Donor: Shreya's Chronicles Book 1

by Sheryl Kaleo

~ One drop of her blood ~

The moment when you realize sleeping without a nightlight
did nothing to prepare you for the dark chasing you into daylight…?
Yeah. That.

~ Could start a war ~

Only when I face life on the run alone do I realize
how well Mama trained me to protect myself.
If only she’d had time to explain
why her tears turned to crystals when we parted,
and what I’m destined to become.

~ And bring an end to Humankind ~

Now I can trust no one, especially Enoch.
This all started the day he showed up looking for me
and he seems to be everywhere I go—before I get there.
Is he one of the Undying? Or something Other?
The answer may be my deliverance…
or make me wish I were dead.

DONOR (Shreya's Chronicles Book 1) follows Shreya’s journey from an ordinary sixteen-year-old girl living in upstate Louisiana to a fugitive on the run from the law, the unlawful, and those beyond any natural laws known to Humankind.

This Book includes all four

DONOR Part 1: A Bat Out of Hell
Life after high school for Shreya means a local college, local job, settling down with a nice local boy (the lacrosse team captain), and the white picket fence with the solar panels and the two-hovic garage. She’s a homebody. But life has different plans for Shreya and is about to teach her that leaving home is never a choice and everything she’s ever believed about her identity, is a lie.

DONOR Part 2: The Jeweled City
Shreya travels to New York to decipher the book of scrolls. But the City that Never Sleeps is also a mecca for the Undying. Will she get lost in the crowds, or stand out and be devoured for the secrets she holds in her blood?

DONOR Part 3: A Silver Lined Grave
When Mr. James and his Cyber Thugs find her in New York City, Shreya accepts Dax’s offer for a place to hide. Unfortunately, that means going deep down into New York’s subterranean tunnels, where darkness is just a light switch away.

DONOR Part 4: The Heart of the Enemy
The end of this serialized novel finds Shreya escaping her underground trap only to end up in the hands of her worst enemy and her greatest temptation, Enoch.

Genres: Solarpunk

587 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 27, 2014

About the author

I spent my childhood building sandcastles on the beaches of the Caribbean. Monsters from the mysterious depths of the ocean were always on hand to storm the ramparts or stop by for a l’il skylarking with space-conquering aliens.

These days, I spend my second childhood writing or drawing science-fiction and supernatural young adult stories, which are peppered with a spicy marinade of multicultural folklores and myths.

I’ve helped run a critique group or two and have a Computer Science and Liberal Arts Degree from Boston University and Graphic Design Certification from Massachusetts College of Art. I’ve finalled in some cool contests including the RWA’s Golden Heart ® and won first place in the following:

Colorado RWA Heart of the Rockies for TIME WALKERS 2006
Fiction from the Heartland for PIPER’S KISS 2008
Heart of Denver RWA YA Molly for PIPER’S KISS 2009
Southern Magic Romance Writers Linda Howard Award of Excellence for DONOR 2011

I’m also a CZT, Certified Zentangle Teacher. Which means I’ve been trained in the Zentangle Method. For more information about Zentangle read my Zentangle, CZT page.

When I’m not tangling, writing, or reading, or reading about writing, or drawing, or painting, or geeking, I head out on real-life adventures with my family in our very own zombie-apocalypse Jeep. I live in the northeast, where it’s too cold in the winter and almost perfect in the summer. I’d love to hear from you at sherylkaleo @ gmail.com OR Twitter @sherylkaleo.

Reviews

[Alyssa Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I haven’t had a book keep me up late at night so frequently since Hunger Games. That’s not to say the books are comparable, beyond being YA and fast paced action filled thrillers though.This book has such and imaginative world I don’t even know how to sum it up. Maybe “underground railroad-esque thriller in a near-future scifi setting and characters inspired by fantasy creatures.” I loved the main character and how the details and politics of this world unfold into something I could never have guessed at. This is an excellent adventure story with a tingly romantic subplot, but it never falls for the usual pitfalls of YA romance. Damsel in distress does not describe this heroine at all. Actually I can’t think of any way that any of the characters, male or female fit into any sort of stereotype. Everyone was very well rounded and the prose well written. I loved the references to Louisiana, Cajun culture, and Underground Railroad history. Fantasy elements start to creep in with genetically altered humans becoming vampires (or Leechers) and mechanically altered ones becoming cyborgs but there is so much more going on in this world with racial and political tensions between Leechers, Cyborgs and Humans that I never knew what to expect of the altered characters. I like how the fantasy elements took inspiration from a multitude of cultures (not just Western & European) but changed just enough to make the concept of things like cyborgs and djinns feel fresh and unique. I would never have thought these fantasy elements could be blended with science fiction concepts so well but this book pulls it off. In the story many of these fantasy creatures are byproducts of humanity’s transhumanist attempts to defeat mortality. I can’t wait for more by this author but for now maybe it’s good that I’ve finished it. I need to catch up on sleep and work and basically anything that doesn’t involve reading through this as fast as I can. I am not a huge fan of the cover art, it feels too crowded, but don’t let that keep you from trying the book out.

There is another book by this author actually titled “Solarpunk” but I can’t find it on Amazon. The plot summary is that a young native girl (the summary didn’t say from which tribe) has a solar-panel farm with her brother. Her father is dead and her mother left them. Something happens to threaten their farm and she has to ask the boy neighbor help even though she hates him because his family is rich and they plant their trees on the border of her property where it interferes with her solar farm. He, however, is eager to win the heart of the girl he loves. Her little brother grows up to be the first cyborg president. I don’t know where this book is but I really want to read it!