Review 22: Out of Reality by Charlene Wilkins

Out of Reality
by Charlene Wilkins
Copyright: © 2008
$16.12 Paperback
$10.00 E-Book
267 Pages

I know what you are thinking.

“Check out that book cover!”

Maybe you like it; maybe you don’t. Maybe you think it’s lacking. Maybe it is. I think it’s perfect.

Out of Reality, by Charlene Wilkins, is one of those books that shouldn’t need a good cover to sell it. Sure, if a traditional publisher ever picked it up they’d hire an artist to do it justice, to give it the potential it would surely deserve if accepted by the traditional market.

After reading Ms. Wilkins work, my imagination went wild with ideas for fascinating artwork which would send her book flying off the shelves of bookstores everywhere. But this is self-publishing. Let’s forget the simplistic “diary-like” cover for now. Read this book, and you will soon forget all about it without me even telling you to.

Meet Kara. She’s a bit of a tom girl who doesn’t want to listen to her parents. She’s aching to skip karate class but her parents make her go anyway. She blacks out after a rough hit to the head.  She’s carried to the hospital and the readers is given a sense that things are just not right, although nothing too out of the ordinary happens this early in the story.  We then meet Justin and Leeann, who are not so ordinary.  Justin is a psychic and Leeann is a fire starter.

I like the fact that Ms. Wilkins’ has not thrown her readers into a story that seems imaginary and fantastical.  Yes, the story does lead the reader into that direction, and I must say it is a fun journey.  But right here in the beginning, these kids are just ordinary teens that could live across the street from us partaking in their hobbies and squabbling with their siblings.  It made it very easy to get to know these characters because we discover their special powers right along with them.

Also, these kids are not ready to step up to the plate and save the world just yet.  Justin questions strange dreams he’s been having about a red headed girl, learns about his special powers after a discussion with his mother, and then is more concerned with getting some homework done.  Again, the author has plotted out the story gradually and does not hit the reader right up front with a tale we wouldn’t necessarily believe in.  The slow, but suspenseful, build to this story makes it a great read!

Next we meet Elex in a world of castles and queens, worrying about Na, her friend who is strangely sick.  The two of them go off to watch a bow and arrow class, and Elex proves she has skill and is no ordinary girl.  She ends up fending off a wolf and saving Na from attack with a shield of light.

We return to Kara who is at home, but her parents reveal she is the “chosen one.”  Someone will be coming for her on this very night, but they choose not to tell Kara.  The stranger that comes is actually a guardian for Kara.  It is revealed that Kara is a wizard, like the other teens we’ve met, and they are destined to save the world.

I use the word “wizards” only because that is exactly how Wilkins has described them.  Yeah, that word alone is covered with the hype of the Harry Potter series and I seriously doubt any other good books about wizardry could ever be written without being compared to JK Rowling.  So, that is all I will mention of Potter here.  What is more important in Out of Reality is that Wilkins begins her story in a physical reality that we all know and can relate to. She uses this to her advantage in conveying a “real” comfortable world in the set-up of her book.

The story builds and takes us to an imaginary place of magic and monsters, a place of pretend many of us probably have not visited since childhood, but the author has done a brilliant job of taking us back there.  Her tale is both original and different, and one that Potter fans, eager for more wickedness and fun, would enjoy.  So step through the portal, open this book and look beyond that mysterious cover, because the “sur-real” place inside is one worth spending some time in!