Audio Book Review: Travel Glasses

Travel Glasses

By:  Chess Desalls

Publish Date:  May 7, 2014, Audiobook September 16, 2014

Format:  Audiobook - 7 hrs 9 mins
Narrated By:  Natalie Winters

Genre:  YA Paranormal

Series:  1st in The Call to Search Everywhen series

Impression:  A young girl falls into the mind blowing world of time and space travel.

Synopsis:
Calla Winston’s mobile devices sit in a corner of her room, covered in dust. Weeks ago, she shared photos and laughs with her best online friend. Now, after having felt the sting of betrayal, she prefers being hidden and friendless. She equates privacy with security and technology with pain.

Then she meets Valcas, an otherworldly time traveler who traverses time and space with a pair of altered sunglasses. When an ethereal being knocks Calla to the ground near her family’s lakeside cottage, Valcas uses the Travel Glasses to help her escape. He offers his further protection in exchange for a promise. Intrigued by Valcas and the possibility of time travel, Calla accepts. That is until she learns that his search for her was no mere coincidence.

Calla sets off on her own, taking the Travel Glasses with her. Torn between searching for her estranged father and reuniting with the rest of her family, she tracks down the inventor of the Travel Glasses in hopes of discovering more about Valcas’ past and motivations. The Travel Glasses take Calla’s mistrust of technology to all new levels. But without them, she’ll never make it back home. With Valcas hot on her trail, Calla hopes to find what she’s looking for before he catches up.

The Call to Search Everywhen is a serial series of novel-length installments. Travel Glasses is YA fantasy filled with metafiction and other literary twistiness. It's a thought-provoking narrative about trust, relationships, reality and illusion.

First Sentence:
The day I met Valcas began within the confines of the grounds surrounding my family's lakeside cottage.

Purchase At:
Amazon  /  Barnes & Nobles  /  Book Depository

Audible


My Thoughts and Summary:
*This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of AudiobookBlast dot com, at my request.

Valcas is helping Calla, and he could use her help too. He's saved her from some thing that's after her, and it's not safe for her to return home. He's also in a tight spot and she can help him by posing as his betrothed. Calla realizes a bit late that the rule she's to play for Valcas seems more long term than she originally thought. When she learns he's searched her out specifically she becomes upset, and Valcas has her locked in her rooms. Young Calla knows the only way out of this palace is the same way they got in. She must retrieve Valcas's traveling glasses, the ones that give him the ability to travel through time and places. To do this, she must act the part she was brought here to be. After she has the glasses, she goes on her own mission to stay safe and learn what she can of Valcas.

Natalie narrates this story with accents for characters from different parts of the world, and time. We have Romaso from Venice and Shirlyn from England. Valcas has a prim and proper sound to him that is relayed in his speaking and the terms he uses. However in the beginning I didn't feel a lot of emotion in her voice while reading. In the end of the book it felt her connection with Calla and Calla's growth grew in her voice acting.

The first few chapters happen fast and left me with lots of questions.  All good as I wanted to know all the answers! What's after Calla? Why? What's knocking her over? He say's it's 1812? Why does Valcas have sunglasses on in the dark? Things change fast and I'm curious as to why and how, jet ski to row boat. I have to keep going to see what's going on!

As you guessed it, the sunglasses are the travel glasses. They are what helps move from world to world and time to time. They do have their affects on the users though.

The neat thing of this story that I enjoyed when thinking back through the story is my thinking process of how or why things are the way they are changes. Each trip to the past or another place brings something to mind that could be an explanation of why. I do like that you can't change the past. Well, there are the written personals you can leave, but there are rules against such things that are monitored by the TSTA, Time and Space Travel Agency. So the changing the past is not an easy answer to everything. I have changed my mind on Valcas's motives about three times with what I learned. lol.

Valcas...Hmm. I love him and think he's scary. How is that? Well, when we first meet Valcas he comes across a bit strong. Calla's view of him leaves us with a creepy feel for him. But when Calla goes to visit a younger Valcas, before he uses the traveling glasses, he is sweet. I think Calla has fallen for this version of Valcas. Then we learn something else about Valcas, after we too have fallen for him, that changes our view yet again. I want to hear Valcas explain things and see what happens with this 'older' Valcas with Calla. I quote older because there is a special thing with Valcas. By the end of the story I'm liking him very much.

Calla. At first I thought it was a bit quick for her to go to dinner with a boy she's just meet. But things move on and I get to know Calla a bit more as the story goes. She is seventeen and still learning the way of the world. Her thinking is a bit innocent in the seventeen year old's ways as well. But at the end of the book it seems Calla is learning and trying to do the right things. Calla also has in mind her father. She's never known her father and maybe, just maybe, she has the means now to find him. But I think that's another story.

This is a Young Adult read. It's done with no violence or overly intimate scenes. Good clean story with a young girl learning her way in the world and getting to experience friendships she never had.

I grew attached to Calla and green eyed Valcas. I'm looking forward to seeing them in the future books. I ended this book surprised that it ended. I want to know what comes of what she learns of her mother's job and her hearing with TSTA. Then what Valcas will say and if there is a connection here with him in the current time. I'm still wondering on what was after Calla too. And her missing father...