BOOK REVIEW: The White Orchid and the Willow

It’s been a long process for author Joel Collins. He’s just beginning the tribulations of a twenty-something, but for the last eight years his passion has been a novel. For four years he thought about the story, and he would write. All by hand, he wrote until there were mounds of paper around him and a story he’d always wanted to publish. “I wanted to create art,” Collins remembers, “where the canvas was the reader’s imagination. Sometimes I would spend a whole day on a single word because I wasn’t satisfied.”

His debut novel is part one of his trilogy, The Shadow Chronicles. The book, The White Orchid and the Willow, introduces readers to the island of Jade and Creyton, a young man and his Golden Eagle companion, Eliza. His hard work shows in White Orchid as he paints a very detailed picture of life on the island.

After Collins had the story, he knew he wanted to share it with others. The next four years would be dedicated to editing and self-publishing. Which would be hard for anyone, but it is especially hard for a student majoring in Computer Science, Physics and Chemistry as well as a minor in Mathematics. To support the rest of his trilogy, he created a Kickstarter, which you can find here.

The book may suffer from some small disadvantages due to being self-published, but the lore is there, the plot is intriguing and the imagery is so vivid. It will satisfy readers who are looking for a tale of morality and the winding paths one must take to come to terms with it. It’s about coming out of the shadows and embracing your time in the light.

If you want to get your own copy, The White Orchid and the Willow is available physically and digitally on Amazon and for the Nook.

If you enjoyed Carly’s review (look, it’s hard to come up with something clever every time, okay?), you can find the rest of her work right HERE on Sci-Fi Bloggers. You can also follow her on Twitter @MrsCarlyRodgers.

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