Review: Geist by Philippa Ballantine

I actually won this book (plus 5 others) in the Mistletoe Madness Blog Hop.  This was an author I had not heard of before and the reason I entered Ms. Ballantine's blog stop was, "Hey, a chance to win Free Books!"  Who in their right mind would turn that down? I got a 6 great books and some cool swag.  Here is a picture, directly from the blog stop of what I won.   

Geist has a very nice Nalini Singh cover blurb for it: "One of the most vivdly orignial books I've read this year."  Since I have been enamored of her Psy/Changling series since my sister forced nagged urged me to read to read the first one, I decided to give it a try.  Super glad I did. 

This book reminded me of some classic fantasy authors that I have read, like Barbara Hambly, Terry Brooks or Jennifer Roberson.  The world building is massive, the characters authentic and original.  It is in worlds like these that women are regularly the hero, the one who saves the day and the no one thinks it odd or unlikely that the female lead can be the leader of the group or save the men from the big bad.  That is probably one of the reasons I like the genre so much.  In fantasy novels, women can be as hard core as the guys, and no one gets all shocked and "gee, look at the little lady with penis envy."  

We are introduced to Sorchas Faris, who is an Active of the Order of the Deacons.  She has an amazingly strong power, but has been held back because of control issues.  Within the first chapter we see her battling both a geist (ghost type creature) to save both her husband and the local people.  Koyla is a Sensitive of the Order and her partner.  We find in every partnership of Active and Sensitive, there is a Bond that lets the two of them work together to battle the Unliving.  Sorcha and Koyla, took their partnership to the next level and were married.  But there is a strain in both the marriage and Order partnership.  When he is injured in the battle with the Unliving, she is assigned a new partner, fresh out of training and sent on a journey to stop an outbreak of Unliving at one of the outposts.  

The story moved quickly and changed viewpoints between the 3 major characters in this book.  Sorcha, Merrick, her new partner and Raed Rossin, a pirate and Pretender to the throne.  Raed carries a curse due to his bloodline and consequences of his family's actions before he was even born.  We meet each individual character separately and the change of view point is a nice way to keep the action moving and allow us to get a feel for them separately before each one meets and starts traveling together.  

I liked this book, it was a new and original world.  I look forward to reading the second book.  I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads for the simple fact that it was very complex, and I felt like I almost needed a notebook to keep some of the names straight in my head and I had to keep flipping back to figure who was who on occasion.