Uncharted Passage - Dark Publications

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Two women on a vacation that turns deadly face down one of nature's most ruthless killers--and find themselves falling in love.

Refusing to allow her absent lover to ruin her vacation in an exotic corner of Thailand, Emily Stone determines to set her private disappointment aside and enjoy herself--until a natural disaster strikes and turns her world upside down. Major Hayden Caldwell plans to escape the restrictions of her job for a rare few days of freedom when she and Emily are forced into the fight of their lives. Together, Hayden and Emily face death, disease, despair, and imminent death, and find in themselves and each other the strength to deny the tsunami two more victims. But can their intense bond survive outside of the extreme situation in which it was forged?

Uncharted Passage is the story of two women who face one of life's deadliest challenges and find their hearts forever changed.

Customer Reviews:

3 out of 5 stars

Decent book whose strengths manage to overcome its weaknesses, and has some interesting musings on Don't Ask Don't Tell November 1, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

This book was fine. As is typical with this author, I find myself somewhat frustrated with characterizations in the first half of the book, but she manages to elevate her writing and handling of emotional situations and the drama of her story at the end of the book, ending on a high note that helps

The internal musings of the characters often seemed random and contradictory. The author also does a lot of telling us how the characters are, versus showing us through actions and dialogue. So we find out in the initial disaster of the tsunami at the beginning that Emily is the one used to being in charge, versus a follower, and is surprised at her instinctive willingness to follow Hayden, but we get very little supporting evidence of this: reluctance, conflicted body-language. This is just an example of the issues I have with this author's introduction of the reader to these characters.

The way these characters meet is very interesting and fairly original too. It's not a bad set-up to have one character help rescue the other, and a disaster situation provides an excellent pressure-cooker in which intense emotions and connections between people can be formed quickly, even more believably quickly than normal. This author could use a little more work on engaging all of the reader's senses, but she set the scene competently enough.

Still, I felt that she strained all credibility with the amount of time the characters spent obsessing sexually about one another. In particular Hayden's lack of thought about the details of their survival, beyond "I guess we'll walk in this direction" was frustrating. No deliberation about the need to find more food and water, to scavenge/salvage as they traveled on the off chance that no rescue efforts by outside forces hadn't yet been mobilized, no contingency planning. OK, noticing attraction, using it as a distraction from the horrors surrounding them I can buy; forming emotional attachments, and acting on their feelings I'd expect. But their initial consummation, after over a day with very little food or water, injured to varying degrees but very seriously in Emily's case, after having walked all day in the extreme tropical heat surrounded by dead bodies and mind-numbing destruction, dirty and uncomfortable? Sure, there's the life-affirming urge, but it's hard to believe it would have been as easily shattering multiple times as it was. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief, to my extreme frustration.

After a period of separation, the characters finally reconnect, and suddenly each are jumping to extreme conclusions so quickly that I felt mental whiplash. I am not fond of characters creating their own drama and exacerbating every situation because they have to be mental idiots. I almost stopped reading at this point. I'm sure there are people out there (ok, I know there are) who act in such impulsive, emotionally-driven, ill-advised manners, making ridiculous decisions that make me want to shake some sense into them. But I don't enjoy reading about it. Some others might, and if so, they will probably love this book. But I got hung up on it a bit: I like my characters to at least try acting like adults, or at a minimum to realize that they're being absurd and childish.

There was plenty for the author to use about their situations and the people around them to create conflict and drama, so I was disappointed that she instead chose what amounts in my mind to character-assassination: I want to like them, not be driven to distraction by thoughts of bringing them to their senses. I hung on by my fingernails, though, because while their thoughts and actions weren't justified in my mind, the author had laid a bit of the ground work in her early characterizations to make them not completely inconsistent with their personalities. Still, with such rigorously trained minds (brilliant scientist turned teacher, high-ranking commanding officer in the army), it stretched my credulity and mostly just bugged me.

Thankfully, as she often does, this author pulled it off all right in the end. The characters started working together and communicating more, and this gave the author room to explore the larger and more interesting issues of their lives and careers and the impact that their relationship would have on both. Their motivations and emotions became more realistic, and it was interesting to explore Don't Ask Don't Tell through both Hayden (career Army and proud of it) and Emily (deeply suspicious of the military after a good friend of hers died in service), with some scheming thrown in from both sides of the issue as Hayden and Emily did the talk show circuit to tell the world about their ordeal overseas in the tsunami and its aftermath and their subsequent reunion.

Not the best book. It unfortunately hit some of my buttons (clearly). But not the worst either. As is characteristic with this author, she tends to save her books in the end for me by finally addressing honest emotions with more realism than the false drama created by them earlier. If you don't mind characters acting immaturely and thus wreaking their own havoc for much of the book, you will likely not have the hang ups I do, and further be entertained by events. Because plenty of interesting things were going on in this book: natural disasters, rescues, publicity and media junkets, military service, political machinations, etc. But this author keeps making the same mistakes, and I didn't see much growth in this novel. Fans should be satisfied, though.

2 out of 5 stars

Disappointed November 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I have come to really enjoy this writers works; however, I was very disappointed with this one. I could not wait for this book to be over.

Right from the beginning I was captivated. The tsunami hits then Hayden rescues Erin and two young children. The writer takes you on their adventure and obstacles until they finally get help. The first few chapters really kept my attention. At this point I was really enjoying this book.

All of a sudden the story gets boring. Erin and Hayden draw the wrong conclusion about one another and this continues for too long. There is no mention as to what happens with the children as if they weren't even a part of the first few chapters.

The story line actually gets somewhat annoying with Hayden and Erin after a while, but I will say Cannon handled the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" issues very nicely, but it wasn't enough. The book really started to drag in the last few chapters. I guess I wanted and was expecting a little more.

The author does pull it off in the end, but for me it was too late. Definetly not her best work.

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