Birthright: The Evolution Chronicles Book 1

By RJ Palmer

One beleaguered man...

In the bitter cold of an unseasonable Colorado winter, Raine Donnelly’s life is turned hopelessly upside down. Machines malfunction and electricity goes haywire, and that’s just the beginning. The doctors think it’s a brain tumor and he’s hallucinating but if that’s the case, why is someone trying to kill him? Isn’t one scared and dying man relatively harmless?

One woman living in no man’s land...

Raine’s widow Sierra is planning a vacation to Colorado with her twin daughters, Renee and Elizabeth who have been insisting that they’re going to visit their dead father and ruining Sierra’s calm. It took her a long time to piece her life back together after he died and for them to refuse to accept the truth is tearing her apart.

An inevitable chance encounter...

When their worlds collide all hell breaks loose and Raine must find a way to piece together the fragmented truth of his past without getting all of them killed...

• Language: English
• Publisher: RJ Palmer
• Release date: Jan 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781453786079

RJ Palmer

There is nothing the least bit interesting about me and in truth sometimes I believe that I live vicariously through characters of my own creation in which case I should probably seek professional help straightaway. I could bore you with dry facts recited by rote but that would be contra-indicative of my personality type which demands that I at least make this somewhat interesting regardless of the enormity of the task involved. Easier said than done I can assure you. RJ Palmer on Self Publishing To be completely truthful I've found that more off beat authors who have acquired a faithful following have the more richly woven stories. That's not to say that authors who receive a lot of attention are not by all means talented I simply believe that in the practice of traditional publishing there are a select group of authors that receive almost all the attention for one reason or another and I believe that this is an effective way for publishing houses to tell a reader what they're supposed to like which is something with which I do not agree. In keeping with this train of thought I believe that there are hundreds of incredibly talented authors who do not get the attention that they deserve and the opportunity to share their talents with the world which would be an enriching experience for anyone who has the pleasure of stumbling upon their work.

Book preview

Birthright

By RJ Palmer

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 - 2011 RJ Palmer

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

October 7, 1969

Harsh white light shone insistently on her eyelids. The woman surfaced slowly from the depths of a long, unnatural slumber, becoming slowly aware of her surroundings as her senses began to clear and focus. The low buzz of electronic equipment, the steady beep of a heart monitor and the soft whisper of a respirator droned monotonously near her left shoulder. The crisp smell of alcohol and astringents filled the air and burned her nostrils under-laid by the sickly sweet smell of disease. The mattress was beneath her was thin and uncomfortable and her back ached from lying on it for so long.

Gradually, she became aware of the whispered conversation on the other side of the room. It was intense and heated judging by the sentence fragments that drifted her way and she wondered dreamily whom they were discussing. The voices were fuzzy and vague, like they were echoing down a long tunnel and she found that she couldn’t piece together more than a little of what they were saying.

…Severe concussion...X-ray…lucky...alive...

…More than that…

…That man…wild look about him…

…Husband…

…Early pregnancy…very early…

They weren’t doing a very good job of whispering and she turned her head slightly to the left trying to hear them. The voices faded out as pain began to pound in her temples. Hammers shivered over the crown of her head and down her back, driving her to the trembling edge of madness and nausea as bright pinpoints of light and color began swimming gracefully in front of her eyelids. The muscles in her neck and back cried out in protest and something came out her parched mouth in the form of a dry, gritty squeak.

They heard her, whoever they were. The conversation ground to a halt a moment before the deep, reassuring baritone of a male asked her how she was feeling.

Unable to open her eyes more than a sliver against the lights, she saw a featureless shadow outlined in front of the glare. Her lips parted slightly and she tried to tell him it hurt which was all but impossible since her mouth was parched. She could only seem to force one word past her dry, swollen tongue and it took all she had, Thirsty.

Through a blurry haze she watched the nurse move quickly, her footsteps hushed and smooth in her thick soled shoes. To a woman who couldn’t see very well, it seemed as though the nurse didn’t walk and in fact had no feet at all. The woman imagined that the nurse floated serenely a few inches above the floor, reaching the carafe that sat a few inches away from the bedridden and frustrated woman who couldn’t reach it herself.

Grabbing a depressingly small paper cup, she filled it with an even smaller amount of liquid and added a straw. The nurse held it to her mouth and helped the woman hold her head up slightly to drink, cautioning her to sip slowly. She obeyed and drank carefully despite wanting to cool the burn in her throat and relieve her hunger.

She figured out that she was weak pretty quickly and that for all that the water soothed her throat, it also hurt her stomach. How long had she been asleep for that to happen? The few sips she took were quite enough to make her weak and that was slightly alarming. Shaking visibly and limp with exhaustion as well as slightly embarrassed by her weakness, she looked around the room and moaned in pain again. At least it sounded a little more normal this time.

Then she closed her eyes and surrendered once again to darkness, seeking escape from the pain in sleep.

March 28, 1970

The small, amazingly lusty cry of a newborn broke the hush that had settled like a pall over the operating room from an infant that had been born three months too early. The little mouth opened again and issued another tiny bellow and the doctors and nurses surrounding the operating table looked at the infant in surprise. Small as it was weighing only slightly less than three pounds, the baby was cold and obviously mad.

The surgeon was intensely curious about the child but spared it only a single glance before he resumed his useless endeavors on the mother.

She had wasted away during the pregnancy. Her face and body had once been fairly aglow with youth and vitality and were now emaciated. Her eyes stared up at him uncomprehendingly. Emotionless now, they were dull and glazed with fatigue and pain. At one point they had been if not lively then at least alive, the intense blue of a perfect summer sky.

Less than six short months ago she had been admitted into this hospital, the tragic victim of a drunken driving accident. They hadn’t known that she was also expecting the child that he had just delivered into the waiting arms of the nurse standing at serene attention nearby.

When she had come in to the hospital broken and bloody he had still seen in her thick, lustrous hair and smooth complexion a normally healthy woman, a fighter in her own right. Despite the battered state she’d been in when she had been admitted his initial prognosis for her recovery, if not a full one, had been good.

They hadn’t known. That was his only consolation right now in this. They hadn’t known.

He was something akin to panicked when he discovered the existence of the child that grew within her. They had been in a rush as they had tried to compensate for the nutrients that the baby would need to develop and would take from her if there was no other ready supply. Unfortunately, even the vitamin regimen combined with the strict diet routine that they had followed meticulously couldn’t save her and had been a study in irritation. She had not been able to eat well or much at all and the child had taken it all, growing and developing at an astonishing and upsetting rate. While the woman had been laid to waste, the child matured within her womb, growing strong and healthy and with dizzying speed. The doctor was stricken with a sense of angry futility and had watched the expectant mother die a little more every day.

He’d known her blood was too thin; the pale color of her skin showed even outwardly that she was anemic. He might be able to stop the bleeding if he was careful but he’d had to cut her when she’d begun first stage labor at twenty-eight weeks, twelve full weeks preterm. He’d had no choice. He’d had to take the baby because it was going to kill her. She had never healed fully or properly from the car accident and her body would not have been able to handle the rigors of natural childbirth. Her flesh was still bruised darkly, swollen and misshapen from the numerous injuries she’d sustained. She was now a shell of the woman she had been, withered to nothing and he knew she would not survive. It was only a matter of time before her exhausted body gave way completely because she could no longer fight the pull.

Trying to stem the flow of blood from the woman was a lesson in the improbable as if death had already hung its ghostly shroud over her. Silent communion with an invisible specter shadowed her slack features and was taking her life even while he was trying to cheat it. Folding in and stitching the final layer of her skin, her life’s blood flowing out of her anyway, the doctor tied the last knot in her sutures and cut the string knowing that there was nothing more he could do. His heart and head pounding with futile rage, he stoically quelled the urge to shout at the heavens, angry that all his practice in medicine could not save her. He had invested a lot of time and effort into her care, after all. She was loosely equated to his sweat, blood and tears and he hated to see his hard work mean nothing. He looked away from her face because he couldn’t look at her anymore. It made him feel guilty and he was afraid he’d lose his own mind in the defeated depths of her eyes.

Finished with his ministrations on the woman he finally turned to watch the infant wheeled away in an incubator and believed like everyone else that the baby would die.

The high-pitched whine and flat line pattern of a dying heart broke the silence behind him. Without having to turn around and look into her soulless eyes, he knew that she was gone.

Present Day

Raine Donnelly opened the kitchen door with a vicious yank and a gust of arctic wind assaulted him. Swearing softly, he quickly ducked his head to shield his eyes from the sharp sting of small flecks of blowing snow. Blowing snow was beautiful but it also hurt like the dickens when it hit a person’s eye straight on. Then he faced into the wind, gritting his teeth when a tentacle of frigid air feathered down his back. Hunching his shoulders he began the slow, laborious trek through the eighteen inches of snow to the SUV parked fifteen feet away.

Brushing the snow away from the door lock, he inserted the key and turned gently, hoping fervently that the lock had not frozen in the cold. It turned easily to his relief and he opened the door and climbed into the drivers’ seat. Putting the key in the ignition and starting the car to warm it up, he breathed a low and thankful prayer when the engine roared easily to life and the cold air blasting from the dashboard vents began to warm.

Unearthing his ice scraper from the backseat, he got out of the vehicle and pried the sheets of ice and snow from the windshield with clumsy, cold-numbed hands and then got back into the cab. Turning up the heat, he adjusted the vents to defrost the windows, allowing his fingertips and shaking hands time to thaw and steady. Then he fastened his seatbelt and put the car in gear, backing as carefully down the driveway and onto the road as his hurry and panic would allow.

The drive to the grocery store was slow and tedious. Blaine, Colorado was about half an hour outside of Boulder and was not large by any means. With a population of little more than two hundred, it was a quiet and somewhat boring town nestled in the heart of the mountains. It made for an idyllic picture in a magazine but that was about the sum of it. Blaine still boasted cobbled streets around the town hall and turn of the century architecture and everyone seemed to be very proud of it. Everyone knew everyone else and nothing escaped the sharp eyes of the town gossip no matter how valiant the effort. Locals from the outskirts of town gathered at Ian's Place, the town Bar & Grill, to toss back a beer at the end of the day and shoot some pool.

It was the perfect setting for the impossible to become possible.

Unbidden, the thought whispered across his mind and catapulted him back to the events of that morning. Raine began to see the stuff that his nightmares were made of flash vividly across his memory...

Laughter on the fringes of a dream had woken him. The gentle sound of feminine gaiety had roused him from his slumber as effectively as an intravenous caffeine drip. He was a guy after all.

He'd jerked awake and looked around with bleary, unfocused eyes as the last remnants of the dream evaporated and he was in his room again. Trembling violently, breathing heavily as though he'd just run a marathon and not woken from a dream he could not remember he had sat up, wondering why he could not shake the sudden feeling that the disembodied laughter was vital. He could not rid himself of the instinctive knowledge that the woman behind the sound was critical to him in a way he didn’t understand.

Groaning softly, he stretched and sat up, reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp and check the clock. It was half past five in the morning but he got up with a resigned groan, knowing he would be awake now despite the early hour. The first watery light of predawn had just begun to leak over the eastern horizon and unseasonable frost lined the panes, standing desolate reminder that winter still cuddled the earth in an icy blanket though the days had begun to grow longer about a month ago.

It was mid-April now, far beyond the time that the frosty breath of winter should have given way to the new life of spring. This last winter had been a hard one, sweeping in on skeletal wings as soon as early October. Folks had tried to weather the winter the way they had always done with children running around in the wind and snow and parents keeping a watchful eye at a respectful distance. Soon the cold had been too much for even the hottest blooded among them and had driven the townsfolk indoors when the wind and snow began to break long standing records on five of seven days a week. During the course of the season they had already been buried under a whopping four feet of snow with one more front set to arrive later on today. With the pressure in the air around him, he could tell it had already arrived and he was irrationally annoyed with it.

Dragging himself out of bed and forcing sleep clumsy limbs to cooperate, Raine stood. Weak light from the lamp illuminated his reflection in the window as he pulled on his jeans and grimaced slightly at what he saw. Standing at six feet three inches and well and fit if not chiseled physique courtesy of his normally year round construction job, he never quite understood why the look got attention but by now he was used to it. He was forever in danger of hitting his head against low hanging objects if he didn’t watch what he was doing and he had on more than one occasion, earning the laughter of anyone who saw which was both painful and embarrassing.

He’d gotten compliments about his eyes all his life. They were very blue and very big and very useful when he wanted them to be but that was about it when it came right down to it. It’s not like he had much use to put the moves on any one of the young girls or married women around town and he almost never left, so it was a moot point and he shrugged it off casually.

Walking into the bathroom he opened the medicine cabinet and got out his toothbrush and toothpaste, razor, shaving gel, and deodorant and then closed it again. His reflection confronted him once more and he stuck out his tongue which did absolutely no good but for whatever reason made him feel oddly better.

Then his thoughts turned to the bodiless laughter that he’d heard upon waking and he tried to concentrate on why the woman behind the sound seemed so crucial. Unfortunately, the more he concentrated, the more the details seemed to slip from the grasp of his memory like so much dust slipping through the fingers.

Frustrated at the suddenly errant quality of his normally razor sharp ability for total recall, Raine pushed the laugh from his thoughts and looked to the day ahead reminding himself that he was a realist, and realists did not believe in the importance of dreams. Forcing his thoughts to the immediate future and the work he wanted to get done helped for the thirty minutes it took him to get ready to face the day. For a little while he was able to forget the dream, the woman's laughter and the instinctive sense that something was amiss.

He followed his morning ritual carefully, brushing his teeth, shaving, showering and dressing meticulously. He donned faded blue jeans, an old tattered gray sweatshirt, threadbare socks and beat up tennis shoes. His clothing was old and comfortable and perfect for cleaning out the basement which was going to be a filthy, dusty job and one he’d been promising himself he would tackle now for a month of Sundays. He knew that with the weather making work impossible, he was bored out of his mind but it gave him time to get things done. It also occurred to him more than once that he had showered prior to cleaning the basement which struck him as somewhat silly and a little odd but he had always counted on a shower to wake him in the morning so he did it anyway.

Then he haphazardly made his bed, nothing more strenuous than pulling the covers over the mattress that had been disarranged in his sleep, left the bedroom and walked down the hall toward the kitchen, his mind on what he wanted for breakfast.

Raine lived strictly within a well-ordered, solitary existence. There were no wrinkles in the fabric of his daily life, no surprises or changes. He was older, he was boring, he was settled and he didn’t like curve balls. It was an undeniably lonely existence he realized sourly after a moment of reflection and very likely the best reason that a woman’s laughter on the edges of a waking dream had woken him so effectively and easily.

In the kitchen he switched on the overhead light and went directly to the refrigerator and got out eggs, milk and cheese. Then going to the cupboard, he got out the frying pan, set it on the stove and turned on the fire beneath it, allowing the pan to heat before he began to cook. He got out a bowl and broke the eggs into it, scrambling them furiously in an effort to still the restlessness that had plagued him upon waking. He reached for his memories of the dream itself only half enthusiastically, trying to understand emotions that stemmed directly from something he could only vaguely remember.

There had been nothing particularly surreal about the dream, at least in retrospect. A feminine hand, delicate and soft, long graceful fingers, the fingernails long and tapered had been reaching for him. The movement of the hand itself did not seem to scream danger in the dream but rather someone reaching to try and pull him to safety. The hand was outstretched and palm up as if urging him to grasp it and be swept away though to where he didn't know. He just knew the hand had been no threat. He did think for a moment that it was telling that he couldn’t remember most of what had happened in the dream but he could recall every detail of the woman’s hand in the dream. He needed to get out more often.

The danger he'd felt had come from his environment. Dark, confining and positively oozing despair, he hadn’t been able to see the walls if there had even been any. There had also been a vague sense of unease and the atmosphere itself had had a claustrophobic feel; as if he had been in a small hole somewhere underground, buried alive and desperate for rescue.

There had also been a circle of light right above his head which could have been a kind of proverbial dream symbolism he supposed. It was from this light that the woman had been reaching for him in an effort to save him, whoever she was and if that had truly been her motive.

He was going to burn the skillet over thinking that dream. Shaking off his thoughtful haze he added milk to the eggs he had just scrambled, stirred the mixture once, twice for good measure and poured it into the frying pan. A satisfying sizzle filled the room and Raine began to feel the tension of the last hour begin to flow off of him. Relaxing once again into his morning routine, Raine began to turn the eggs and slice cheese, every movement he made methodical and precise and thoroughly second thought, experience making him deft and at ease.

The blaring of the radio startled him into immobility. The contraption was across the room from him, sitting alone and forgotten on the counter above a dish washer that he had never used, emitting the shapeless static of unused airspace but there had been no one there to turn it on.

The radio had no remote and he hadn’t ever used the alarm on it or even turned it on so there was no way that it could’ve been just turning on by itself. It wasn’t even plugged in and yet there it was screeching and blaring and putting up a ruckus all by itself. Not real, not possible and not good.

His mind screamed at him that this was not happening but the dank, sour smell of sweat and fear had already begun to permeate the air. His heart pounded so hard that it made him worry that it might explode in his chest and his throat began to close. Lightheaded and nearly faint with terror and choking on a keen sense of recognition that frightened him more than the screaming radio, his every muscle poised for flight from an unseen enemy Raine watched it, momentarily riveted as much as he was scared.

Then his eyes began to move quickly, darting here and there and looking for any signs of remote sabotage. He search for a blinking red light or a movement outside, one shadow becoming another; something, anything that would prove to him that what he saw and heard wasn’t right. The very air around him seemed to take on a cloying pressure, a presence in itself. Raine’s dizziness increased apace with his alarm and his breathing became more erratic, leaving him standing on the crumbling edge of panicked hyperventilation.

Nothing moved. The squawking of the radio took on a rhythm all its own with the harsh buzz quaking in the air around him and through him.

A bead of sweat traced its way across his brow, tickling a path down temple and cheek.

The buzz got louder. His eyes grew large with surprise and horror as he watched the volume dial on the radio turn slowly on its own, increasing the intensity of the throbbing clamor.

The screaming sound rose to a thundering crescendo and the speakers in the radio rattled, ill-suited to handle the volume of the racket howling through them.

The dial turned again, raising the volume to an ear-rending screech that reverberated discordantly off the walls and made him cover his ears in acute pain.

Raine watched the radio.

Then as quickly as it had taken ruthless charge, the burden in the air subsided. The intense heaviness and the cloaking, all-consuming weight that had been the environment itself were gone. The crushing, daunting will of what could only be described as nothingness was suddenly and conspicuously absent. His breath became freed again if not easy and he sucked great gasps of air into formerly constricted lungs, watching closely around himself and the radio for further signs of unexplainable phenomenon as it were.

When the radio continued to play for a few moments without showing any further sign of a ghostly touch he gathered his courage. Slowly, on legs that felt like rubber bands he crossed the room to where it sat on the countertop. His hand shook as he reached over and flipped the switch to turn it off.

Tomblike silence filled the kitchen accompanied by the stench of burning eggs. Cursing under his breath, he grabbed the skillet and dropped it in the sink and turned on the cold water, watching it douse the scorched contents with a hiss of rising steam.

Berating himself silently he turned off the fire on the stove, grabbed his coat and car keys and left by the back door off the kitchen. Those were his last eggs; he'd grab something to eat at Ian's and go do some grocery shopping. With the forecasted blizzard blowing in it was becoming necessary anyway...

Pulling himself from his reverie with a concentrated effort and trying to avoid a wreck and vehicular homicide, Raine looked at the sky. Noting the swollen, pregnant quality of the low, dark clouds he knew that they didn't have much time before nature would break free her confines and release them. The bone-deep chill and repressed fury of an oncoming storm were palpable.

There were several people out, scurrying about from shop to shop like rats in a maze trying to prepare for the oncoming storm that would snow them in for who knew how long. The last blizzard that they'd had had come right on the heels of a kind of spring thaw when everyone had been sure that warm weather had been just around the corner. The snow that had come had taken them all by surprise when nine pristine inches had fallen to blanket the ground, heavy and wet from the recent warmth of the weather itself. Power lines had fallen and some had gone without electricity as long as two weeks. No one wanted to be caught unawares this time.

Reaching Ian's and pulling into a parking spot, he shifted into park and cut the engine, getting out and hurrying from the car into the small eatery, chilled from just that short walk in the biting wind. Grabbing a menu as per local custom Raine walked up to the counter, looked it over quickly and ordered the Whirlwind, the perfect meal for the individual on the go as the type written menu label suggested; two biscuits, sliced sandwich style and filled with scrambled eggs, ham, cheese and tomatoes with a large coffee. Not that anyone in this town would be in a particular hurry to get anywhere he reflected in a moment of dry humor.

His waitress was a sleepy looking teen-aged girl whose bleary, glazed eyes suggested a late night of underage imbibing. She had the look of a young woman who was suffering through work with what was obviously a painful hangover but he remembered those days and he was more than able to relate. Some of his best stories came from those days.

She took his order and then his money and handed him his change, then gave him a small, weak smile and flinched. Apparently even movement was painful. Handing him his food in a white to go box she wished him a nice day and blushed, likely in regards to his piercing and knowing stare, looking like she immediately regretted what probably set off the hammers in her head again. Fortunately noise was also painful for her although even the thought seemed rude to his own mind. It did get him on his way soon because he didn't have to stop and make small talk while his food got cold. He simply turned around and walked out, offering a wayward grin and a softly spoken well wish for the poor girl who again smiled weakly and this time rolled her eyes in what was probably acute embarrassment.

Raine walked out to his car, careful to hide the soft, indulgent smile still playing on his lips. Getting into the SUV and starting the engine he backed out of the parking spot and headed the vehicle eastward, turning right at Coverly Street and making his way toward the grocery store.

Driving slowly enough that he could eat while driving on the slick streets and not lose control of the car, Raine set his coffee in the cup holder and opened the box with the biscuits, savoring the spicy aroma of ham that filled the SUV. He picked up a sandwich and took a healthy bite, enjoying the spectrum of flavors. He did like to cook and he liked to eat and he loved to take a moment and just enjoy good food.

Pulling to a stop at the sign on the corner he signaled, checked for traffic and turned left onto Rosewood Avenue, going the last half block to the store. The building that housed it was old, standing testament to days gone by and one of the few buildings in town that still had the old fashioned high facade. Once the popular architectural style throughout the Americas in small towns and cities alike it was simply a building with a low roof behind a deceptively higher front. Facing it presented one with the illusion of a building larger than it was.

The building itself was falling to ruin and crumbling with neglect, the owners were unable to pay for the upkeep.

Reviews for Birthright

[freebookreviews · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Overall Feedback: This was the first book that I ever reviewed when I first opened this blog. I decided to revisit it so that I could clarify my review and show a little more honesty in the review. Before I start I will state that RJ Palmer is my wife and that may skew the review. With this said I will automatically take one star away. I still believe that this is a thriller in caliber with a Dean Koontz novel just not as polished. I did read this in 3 hours but I am also a reader that was and still is able to read The Dark Tower Series in a weekend or less. RJ does a superb job of developing a story around her characters that draws you in and squeezes your reader brain until it can get no more attention. Although descriptive and in places overly descriptive do not let the other reviews trap you into the mindset that you will be lost inside the pages of this book. If you are like me and read a voracious amount of books then have at this one as it will meet your high expectations for a well written, descriptive book. If however you are the type that is more of a beach reader you may want to wait on this one. I do know the author is currently having this edited and I am sure that after editor and author get finished there will be less of the errors that so many have had problems with and I am equally sure that all of the extra descriptiveness will be polished away. However in it's current state Birthright is still an superb read for the right fit. So jump in and follow Raine as he discovers his life and his power and know that Birthright is only the beginning.Point of View: You will bounce back and forth from 3 viewpoints throughout the story. Although for the most part you will experience the twists and turns from Raine's and Sierra's point of view for the majority. We as the reader get to live and learn through these characters and RJ has a knack for placing herself inside the minds of her characters or do they place themselves into her mind.Voice: Mankind has always and will always create it's own downfall and lose when trying to control the changes it creates. This is what I gather from Birthright but you may gather something entirely different. That is the great thing about reading itself, perspective and experience creates the voice. As far as RJ is concerned I believe she was dealing with some latent issues from her life in as far as a lost husband and the hope that he would return. This is what helped her past.Character Development: Before I stumble over myself in platitudes for the author I shall point out some cons. I feel she brings in far too many characters that are to support the main cast but does not give viable reason for them to stick around as long as they do. Some of the characters felt as if they were placeholders for the story only to help the author to the next page. Now onto the pros. RJ has an impeccable ability in getting the reader to relate with her main cast. You are just as baffled, joyous, enraged and vindicated as Raine. You are just as hurt, confused and scared as Sierra. You feel both anger and understanding of Baxter. All in all you will be just as involved with the characters as they are with the story.Plot: This is where I was the most intrigued by RJ. She took an everyday occurrence and envisioned the possibility of an evolutionary change to man and created a bold story about it. Although she is quite descriptive (again it is being edited for rerelease in Spring 2012) she is still able to pull of a great, intriguing and fresh plot to feed to our hungry imaginations.Dialogue: As far as dialogue I believe that a few more stories and RJ will have perfected her dialogue making ability. You can tell that she is in the dialogue instead of her just letting her character tell his or her story. Again nothing that a good editor will not find and polish.Setting: Grading a book here is all about telling future readers if this story can be believed. This is always hard to do because everyone's imagination can hold a different amount of believability. With this said this is one of those stories that we know could happen and most of us are probably wondering if it has happened.Continuity: RJ does well to keep the story moving forward although she uses flashbacks and paranormal activity to tie up parts of the story. She leaves the reader on the edge of a cliff with a series of questions at the end of Birthright. You will find that you want to know what happens to Raine, his daughters and Baxter. You will wonder and rightfully so if there is more and I can answer that yes there is more but that story is for other books. The only drawback I could find in this area was descriptiveness. I love descriptive stories, I read Dean Koontz and Stephen King, and I therefore fully enjoyed this one but I do realize that Dean and Stephen are polished by years of writing and a team of editors so this is where Birthright falls short. After the editing process that RJ has started with Birthright I am absolutely sure that we shall see she is an author in caliber with both Dean and Stephen and her stories will soon fill shelves like theirs.