Advertisement

Will Kosh's Little Winged One: The First Book of Guardians is the first novel and like any debut, it reads like an interesting one. Alida Beretta is a teenager living in a Colorado town and to everyone she is just a normal everyday teenager, but for one thing, a pair of bird's wings that have fully grown from her back. Alida has friends, though society does not accept people like her, winged ones who have the ability to fly and feel as free as a bird. She has to accept the prejudice from others as she's spotted flying around. She has no idea of the chaos she has just caused with this incident, yet she does have a lover, Tyler Goldman and, along with him, she sees the world Guardians, and other chaotic altered types who cause violence and even murder. Lela, Alida's sister tries her best to keep the teens in check, but when Tyler and the team get wind of all the murders, they suspect Lela, but in that judgement they would be wrong.

The cover to this novel might look cute, but the blood on the wings should be enough of an indicator or what to expect. Alida has awful dreams of being shut in a box and prodded with needles and being forced to have blood drawn. She risks being seen flying and also being killed by the murderer who is still at large. The story has Alida and Lela caught up in a dystopian view of the future where genetic alteration is rife, and no one can do as they please; curfew is set due to all the violence, but that does not prevent Alida from breaking the rules if she wants her freedom from society's restraints.

Alida does not know why she has wings, they sprouted from her back when she was young. Her mother and father accepted her genetic mutation, but when one girl, Tammy, hears information about Alida's wings after phys ed, she feels the full brunt of how she considers people like Alida. With all her cruelty and bad feeling, she does not encourage the brutality of the killer who stalks the shadows in wait. Little Winged One: The First Book of Guardians has two stories running alongside each other. One is the life of Alida and Lela and the Guardians, and a girl called Laura who gets infected by a mystery woman. This book is a lot more descriptive than the rest, and describes the horror of murder, and what the woman doing it feels.

The book itself is a science fiction horror with all the elements of fright in it, blood, gore, corpse's usually alive, rotting flesh and decapitations. The strange part is the front cover, as it does not prepare the reader for a horror novel. This is an unnerving novel that gives nothing away until you start reading. It is exciting, and ghastly in places and is, to my mind, a first rate horror.

Sandra has been wandering the Earth for some time thinking about all these newfangled things like Dropbox, and ponders what happened to the usefulness of the .doc or pdf. When she isn't pondering deep subjects, she writes for Active Anime, Fantasy Book Review, Love Vampires, and Love Romance Passion.