Between the Lines

The Planar Pages #1

by D. Hale Rambo

Life flourishes in the Book, a world of stacked realms spanning the ages, like the pages of an epic chronicle. Each page opens to domains evoking the glory of ancient empires, the passion of the Renaissance, or the adventure of court intrigue. Those who can travel between them are page turners, blessed with the power to go from one page to the next.

For investigator Fiona Thorne, turning the page is normal life. Solving mysteries is where the excitement lives. No case is too small to ignite her curiosity, no page too familiar to explore. She is determined to leave her mark in the Book, no matter where her cases may lead.

Whether unravelling conspiracies in an Elizabethan-like kingdom, outwitting sly cutthroat panthers on Roman seas, or navigating intrigues in a Venetian realm of canals and secretive fae, Fiona follows clues through page after page.

Blaze, the page of fire, is wasting away. Fire elementals are being smuggled out in waves, but by whom? Fiona is on the job and nothing will hold her back, not even the overbearing Travel Guild. They may run the Book, but they don’t rule her. With the fire page and its creatures on the brink of winking out, she has to race to unravel who the smugglers are and how to stop them. Is there more to this case than it seems? Can Fiona read between the lines and solve it in time?

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

305 pages, ebook

First published July 27, 2022

About the author

D. Hale Rambo is a fantasy author whose books transport readers to wondrous worlds filled with magic, mystery, and humor. With compelling and memorable characters at the heart of her stories, Rambo weaves tales to entertain and enthrall.

A lifelong storyteller, she’s been writing and creating other worlds since she was old enough to mark them on her bedroom wall. When she’s not writing, you can find her enjoying a stiff cosmopolitan while reading mysteries alongside her favorite pet companion.

Reviews

[Twyla Rae Andersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Between the Lines is a rare treasure in how unique the story concept is for a mystery within the fantasy genre.

Fiona Thorne is a page turner, someone gifted with the ability to move between worlds within the Book of Larrakane. Being a curious person by nature, she chooses to be an investigator. By taking on clients, she works to build a reputation and become financially independent, breaking away from the influence of the Guild which governs page turner activities.

The author does an exceptional job of detailing Fiona's perception of living in a book, and the mechanics involved with navigating within its pages. I think my own curiosity rivaled Fiona's in my need to know what it would feel like to be self-aware within that kind of setting.

Fiona's entire universe is condensed into pages which are diverse worlds. Even the spine of the book is described in terms of geography, with communities of beings from pages bordering Spine dwelling there.

It's brilliant how the author took terminology familiar to readers (like 'bookmark') and wove it into Between the Lines as reinvented objects, places, and concepts. A good example is Fiona calling tourists who just pass through a page 'skimmers'.

I did enjoy the bonds of friendship between Fiona, Soot, and Gaili. Unfortunately, the story within Between the Lines meanders, traveling in too many directions too often. Consequently, the entire narrative loses focus. This leaves very little room for character development. The greater mystery Fiona solves loses intrigue very early in the story.

With so much world building happening within, reading Between the Lines feels more like a video game walkthrough than a novel. There are searches for clues, quests and side quests, NPCs that further the story, potions, tolls to pay, unique forms of currency, puzzles to solve, machinations and politics, a Guild, and always the opportunity to level up whenever Gaili invents gadgets that give characters added strengths.

The worlds within Between the Lines held my interest, even though the story in its entirety did not.

I love how this novel makes for a great video game concept!

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was unsure about this for a couple chapters but I am very glad I pushed through. This is a very unique and creative story that caused a bit of confusion at the beginning but I quickly grew to love the characters and rooted for them to solve the case.
A very cute mystery.

[Mareli Thalwitzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greetings! Wouldn't you just love it if you could live between the pages of a book? For real. Just imagine the Spine of the book as a whole cosmopolitan and turning but one page, is a life altering experience.

Meet Fiona Thorne. Like most avid book and page lovers, curiosity is the death of her. As an investigator, being a page turner enables her to to travel through pages in the Book and to ensure that law and order will be in perfect harmony - black and white, like the black letters on a white page. But mysteries are what excite her and what will any book be if it doesn't tickle our curiosity?

Seeing that this is Book #1 in The Planar Pages Series, I'm sure there will still be couple of pages to turn for Fiona. But for the first edition, Fiona finds herself trying to solve the mystery of why someone is capturing Fire Elementals from Blaze, the Page of Fire. Or at least, I think that was the main plot for this instalment of the series?

With a large variety of different characters and creatures, plotlines, bookish terminology as character trades and world building, the main synopsis of Between the Lines got lost between all the lines and I never really picked it up again.

I did love the author's creative writing style and the bookish terminology is very clever. A glossary might be a good idea? Fiona is a lovely, inquisitive character and meeting all her friends and allies was a fun reading experience.

I believe this series might have a lot of potential and as a curious book creature myself, we are eagerly awaiting to see how the next page turns.

Thank you to The History Quill Book Club for our copy of this book. Much appreciated!

[Releanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked this book. But I (English isn't my first language) had quite some difficulties discerning who was meant with "They" - the group or one of the persons. I wish there was another word - well this isn't the author's fault.

[Tom Mock]

This is not a full review. I read through the beginning of all 300 SPFBOX contest entries. This was a book I wanted to read more of.

Magic people can step between parallel worlds by “turning the page,” and our young MC is tailing one such page turner who is kidnapping elementals from another world.

I found this youthful fantasy to be charmingly creative with its conceit. Stepping between worlds is familiar enough, but the literary parallel of the language was a delight to me, and the narration clearly relishes sharing those delights with its reader.

The 3rd person voice of the novel is equally charming. There is a humorous energy about it, tho I don’t believe the story is a comedy. Our female MC is plucky, a little reckless, and driven to investigate mysteries.

The prose is clear. The action starts straight away, but without seeming in a rush, giving us a good sense of our main character as the story unfolds. We’re with her! And the image of helpless little fire elementals is a nice, Ghibli-esque touch.

While the setting, beyond being a city, is for the moment undefined, no beginning can be all things at once. This is more interested in its story-involved organizations. The Who and the What for the moment trumps the Where.

I was confused by some minor plot details, but I’m not sure that’s the sort of thing I need to be overly concerned with in an adventure story like this.

How some group knew where to meet our MC and why she made a complicated back up plan are less important to me than to learn what happens next! Because something is happening here!

There’s bad people in this world, and they up to no good. Oh, did I mention the anthro cat people? And a non-white MC?

This opening has a lot to offer readers. It feels full of possibility, and I can little guess just where it will take me. I think this would be a treat especially for younger readers. Great fun! I’m in.

[Maed Between the Pages · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Rounded up for GR.

I have such conflicting feeling about this book. The things I liked I really liked, and the things I didn't, I really didn't. The world and it's concepts are fascinating. Our main character Fiona is one of those elements I really enjoyed. She is an investigator- empathetic and quirky...a character archetype I can always get behind. Fiona can travel between the different worlds in this universe which are stacked on top of each other like the pages of a book. Each Page has it's own unique environment and this is where I believe the story really shines. Evey place we travelled to was fascinating and a delight to imagine; the wanderlust in me would be ecstatic to have the chance to see these worlds.

Unfortunately this is also were some of my problems begin. The concepts in this book are so vast that I felt like we didn't sink deep enough into any aspect of it. Each world requires it's own elixers and potions to survive there, so how would the apothecary business be affected by this? Are there certain smiths who specialize in gear for specific worlds? Do they compete for resources? Fiona just so happens to make a friend that seems to be able to make gear for every environment they encounter and that felt like a cop out almost (even though I did enjoy the friend character). Actions that should have had larger implications or a ripple of consequences simply...didn't? But sometimes smaller actions would come back to bite the characters in a way that seemed disproportionate to the inciting incident. That feeling of internal inconsistency was present throughout.
I also felt like the transition between different scenes and/or plot points to be quite jarring. Fiona would come to some conclusion or change locations suddenly and I would have no idea how we got there. If it weren't for the fascinating world building concepts, the plot would have lost me entirely.

Basically for me the concepts here are great, but the execution of putting them on paper isn't quite there. I don't think this is a bad book, and I would be open to see if the later installments do that kind of deep diving work I mentioned to be lacking, but it's not a high priority.

[Laura Doe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book via The History Quill Book Club. An interesting book and one that I don’t think I’ve read anything similar to before. The similarities and terminology used was very much book based which was interesting.
We follow Fiona Thorne who is what is known as a Turner (she can move between different worlds, by turning a page in the Book) and an investigator. We start with her tracking a lead for a smuggler who has been smuggling different creatures out of pages and keeping them somewhere. She follows him home, and as she had already tipped of a friend who works for The Guild (Turners who keep things in some kind of order) she makes sure that she is around the action when they arrest the smuggler.
She comes across a fire elemental who she frees from a jar, and after the arrest of the smuggler, she offers to take the fire elemental and the other smuggler fire creatures back to their home page. Once there, the fire elemental asks if it can stay with Fiona and goes home with her. Fiona names it Soots and from there a friendship forms, which unfolds nicely throughout the book. Fiona also makes friends with other creatures that she comes across, and as someone who normally works alone and doesn’t tend to have many friends, this is growth for her and it shows.
I loved reading this book, it was the perfect amount of fantasy mixed with mystery as Fiona tries to solve the case that she has been given. I did have a bit of an inkling about the end, but I did still second guess myself until the very moment that it happened.
The only thing that did baffle me sometimes was a bit of the terminology and trying to remember what was meant by certain terms around how Fiona moved through the pages, maybe some kind of reference would have been useful to have.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have already signed up to the newsletter to gain access to the novella in order to find out what happened to Fiona before this novel started! I hope that there are more books in this series as I would love to find out what the Druid means at the end of the book!

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting concept book, which works quite well. The main character, Fiona Thorne, is a 'turner' who solves mysteries - she comes across as a type of young female Sherlock Holmes.

It took me a while to get used to the 'Elementals' in the story being addressed in plural, I thought at first that it was a typing error. I did find it mildly irritating but then I realised that the 'Elementals' were gender neutral, so it made sense, as none of these characters had names or a gender. The only exception to the no names rule was Soots, the fire sprite, who is named by Fiona Thorne and helps her solve the case.

The story is set in a book or rather The Book, with each page a world in it's own right, which 'turners' could traverse. Fiona Thorne is a very feisty young lady which would make this book more appealing to female teenagers rather than to adults.

Although I enjoyed the imagination of the author and I did read all the book, I would not choose to read the 2nd book in the series.

I received a free copy from The History Quill Book Club

[Lycett T · Rating 4 out of 5]

The experience as a reader, letting your mind travel to another world and watching the story you’re reading play out in your head, is something I would’ve never have seen put on paper in such a fun way! Rambo does such a great job of taking that experience and putting it into a fantasy world. I love all the bookish terms used in such creative ways, such as Jackets for those who protect the pages. The detailing for Blaze was so fascinating, along with the various other locations in the book. I won’t lie I had trouble grasping the world at first, and I foolishly didn’t check for a glossary, which it does have! This book will have you on the hunt to discover who’s behind the kidnapping of fire elementals and who stole the Blackstone. I hope to read book 2 in the future to explore more of the world of “The Planar Pages.”

[Scott Gardner · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book via The History Quill Book Club

The overall idea in the book is good , the world resembles a book , you go through the spine to journey to other pages ( worlds )

If the book is aimed properly , it would do well aimed at the teenage market . a teenager would enjoy the book , most likely a female teenager

As it is , i am not that , so to me , the book was a disappointment , it's a jumble of characters as you pass through the worlds , most of them quite boring

[Alaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

My two big loves in fantasy are fully-realized characters and innovative world-building, and this has both of those in spades.

The main character is flawed, funny, guarded, and big-hearted, though she has forgotten how to be part of a community or family (if she ever knew). The other characters are not just side pieces - they each have their own complex motivations, feelings, and backgrounds, and I loved how well these characters were developed over the course of the book.

The world is an innovative place - a character capable of skipping between planes is nothing new, but D. Hale Rambo provides depth to the realms and their relationships to one another. There's a lot going on behind the scenes, and of course I also love the literature-themed terminology for everything in the world. The planes are "pages," travelers are "page-turners," tourists are "skimmers," the central plane that can access all the others is the "Spine," and so much more.

This is a fun adventure story - it's several mysteries in one, as well as a story about the cruel costs of greed and exploitation. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fortunate to receive an ARC. I was delighted with this story. Unique world building and magical travel systems--I love this kind of thing. I really appreciated the good humor, endearing friends (ahhh Soots!), and a main character in Fiona that I was happy to root for. The one thing I would have really appreciated would have been a glossary to help me keep track of all of the important terms/jobs/characters/etc introduced as the world was built around me as I read.

[Kat M · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was a great start to the Planar Pages series, it was a great mixture of fantasy and mystery. I was invested in what was going on in the world and characters and enjoyed my time with them. Can't wait to see this series unfold.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Tyrannosaurus regina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really fascinated by the worldbuilding in this, the way the worlds are "stacked" upon each other and the means taken to reach them, and the idea of those people with the ability to move between them living on the spine of the book. As well, the authority figures in the book felt true to the concept of the world and not tacked on to have an enemy type to face. All in all a very good read.

[Misty McIntosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read for any true book fanatic. The imagery of a world that is laid out like a book with each page being a new world made this read unique. The twists and turns Fiona encounters trying to solve the mystery of the missing stone made for a quick and intriguing read.

[Dana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fiona is a page-turner in a fantasy land whose job is basically a private investigator for hire. She encounters friends and foes as she accepts dangerous assignments to keep all parts of the “book” alive and well
I enjoy a good fantasy and really liked the concept of a fantasy world within a book. Unfortunately, I found this story to be very confusing in the beginning which made it hard to get involved with and was actually boring at times. Since this book is planned to be the first in a series, I would have liked to see more explanation about the various creatures and entities such as physical descriptions and background information. For instance, what is the traveler’s guild and the guides and how is the governance of the fantasy book land set up? What are the roles of the different characters and what is the basis of the various conflicts? I think taking time to explain these concepts while describing Fiona’s adventures would have really helped set up the series. And a simple map or diagram of the various lands within the book would make a nice visual that could explain a lot. This book did not entice me to read any further. Unfortunately, a fascinating concept and unique fantasy world was poorly executed.
Thanks to History Quill Book Club for the Advanced Reader Copy.

[Chrissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book it was unique compared to all of the fae and vampire books that keep coming out if you love fantasy you should give this book a try.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Em · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF I can't deal with millennial character building rn