Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Oracle The Complete Collection gives readers an opportunity to own both books at a reduced price.
Book 1 – Oracle
Love, adventure, an empath & an ancient relic that could destroy the world.
Alex Sheridan is a thief, able to steal even the hardest to reach antiquities. Luke MacKinnon is a professor of ancient languages.
When they come together to locate the Oracle, it is because both men have targets on their backs. Can love blossom when each day could be their last? And, how can they survive the evil that wants the Oracle?
Book 2 – Book of Secrets
Kidnapping, adventure, drama and the fight for eternal life.
Alex is making good on his promise to put things right; retrieving items he had stolen, and returning them to their rightful owners. It’s dangerous work, especially since he lost his most useful Oracle-given powers.
When Luke is kidnapped by a man intent on finding the secrets to eternal life, Alex has to make a bargain with the devil and break steal an item from the private library at Windsor Castle. Will Alex be too late to save the man he loves?
This book is actually two books in one: Oracle and its sequel, Book of Secrets. It’s a sweeping fantasy-paranormal-contemporary saga in which one man, Alex Sheridan, meets his soulmate, Luke MacKinnon, and together they learn that Alex is the infamous Oracle of Greek legend.
As the story opens, we meet Alex who, together with his partner Edward de Chauncey, is about to steal a priceless artifact from the British Museum. Alex and Edward own an antiquities business which specializes in placing hard-to-get items. It just so happens that Alex can get them because he has a gift which allows him to sidestep into another dimension, making him invisible to those here in the real world. Shortly after the theft, Edward is killed by a gunshot as armed men try to force their car off the road, and Alex is left alone with only Edward’s last words imploring him to go to Greece, echoing in his mind.
There he meets up with an old friend, Thanos, who alerts him to his true nature and the possibility that he is the Oracle come to life. Thanos has been holding his secret all his life, a secret passed down through generations of his family, only to be revealed when the Oracle is found. They realize that they need someone to translate the etchings and markings which cover Alex’s body—etchings which were carved into his skin when he was a child and are covered with the tattoos Alex felt he needed to hide them. Intuitively, he knows that he needs to connect with Luke MacKinnon, well-known professor and scholar and authority on ancient languages, a man he met briefly that night at the British Museum. Luke is well-known for his translations of ancient Greek, and since Alex has no memory of the first eight years of his life before Thanos found him lying on the beach half-dead, he hopes the markings on his body will give some answers.
At the time he was found, the atrocities committed on him were evident, but the boy had no memory of how they got there, so Thanos arranged for him to be adopted by friends from California, seeking to move Alex far away from any danger. Now, as an adult, Alex has come full circle back to Thanos in the hopes of solving the mystery of his scars and how that mystery connects to Edward’s murder.
What Alex and Luke uncover is a bizarre story of the second coming of the Oracle, and they also discover that the initials carved into Alek’s thigh so long ago actually spell out Luke’s name. It’s very evident that the two are destined to be together, soulmates apparently bonded centuries ago and destined to work together to carry out the prophecy of the Oracle made by the gods on Olympus.
Poor Luke is kidnapped twice in the story: once by the US Army and the next by a Serbian ex-Mafia chieftan. Everyone wants to get their hands on the Oracle for the power and the mystery as well as the possibility of eternal life and everyone seems to know that Luke is the best person to force into translating the ancient language. One of the best things to come out of Luke’s first kidnapping is his friendship with his rescuer, Chris Samuels, and Chris’s eventual romance with Griff Morgan. The two were a secondary MM couple in the story, becoming close friends of Luke and Alex and playing a prominent role in the Book of Secrets.
The first story focusing on the power of the Oracle and Alex’s abilities is very lengthy with a complex and convoluted plotline which I found a bit difficult to follow at times, however it ended dramatically in a very satisfying nail-biting adventure. It was starting to look like the fated lovers were going to become ill-fated lovers, but the surprise ending allowed for the possibility of a HFN or HEA.
In the second half of this story, originally Book of Secrets, Alex is on a quest to return all of the priceless items he and Edward had stolen. Griff and Chris, their good friends and housemates, play a pivotal role, helping to resolve Luke’s eventual kidnapping and working through possible solutions to the mystery Luke is kidnapped to translate. Alex’s powers and ability to shift into an invisible half-space are no longer with him at the beginning of the story, however one night when his back is to the wall and he’s about to be caught, he discovers remnants of his original gifts. His ability to fade and some of the “blue light” power he previously had seem to be returning, enough so he’s able to escape from a situation set up by an old nemesis, and he can make his way back home.
When Alex is then blackmailed by that nemesis to lift a document from the Queen’s chambers in Windsor Castle, he discovers that Luke has been kidnapped and it turns out that he’s being held to translate the very volume Alex lifted. It’s a document apparently originally penned by DaVinci that appears to be the key to the code for the Voynich Manuscript that has the reputation of holding the secrets to eternal life. Complex? Yes. If you put this down and walk away for a day, you will be lost. This is a story that needs to be the reader’s primary focus until complete. It’s quite creative and ingenious, entertaining, romantic, and wildly improbable. That’s pretty much why I described it as a fantasy-paranormal-contemporary story. It’s just too difficult to separate all the components and decide what to call it.
If you like epic adventures, you should like this one. It reminds this reviewer somewhat of Indiana Jones meets the Ten Commandments. There’s some reality woven in among the fantasy, and it’s set in a contemporary time period, but it’s got the gods, the sorcery, the mystery, and the romance to make it a story you won’t want to put down.
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Cover Art by Meredith Russell features a split cover done in shades of browns and golds with Alex’s face in the forefront of a scene reminiscent of an ancient temple in the upper pane and with Luke’s face in the forefront of a scene of filled bookshelves in the lower pane, thereby representing both stories in the book.
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Book Details:
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 