Oliver Awesome's Book Corner with Sandra Ulbrich Almazan

I recently had the pleasure of reading Sandra's novella, Lyon's Legacy. SciFi isn't a genre I read much, though I do enjoy it, so I was very much looking forward to diving into her book. I wasn't disappointed. Here is the blurb:

Sometimes being a geneticist isn’t enough to understand your family....


When scientist-in-training Joanna Lyon learns her rich uncle plans to have their rock legend ancestor, Sean Lyon, cloned, she’s disgusted. Uncle Jack pushed her into music when she was younger, and she hated it. So it’s particularly galling that he wants her to travel through a wormhole to an alternate universe and sample Sean’s DNA. She only agrees to go so she can secretly sabotage the project. But meeting Sean forces her to re-examine her feelings about her family, including her estranged father. Can she protect the unborn clone from her uncle, and will she have to sacrifice her career and new-found love to do so?


What I liked: This book definitely contains a lot of science but it wasn't so bogged down in it that it lost me. Sometimes the technical aspects of SciFi books can get overwhelming, but this had just the right touch of "ooo that's kind of cool" without being so over-the-top technical that it's impossible for anyone without a PhD in Genetics to understand.

Jo is a great character, very real and relatable and I connected with her right off the bat. It was fun to watch her in a situation she didn't want to be in and to watch how it changed her. Her love interest, George, is just lovable and I liked that their romance was very present in the story without overtaking it. It was woven very well into the main storyline. This book just had a little bit of everything; science, time travel, romance, major character growth, a bad guy you want to smack upside the head, heartache, and hope.

I also liked that the story felt complete. Many novellas I've read do not. While this is Book 1 in a series, and there is definitely more to the story, this book does well standing on its own and doesn't feel like it was just cut off in the middle of the book in order to create a series as many novellas I've read do.

What I didn't like: The only thing I didn't really like (and this is very nitpicky) was that one of the characters called the woman who raised him Aunt Grandmother (or various versions of this). It got a little confusing. Every time I saw an instance of this, I found myself wanting to spend some detailed time with his family tree instead of paying attention to the story. However, this was a very minor part of the story and didn't affect my enjoyment of it.

Overall, I loved it :)

If you'd like to purchase a copy of Sandra's book (and I'd highly recommend you do) :) it is available through the links below. I will be posting an interview with Sandra on my blog tomorrow, so everyone be sure to head over!!

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords
Sandra's Blog