Book Review: Earthbound

Title: Earthbound
Author: Leia Stone
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Fiction

What It’s About: Logan, Sloane and the pack go to the land owned by Isaac and Sloane shares a house with Nadine as sharing one with Logan feels a bit too premature. She also tells Eva what Isaac had said about there being other Skyborn, so Eva makes the decision that after she heals the pack, she will leave them in search for these Skyborn. She feels obligated to do this to make it up to Logan for telling him that he was the only Skyborn left alive.

Sloane begins to train with Isaac in druid magic, and with Sophie to run and fight. The pack had buried Cooper and all of them got tattoos in Cooper’s honor. Isaac teaches her that she needs to go barefoot to connect with Mother Nature in order to be able to use her druid powers, and tells her that they will need to get her a staff like his because his don’t work for her magic. The purpose of the staff is to help her ground her magic back to earth. He has an idea to find the elf that made his wands–it was actually two brother elves that worked together but Yalash is dead, so they would have to find the brother.

Nadine reveals to Sloane that she has a thing for Gear and she wonders if Gear has any interest in her, but because Keegan has a rule that no one in the pack may date each other or be together unless they are mates (which for every other, non-dragon shifter means that you choose to be with them for life). She cannot date him as a result of this rule to find out if they would be good together. Isaac does warn Sloane that if she uses her druid magic, she may do herself some damage especially without a grounding element.

To find Griddish, Yalash’s brother, they go to a pureblood bar. Dom, one of the pack members who turns into a lion, smells his old abusers. Before he had become a member of the pack, courtesy of Keegan and Cooper saving him, Dom was forced to fight in a supernatural fighting ring. He was barely alive by the time Cooper had saved him. Logan, Sloane, Dom and Isaac go into the fighting ring, and break it apart. Sloan wants to save the dog, which they do, but Dom is also hurt and not healing. Isaac takes the lion and runs into the woods with him, while Logan and Sloane follow. He finds a tree, and uses its life force to heal Dom, teaching Sloane how to do that as well.

After healing Dom, they head over to the elf’s house and the conversation doesn’t go well with Griddish as he is hesitant to help because he might be killed by the druids. He had been making knives for the druids that they use against the Skyborn. Isaac gives Griddish until the following day to change his mind, and that night while they camp out in Isaac’s bus, Logan shows Sloane a picture of Marcus. She recognizes him as the same man from the picture that her mom had shown her of her dad when she was a young girl. The following morning, the pack finds their bus levitating into Griddish’s back yard. Griddish agrees to make the earth wand for Sloane and begins to ask Sloane a series of questions to determine the wood and the style. He agrees to also stop helping the druids in exchange for Sloane’s $100K as he was doing this to survive.

Griddish’s questions and the trees reveal the answer to what Sloane is–a fire druid. Isaac explains that there used to be four types–earth, water, wind and fire druids, with fire druids being the rarest. Druids essentially harness energy from their elemental type, with wind druids being some of the most powerful. Fire druid magic, however, is some of the mightiest because their magic is born of the core of Mother Earth. With proper training, a fire druid could eviscerate Ardan, a wind druid.

Griddish promises to get the wand done in four days and they agree to come back then. On their way back to Isaac’s land, Sloane laments that her mom died so she couldn’t get these answers from her. Isaac tells her his theory is that maybe her mom used up all of her magic to make Sloane appear human. Sloane later cries to Logan about how her mom did not tell her anything, and he asks her if her mom never left her a note. Sloane suddenly recalls a green address book that her mom had called her life’s work and told Sloane that she would have to continue it. What if that book also contained addresses of other Skyborn? Her mom had once said that the book is full of people like her and to find them. Logan gets upset because he should have believed Marcus about this druid being different, and Sloane laments not going to the people in the address book. Logan tells her that he will have Gear find the car, which most likely was impounded by now from the club in San Clemente.

Sophie and Rueben created an obstacle course for Sloane that she begins to train on. Sloane then finds out from Nadine that Logan and Keegan were talking about her heat, with Keegan tracking it all on an app. Nadine gives her a key and it turns out that Keegan got it from Isaac because he thinks if Sloane is alone, she will not shift. Sloane catches Keegan and Logan in front of the house, and sends Keegan off. Then she and Logan end up mating in the house.

Danny and Keegan have an argument after her training one day, and Danny tells her that he had fallen in love with Keegan but that he had started to act shady–picking up calls at night, disappearing for days on an end without reason and not explaining anything to Danny. They are interrupted by Gear and Eva suddenly arriving in Sloane’s car. It turns out that Eva had gone to someone to get a magical artifact in exchange for her bar and client list. The bar was burned in the meantime, and the guy is now coming after her. Eva also reveals that Ardan has been initiating the hunters (normally harmless) into druids and they are going out in packs searching for Sloane specifically because they know that she’s a fire druid. Eva also mentions that Griddish is dead.

Eva then shows Isaac and Sloane what happened to Griddish through the Eye, an artifact that shows the past. Isaac tells them that Griddish is not dead–he teleported, because if he was dead, his clothes and the staff would have been left behind. They need to go back to the house and look at the piece of paper that Griddish had left behind in the middle of the fight. Sure enough, Griddish had left them a location–a tree in Louisiana. En route to Griddish’s house, Eva asks a question that reminds Sloane about the book. She finds it in her car and it has addresses as well as numbers, which Sloane thinks are the numbers of the Skyborn at that address. Sloane also realizes that Logan has abandonment issues when he accuses Eva of disappearing. Before they can leave Griddish’s house, they are attacked by Druids and Isaac tells her not to use her magic as it is dangerously unanchored. Sloane gets ambushed by Steven and uses her magic, killing Steven, but then she’s unable to stop her magic from flowing out, and Logan has to knock her out.

Sloane wakes up in the bus, and Isaac tells her that she can no longer afford to go without a staff. She asks how her mom went without one, and Isaac mentions an amulet, which reminds Sloane of this large, red ruby necklace that her mom had carried and never sold even when they could not afford to keep it. Sloane had buried her mom with the amulet. In order to heal with the massive use of power, Sloane has to keep her feet in pots of soil, but she also gives up eating meat since Isaac tells her that it brings down her energy and reminds her that her mom did not eat meat. Sloane tells the group about the book, and Isaac agrees that they will get the staff and then check out the nearest address.

They make it to the Seven Sisters tree, one of the oldest trees in the US, and they find Griddish. He gives her the staff, chasing away the last of her headaches. With his last breaths he tells her that he knew her mom–she was his Queen’s battle druid–and then he dies. Eva doesn’t know who this battle druid could be, but Isaac calls her Racine McCallister, a legend, and tells Sloane that she probably changed her name. He tells her what he knows of Faery and of Racine, who could command lava as if she were a living Volcano, set things on fire from miles away and lay waste to entire civilizations. Racine McCallister was the queen’s last line of defense against the rebel druids and was thought to have perished with the Queen. Once they are back on the bus, Eva uses The Eye to show Sloane her mom in Faery. Turns out that Racine had helped the queen create the Skyborn.

The group makes their way to the nearest address and they encounter a family of three with a little one on the way. They are indeed Skyborn and Sloane’s mom had given them amulets that suppressed their dragons. The lady tells her that the amulets began to fizzle out of power a while ago and that is how she came into heat, which resulted in the pregnancy. Turns out Lily (Racine and Sloane’s mom) had kept in touch with them so they knew who Sloane is, but they were getting worried about what to do with a baby that is coming due in two weeks and one that will want to shift. Knowing that her mom gave up her life to save others makes Sloane emotional, but she knows that she has to do what her mom would have wanted: protect them.

Logan convinces the family to move onto the ranch with them and they all pile into the bus. Sloane reminds the group that there are many more Skyborn and Keegan states that they will need to hire way more shifters. Sophie and Keegan separate from the group to find more shifters to protect them, and plan to meet them back at Isaac’s land in California.

When the group returns, they reconfigure the housing situation, and Logan and Sloane move in together. At this point, she starts training even more, and Isaac tells her that her mother most likely made Sloane human to protect the dragon, the one remaining piece of Sloane’s Father that she had left, from being consumed by Sloane’s druid side. He promises her that they will try to figure out a way to keep the dragon side, but the worst case scenario is that the Druid side of Sloane will consume the dragon, thereby killing it and taking the mate bond with it.

A week later, Sloane had told Logan the truth about her dragon and they had called everyone in her mother’s book–50% of the numbers worked and only after Sloane showed her face, did many of the Skyborn believe her and agreed to move onto Isaac’s land. In the meantime, Isaac has Sloane try to light a leaf on fire with just her mind, and she’s not able to do it. On her way back to her house, she comes across Nadine, who tells her that She’s leaving the pack because Gear had rejected her. Nadine also tells her that Eva made a birthing plan–they will have the birth at a nearby rental house, and then put the baby in a pool of water with a spell to stop it from shifting.

Suddenly, the two of them are interrupted by a young girl who appears to be no older than fourteen, and she pulls a gun on them. The girl notices Sloane’s tattoo and raises her gun, but Nadine stops her. She thinks that it’s a trick until Logan tells her and shows her that he also is a Skyborn. It turns out that her mom was killed by druids the year prior and has trained her not to trust anyone but the lady with the same necklace. The girl has a fake ID and tells everyone that her mom is disabled and can’t leave the house, which is how she’s gotten away with it for so long. After introducing herself as Casey, she asks if she could stay for a bit, because she has no money. Logan responds that she can stay forever. Sloane asks how they will be able to afford this, and Logan tells her it will be very expensive and that he could give scales but they take years to grow out. Taking too many also means that his magic would be weakened.

Keegan comes with Sophie and a new pack of shifters. He introduces Dee, who is going to be the leader of the second pack, and they choose who goes where. Nadine asks to join Dee’s pack for personal reasons, and after a bit of a discussion, Keegan lets her go. Then Logan makes a plan–they drive two hours away from the land with Keegan, Sloane, Logan, Eva, Danny and Dominic–to protect the land from being found out. When Ardan killed the first dragon, and took their magic, he was able to manifest the gift of finding them whenever they shift and all the others linked to him have that same gift.

Sloane shifts, they rip the scales, and Logan gives a few of his own as well. Then they head out only to find Eva and Danny gone, and come face to face with the Sorcerer who sold Eva The Eye. They knock him out, Eva tells them that she wove a spell over him to make him sleep longer and they leave without the Eye. As they leave, they get a text from Sophie that Lynn is in labor. Logan goes from freaking out to joyous because of this. They make it to the mansion and Lynn manages to give birth without changing but the baby transforms into a dragon before Eva is able to get it to the pool. So they pivot to Plan B, which results in Sloane and Logan being split up so that they do not get killed for good. Keegan sends Sloane out with Rueben, and they speed through roads, when a tall druid appears in front of them. In the fight, Sloane loses her staff, as Ardan takes it from her, snapping it first and then burning it. He tells her that he cannot believe he almost killed her before he knew who her mom was. Before Sloane is able to fight back, he teleports her into a cage with metal bars, that looks to her a lot like Ireland.

As she relays this information to Logan, the tells her that he is coming for her.

My thoughts: I really loved the connection to Ireland at the end–something that I think I figured out in book one. While I did enjoy this story, I do wish that there was more information on Racine and Faery–we only get glimpses of the past, and it’s not enough to understand how the elves fit into this, and how Racine helped the queen form the Skyborn. Was it her ability to help form the Skyborn that also made it possible for her to have a child with one of the Skyborn, when in reality they’re always pureblood? I am curious and would love to know more about this, so I feel like this is not well explained or the context is not provided around how any of this is possible. I’m still entertained by the story and cannot wait to read the third book in the series next!