REVIEWED by Jay V.

TITLE: Nixing the End of the World

AUTHOR: Alice Winters

SERIES: Phoenix’s Quest #1

PUBLISHER: Self Published

LENGTH: 347 pages

RELEASE DATE: April 29, 2021

BLURB:

Nix

“You are the savior of mankind” are the last words I ever expected to hear while nibbling on fries. The thing is, I’m not mankind saving material. I don’t even have magic (and just found out it exists). I’m the most boring, normal(ish) human ever.

Suddenly, I’m being tossed right into the middle of a fight that started years before I was even born, and then I get partnered up with Alastair, a quirky magical Guardian. He is rather attractive and sweet when he’s not into the whole “woe is me, I can’t let myself fall in love with you” nonsense. I mean, the moment he took my annoyingly judgmental grandma hostage, it was all over for me. I was hooked.

Now the only problem is… what exactly are we saving the world from?

Alastair

The moment I laid eyes on Nix, the naïve yet easygoing human captivated my attention, and now I’m determined to protect him. But despite my amazing and majestic abilities, we might not make it out of this mess. Still, there must be a reason Nix was chosen. No, he doesn’t have pizazz and maybe he really doesn’t have magic, but he’s also one of the strongest and kindest men I’ve ever met.

Now if I can just get him to stop throwing blankets at enemies, we might have a shot at this.

REVIEW:

Being the savior of all mankind can really go to your head.  Well, if you aren’t Nix, who’s just finding out about his title and doesn’t quite believe it. Dropped down the rabbit hole of his reality, Nix must rethink everything he knows. He’s thrown in with a magical Guardian who really just likes to be his whole glorious self, a freakishly tall stranger, and his best friend, who has held secrets since they were thrown together as children.

The book really does start with the sentence, “Your are the savior of mankind” and it’s off to the races. It takes awhile to get into the groove of this story and you really are thrown in to the deep end, pretty much like Nix. It’s a bit difficult to get the tone of the book right away, with a few zigs and zags before it finds its pacing. Getting told that opening statement is rattling & Nix tries to take it in stride but there’s a lot of confusion. And everyone isn’t helping as they’re not quite sure what makes him so special but they just know he is important.

Thrown into a series of craziness from being dropped in a forest to portals to a field in Florida, Nix and the group is still just trying to figure it out. Much of Winters’ recent books have been funny, almost to the point of ridiculousness, but this book pulls back some from the edge. If you love Winters’ books, you will love this. If you’re on the fence or more, this is a good starter book. She’s found a balance of story vs. humor and shies away from being formulaic in her style.  A few of other series has a really ridiculous main with the other being the ‘straight’ man to the humor, usually initially apprehensive but plays along soon after.  But these leads have a balance of both aspects and it’s fun to watch them bounce back & forth between being out there and the reasonable one.

They don’t have a really strong initial chemistry but it grows. This is the beginning of the series, and I’m just dying to know how this all will resolve itself. The book ends on a HFN, so don’t hold off reading it until the next book comes out – you’ll be fine.  Waters has really gotten in to her stride of well written stories that are inventive yet grounded in stories we’ll all heard.  This almost has the feeling of a game to give the author a great sentence to start out with & see where they go. And Winters goes to fun places.  I’m not the usual laugh out loud person, but there were several instances I couldn’t hold back a belly laugh even though the stakes are high in the story. Winters is a pretty fast writer so I hope she has the next book queued up to finish  soon as it will be fun to ride with these characters again.

RATING:  

BUY LINK: 

amazon