KIDNAP: PART ONE OF Guy Erma & The Son of Empire by Sally Ann Melia {Book Review}

Genre: Young adult science fiction adventure
Pages: 209
Rating: 4 out of 5

I don’t want to go… Do I have to go?

13-year-old Prince Teodor of Freyne knows his duty to the memory of his father and his kingdom. Always, he must help those less fortunate than himself. Yet a frightening nightmare fills him with foreboding, but still he must do – into the Dome.

13-year-old Guy Erma lives in the shadow of the Dome, he has no father and no mother and his future is uncertain, he must start earning a living when he turns 14. He knows not where he will live or even how he will eat, and his only dream is to enter the military academy – at the heart of the Dome.

Two boys as different as any two boys might be. One act of cruelty will throw their lives together, but who dare they trust?

The book started in a ‘prologue’ that didn’t fully make sense and even after finishing the book, I’m still not 100% sure where it fits in, but I have a feeling I will find out in the following books.

I really liked this book. I wasn’t really sure if I was going to like this book, but I have to say – I did and I cannot wait to get part two.

Kidnap is definitely futuristic. The description described it as “young adult space opera, galactic empire, aliens”.

The book follows Teodor who is the heir to the ‘throne’. His father and brother were killed and his mother is currently the ‘leader’ of “The Dome”.

There are a few shady characters that we are following and it sounds like there is a plan to take control of “The Dome” and in order to do so, someone has kidnapped Teodor during rehearsal for a show that he is doing with the children of “The Dome”.

We also follow Guy Erma very closely. The best way to describe Guy is that he is an orphan who wants to be a part of the Dome Elite, but because of his orphan status, is not allowed. It feels like he may be innocently being involved in the kidnapping of Teodore and has no clue how close he really is to it.

Aside from shady characters, the ‘bad guys’ of the book are cy-borgs who once were humans, but upon illness and/or accident, they are pieced together with robot parts. Some parts of their body still have skin, but it continues to gray and crack as the cy-borg nears the end of it’s ‘term’ (or life).

The Dome Elite always has cy-wolfs and the prologue speaks of a certain cy-creature that is poisonous and can destroy everything (which again, I forsee coming out in the later book(s)).

I really did like this book. I’m not sure very many young adult females would like this unless they are into the spacey, galactic type reads, but I can definitely see young adult males enjoying this read.

Follow the Author

Website     Facebook     Twitter     Pinterest

About the Author

The author was born in Wallasey, England, in 1964, and moved to the South of France when she was eleven. She spent her teenage years living in the cosmopolitan city state of Monaco and became immersed in its many languages and cultures. An English girl in a French school, for three hours each week she would sit at the back of the class as her colleagues learnt English. To pass the time, she wrote stories. This led to a lifetime of writing novels, scripts, stories and articles.

In her working life, Sally writes marketing communications and manages large international websites.

In 2010, Sally joined the Hogs Back Writers, a club located on the outskirts of Guildford, and she set about turning an old manuscript into this novel: Guy Erma and the Son of Empire. Sally currently lives in Farnham, and she is married with two children.

Buy the book… Amazon.com