Book Review | Hive

Another tour book for this week and its another brilliant one.

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Hive
DL Orton

What if saving the future meant rewriting the past?

In a dying world overrun by microdrones, humanity’s last survivors cling to life inside the Eden-17 biodome. Isabelle Sanborn knows her time is running out, but one desperate plan might give humanity a second chance. With the help of Madders, an enigmatic AI built from the memories of a brilliant physicist, Isabelle sends Diego Nadales—the love of her life—35 years into the past. His mission? To change the course of history and prevent their world’s collapse.

When Diego arrives in the vibrant yet fragile Main Timeline, he’s forced to confront ghosts of the past, including a younger, ambitious version of Isabelle. As he battles to shape a better future, Diego must navigate a delicate web of relationships and events without destroying the very fabric of time.

Brimming with suspense, heart-pounding action, and a poignant love story that transcends time, Madders of Time – Book One is a breathtaking science fiction adventure. Award-winning author DL Orton weaves a tale that explores sacrifice, resilience, and the timeless power of love.

Fans of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Dark Matter will find themselves captivated by this unforgettable journey through parallel worlds and intertwining destinies.

The clock is ticking. Can love survive the collapse of time itself?

Prepare to lose yourself in the first installment of the Madders of Time series—a story that will keep you turning pages and leave you hungry for more.

Goodreads | The StoryGraph | Amazon

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From the first page, I knew this story was going to be unexpected in a good way. It was such an unusual start to a story, since it’s kind of at the end of the world, but it definitely got my attention. From there, it was a book that explored a little bit of everything, romance, multiverses, time travel, advanced technology and an impending apocalypse, which when put together sounds like it might be a bit much, but it works very well and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The story is able to handle such a wide scope because the characters are fantastic and really ground the plot. The book is told from the perspectives of Isabel, Diego, and Matthew and focuses on their roles in the impending end of the world and their relationships with each other, their family, and their friends.

I loved Isabel and Diego’s relationship, I am a sucker for a second chance romance but they also have amazing chemistry, the banter between them was brilliant, and I spent a lot of the book not-so-patiently waiting for them to figure things out. Matt ends up being stuck with some frustrating and controlling characters in his storyline but I was happy to see him start to gain the upper hand as his friends come to help him with his task. 

Special mentions also go to Cassie, Matt’s niece, who seems like she is about to shake up the story a little, and Tolstoy and Lucky, who are just the cutest. I also enjoyed the updates on whether anything was making a difference in the timeline from Madders, the AI guardian. 

I’ll admit that I didn’t always understand all the science references in the story, and at times found it a little hard to follow, but I could understand enough from the context that it didn’t really impact my enjoyment of the rest of the story. In fact, I quite liked that there was a big event and I didn’t totally understand what was going on, even though it was a little frustrating, because I know that is how I would have felt in that scenario. 

The epilogue was exceptionally intriguing, and I’m kind of gutted that I’ll have to wait to get to the next part of the story, because I feel so invested in these characters that I am desperate to find out what happens to them.

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The BEST-SELLING AUTHOR, D. L. ORTON, lives in the foothills of Colorado where she and her husband are raising three boys, a golden retriever, two Siberian cats, and an extremely long-lived Triops. Her future plans include completing the books in the BETWEEN TWO EVILS series followed by an extended vacation on a remote tropical island (with a Starbucks).

When she’s not writing, playing tennis, or helping with algebra, she’s building a time machine so that someone can go back and do the laundry.

Ms. Orton is a graduate of Stanford University’s Writers Workshop and a past editor of “Top of the Western Staircase,” a literary publication of CU, Boulder. The author has a number of short stories published in online literary magazines, including Literotica.com, Melusine, Cosmoetica, The Ranfurly Review, and Catalyst Press.

Her debut novel, CROSSING IN TIME, has won numerous literary awards including an Indie Book Award and a Publishers Weekly Starred Review. It was also selected as one of only 12 Great Indie Stars by BookLife’s Prize in Fiction.