Iva Kenaz

Thoroughly enjoyed The Man, the first book of The Firebird Trilogy!

The Man tells a story about Gin, a girl who lives with a kind old candle-maker, and carves out candles for living. After a fire tragedy pulls them apart, Gin finds shelter in a safe house of the candle maker’s mysterious friend, Niall. In the safe house, Gin meets a group of people who share many secrets. And as time goes by, Gin becomes fatally attracted to Niall, her protector on the journey that’s to unfold…

I thoroughly enjoyed the story and found myself wrapped in its magic right away. I empathised with Gin, who is a very interesting, soulful heroine. Her romantic relationship with Niall is engaging since their very first meeting and their chemistry is quite irresistible. Gin’s dog friend, who is simply called Dog, is a cute character as well.

The novel blends romance with fantasy and dystopian genre, but is one of a kind in its own special way. I enjoyed Gin’s memories of her wise grandmother, through which the reader slowly unravels Gin’s past as well as anticipates her future lot. Being an astrologer, I also liked how the author plays with the fire element symbolism and astrological philosophy. I particularly liked the mention about the “Virgo maiden who spent so much time analysing life and its pieces that she forgot to live.”

I’d recommend this book to those who enjoy reading unique dystopian fantasy romance, but to everyone really, because it’s a really good one! And since this is the first part of a series, I look forward to read on.

The Goddess Within quote 

༺☆༻ The Witch Within༺☆༻

Special halloween sale! Only for 99 ¢ this October!

Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Witch-Within-Iva-Kenaz-ebook/dp/B00LCWN002

Amazon.co.uk:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Witch-Within-Iva-Kenaz/dp/1514126605/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1444741207&sr=8-3&keywords=iva+kenaz

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Amazon.com.au:

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Coming Soon! My third novel and a stand-alone sequel to The Witch Within.

Mystical fantasy set sometime in the 16th century, somewhere in South Trentino, Italy

SYNOPSIS:

Berka grew up in the wild, secluded from human society and raised by her father, a hermit and healer. At the dawn of her fifteenth spring Berka meets a faun, a being from a different realm, who warns her about an upcoming danger. Though he was forbidden to visit her, the two simply can’t stay away from one another.
With the help of her spirit guide, Berka is about to discover a way to the faun’s realm, but instead finds herself endangered by a group of bandits. The threat deepens when the group’s leader establishes an alliance with evil spirits from the underworld. Berka’s father comes up with an escape plan but she doesn’t want to leave and so she finds another way to deal with the inevitable peril.

Throughout the adventurous tale, Berka also goes on a road of self-discovery. She learns to embrace the powerful aspects of her divine feminine as well as the inseparable bond to the masculine archetype.

Berka’s Grandparents, Talitha and Nathaniel are the two main heroes in my debut novel, The Witch Within, so The Goddess Within is considered a stand-alone sequel.
Both novels were deeply inspired by ancient European mythology, pagan philosophy, runes, sacred geometry and feminine mystique. However, in this book I also explored new themes such as multidimensional travelling or dealing with one’s shadow aspects.

http://www.ivakenaz.com

My Melancholic Diary by Iva Kenaz

The Witch Within is now available in a printed version on Amazon!

Plus it's listed in the ebook giveaway section here on booklikes until the end of September! 

I like to delve into poetry from time to time and Angel M.B.Chadwick‘s book of poems was a pleasant break from fiction. It was dismal in places but on a whole I found it touching, sincere and true to its premise. I deeply appreciated that the author took me on a journey through her inner worlds, thoughts and insecurities. I admired her courage to speak her truth the whole time I was reading it.

I enjoyed the emotional flow of verses and the inner crisis the author expresses.

What am I living for?

What am I dying for?

What I can’t ignore alone at night

What am I wanted for?

Could I have wanted it more?
Lock the last secret window; my ghosts are preying upon me

I liked the metaphors and philosophy that makes you want to explore your own inner symbolism.

A wild, untamed immature fruit

The peel is fragile and the flesh rich with tenacity
The taste sweet with obnoxiousness

The juice fortified with energy

The other half enlarged, almost ripe

The flesh extremely soft, succulent

The peel denser

The juice bittersweet

I also appreciated the romantic bits amid the melancholia.

When rain pours with full moon and stars
When sparkling cores and shining glimmers bold

When glory leaps to seek, to be, to free
I will love you forever and a day


And on a whole, I found it heartfelt and inspiring!

Pursuit is a timeless, adventurous and philosophical novel about battling the shadows in order to find the inner light and connection to the divine guidance.
I love how the three stories bound by an ancient mysterious book merge together and support each other. All the stories are equally entertaining and lead to the same crucial conclusion, yet each of them also manages to keep its own unique atmosphere.

Sometimes, when a story has multiple protagonists, there’s the danger of one overshading the other, but I felt that this book achieved to keep them all equally likeable.
It’s a fast paced read, each chapter’s ending makes you want to go on, because you look forward to know more, uncover more mysteries and secrets.
What I also loved about the book is that its fairy-tale-like approach can be appreciated both by children and adults.
I recommend this story to anyone who is interested in mythology, particularly dragons and spirit guides, and is courageous and humble enough to confront his own shadow and find the light that resides within.

The Fractured Dream was a lovely and exciting tale to read. It’s the kind of book you read in one breath because it’s very well written, funny and adventurous.
Story, the main character, is so complex and real that you instantly feel like you’re her friend and want her to decipher the riddle of her strange dreams and nightmares. But Story is not only a unique girl in our dimension, as we get to know later, she’s also someone very special in the realm of the fairytales!

The idea of the seemingly ordinary lake Sandeen being a portal to a dimension of myths and fairy tales is just lovely and so is the idea of a young girl learning about her past/present/dark self, ultimately trying to feel complete again. It’s exciting to learn that Story is in fact connected to a profoundly important hero from the Fairytale Land’s past and may in fact bring the salvation in the future.
What I found particularly exciting was the work with Story’s dark side/shadow, which eventually revives at one point in order to achieve good. The battle between good and evil is therefore not just black and white - it actually has a depth to it.

The novel explores various faces of love, being it the parental love, friendship and romance. There are so many beautifully drawn characters that I fell in love with and also enchanting sub-plots. My favorite was the love-story between Story and Nicholas, because it’s a love that transcends time and space, love that is spiritual as well as earthly passionate.
The growth of Story as a character is beautifully interwoven with the main plot. She develops to be stronger and more confident, but most importantly, she explores different fragments of her mysterious personality, some of which remain hidden until the end of the first book. And this left me curious about what happens next and definitely made me want to set on a new journey with her.

The Doom of Undal is a follow up of the wonderful Serpent Priestess of the Annunaki and Katrina Sisowath once again surprises us with a unique take on human history. This time the author taps into the mystery surrounding ancient Egyptian and Greek deities, Hathor, Rhea and Cronus.
The novel weaves together powerful stories of these three main characters, starting when they were children, continuing after they part and resulting in their ultimate reunion.

As much as I adored both Hathor’s and Rhea’s journey and the intriguing view on the feminine mystique that was also present in Katina Sisowath’s previous novel, I found the Cronus character a particularly fascinating driving force. I have always been curious about this deity, the shadow aspect of ancient Greek mythology, as there were so many odd things written about him. And after reading this novel I began to view him in a whole new light. He’s a very interesting character who starts off as a likeable hero, but grows more in tune with his shadow aspect as the story progresses. The love story between him and Rhea is captivatingly chilling. They bond when they’re quite young and set off to a romantic destiny driven romance until things go awry. His future is foreshadowed as a dark one but I still hope that perhaps he would choose a path to light after all.

The ending of this novel is a true cliffhanger. It makes you want to read on, you feel like you need to know more. All together it’s a challenging take on mythology and history. The author clearly made a thorough research and I found her view on the legendary gods and goddesses, the myth of Atlantis and the enigma behind Thoth’s Emerald Tablets very refreshing.

I think Katrina Sisowath’s work is truly one of a kind. She writes unique atmospheric novels with masterfully built plots and characters. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and can’t wait to read the next part.

Redemption is a unique novel that blends sci-fi, history and philosophy. The story starts in the future but the reader eventually goes on a journey through different time periods in the past, from Stone Age to the Second World War, as the main character delves into various lifetimes of experiences.

The heroine, Ann is from the year 2045 and works for an AI department. She enjoys her work and bustling social life, though she feels that something is missing in her life, particularly because of a repetitive anxious dream about a spiral circling her in its ceaseless course. At the beginning of the novel, Ann is an atheist, however an open minded curious one and as the story unfolds, she begins to be more interested in faith and spiritual matters.

I found the story so interesting that I could hardly put it down. I identified with the main character and particularly enjoyed her relationship with her AI assistant, Rob who is not only a marvellously engineered program, but also her friend with whom she can philosophize about free will and God. I enjoyed the metaphor of us being gods of the artificial intelligence and its correlation to seeking our own creator.

Overall, I liked the philosophy behind the story, the idea of time-travel and multi dimensions, and the surprising twist in the end, which truly amused me.
It’s an inner journey, a spiritual quest for redemption through recognizing values in life such as freedom, love, courage and peace. I loved that the story is in fact set in the future and past and not in the present, it's a refreshing approach.

If you like mysticism, spirituality and visionary fiction, then this is really worth reading!

Red Willow’s Quest is a story about a strong willed Shoshoni girl who is guided by her spirit guides to become a medicine woman.
Red Willow/Vision Woman is a beautifully drawn character. She is gentle and caring as well as brave and strong and even her flaws are loveable. She has a profound respect for her life’s purpose and never goes against her deepest beliefs. She learns to be less stubborn along the way and realizes that everything has its meaning on the whole, growing up to be a unique shaman. I admired the character, identified with her inner struggles and found myself wishing to be more like her.

I enjoyed the setting of the novel and was drawn to it instantly as I’m an admirer of the Native American culture and wisdom. I fell in love with Red Willow’s companions, being it her horse Good Thunder, her lovely dog/wolf Wind Chaser and her human protector and friend, the Kootenai warrior Masheka.
I admire the way the author handled the romance. It has a lot of emotional and sensual tension as well as a truly archetypal quality to it. The relationship develops into such a deep human connection. We can see how much the two grow together, how important they are for one another. While she learns to understand men better, he gains greater respect for women and together they harmonize their own inner masculine and feminine, which makes them stronger and more complete in the end. I actually find myself missing the characters now and wish I could read on.

This novel stirred many emotions and thoughts within me. I learned a lot from it as it came at the right time in my life. I’m so thankful to the author that she followed the guidance of synchronicities she mentions at the end of the novel and wrote such a wonderful compelling story. It touched me greatly and I will surely read it more than once.

To sum up, the story is equally fast-paced and soulful, blends action, adventure, romance as well as metaphysical and spiritual genres, and therefore may satisfy a wide range of readers. I highly recommend it!

I'm a big fan of Meyrink's work, because I love novels that one can read many times and still find something new and inspiring to focus on. I found Golem to be so atmospheric that I felt as if I was there in the old Jewish Town, feeling the claustrophobic melancholy of the place, seeing the variety of people who lived there, hearing the old medieval houses whispering their ancient secrets, absorbing the mystery of the stones. I was born in Prague and grew up in the city, but the Jewish Town (also called the Fifth Quarter) was destroyed at the end of 19th century and so the picturesque mystical part of Prague survived only in memories, paintings and in its very basis, the cellars underground. Though most of the houses were torn down, the magic perseveres and one can imagine that it lured Meyrink to write such a story. Also, the mystery of Golem and the House by the Last Lantern in the Golden Lane are intriguingly inspiring. I found the idea of the main hero experiencing a life of an artist who lived in the Jewish Town and most probably later moved to another dimension of Prague very interesting. I was unaware of the terms ibbur or dybbuk and found that this story explained it for me. And so while some of the characters appear to be haunted by some lost spirit (Golem?), the main hero experiences an attachment to a soul that teaches him something of great value. Perhaps Meyrink himself felt that Athanasius Pernath was his ibbur for awhile and by thinking what he was thinking and feeling what he was feeling, he was able to make his life-story real. Meyrink's writing style, his language and the construction of sentences are so poetic! I think this is a book to return to from time to time, as it stays inscribed inside one's heart.