not the dramatic—and perhaps slightly unfeasible—escape for which pulp serials are known. Instead, Riley is not merely returned to imprisonment but left on the verge of death; thus the previous arc of her striving for ways to escape or endure is replace by one where her survival lies entirely in the hands of others. Fortunately, previous books have established enough of the Tower’s population and society that this is an engaging tale of how much different people are prepared to risk their own scant safety or resources to help someone, rather than a more simplistic portrayal of a protagonist living—or not—by chance or natural resilience.
In contrast, Seth’s tale opens as the expedition planned at the end of the last book prepares to set off. In addition to not sacrificing momentum by taking the reader through details of preparation that won’t impact events later, the uncertainty over exactly how long has elapsed subtly adds to the question of whether Seth’s expedition is going to get to the Tower in time. Higgins begins with a series of scenes from the perspective of Seth, Jessica, and Jara, about the moment of departure and initial travel through safer territory which serve both as a smoothly integrated reprise of the situation and as a skilled portrayal of the tensions within the group over Jara’s decision to betray Malcolm. After this initial more character-focused section, the expedition starts to encounter the significant natural dangers of the wilderness, adding fast-paced action and real danger, and further escalating the tension from the divisions by driving home how failure to all work together to their fullest could bring disaster.
Hera’s attempt to escape pursuit blends the same threat from the cruelty of humans that pervades Ridley’s arc with the harshness of unmarked nature that appears in Seth’s. In addition to being a tense and action-filled plot in its own right, this provides both a bridge between and contrast to the other narratives.
Having revealed more of the complexity of the Tower over the preceding volumes, Higgins brings the issues to the fore, escalating the dislike of Malcolm’s rule into an active attempt to overthrow him. Rather than simply make this a redemption arc for a lieutenant or a scrappy uprising, Higgins draws on the lesson of history that successful revolutions often turn into tyrannical regimes to raise questions of whether people who are best at using violence to change a situation are the best people to lead a society that wants to move away from rule by force.
After the desperate rush to save Rebel from serious illness and subsequent recovery that defined much of her previous arc, Rebel’s story picks up with her falling ill again. While those who have just recovered from a significant condition and those who are under great stress can have weaker immune systems, so this is not implausible, some readers might feel a slight sense it is reprising old ground. Given this thread starts later in the book, so doesn’t progress far, it might shake off any echo in the next volume.
Although Higgins does reprise events and perspectives from previous volumes, the plot and setting rest heavily enough on them that anyone coming to them fresh is likely to lack the context to fully feel the emotional resonance even if they can understand the objective situation. As such, it is unlikely to be a strong entry point to the series.
While Higgins includes an extract from the next volume at the end, so this is not intended to be the final book in the series, the ending is—save for Rebel’s illness—a clear enough resolution of the existing arcs that readers would be likely to feel it is an ending rather than merely a pause were it to be the final volume. Whether it would be the conclusion they would wish is a more personal matter.
Seth and Ridley remain consistent with their characters from previous volumes while sometimes displaying plausible new behaviours in response to new circumstances. As such, even with Ridley being less active in this volume, readers are likely to feel this is still a story about Ridley.
The other returning characters gain nuance and complexity but similarly remain consistent with what has gone before. This includes Malcolm who—while Higgins does not delve in the relativism of revealing he has a moral foundation for his actions—reveals enough of his transition to where he is that a reader might understand how his choices made him worse rather than him simply being an evil man.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I recommend it to those who enjoyed previous volumes.
I received a free copy from the author with a request for a fair review.
May 16, 2024
entertaining adventure in a prehistoric time. A post apocalyptic time jump to the dinosaurs
This is an entertaining action adventure story that takes place in prehistoric times with dinosaurs. A great cast of characters and an entertaining storyline. At some point scientist played with things they should not have played with. Their actions opened up time rips around the world. In some cases entire cities and towns and other cases partial cities and towns were ripped through time and thrown back into the time of prehistoric dinosaurs. The story does not mention it I’m guessing that chunks of the past were ripped forward in time as well. However our story is about the people that were thrown back in time along with parts or all of the cities and forced to live in a time with no technology of the current times. The original series was about rogue and her adventures. This particular series is about rogues daughter Ridley. Both are entertaining and a great read. Read and see what’s going on with Ridley and rogue and Seth and Jessica and all the rest of the People from the zoo and city and other towns as well as the evil dictator who rules the tower.
This is an entertaining action adventure story that takes place in prehistoric times with dinosaurs. A great cast of characters and an entertaining storyline. At some point scientist played with things they should not have played with. Their actions opened up time rips around the world. In some cases entire cities and towns and other cases partial cities and towns were ripped through time and thrown back into the time of prehistoric dinosaurs. The story does not mention it I’m guessing that chunks of the past were ripped forward in time as well. However our story is about the people that were thrown back in time along with parts or all of the cities and forced to live in a time with no technology of the current times. The original series was about rogue and her adventures. This particular series is about rogues daughter Ridley. Both are entertaining and a great read. Read and see what’s going on with Ridley and rogue and Seth and Jessica and all the rest of the People from the zoo and city and other towns as well as the evil dictator who rules the tower.
March 31, 2024
This one gave me high expectations with what was coming but definitely fell flat. I feel Higgins should have included Loki and Ridley’s reunion, especially after mentioning several times how much he missed her and her grief at him being dead. I somewhat expected him to be in the coup.
Like the others, this one needs another round or two of proofreading. It jarred me out of the story a few times to stop, go back and reread a sentence due to spelling errors or incomplete sentences. Perhaps a minor annoyance to most but it disrupted the flow.
The ending was SO anticlimactic! There was more excitement and action between characters mundanely talking about nothing relevant to the story, just words to fill space, than what should have been an exciting ending that leaves the reader anticipating the next book. The ending here… I could leave this series now and never miss it, though I’ll likely follow through with the next since I do love time travel and prehistoric reads.
Like the others, this one needs another round or two of proofreading. It jarred me out of the story a few times to stop, go back and reread a sentence due to spelling errors or incomplete sentences. Perhaps a minor annoyance to most but it disrupted the flow.
The ending was SO anticlimactic! There was more excitement and action between characters mundanely talking about nothing relevant to the story, just words to fill space, than what should have been an exciting ending that leaves the reader anticipating the next book. The ending here… I could leave this series now and never miss it, though I’ll likely follow through with the next since I do love time travel and prehistoric reads.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 13, 2024
Great read
This was an awesome addition to the series and I can't wait for the next book. I'm so glad Seth is back with Ridley. I hope Jessica finds herself after taking her revenge for Bear's death. I'll be happy when Ridley and Seth are back together with Rogue. I would recommend this story to any reader that enjoys great action reading.
This was an awesome addition to the series and I can't wait for the next book. I'm so glad Seth is back with Ridley. I hope Jessica finds herself after taking her revenge for Bear's death. I'll be happy when Ridley and Seth are back together with Rogue. I would recommend this story to any reader that enjoys great action reading.
March 13, 2024
Loved it, from start to finish once again leaving me wanting more. Baileigh's stories have you right there with the characters, and how I wish I could actually talk them. That is how real they appear to me.
Absolutely cannot wait for the next chapter. I'm dreading the time this series will end.
Highly recommended
Absolutely cannot wait for the next chapter. I'm dreading the time this series will end.
Highly recommended
February 21, 2025
Really Good Sci-Fi series
I am continuing to enjoy the primeval series. To be honest honest, I’m not usually a fan of multiple points of view in a, but in this case it works, and I think I would’ve dropped the series long ago if Ridley had been the only point of view.
As always, I enjoy the action, the adventure and the dinosaurs .
I am continuing to enjoy the primeval series. To be honest honest, I’m not usually a fan of multiple points of view in a, but in this case it works, and I think I would’ve dropped the series long ago if Ridley had been the only point of view.
As always, I enjoy the action, the adventure and the dinosaurs .
March 10, 2024
playing favourites!
With each book, this series became more. More exciting, more grief ridden, more filled with love, loyalty, hope and forgiveness. Am I playing favourites? I can’t foresee a future without the next book and the next and the next…
With each book, this series became more. More exciting, more grief ridden, more filled with love, loyalty, hope and forgiveness. Am I playing favourites? I can’t foresee a future without the next book and the next and the next…
March 10, 2024
Great!!!
Loki is back. Dinosaurs are back. Interesting characters are back. The story runs smoothly. I read it in a day.
Thank you Bailiegh. Excited to continue reading this series.
Loki is back. Dinosaurs are back. Interesting characters are back. The story runs smoothly. I read it in a day.
Thank you Bailiegh. Excited to continue reading this series.
March 12, 2024
I did really enjoy it! This is a good continuation of the storyline, following the same family as they struggle to strive in this primordial dystopian world! Lots of good, fast paced action & adventure, always a fun read! I do recommend!
March 22, 2024
Always great reading a Baileigh Higgins book and Primordial Book 5 doesn't disappoint. Intrigue, romance, and dinosaurs all rolled into the continuing adventure of Ridley, Seth, Rogue and Loki along with a host of other characters.
March 27, 2024
Once again Ms Higgins has given us another thrilling and exciting story in this series. While Seth and his friends make their way through dangerous lands to rescue Ridley, there is a coup about to take place at the Tower. Great lead up to the end and can't wait for the next book. Great author.
April 4, 2024
Seth, Jessica and a few friends head to nthe Tower to safe Ridley. And they get some unexpected help in their efforts. Again a very entertaining and fast paced read in this series set in a prehistoric world. And again it shows that animals aren't the most dangerous creatures on earth. Humans are.
August 28, 2025
Having a BLAST with this!!!
I've reached the halfway point in this series, finding it surprisingly bittersweet. While I'm eager to see where this is ultimately going, I am also dreading saying farewell to these characters that I have grown to love.
I've reached the halfway point in this series, finding it surprisingly bittersweet. While I'm eager to see where this is ultimately going, I am also dreading saying farewell to these characters that I have grown to love.
March 12, 2024
Love the series
This is just as good,if not better than the Primordial Earth series. Keep writing and I will continue reading Ms. Higgins.
This is just as good,if not better than the Primordial Earth series. Keep writing and I will continue reading Ms. Higgins.
March 17, 2024
5 Stars
Book 5 has Seth, Jessica, Jara and the others heading to the Tower to try and rescue Ridley. While back at the Tower a coup is brewing.
Book 5 has Seth, Jessica, Jara and the others heading to the Tower to try and rescue Ridley. While back at the Tower a coup is brewing.
July 12, 2024
primordial Book 5
Again I enjoyed this book thoroughly!
I can't wait for the next book.
Sadly it's not very long but that's what it is.
Thank you
Again I enjoyed this book thoroughly!
I can't wait for the next book.
Sadly it's not very long but that's what it is.
Thank you
August 21, 2024
Brilliantly written
I absolutely loved this book, it bought a lot together and has left a lot more open and I can not wait to see what happens next!!
I absolutely loved this book, it bought a lot together and has left a lot more open and I can not wait to see what happens next!!
November 5, 2024
I absolutely love this series! On to Book 6! The only downside is that it has to eventually end.
April 6, 2025
easy read
Much the same as the other previous four books but still a fun read. I am hooked on the series and will continue till the end.
Much the same as the other previous four books but still a fun read. I am hooked on the series and will continue till the end.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews