Vaughan W. Smith

Awakened by Vaughan W. Smith is the first book in the Blood Storm Series. It revolves around Maya, who unleashed the 'BloodStorm'. Seven bloodlines were granted powers. However, Maya is unique, she has powers from all seven bloodlines.
An enjoyable read. I found the first half of the book spent too much time jumping between the two different time periods. Very fast paced, and I could appreciate that we were seeing things from Maya's perspective, so her confusion and lack of understanding is what we as the reader also experience. That could be confusing at times as well, not enough world building and trying to keep characters straight from different time periods.
I liked the story, the magic and how people used it was interesting and certainly different. And the action was exciting. The next book I am interested in reading, hopefully without time jumps and the author will settle into building more of the world and characters.… (más)

Maya has been a pawn in the games of the Master Sage who has long been manipulating bloodlines for his own purposes. Each line has special powers that the Master Sage hopes to control.

For the first half of the book, there are split timelines. I’m not sure why this structure was used, rather than a more linear approach because it led to a very disjointed feeling in a plot that was already a little rushed. There was a lot of “okay we’re here doing this, now we’re there doing that,’ usually with some reason, but it was not very smooth. There was some improvement in the last half, once the timelines merged. There were also some incongruences--in that in a scene where an announcer says that the six contestants have arrived (more than once), there are actually seven contestants. I kept having to look back to see if I had miscounted something.

Despite all of that, Maya is pretty charming as well as smart, determined, and brave. The magic system is interesting and different from the usual. The action is not lacking either. There is definitely potential in the writing and world building, and I will definitely try the next in the series to see where both go.… (más)