The Island blog tour review, playlist and giveaway

‘I walk toward the sea. The endless surface of the water extends to the horizon, whichever way I look.

Our world is small. We are on our own, and we only have ourselves to depend on. We rely on the Force deep within us, as taught to us by our forefathers.

If I were to walk westward from here, I would come across a barrier – the Wall.
Behind it, there are Fools. At least, that’s what everyone says.
I have never seen one.’

About the book: Leia lives on the Island, a world in which children leave their parents to take care of themselves when they are ten years old. Across this Island runs a wall that no one has ever crossed. The Fools living behind it are not amenable to reason – they believe in illusions. That’s what The Book says, the only thing left to the Eastern Islanders by their ancestors.
But when a strange man washes ashore and Leia meets a Fool face to face, her life will never be the same. Is what she and her friends believe about the Island really true?
Or is everyone in their world, in fact, a Fool?

 

 

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About the Author: Jen Minkman (1978) was born in Holland, in the town of Alphen aan den Rijn. When she was 19, she moved between The Hague, Salzburg (Austria), Brussels (Belgium) and Cambridge (UK) to complete her studies in intercultural communication. She is currently a teacher of English, career counsellor and teenage coach at a secondary school in Voorburg, Holland. She tries to read at least 100 books a year (and write a few, too!). She is a published author in her own country, and translates her own books from Dutch into English for self-publication.
In her spare time, she plays the piano, the guitar and the violin. For every novel she writes, she creates a soundtrack.

'I have always been drawn to writing. My first book was a sci-fi novel at the age of eight, which I painstakingly typed out on my dad's typewriter and illustrated myself. Nowadays, I stick to poetry, paranormal romance, chicklit and/or fantasy. In my home country, I am the first-ever published writer of paranormal romance, and I will gradually make my books also available in English (seeing I have to re-write and translate the books myself, this will take some time!).'

 

Enter the Dystopian world of 'The Island', where myth has turned to truth.

 

The waves are calling, beckoning me.
As my blood turns to water I bleed into the sea.
And the current of hope will carry me home
No woman is an island, and I am not alone.

 

This book took me by surprise. Minkman has taken a love for dystopian novels and mixed it with her obvious love for a certain uber famous sci-fi movie to create her world on The Island.

 

This short story is told from the POV of Leia who, with her twin brother, have left their parents to make their own way, at the tender age of 10. That is the way of life in their world. A post apocalyptic world originally created many years ago by another 10 year old that lost everything and everyone, armed only with a copy of his favorite book. Star Wars.

 

At 16 Leia and her brother are still living in the village trying to build a new life and find partners. Things could be worse, they could live on the other side of the wall with the fools. Leia has never seen one and doesn't care to, her parents have told her and her brother the stories. But Leia is stubborn and having some trouble conforming to the village and what's expected of her. One day on a walk she stumbles across a boy from the other side of the wall. And he's nothing like what she's been told the 'fools' would be.

 

I'd love to see a full length novel for this story and these characters. There were some scattered areas that didn't flow directly from one scene to the next, but overall this was a fresh novella that scratched the surface of what society could be like in a hundred years if the person that created it was a Star Wars fanatic! I give this one 3.5/5 stars!!

 

 

 

Want to know what songs Minkman played while writing the Island?

Check out her Playlist & Book Trailer on youtube!

 

While writing the book, I listened to the entire score of The Hunger Games, but the following songs also fit the mood really well:

Patrick Wolf - Wind in the Wires

Patrick Wolf - This Weather

Patrick Wolf - Epilogue

Laura Veirs - Spelunking

Laura Veirs - Where Gravity Is Dead

Rosie Thomas - I Run

Tori Amos - Horses

Tori Amos - Not The Red Baron

Minkman's Goodreads giveaway link

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