ARC Review--Rift by Andrea Cremer

Chronicling the rise of the Keepers, this is the stunning prequel to Andrea Cremer's internationally bestselling Nightshade trilogy!

Sixteen-year-old Ember Morrow is promised to a group called Conatus after one of their healers saves her mother's life. Once she arrives, Ember finds joy in wielding swords, learning magic, and fighting the encroaching darkness loose in the world. She also finds herself falling in love with her mentor, the dashing, brooding, and powerful Barrow Hess. When the knights realize Eira, one of their leaders, is dabbling in dark magic, Ember and Barrow must choose whether to follow Eira into the nether realm or to pledge their lives to destroying her and her kind.

With action, adventure, magic, and tantalizing sensuality, this book is as fast-paced and breathtaking as the Nightshade novels.

I received this ARC (for review) at the RT Booklover's Convention via the Goody Room!

So yeah, I went a little spastic when I saw Rift in the Goody Room at RT a few months ago! Needless to say it was the first book I grabbed! And it was wicked awesome! Granted I couldn't remember the history of this upcoming story that we got bits and pieces of in the Nightshade trilogy. I was a little lost, but then I told myself to just stop trying to remember something that I obviously wasn't going to remember!

The story was good! Ember was an outstanding character! She was fierce, much like Calla was! I really enjoyed seeing Ember go through her struggles, she really grows. The book has a fairy tale like quality in that when her mother was about to give birth there were complications, and it was quite possible neither would survive. So the group Conatus steps in, saying that when Ember reaches her 16th birthday, she was to come join them. 16 is such a lucky or unlucky age in this manner!

Ember was actually excited about this, for her father had mundane plans of marrying her off to the highest bidder. He was not an affectionate father and the things he did to try to keep her with him were not heartfelt either.

Barrow Hess! Oh man, what a guy he was! We know right away, without being told by the cover description, that he and Ember are going to have some sparks flying between them! (Ha! an unintended pun!) But it's a love that grows ever so slowly, and to me, those are the best kinds. I don't go for insta-love.

When Ember comes to the place where Conatus calls home, she is about to learn a whole lot about the world around her and the creatures that live there! It was quite exciting! It's like getting a new look at the world we sort of knew from Nightshade!

And of course there's the evil lurking in the shadows as well, causing chaos for Ember and her new friends. The evil will begin to corrupt them, looking for the one who will set it free! And of course we've seen this evil before! That much I did remember! But there are other characters who may not seem evil at first that took me by surprise.

The ending definitely leaves you hanging a bit. Nothing totally killer, but just as things really start to get on the edge of the cliff, Andrea leaves us hanging! :)

Rift is a stellar prequel to the fabulous Nightshade trilogy! I look forward to reading the rest of Ember's adventures to see how everything pans out!

Overall rating 4.5/5 stars--a near perfect rating, except my ARC was missing some pages, I was able to get some idea of what I missed, but still I was sadden to see that scenes were missing or sentences were left hanging, not that an actual page was gone.

Rift releases August 7, 2012