Retrato do autor

Kelly Beltz

Autor(a) de Beyond the Stars: Kataria

2 Works 21 Membros 6 Críticas

Séries

Obras por Kelly Beltz

Beyond the Stars: Kataria (2009) 18 exemplares
Ineo (Beyond the Stars #2) (2011) 3 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Sexo
female
Nacionalidade
USA
Locais de residência
Pennsylvania, USA
Educação
La Roche College (MS)
Ocupações
businesswoman
teacher

Membros

Críticas

This is a scifi adventure with some romance & I think I liked it. Okay, I liked the scifi adventure part more than the romance. The beginning really dragged for me as we get to know about Sami's life before this big trip to the space resort that she's embarking on. It was a big flashback of her life from her first day at work on the project to the moment we meet her in the opening. It documented her meeting her husband, getting married & having a family well enough but it wasn't very exciting. It was sweet though. Also, there are bits about the progress of the project to make the space resort, so it did help to keep me engaged & interested enough. After reaching about 24% of the way through though, the adventure kicks in & it's a fun & quick paced ride. I have to admit that there were many times that I read something and thought "What? Oh, come on, that's convenient" but all those moments did move the plot along at a good enough pace that I wanted to continue reading. I liked the writer's style & felt that for a story told in the first person, it was pretty good & didn't get bogged down. Because of the POV, I could overlook that in some instances I didn't feel much for the other characters. We're told everything, so there's not very much "show" going on. Overall, I liked it well enough once it got going. I have the second book in the series on my Kindle & will read that as well.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
anissaannalise | 5 outras críticas | Jan 1, 2014 |
Imagine, you start your ideal job for a company that promotes living in space. The crazy side of that job is you despise heights, while everyone you work with cannot wait to leave the Earth. This was the situation Samantha Gerris found herself in. She thrived on working for Space Island Group but at any thought of leaving the ground, her anxiety kicked in. She managed to avoid this fear of hers, until she meets the man she marries as one of their first dates is in a glider plane.
Samantha is a character that I feel many can identify with in the sense that so many of us seek the ideal job, family and overall life. It depends on the area, but I also share that fear of heights so I was able to truly identify with feelings expressed. Many of us have experienced a loss in our family and the grief that comes with it, whether we express it openly or bottle it up to just get through our day.
Samantha finally decides to go into space to be with her teenage children and life is escalated to another level for her. Upon her arrival, an alarm rings and all occupants are to evacuate. However, after a small mishap she finds herself aboard a Katarian space vessel that is leaving the station to go back to their home. She is stuck on-board, away from her children.

Kelly Beltz did an amazing job by taking me on the ride with her main character, Samantha throughout this entire story. I was very pleased for a tale that includes encounters of alien life forms, there was nothing overly complex to create the feel of the species introduced. I have attempted a few other stories that introduce alien beings and the language, body descriptions and even names become so overwhelming that it can be annoying when trying to visualize what you read.
This novel (which certainly has a second part coming!) was hard to put down as I was very much sucked in. For me, it has quite the punch of romance, action, adventure and science fiction. And it was a treat to learn that the Space Island Group did indeed exist! While I find that some works of fiction can be hampered when an author mixes in some parts of ‘reality’, this idea only enhanced the tale for me.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
AHauer | 5 outras críticas | Oct 28, 2010 |
We’ve built on Earth and now it’s time to build above it. Samantha Gerris works for a company that has been charged with building a space resort. It will be reached via an elevator/launch pad system to ferry passengers to an all-inclusive space resort. With this new idea, new technology must be invented. New jobs and fields are to be had. And everyone wants a piece of this history.
The book begins with Samantha coming from school and being hired into a plum position with the company tasked with building everything. Over the course of years, she grows at the company, gains friends, falls in love, gets married and has children. She’s content where she is and never wants to head to space. She is a complacent person, not apathetic, but just comfortable with where she is in life. And then one day everything changes…
Through tragedy and life being turned upside down, Samantha starts life anew. Everything is different. Everything is scary. Nothing is as it was. She is forced to just go with everything that is happening. So unlike the person she used to be – the person she is used to being. It is sink or swim time for her.
Where there was land there is space. Where there was unacknowledged loneliness there is new love. Where there was steadiness there is adventure. But then something threatens her new life. She must fight for what she wants and what she knows is right. Something she had never foreseen or never would have done in her old life. Is she strong enough?
This book to me represented something I think we all want. A second chance to answer our “what-ifs”. Whether we know it or not, some part of us always wonders what’s on the other side, what if we had done this or that, what would we do in a particular situation…? I enjoyed this book. It was an unexpected romance but with a sci-fi twist. I didn’t think I would like it, but it drew me in and grew on me. Give it a try – it’s different than anything else out there.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
bshowell | 5 outras críticas | Mar 27, 2010 |
Landing the job of her dream in research and development at the Space Island Group (SIG), Samantha Gerris finds herself doing what she has always wanted to do and all with her feet firmly on the planet Earth. While others made SIG a career so that they could go into space, Sami was scared of flying even after meeting an almost perfect man who happened to be a pilot. Marriage and two kids later, Jack Bennett finally got his chance to go into space leaving Sami and the kids on Earth, then a tragic accident took Jack from his family. Finding out that both of her kids wanted to follow in their fathers steps and take a job on the Space Station/Space Resort, Samantha knew she could not sit by and watch the rest of her family leave her. Doing what she never thought she would ever do, with the fear of losing her kids stronger than the fear of traveling in space, Sami joined her kids in space. Now Sami will learn the Katarians have been a part of her work, her husbands work and now her children’s work on the space station for many, many years. With her knowledge and know-how, Sami may find common ground and even happiness again through an adventure that takes her to places she never expected to go.

The adventure of a lifetime, Sci-Fi, even romance, this book has such a run of everything. The writing style is easy to read and very descriptive, sometimes too much so. This book is good in story line, great character creation and the technology is comparable to any Star Trek. The terminology is not overused, so you don’t get bogged down trying to remember what each of the big words mean. The beginning of the book moved quite slowly though. The drag of the fist 100-150 pages, while it was a sweet romance and the ground work for some of the adventure of the later parts, still left me wishing that some of it had been skipped all together. I enjoy a good romance, but this one really dragged for me and even though I liked the characters and was sad at the lose of Jack, I started to not care as much for them because it was taking so long to get to the point. The adventure was much better, a lot was packed into the remainder of the book and while I missed Jack, the connection with Gaelan was even better.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
onyx95 | 5 outras críticas | Feb 13, 2010 |

Prémios

Estatísticas

Obras
2
Membros
21
Popularidade
#570,576
Avaliação
½ 3.6
Críticas
6
ISBN
2