Rise of Gaia

The Rise of Gaia is a book that you have to take your time with. While the storyline flows and keeps you engaged, there is more to the narrative than just a story to entertain you. I am going to share my thoughts, and my take on the book. Kristin Ward delivers another book that is profound and thought-provoking.

Stars: 4/5

Review of The Rise of Gaia:

Terran is a normal teenager, at least, until the day she turns 17. On her birthday, she is hit with visions of a dark and horrid world. She cannot get them out of her head. She does not want to confide in her parents, so she confides in her best friend and her mother. As they work to figure out what might be causing the visions that she is seeing, a medium is suggested. After the first visit, Terran wants nothing more to do with him, but the visions continue, and she must find a way to either come to terms with it or discover what she must do to make it stop. Doing that, however, could put her in danger.




My Thoughts:

I did enjoy the book, but I bogged down a little bit on this one. I have loved what Kristin Ward has written in the past, and while I enjoyed this book, it took me a bit longer to get through this one. I found that the characters were relatable, and the underlying issues that she is alluding to were not overreaching, or out of the realm of possibilities. While this is not my favorite of what she has written, it is still a fabulous book. Everyone reads a book differently, and this one has huge potential.

Happy Reading!

The Rise of Gaia is author Kristen Ward's third novel, and frankly, she just keeps getting better and better. In this outing, Ward touches on a few different topics, but first and foremost is the topic of climate change. Readers have been seeing a lot of books out in the world about this subject. It is on the minds of authors as well as readers because we as humans are seeing the effects of environmental degradation more and more every day. Instead of writing a purely dystopic novel, which you find often when dealing with climate change, Kristen wrote a novel exploring friendship, love, and unusual circumstances.

The protagonist of the story is a young woman name Terran. A nod to Kristen about the name choice, the word Terran translates to “of the Earth.” This sets a fun foreshadowing about how Terran develops as a character and the interesting path she takes in the narrative. Terran is an atypical teenage girl, in that instead of playing with social media, worrying about her hair or school drama, Terran feels most at home hiking. I like this as a character attribute. Often teens are written stereotyped. Terran and her best friend Beth are interesting characters because they are realistic in that they seem like real people.

The story progresses as Terran is wracked by visions of a dying Earth. She feels the pain of loss at a natural world that is rapidly disappearing, and sorrow for a broken future. Eventually, we come to find out that Gaia (The entity representing the spirit of the natural world) has decided that Terran is a chosen one. What that means for Terran's future and how she sees the world is the bulk of the story.

The strongest element of the story and the part that I enjoyed the most was the depth of friendship between Beth and Terran. As I was a teenage girl, so very very long ago, I remember the intense and important relationships that I formed that as a young girl and how they lasted me a lifetime. I loved that Kristen explored some of those aspects.

Again Kristen as written a wonderful and affecting story. I am so happy to have been a part of this blog tour and highly recommend reading any of her books.