What do you think?
Rate this book
What if every bedtime story ever told to any child by any parent in all the history of all the cultures of the world...was real?
What if there was another world, parallel to ours where all these stories thrive? A world where the veil between our world and theirs is thin, and easy to slip through?
Exactly one year after his 19 birthday, Kellen T. Samuelsson finds himself on the green trails of Grouse Mountain where he runs into a beautiful and mysterious young woman who calls herself 'Mirage' and changes his life forever. In an epic new tale of adventure, fantasy, myth, and love, young Kellen is whisked away to a new world, her world. The world Mirage calls home is very different from ours. But the fate of our two worlds are intertwined. All of our futures rest in Kel's hands, as he battles to preserve the delicate balance in Nascentia with Mirage at his side.
In the world of Nascentia, readers will discover their imaginary friends and get courage and help from their favorite heroes. Nascentia is home to the characters of myth and legend from all over the world, from every culture, from the mind of every child.
The world of Nascentia is constantly changing. Old stories die, while others live on, and more are yet born. Their very existence depends on humanity's belief...a delicate balance of faith and knowledge.
Do you believe?
What if there was another world, parallel to ours where all these stories thrive? A world where the veil between our world and theirs is thin, and easy to slip through?
Exactly one year after his 19 birthday, Kellen T. Samuelsson finds himself on the green trails of Grouse Mountain where he runs into a beautiful and mysterious young woman who calls herself 'Mirage' and changes his life forever. In an epic new tale of adventure, fantasy, myth, and love, young Kellen is whisked away to a new world, her world. The world Mirage calls home is very different from ours. But the fate of our two worlds are intertwined. All of our futures rest in Kel's hands, as he battles to preserve the delicate balance in Nascentia with Mirage at his side.
In the world of Nascentia, readers will discover their imaginary friends and get courage and help from their favorite heroes. Nascentia is home to the characters of myth and legend from all over the world, from every culture, from the mind of every child.
The world of Nascentia is constantly changing. Old stories die, while others live on, and more are yet born. Their very existence depends on humanity's belief...a delicate balance of faith and knowledge.
Do you believe?
433 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 7, 2013
1 person is currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
David J. Eden
3 books6 followersFrom a very young age, new Author, David J. Eden has been involved in storytelling. As a young child, he and his best friend would doodle and draw, creating random characters and creatures, most of which were intended for Capcom's 'Megaman' videogame series.
As he grew, Eden aspired to be a Songwriter, writing close to 100 various poems and lyrics. Poetry took a standstill on the back burner, and Eden began various writing projects that were never fully completed, ranging from Star Wars fanfics, to various short stories.
After leaving his home city of Vancouver, BC to spend 2 years in Pittsburgh, PA, Eden found himself back home and attending Vancouver Film School. Studying animation, and taking a knack for directing and film-theory, he gained a real thirst for storytelling. 6 Months out of VFS, Eden ended up as an artist on the Television series "Class of the Titans" which aired on Teletoon for 2 seasons. This is where he gained the seeds of inspiration that would eventually become "The Nascentian Chronicles". This education and experience in the Film Industry has often been the thorn in the side of family and friends as Eden is known to "pick apart a TV show or movie like a bad critic."
"I do tend to annoy people with it." He says, "I have a hard time keeping my opinions and excitement to myself, and it doesn't take much for me to memorize a complete movie in 2 viewings or less." To this day, he still has Disney's 'Aladdin' memorized, "including every nuance, voice and musical annotation...drives my mother nuts." he says with a chuckle.
His passion is now writing, but resorts to more...traditional methods. "I have to write everything out by hand first," he says, "there is no real flow of creativity otherwise. Something about the feel of an old-school fountain pen on rough pages is just soothing and allows things to just flow. Must be from my training as a Classical Animator."
Aside from the Nascentian Chronicles, which are planned to number 5 in the series, as well as a 20-part mini-series, Eden has a number of other novels "on the back burner" and ready to go when The Nascentian Chronicles run dry.
A music aficionado, (being a French Horn player and 3rd Generation Trumpet player) Eden has been to many various live performances, ranging from Broadway to Punk-Rock, his favourite of which is the Goth-Rock band, Evanescence.
Aside from Music, Movies and Writing, Eden likes to spend his time Surfing in the summers and skiing in the winters, as well as wrestling with his 2 year old Chocolate Lab, Sierra.
As he grew, Eden aspired to be a Songwriter, writing close to 100 various poems and lyrics. Poetry took a standstill on the back burner, and Eden began various writing projects that were never fully completed, ranging from Star Wars fanfics, to various short stories.
After leaving his home city of Vancouver, BC to spend 2 years in Pittsburgh, PA, Eden found himself back home and attending Vancouver Film School. Studying animation, and taking a knack for directing and film-theory, he gained a real thirst for storytelling. 6 Months out of VFS, Eden ended up as an artist on the Television series "Class of the Titans" which aired on Teletoon for 2 seasons. This is where he gained the seeds of inspiration that would eventually become "The Nascentian Chronicles". This education and experience in the Film Industry has often been the thorn in the side of family and friends as Eden is known to "pick apart a TV show or movie like a bad critic."
"I do tend to annoy people with it." He says, "I have a hard time keeping my opinions and excitement to myself, and it doesn't take much for me to memorize a complete movie in 2 viewings or less." To this day, he still has Disney's 'Aladdin' memorized, "including every nuance, voice and musical annotation...drives my mother nuts." he says with a chuckle.
His passion is now writing, but resorts to more...traditional methods. "I have to write everything out by hand first," he says, "there is no real flow of creativity otherwise. Something about the feel of an old-school fountain pen on rough pages is just soothing and allows things to just flow. Must be from my training as a Classical Animator."
Aside from the Nascentian Chronicles, which are planned to number 5 in the series, as well as a 20-part mini-series, Eden has a number of other novels "on the back burner" and ready to go when The Nascentian Chronicles run dry.
A music aficionado, (being a French Horn player and 3rd Generation Trumpet player) Eden has been to many various live performances, ranging from Broadway to Punk-Rock, his favourite of which is the Goth-Rock band, Evanescence.
Aside from Music, Movies and Writing, Eden likes to spend his time Surfing in the summers and skiing in the winters, as well as wrestling with his 2 year old Chocolate Lab, Sierra.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 26, 2015
First of all, MIRAGE definitely does not fit into my preferred genre of reading. Fantasy just never really grabs my attention. I will say that MIRAGE has an extremely interesting concept but falls short on many levels. The fact that it's a work of fantasy cannot be counted against it since this is mostly my fault for not being a fan of magical worlds filled with powerful sorcerers, hordes of scary monsters, heroes who inevitably rise above them and characters and locations with names that have too many vowels in them. That's just me.
No, MIRAGE has enough other things going for it that made it difficult to fully grasp. Like I said, the concept was very intriguing: an alternate world, Nascentia, made up entirely of characters from stories and legends. It's a world inhabited by nosferatu, leprechauns and the tiger from The Jungle Book. Even Santa Claus is kicking around in Nascentia which is kind of cool. It's a lengthy and admirable first work by a new author and there are plenty of moments where I stopped and thought about how wonderful a description within a particular sentence was.
But then there's everything else about it. Our hero, Kellen, arrives in Nascentia and is (of course) sent on a perilous mission of dire consequence with the hottest girl in town. Now because Kellen is the proverbial fish out of water, our tour guide (Mirage, for whom the book is named after) explains the lay of the land to him. What follows is 400+ pages of serious info dump. Mirage explains everything to Kellen, and I mean everything. And she doesn't skip on the detail either. I admire the author for having crafted such a richly detailed world, but the story stops from being a straightforward quest and it reads more like a Nascentia guidebook. At times I forgot what the characters were supposed to be doing, having been bogged down with so much explanatory dialogue after every corner they turn. MIRAGE includes an appendices at the end of the novel, so much of the information within the story can actually be found again at the end. As such, I feel as though I could have been reading more actual story along the way.
The editing in the book borders on appalling, with so much arbitrary capitalization of words as well as word duplication, typos, and ignorant document settings like paragraph indentation and extra spaces between sentences within paragraphs. I also prefer reading novels with a "justified" typeset, rather than the harder to read left-aligned one withing these pages.
Will I read Volume Two of The Book of Nascentia (it's fantasy, so of course there's more volumes to come!)? Probably not. But if you like richly detailed worlds of fantasy that don't ever have to end then you should check out MIRAGE, and help support self-published works of all kinds!
No, MIRAGE has enough other things going for it that made it difficult to fully grasp. Like I said, the concept was very intriguing: an alternate world, Nascentia, made up entirely of characters from stories and legends. It's a world inhabited by nosferatu, leprechauns and the tiger from The Jungle Book. Even Santa Claus is kicking around in Nascentia which is kind of cool. It's a lengthy and admirable first work by a new author and there are plenty of moments where I stopped and thought about how wonderful a description within a particular sentence was.
But then there's everything else about it. Our hero, Kellen, arrives in Nascentia and is (of course) sent on a perilous mission of dire consequence with the hottest girl in town. Now because Kellen is the proverbial fish out of water, our tour guide (Mirage, for whom the book is named after) explains the lay of the land to him. What follows is 400+ pages of serious info dump. Mirage explains everything to Kellen, and I mean everything. And she doesn't skip on the detail either. I admire the author for having crafted such a richly detailed world, but the story stops from being a straightforward quest and it reads more like a Nascentia guidebook. At times I forgot what the characters were supposed to be doing, having been bogged down with so much explanatory dialogue after every corner they turn. MIRAGE includes an appendices at the end of the novel, so much of the information within the story can actually be found again at the end. As such, I feel as though I could have been reading more actual story along the way.
The editing in the book borders on appalling, with so much arbitrary capitalization of words as well as word duplication, typos, and ignorant document settings like paragraph indentation and extra spaces between sentences within paragraphs. I also prefer reading novels with a "justified" typeset, rather than the harder to read left-aligned one withing these pages.
Will I read Volume Two of The Book of Nascentia (it's fantasy, so of course there's more volumes to come!)? Probably not. But if you like richly detailed worlds of fantasy that don't ever have to end then you should check out MIRAGE, and help support self-published works of all kinds!
March 3, 2025
Such a captivating premise. I always love a reimagined fairytale and this one has such a fresh and creative spin on the lore we already know and love. The descriptions are rich and evocative, so if you are into world building, you will not be disappointed.
My biggest struggle with the book was the density of it. So many characters and settings. I wish there was more time with each one to really develop the characters and the plot. There’s so much potential, I just wish the pacing let me enjoy it more.
Would definitely love to see more from this series. I think it could make a very cinematic series with the right editing.
My biggest struggle with the book was the density of it. So many characters and settings. I wish there was more time with each one to really develop the characters and the plot. There’s so much potential, I just wish the pacing let me enjoy it more.
Would definitely love to see more from this series. I think it could make a very cinematic series with the right editing.
June 4, 2013
Having been an avid reader for years, I was excited to find out that a friend of mine was releasing his first book. The much anticipated Mirage: The First of the Nascentian Chronicles by David J. Eden has been a wonderful addition to my bookshelf. Mirage takes everything we know and love about your favorite childhood fairy tales and mythology and puts a unique twist on it. Kellan is not your typical hero and Mirage is everything you would expect her to be and more. Mirage holds you attention from start to finish. It is one of the few books that I couldn't put down while reading. Looking forward to what stories and adventures book 2 will bring.
June 4, 2013
This is my own novel, so I am a little biased ;)
Gonna have to rely on the reviews of others!
Gonna have to rely on the reviews of others!
June 4, 2013
This is actually listed incorrectly.
Find it under "Mirage - The First of the Nascentian Chronicles".
Find it under "Mirage - The First of the Nascentian Chronicles".
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews