Friday, July 22, 2011

Review: Dangerous Designs by Dale Mayers



















Drawing is her world...but when her new pencil comes alive, it's his world too.
Her...Storey Dalton is seventeen and now boyfriendless after being dumped via Facebook. Drawing is her escape. It's like as soon as she gets down one image, a dozen more are pressing in on her. Then she realizes her pictures are almost drawing themselves...or is it that her new pencil is alive?Him...Eric Jordan is a new Ranger and the only son of the Councilman to his world. He's crossed the veil between dimensions to retrieve a lost stylus. But Storey is already experimenting with her new pencil and what her drawings can do - like open portals.It ... The stylus is a soul-bound intelligence from Eric's dimension on Earth and uses Storey's unsuspecting mind to seek its way home, giving her an unbelievable power. She unwittingly opens a third dimension, one that held a dangerous predatory species banished from Eric's world centuries ago, releasing these animals into both dimensions.Them... Once in Eric's homeland, Storey is blamed for the calamity sentenced to death. When she escapes, Eric is ordered to bring her back or face that same death penalty. With nothing to lose, can they work together across dimensions to save both their worlds? (goodreads.com_


There is a lot that goes on in this story, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love YA books where the main character is strong and doesn't let anything get in the way of accomplishing her goals. Storey is one of those characters. She has a good head on her shoulders, and once she finds out her stylus is different then what she thought it was, she doesn't let the rules of the other dimension stop her from trying to fix the mess that she accidentally made in both worlds.  




Eric was an interesting character, but to be honest I had a really hard time relating to him and while there was a bit of a romance between him and Storey this is one of the rare times that I think that the romance wasn't really necessary. This might sound contradictory to what I just wrote, but I enjoyed his friendship with Storey. He was there to guide her, but she ended up showing him that it is ok to be different and sometimes rules are made to be broken if you are doing it for the right reasons. 

The story line was really different from other YA books that I've read and I think that is one of the things that pulled me into the story. I loved learning about the other world that Storey stumbled on, and how it was a lot like Earth, but only different. It shows how history can twist things to the victors side and what Earth could've been like without all the pollution. No world is perfect though and each side had it's own pluses and minuses. This is was just a great change of pace and I look forward to reading more by Dale Mayers.