Book Giveaway: Retrieval by Jeanie London

In life Roman Barrymore was the head of Sanctus, a secret security organization. In death, he's been charged with leadership once again, to fight a battle for control of the passage between life and death. He must rally a force to defend against the demons, the key to this force is one woman with the power to see things as they truly are. The only problem is she is currently residing in the body of a living woman, unaware of who and what she is. Roman's first engagement in this war is to win her back, then he must convince her, and her companions to join him, and that's just the beginning...

I have mixed feelings about this one. The writing style was fine, Jeanie London is the recipient of many awards, so there's no question she's a talented writer. Roman himself was my favorite character, but he just seemed to have a total disregard for the fact that he had died, it was almost like, ho-hum, another day at the office, here's the next big situation I have to defuse. I mean, I think I'd be a little more upset at being dead than he was! LOL! The ideas behind the story were very good, but it was a little tedious getting there in my opinion. I felt almost like the author felt guilty about some of the plot lines and had to make up for it by putting in a lot of agonizing over right and wrong. It felt like a lot of bouncing from one side of the spectrum to the other.

I liked it, about halfway through I went to see if there were any more in a series with it, and discovered that this is the last book FantasticFiction has listed for Jeanie London since 2006. So I went an looked at Jeanie's website to see that she had been diagnosed with cancer, and after coming through that, had decided to devote her career to a more religious focus. Jeanie's deep religious beliefs come through strongly, even in Retrieval, written before this change of professional direction. She is working on two writing projects currently according to the site, one a non-fiction look at miracles in which she invites anyone to share the miracles in their lives in a blog. The second project is a fiction series called Shadow-Seekers and in her words "deals with the darker side of miracles and how the devil works to deceive us into believing they don't exist. It's a fiction project about an FBI-type agency battling against the spiritual warfare struggles happening in our country today--struggles all too many people won't acknowledge exist." Hmmm... sounds a lot like Retrieval!

Does this sound intriguing? Great! Because I'm putting my copy of Retrieval up for Giveaway! As always it is a gently loved, Bookcrossing labeled copy. I would love for the winner to make a journal entry when they receive it, you can do so completely anonymously if you decide Bookcrossing is not for you, and whether you do or do not, the book is yours to do with as you please. :)

Giveaway Details: I'm going to make you work for this one a little. All bloggers that are open to the public view like to know that people are viewing what they're posting, right? I'm no different, I want comments and ego strokes as much as anyone else! ;) So... since this book is called Retrieval, I'm going to make you retrieve some info from my past blog posts to gain extra entries in the giveaway. Ready? Okay! Please feel free to comment on any of these old posts if you see something you like, and take the time to enjoy the pictures, I've posted them because I want to share!

First entry: You get one entry just for posting here that you're interested.

Now, the rest of these we're going to handle like this. To answer the questions, please post a comment ON THE POST IT APPEARS IN, NOT HERE! If you post it here, it will not count! I will tally your extra entries by the comment notifications I receive that you have posted there.

Second entry: You get a second entry if you can tell me what Chapungu is. (hint: can be found in a post under the Gardening category)

Third entry: You get a third entry if you can tell me some of the places that I visited on my honeymoon. (hint: can be found in a post under the Vacation category)

Fourth entry: You get a fourth entry if you can tell me what I grew in my flower pots instead of petunias last year. (hint: This post can be found under the Animals Category, but you might also see it under Gardening!)

Fifth entry: You get a fifth entry if you answer this correctly: True or False, the streetlights of downtown Hershey, Pennsylvania are shaped like Hershey's Kisses. (hint: This post can be found in the Food category, and a few other places as well!)

I will tally all the entries, and choose my winner from them randomly on October 4th!

I promise I won't make you work so hard on the next giveaway, but I just wanted to see if anyone would play along with me, and I wanted to share my pictures with people! ;)