Rise of Gaia

The Rise of Gaia is author Kristen Ward's third novel, and frankly, she just keeps getting better and better. In this outing, Ward touches on a few different topics, but first and foremost is the topic of climate change. Readers have been seeing a lot of books out in the world about this subject. It is on the minds of authors as well as readers because we as humans are seeing the effects of environmental degradation more and more every day. Instead of writing a purely dystopic novel, which you find often when dealing with climate change, Kristen wrote a novel exploring friendship, love, and unusual circumstances.

The protagonist of the story is a young woman name Terran. A nod to Kristen about the name choice, the word Terran translates to “of the Earth.” This sets a fun foreshadowing about how Terran develops as a character and the interesting path she takes in the narrative. Terran is an atypical teenage girl, in that instead of playing with social media, worrying about her hair or school drama, Terran feels most at home hiking. I like this as a character attribute. Often teens are written stereotyped. Terran and her best friend Beth are interesting characters because they are realistic in that they seem like real people.

The story progresses as Terran is wracked by visions of a dying Earth. She feels the pain of loss at a natural world that is rapidly disappearing, and sorrow for a broken future. Eventually, we come to find out that Gaia (The entity representing the spirit of the natural world) has decided that Terran is a chosen one. What that means for Terran's future and how she sees the world is the bulk of the story.

The strongest element of the story and the part that I enjoyed the most was the depth of friendship between Beth and Terran. As I was a teenage girl, so very very long ago, I remember the intense and important relationships that I formed that as a young girl and how they lasted me a lifetime. I loved that Kristen explored some of those aspects.

Again Kristen as written a wonderful and affecting story. I am so happy to have been a part of this blog tour and highly recommend reading any of her books.