Tempeste: Aubrey Rising Book 1

Aubrey Rising #1

by Devlin Richards

After years of hardship, fifteen year old Aubrey finally feels like she has found a life that she can be happy with. But just when she’s starting to feel like a normal teenage girl, she discovers she has budding magical powers. And not only that, but she’s been thrust into the middle of a war, with a handful of people like her fighting three sisters, Tempeste, Zephyra, and Mercuriel, who want to protect the magical way of life by eliminating the entire human race. The only hope is to find the Daughter of the Wilderness, a mystical being who they hope holds the key to defeating the three sisters. Aubrey quickly needs to embrace her new life, because a battle is coming. Will she be strong enough to help find the Daughter of the Wilderness and fight in the war against Tempeste, the first of the three sisters?

Genres: Fantasy

368 pages, ebook

First published November 3, 2015

Reviews

[Alina]

I know Ms. Richards personally, and when I first read this series I was just pretty much star struck that someone I KNEW had written it. Needless to say, I loved the whole thing. It’s been years, though, so I should probably read them again...the only problem is, I don’t have any copies. I previously read it on a Kindle, which we don’t have anymore, so I’ll go get physical copies, reread them, and write a real review. 😉😉

[Robz]

Recommend for 8 to 15-year-old
Instead of reviewing uniquely this book I am reviewing here the whole series which I just finished.
There are two reasons I would recommend the series to the indicated age group. First, the story deals with a classical situation of the 15-year-old girl that changes school and finds out about her magical powers. Follows a series of events that result in the hero (Aubrey) getting entangled in a war between magical factions. The story deals with magic, dragons, elves, princesses and queen, good and evil, and of course a typical teen romance; everything to appeal to the target audience.
Secondly and more importantly reading this series has been a literary adventure that demonstrated the process of becoming a writer and showed clearly that talent is not something that exists intrinsically but is the result of work, perseverance, tenacity and of course some additional work.
Ms. Richards started writing the series at 13 years of age, when most are attracted by quite different interests or would simply be frightened by such a gargantuan task as writing a 250 000-word story. The books were written in the present tense, a form well suited to writing a story in what I call the 'Happening' style. The first book in the series does just that and tells what 'happens': Event one is followed by event two, then the third event and so on. There is no flavor to the text and events simply occur without nuance, without depth, the scenes are flat. This first book exhibits strong inconsistencies in the scenario, conclusions are drawn out of opaque or nonexistent premises, events are somewhat predictable.
Had I not noticed the writer had been 13-year-old when writing this book, I would have stopped right there and then. But her age piqued my curiosity and I persevered into the next book. Shortly into this second book became evident the progression of the author's literary skills. The scenario changed rapidly to be more consistent and the story started to gather some texture. Started also appearing an excess of vague qualifiers such as 'sort of' 'kind of' 'like' 'so' and 'or something' typical of teen talk. Given the protagonist was a teen this teen-language was not oppressive though a bit too flagrant.
With the progression of the book, description of feelings became more fluid allowing a better description of relationships. Friendship or attraction were not only declared but felt, though timidly at first. The progression continued on in the third book; the teen words greatly diminished to be replaced by a much more varied vocabulary and complexity was added to the relationships. The story was still not perfectly cohesive yet the difference between the third book and the first is so astonishing it draws some clemency from the reader.
I would not state that this is a great series of books; yet it has definite inspirational value. Ms. Richards was adventurous by first starting the first book then moving on to complete the whole series, actually take to time to review and edit the work, something I know to be extraordinarily time consuming, and then have the guts to publish.
I would call Delvin Richards inspirationally audacious.