If you want a story that is going to entertain and suck you in, but also make you think about how you view things like AI, cultural resilience, war, and family; you have to check out Mary E. Pearson’s work. She may already be on your bookshelf or on your faves list too, which would not surprise me as her work is awesome.
Mary E. Pearson is an American Children’s and YA author, living and writing out of San Diego, CA. She is the International and New York Times Bestselling and award-winning author of Dance of Thieves Duology, The Remnant Chronicles trilogy, The Jenna Fox Chronicles, The Miles Between, A Room on Lorelei, and Scribbler of Dreams.
Fun Fact: She published her first novel at 44. (Same age I was! EEK! Fangirling!)
I found Mary E. Pearson’s work when a BookTuber I happened upon featured Kiss of Deception (Book 1 in The Remnant Chronicles) in part of her favorite YA fantasy reads of the summer. I found the audio version on Audible, and began my obsession for the world Pearson created and the characters she populated her stories with. I binge-read (listened) to the entire series and went looking for more!
The Remnant Chronicles - The Kiss of Deception, The Heart of Betrayal, The Beauty of Darkness, and prequel Morrighan
There were many things I loved about The Remnant Chronicles as a writer. The first thing that sent me over the moon is her skill of world-building. Pearson’s Remnant world is fully fleshed out and communicated to the reader. It’s done without pulling the reader out of the story with giant
junks of exposition or through dialogue for the sole purpose of communicating information. Her series bible must have been a tome of information. Different governments, societal history, and mythos intertwined with beautiful setting descriptions. The subtle and glaringly obvious differences in clothing details, occupations, and economics for different regions could be missed by some authors or over-emphasized and repetitive, but not by Pearson.
I was so happy when the Dance of Thieves Duology continued to provide an opportunity to escape into Pearson’s rich world!
Before it did, I craved more from this author and found The Jenna Fox Chronicles. Blown away!
Jump from fantasy to science fiction for starters, which historically I have not been an avid fan of, is an exploration into the question of what lengths would you go to keep your child alive and what does it mean to be living.
The science fiction that I have been most exposed to in the past, has leaned heavily on technical and scientific jargon that was exciting to conceptualize but tended to distract me from the message of the story. Yup, a ray gun is cool, but why is it important to the story? Pearson’s use of technology is presented in a way that expresses the legitimacy of why it works, but more engaging is how the use of the technology impacts and drives the characters to make the choices they do throughout each book in this series.
The Jenna Fox Chronicles - The Adoration of Jenna Fox, The Fox Inheritance, Fox Forever
Reading Pearson’s works has been a master class in pacing. From sentence structure variation to POV shifts to chapter structure, Pearson keeps you so engaged that I have felt my heartbeat race through a battle scene, my skin squirm sitting in an awkward but necessary moment longer, and taken a breath after holding it through a precarious moment for the characters. Everything she writes and the way she writes it makes you want to keep turning the pages. Studying her style after enjoying the story, taught me how to make changes to pacing in my own writing to try and accomplish similar emotions in my own readers.
I have yet to read The Miles Between, A Room on Lorelei, and Scribbler of Dreams, but they are on my TBR!
I could go on forever about this awesome female author’s awesome books and all that I have learned, questioned, and enjoyed about them for pages.
If you want to learn more about Mary E. Pearson and her body of work I encourage you to visit her website https://www.marypearson.com/.
Links* to where you can purchase her works on Amazon are provided by clicking on the highlighted titles in this post.
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