Julian Rosado-Machain

Guardians Incorporated is a mysterious multinational company that has a substantial stake in almost every area of society. To the general public, the company's mission statement is relatively innocuous. However, in reality, Guardians Inc. is the oldest of secret societies, one that spans close to seven thousand years of existence, weaving in and out of history, guiding and protecting humanity from creatures and forces that most of us believe exist only in mythology and fairy tales.

Thomas show more Byrne is just your average fifteen-almost-sixteen-year-old teenager. Newly arrived to Carlsbad, California eight months after his parents disappeared while on a cruise, he is now living with his grandfather while going to high school. For the most part, Thomas does well in school - for the new kid, the routine is pretty simple: do your work, stay out of trouble, and whatever you do, don't cross the radar of Vice Principal Khanna - code name: Killjoy.

Thomas Byrne is a young man suddenly thrust into a secret world he shouldn't be aware of, facing dangers of which he should not have any knowledge. But, he ultimately will face such dangers, for he is a Cypher. The only one who can steer humanity's future into the light.

The ultimate conspiracy theory is that Magic is real. Oh, it's kept in check by technology, that's true, but every five hundred years the balance can shift and, if it does, technology will ultimately fail and all those creatures we've driven into the realms of myth will come back with a vengeance. In order to protect the present, Guardians Incorporated must know what lies in the future.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I was quickly caught up in the story, and found the characters extremely likeable and sympathetic. I would give this first book of the Guardians Inc. Series a definite A+! It was certainly an excellent start to this series, and I can't wait to find out where the story goes next. show less

Guardians Inc: The Cypher
By Julian Rosado-Machain
Published by TrueBA Interactive ISBN9781450748582
This book was supplied to me by the publisher on condition that I present a true and honest review for it.

Guardians Inc.: The Cypher - A Book Review

When I came to the end of Guardians Inc.: The Cypher, I felt exactly the same way I felt when I came to the end of the first part of The Gulag Archipelago. I felt a bit stunned, almost poleaxed. Where's the rest of it? I had been turning pages as show more fast as I could read, trying to get to the end of the story, and suddenly (to mix my metaphors badly) I twisted my ankle because the staircase stopped when I was still going down it. In both cases, I was immediately informed. The rest of Gulag hadn't been translated yet. This story continues in Guardians Inc.: Thundersword.

Gee, thanks. When can I get my hands on it?

That is not to say that The Cypher is of the same literary quality as Gulag. It isn't. It's a YA fantasy, of the kind that has today's world interacting with magic. It isn't quite heroic fantasy; it isn't quite urban fantasy. It is something different from either, but it partakes of both. The similarity to Gulag lies in the fact that it grabs the reader on page 1 and doesn't let go.

It is initially set in Carlsbad, California, which was a small town when I lived nearby fifty years ago. I gather from the book that it is now quite a city. Thomas Byrne, 15, lives there with his grandfather Morgan Byrne, since his parents, and the cruise ship they were on, totally vanished some six months earlier. His parents' insurance won't pay off because there is no proof his parents are dead, so his grandfather, at 72, is trying to find a job so that Thomas can go to college.

Thomas is an intelligent though not overly studious youth. He is a red belt in tae kwon do, only one step below black belt, and when three juniors ganged up on him, the juniors wound up in the principal's office somewhat the worse for wear, while Thomas wound up in the office of the assistant principal, who actually runs the school and who telephones his grandfather. As the book opens Thomas is sitting in the outer office waiting miserably to find out what his punishment is going to be, when he hears his grandfather and the assistant principal, Miss Khanna, better known among the students as Killjoy, laughing behind the closed door.

For appearance's sake, and to keep Thomas from getting in more trouble with more students, he is suspended for a week, but is privately told that the suspension won't go on his school record. The three bullies, who will not be allowed to play in the championship football game that weekend, are in considerably more trouble.

Before the end of the first day of his suspension, both Thomas and Morgan are employed by an international corporation which is not what it seems. No matter where you want to go, you can go out one of doors of the building and get there. Wherever you are, if you want to enter the building, you go two and a half blocks to your left and there it is. Morgan is hired to oversee a financial department of the corporation; Thomas is hired as an assistant librarian. Every book that has been written, even if it exists nowhere else in the world, in the last 1700 years is in the library, which he doesn't have access to from his work station. But that's all right, because the books are automatically delivered to his desk when someone asks for them. When the library is quiet, he is allowed to do his homework using the books and computer assigned to him, but other than that, he may make no personal use of any of the books, even those by his favorite authors and believed to be lost, and he may make no personal use of the computer.

Within the next month, Thomas's grandfather is abducted, his house is burned, and Thomas goes to ground in the corporation headquarters, with a robot (actually more like an android) butler looking after him. He is to be homeschooled, and he acquires an extensive bodyguard including an elf princess who looks seventeen but is about 3000 years old and who guards him with magic.
He soon learns that there are far more magical creatures than he ever suspected, and all of them want him. Why? Because he, and his grandfather, are human Cyphers. They can read any language ever written and translate it into English, though this does not extend to understanding the spoken language.

Every five hundred years, a supernatural being comes to earth and writes the history of the next 500 years. That allows the defenders of order to protect the world from the orders of chaos. But twice the book was not found--only a Cypher can find it--and each time, bad things ensued. Now it is late. The last version's last prediction was for 1905. The result has been a series of wars, natural disasters, famines, and other problems the defenders of order could have predicted. By abducting Morgan, the forces of chaos have acquired their own Cypher to look for, and translate, the book, and they have managed to convince Morgan that they are the right side. But having their own Cypher does not mean they will necessarily reach the book first, because Thomas is a Cypher belonging to the forces of order. They want to kill him.

To go farther would be to risk creating a spoiler. So I will say only this: If you want to read a strong page-turner, it doesn't matter whether you are in the intended YA audience. I am 69. And I hope I live long enough to finish reading the trilogy this appears to be the beginning of.

Anne Wingate
Author of Scene of the Crime and other works of fiction and nonfiction show less

I *love* the world here, and I'm loathe to say much more about it lest I spoil the discovery for someone else. Adventure, strange magics, unusual creatures, a special library, and a teenaged boy and his grandfather at the centre of it all. The characters don't feel fully fleshed out yet, but I have faith that they'll grow to be as deep as the world and its history and magic apparently are.

My one complaint is that although the author had me believing in animated grotesques and magical show more libraries, I utterly didn't believe the "romance" and I was so skeptical that I found it distracting and was kind of hoping for some variant of an "it was all a dream" explanation. Surely if you can make robots and centaurs seem reasonable, it can't be that hard to portray a teenager's crush?

That complaint aside, I really enjoyed this and am looking forwards to future stories! show less

This is one of those books that I wish I had discovered on my own-it entailed the kind of magical, and technological, wonderment that stayed with me long, long after the last page. The concept was so well thought out, and quite original. The description does NOT do it enough justice-this book was pretty darn great.

Right from the first chapter, as we are so lovingly introduced to Vice-Principal Khanna (a.k.a Killjoy), I was nostalgically blasted with the excitement and awe that I felt when show more reading Lois Sacher's Wayside series-a tinge of anxious, and confused joy. I already knew that I was in for something that would be way over my head, in a very good way.

I won't waste any time in getting to the part of the story that I wished went on for MANY chapters. I could have easily read an entire story on this one aspect alone: The Guardian Inc. Library. OH..MY...GOD. The description of this mastery had me DROOLING, literally..I swear! Picture a library that holds EVERY single book dated after the year 269. EVERY..BOOK. Even books that were deemed rare, obscure, burned, NONEXISTENT. In both print AND electronic copies I might add. I thought the concept was beautifully thought out, and couldn't help but completely forget about the storyline for a second, and lose myself within my head-walking the aisles, climbing the bookshelves, touching and smelling books..*happy sigh*.

Thomas, for me, was initially a very wishy-washy character. His attitude and demeanor were just a bit too nonchalant. The same was felt about his grandfather, Morgan Bryne. I just didn't feel the emotion that should have been pulsing between them, considering certain circumstances. However, as the story progressed, I began to really admire Thomas and his "talents." Both Thomas and his grandfather took interesting turns in development as the core story began to play out. Bolswaithe, the robot butler, takes home the title for most adored character-I always enjoy the enjoyably dull, unintentional humor of robots in both movies AND print, but none were as admirable as he.

The world-building in this story is fantastic, so much so that sometimes the narrative suffered, but only a smidgen. I was taken for a imaginative AND realistic ride, in which I found myself thinking that some of the back stories could very well be happening/have happened in our very own existence. I was intrigued, and inspired and flat-out entertained.

I definitely recommend this book for fans of Harry Potter, or those who find happiness in books that mix magic with technology, and fantastical with believable. Yeah, make sense of THAT. Check this one out! show less