"The Fear Principle" ~ An Interesting Syfy Slant on Criminal Rehibilitation

The Official Book Summary:On Prison Planetoid Three, Jaguar Addams and Alex Dzarny rehab the worst criminals by telepathically making them face their fears. Their current case is hitwoman Clare Rilasco, emotionless, beautiful, and part of a death machine plot that threatens to take over the world.
Jaguar can’t tell who the bad guys are anymore, as she’s dragged into her own terrifying past by Clare’s telepathic tricks. While the search for the man behind the mirror continues, Jaguar and Clare are enmeshed in a relationship of seduction and trickery that makes Jaguar face her own deepest fears.

 

About the Author~Barbara Chepatis:
BARBARA CHEPAITIS is author of 7 published novels, including the critically acclaimed Feeding Christine and These Dreams, as well as the sci-fi series featuring Jaguar Addams. The fourth novel in that series, A Lunatic Fear was a finalist for a Romantic Times Bookclub award. Her first nonfiction book, Feathers of Hope, came out through SUNY Press in July.
She has optioned two scripts, and has recently been awarded a seed grant to develop a documentary titled Making Peace.
She is founder and director of the storytelling trio The Snickering Witches, and faculty with Western College of Colorado’s MFA program in creative writing.

Read an Excerpt:

“You’re way out of line, Dr. Addams,” he said coldly. “Whatever Nick’s doing, I’ll handle. You better keep track of yourself.”

“Oh, I can track myself. Don’t you worry.” She put her hands on his desk and her face level with his, leaning forward.
“I can track a cat under a new moon, or the smallest scent of death in open air. I can track last week’s eagle in a cloudy sky. And I can track you, Supervisor. Even you. So keep Nick away from me, or I’ll take care of him myself. My way.” She shifted her wrist deliberately, letting him see the tip of her glass knife, gleaming red at her wrist. She gave it a second, two seconds. Then she turned on her heel and left.

My Review:

I found "The Fear Principle" to be an odd book of good things and not so good.  While I thought the premise was fantastic and I chose to read this book as a part of my research on new and fairly unknown authors, the book fell somewhat short of my expectations.

There is no doubt that Ms Chepatis is an author whose books are published and enjoyed by many. I haven't read her other books, sadly, and perhaps that would answer some of my questions having to do with "The Fear Principle." This is one of the books in her series about Jaguar Addams, and to be fair...I don't think this is a stand alone book.

From my perspective, I found this book difficult to get into. I was not interested in the characters, per se. Even Jaguar didn't enlist my sympathies, nor did I feel an affinity to her, or a sense of her actual work. To me, the story seemed disjointed in terms of what was really happening and what was telepathically created for the criminals.

What I did enjoy about the book was the possiblitites...that is, I enjoyed the parts that made me think. I enjoyed the parts that kept me reading, wondering how Ms Chepatis would handle Jaguar's relationship with Nick and Alex.  I wondered how she would pull her relatively minor criminal out of his psychic-world to rehabilitation, and how she would use her very dangerous hit-woman to save herself and others.  It was the getting there that just wasn't well done in the writing, for me.

I recommend this book with some hesitations.
It gets a 1 star...meaning it's interesting but I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to everyone.

Perhaps those who are familiar with Ms Chepatis' other books will be excited with this new series addition!

Deborah/TheBookishDame