The Gryphon Saga: Freeform & Freefight

As far as Lianndra is aware, she is a perfectly ordinary young woman. She’s studying to be a vet, doing her best to scrape by (a struggle which will ring true for anyone who’s studied at university lately), and she is trying to get through a Canadian winter. She has, however, recently won a trip to San Francisco. Between exhausting studies and breaking up with her boyfriend of two years, she’s ready for a break, and where better than a place where she can be by the sun and the sea?

That free trip will wind up changing her life, but not at all in the way she expects. She meets a cute young man, Michael, and grows close with two of his friends, but they have no time to determine whether their budding relationship will have a chance to blossom before she must go back to Canada. While out diving, the quartet are captured and brought to a warehouse. It soon becomes clear they aren’t being held for ransom, as they are separated and kept in cages with hundreds of others. The captives are put through fierce training regimens. They are being prepared for something, but what remains a mystery.

When they do learn what is happening, it is something none of them could have ever prepared for.

I couldn’t prepare for this either. The Gryphon Saga is an epic, planet-spanning tale with a cinematic feel. With every page, I found myself drawn further into the story. L. E. Horn has a gift for bringing a setting to life, and every chapter was a sensory experience. The visual descriptions, of course, were phenomenal, but the author went beyond that. Every one of my senses was engaged, and the settings shot back and forth between delightful and terrifying. This book is a visceral experience and one that should not be overlooked.

If I had one complaint about the book, it would be that it moved a bit too fast in places. While the short scenes kept me intrigued, I found the time skips a little jarring, and I wouldn’t have minded a little more backstory. With a universe as rich as the one the author has created, however, there will always be some mysteries, and that only makes the story more interesting. After all, the best part of reading genre fiction is the wonder.

If you’re a fan of sci-fi, especially old school action-adventure sci-fi, and are looking for books with powerful female protagonists, it’ll be hard to go wrong with this series.