Gyre by Jessica Gunn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Gyre is Young Adult/ New Adult Scifi and book #1 of the Atlas Link series. The book opens in Boston, but most of the action takes place aboard a top secret Navy vessel known as SeaSatellite5.
Chelsea, an archaeology student and rock singer, meets Trevor Bancore one evening. He stops Chelsea being assaulted. Trevor is on the run; for him, there is no escaping a war over time travel, fought between two ancient races.
Three months later Chelsea is confronted by her cheating boyfriend, and her anger unleashes a hidden power within her. She teleports to a top secret naval vessel, where a serious security breach occurs and she is rescued by the intervention of Dr Helen Gordon.
Helen believes Chelsea has an ancient Atlantean gene. However, Chelsea knows nothing of such an ancestry link. Seasatellite5 is currently searching the oceans for ancient artefacts; to keep Chelsea safe and train her, she is offered an internship, helping with the archaeology finds. Chelsea has few choices and is also strongly attracted to Trevor, who works on the vessel, so accepts the post.
The team discover an ancient outpost, but news of the discovery draws interest from others. Trevor has not been totally honest with Chelsea about his own background; when the sub is hijacked by a group of Lemurians, Chelsea discovers just who the enemy is.
As with the start of any series, there is a lot of background information to digest. I enjoyed the theme of Atlantis and the war with Lemuria being documented in history books with connections to lost cities. The association with ancient artefacts becoming travel portals is good, and I can see this leading into the next books in the series.
There is a large cast of characters; I wanted the secondary significant players to be easier to picture, especially for later scenes involving fast action and multiple characters. Currently these were weaker areas of the book, and I found it hardest to picture scenes featuring Lemurian powers.
The scifi fantasy genre allows for creativity of both characters and new worlds. Chelsea is transformed from student to super soldier. Trevor creates and plays computer games like many teenagers, but holds down a top engineering job. I don’t think we’ve seen his real strength yet; in this book he holds much of the storyline together, but has a far lesser role than Chelsea. Were they believable? On the whole I think they were; a few times I would have liked to see their dialogue tightened, and some of the high emotion scenes didn’t work for me. The strength of the book, however, is the possibility of Atlantis and Lemuria being real, and how the author will develop this throughout the series.
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Book Description
Chelsea didn’t try to teleport. All she wanted was to play the Battle of the Bands show. But after accidentally teleporting onto classified Navy vessel SeaSatellite5, all she’s rocking is the boat.
Once it’s sorted out that Chelsea’s not a threat, SeaSat5’s top scientist offers Chelsea a position on the crew as an archaeology intern. Dr. Gordon studies people with powers, believing them to be descendants of Atlantean refugees, except Chelsea’s powers are beyond anything on previous record.
While great for everyone else onboard, the miracle of Chelsea is Trevor’s worst nightmare. The same girl who’d given him a brief lifeline to sanity three months ago literally fell from the sky, under a mile of ocean, and onto the very station where he’s employed. Making matters worse, Trevor’s family are Lemurians, Atlantis’s enemy, and Chelsea’s presence is unpredicted—a wrench in an already unstable situation. But Trevor wants no part of his family’s war. The only thing he wants is Chelsea, Atlantean or not.
Days into Chelsea’s sudden appearance, SeaSatellite5 uncovers Atlantean ruins and a massive artifact cache, placing its entire, hundred-man crew in the crosshairs of an ancient war. There are those who want the Atlantean relics inside the ruins destroyed, and only Trevor knows the treasures for what they really are: Link Pieces, tools used by the ancient civilizations for their time-travel war.
With lies and shifting alliances abound, Chelsea and Trevor will have to think fast in order to save the station. If they don’t, the Lemurians will seize the artifacts and Atlantis will be destroyed forever.
About the author
Jessica Gunn is a New Adult author and avid science-fiction and fantasy fan. Her favorite stories are those that transport the reader to other, more exciting worlds. When not working or writing, she can be found binge-watching Firefly and Stargate, or feeding her fascination of the ancient world’s many mysteries. Jessica also holds a degree in Anthropology.
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