I am excited to be hosting the blog tour for The Prisoner of Paradise By Rob Samborn #HistoricalFiction #MagicalRealism #Thrillers @robsamborn @maryanneyarde

 

The Prisoner of Paradise 
(The Paradise Series, Book 1)
By Rob Samborn

The world’s largest oil painting. A 400-year-old murder. A disembodied whisper: “Amore mio.” My love.

Nick and Julia O’Connor’s dream trip to Venice collapses when a haunting voice reaches out to Nick from Tintoretto’s Paradise, a monumental depiction of Heaven. Convinced his delusions are the result of a concussion, Julia insists her husband see a doctor, though Nick is adamant the voice was real.

Blacking out in the museum, Nick flashes back to a life as a 16th century Venetian peasant swordsman. He recalls precisely who the voice belongs to: Isabella Scalfini, a married aristocrat he was tasked to seduce but with whom he instead found true love. A love stolen from them hundreds of years prior.

She implores Nick to liberate her from a powerful order of religious vigilantes who judge and sentence souls to the canvas for eternity. Releasing Isabella also means unleashing thousands of other imprisoned souls, all of which the order claims are evil.

As infatuation with a possible hallucination clouds his commitment to a present-day wife, Nick’s past self takes over. Wracked with guilt, he can no longer allow Isabella to remain tormented, despite the consequences. He must right an age-old wrong – destroy the painting and free his soul mate. But the order will eradicate anyone who threatens their ethereal prison and their control over Venice.

Trigger Warnings.
Violence, a rape scene, a torture scene.

A trip to Venice usually involves soaking in the culture, drinking coffee, and not wanting to go home. That is what Nick and Julia expect from their visit. What they don’t expect is for Nick to hear the soul of Isabella Scalfini talking to him from inside Tintoretto’s painting, Paradise.  Julia puts it down to her husband’s hockey accident and a potentially ongoing injury to his head. Nick, however, completely believes that Isabella is talking to him from inside the painting and that she is trapped there.

For the most part, this novel follows Nick and Julia, but there are also chapters that follow other people’s perspectives, most notably The Order, a religious group responsible for imprisoning souls inside the Paradise. Nick has little to no knowledge about anything to do with Venice, whereas The Order is the opposite, and while Nick stumbles around, trying to figure out what is going on, The Order is in the background, watching and waiting. In a way, this makes you root for Nick even more, because he is the kind of person you want to come out victorious, and The Order is unlikable and kinda shady. 

There are a few chapters of this book that I particularly loved, and those were the ones where we travelled back to the 16th century to join Angelo Mascari, who knew Isabella before she became a work of art. Angelo is a talented swordsman, but being handy with a sword cannot necessarily help if you get yourself into difficult situations, such as he does. I would love a book just about Angelo’s adventures, and misadventures, because he seems like such an interesting character, and I lamented at how little he appears in this novel. 

This novel was certainly unputdownable and is very successful as a magical realism story. I would have liked to have spent a little more time in the 16th century, but that is just my personal preference for historical fiction. All in all, this is a good book, and I am looking forward to reading book 2 in the series. 

This novel is available at the following bookstores:

Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble

Rob Samborn

In addition to being a novelist, Rob Samborn is a screenwriter, entrepreneur and avid traveler. He’s been to forty countries, lived in five of them and studied nine languages. As a restless spirit who can’t remember the last time he was bored, Rob is on a quest to explore the intricacies of our world and try his hand at a multitude of crafts; he’s also an accomplished artist and musician, as well as a budding furniture maker. A native New Yorker who lived in Los Angeles for twenty years, he now makes his home in Denver with his wife, daughter and dog. 

Social Media Links:

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