Smada's Book Smack : Audiobook Tour: Horizon (Horizon #1) by Tabitha Lord

Author: Tabitha Lord

Narrator: DW Draffin

Length: 8 hours 15 minutes

Series: Horizon, Book 1

Publisher: Wave Equation Media

Released: Oct. 25, 2018

Genre: Science Fiction

Caeli Crys isn't living - she's surviving. On the run after the genocide of her empathic people, she witnesses a spaceship crash near her hidden camp. When she feels the injured pilot suffering from miles away, she can't help but risk discovery to save his life.
Commander Derek Markham awakens stranded on an uncharted planet. His co-pilot is dead, his ship is in ruins, and he's only alive because a beautiful young woman is healing him with her mind.
As Derek recovers, Caeli shares the horror of her past and her fear for the future. When Derek's command ship, Horizon, sends rescue, Derek convinces Caeli to leave with him. But his world is as treacherous as hers - full of spies, interplanetary terrorist plots, and political intrigue. Soon the Horizon team is racing to defend an outlying planet from a deadly enemy, and Caeli's unique skills may just give them the edge they need to save it.

My Review:

3.5 Out Of 5 Stars

Genre: Another-World, Romance, Space, Supernatural, Survival--

When a space craft crashes near where she is currently surviving, empath and healer Caeli makes the choice to get involved and do what she can to save the survivor. Derek wakes to find a strange girl saved his life, a girl who has survived horrors and destruction, now on the run from the same people who killed everyone she loved. When Derek's people come find him, he urges Caeli to come with him and start a new life, but the life he offers is not as safe as he thought.

I will admit that I struggled for the first half of the book because the pacing of the plot was very slow and the content was pretty depressing. It was more a tell than a show/action, so we get a lot of backstory from Caeli and how she ended up on the run. There is also a lot of world building with tons of pain and destruction so it was a little bit of a downer. The pacing and action most definitely pick up and it was much easier to speed through the second half of the book.

The narrator did a nice job of enunciation and being very good with his word pacing but at times it felt a little bit emotionless. I love narrators that emote a lot so that way I feel more involved in the plot and connect to the characters better and I feel like that was lacking a little. And maybe it was done on purpose for the book, maybe that was what the author wanted, but it was just a little hard for me at times like when one of the main characters was describing the destruction of everyone she loved, it was very one note. Also, since there were two main characters that the book was narrated by, it was a little hard distinguishing between voices, I would not have know which character's view it was without the header that announced it.

I think I would have appreciated the book a little more if I had read it instead of listen in this situation. I ended up purchasing a copy of the ebook and I finished reading it that way and I am interested to see how the next book will play out.

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Tabitha Lord. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

Tabitha’s HORIZON series has won seven independent book awards including the prestigious Writer’s Digest Grand Prize in 2016. She has short fiction published by World Weaver Press, Electric Athenaeum Magazine, Grimbold Books, and more. Tabitha is also a partner and senior writer for Book Club Babble, and a managing editor for the Inkitt Writer’s Blog. She lives in Rhode Island and is married with four independent-minded and creative kids, two spoiled cats, and lovable black lab. She holds a degree in Classics from College of the Holy Cross and taught Latin for years at a Waldorf school where she now serves on the Board of Trustees.

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DW Draffin is an actor and narrator in San Francisco. He has founded his own science fiction theater company, sold screenplays to New Line and FOX2000, and narrated the books of authors he idolizes.