Phantom Hearts Part 1: Bound by Chris Michaels and Reema Farra

Title: Phantom Hearts Part 1: Bound 
Author: Chris Michaels and Reema Farra 
Type: Young Adult Novel in 4 Parts
Genre: Steampunk fantasy
Series: Yes, four parts 
Pages: 107
Copyright: 2012 
Publisher: Darke Media Group 
Rating: 3 out of 5


Reviewer's copy provided by the author.

Summary: from Amazon

“Jason?” Her legs gave way.

There was no denying it anymore. No telling herself someone else had been shot down.

“Jason, you promised.” Her voice cracked. “You said forever.”


Airships, tanks and clockwork automatons chew through the Ilsa, threatening the balance between science and sorcery. Takers of the Dead clear more and more bodies. The Grey Wolves hunt anyone using Majick.

Hannah doesn’t care about anything besides Jason, her forbidden lover. Though she is a slave, and he an Ilsan noble, they meet at night and dream of the time they can run away together. Then the news comes. Hannah refuses to believe it. When she sneaks into his funeral, Hannah is unknowingly plunged into whirlwind of black-market majick and rogue spies. Then she meets Travis, a stranger with dark secrets, who promises to lead her to a secret cult of necromancers where she can bring Jason back.

In this steampunk-fantasy told in pictures and words, Hannah Blue will follow Travis anywhere, do anything, pay any price to find the outlawed majick to be with Jason again.

Feelings:
This is the first book published by Darke Media Group. I think they have some bold ideas and are definitely worth watching. Whether they do well or not will, in my opinion, depend on the quality of work they create. Phantom Hearts Part 1: Bound is a good start but I'm not sure it is good enough to create the kind of hype they need.

Phantom Hearts Part 1: Bound is marketed as an interactive book and to a certain extent it is. I was expecting something a little like a graphic novel when I first read about it. However, it wasn't like that at all. The interactive aspect is where I think the book was weakest. I should note that this is not a book you take to read someplace you don't have Internet because you need Internet for the interactive part of the book.

Phantom Hearts is a young adult (ya) fantasy told in pictures and words with special bonus features. When you purchase the ebook parts 1-4 or the full length novel called the special edition, you'll find bonus codes scattered throughout the story. These codes take you to things like secret majick lessons, extra chapters and a hidden codex. (Phantom Hearts' website)

From this description I would expect short videos, images and many other things. There was one video and to me it wasn't all that exciting. The majick lesson looked like an image that was filmed and zoomed in and out of while someone talked. I know they are working on a tight budget but I expected more videos than just the one but maybe Parts 2-4 will have more. There was an added short story about one of the characters which switched the point of view to first person which was a little hard to get used to after reading the rest in third person. Most of the additional media was a history of the world and important figures where the story is set. I did find this interesting, but the editing of the additional media was not as strong as for book itself.

Phantom Hearts Part 1: Bound could have easily stood on its own without all the additional interactive parts of the story. Some of the history might need to be incorporated into the story but then it could stand alone. This is not to say that I think it should be a stand alone book. The interactive part is what makes Darke Media Group an interesting new idea. I just think that part needs to be strengthened. There were not as many images in the book as I expected. I expected from the beginning of the book that the text would have have small images included on almost every page. This was not the case. After the opening there were a few whole page images but not any small images in the text. It would have benefited from having more small images as well as whole page images.

The story itself was enjoyable to read and followed three very different characters:

1. Hannah Blue is a slave and a Taker of the Dead, she sorts the dead and wounded on the battlefield.
2. Jason Everette is the son of a general and is from an important family in Isla. He is rebellious and does not want to continue the family traditions in government.
3. Marrissa Cabbot is part of the elite arm of the Republican Guard, the Grey Wolves. She is a hunter of those that use majick. Cabbot lets nothing stand in her way as a soldier.

These three characters have a slight connection but not as much as I would have expected having it switch between their perspectives. I was willing to let that go as in the next parts I expect the connection to be developed.

The story is the strongest part of Phantom Hearts Part 1: Bound. The story is incomplete though so it waits to be seen as to whether or not it maintains its strength. I enjoyed reading this story. I think that it has potential to be a new form of media for story lovers. For those interested in reading this I would recommend waiting until the other parts are released. I have been told by the authors that this should be by the end of the year or early next year. I for one really don't like being stopped in the middle of a story.

I have rated this 3 out of 5 because I thought that the interactive parts were weak. I also found the whole page images to be not as bright as the images the story created. While I found them fun, I think they could have added more to the story. The small drawings seemed stronger than the whole page images and yet there were not any after the title pages. I did enjoy the story itself and would recommend this to readers for the story.