Lightning Rider by Jen Greyson

Evy Rivera is one tough cookie, she has to be as she works in the world of Custom Bikes and some of her clients are a little on the unsavoury side.  Her motorbike is her pride and joy and the feeling that pushing the boundaries on it gives her exhilarates like nothing else can.  The only downside is Lightning, as it cracks and fires across the sky it rips her apart inside and she has begun to dread the regular storms.  With terrible taste in men and a loving Latina family Evy is just a regular woman trying to make her way in life.  Until she gets trapped in the mountains during a storm and suddenly, she isn't in the mountains any more.

Wonderful pacing helps to bring the tale alive here.  The only character we really get a handle on is Evy; everyone else if a little flat and only manages to break in to two dimensions (at best).  This isn't too much of a detriment to the tale as it is purely and simply about Evy and her first alteration as a true lightning rider.  Menace comes in bucket loads in this book - not just from the unfamiliar setting of Ancient Spain and her sudden appearance in a Roman Military Camp but also from Ilif (a man very much with his own agenda).

The setting is well constructed and Ancient Spain really does just feel a heartbeat away, tucked behind a fold in time that we could reach if only we could manipulate the lightning/  I did find the relationship between Evy and Constantine a touch overwrought and couldn't really get behind the romance of it.  The descriptions of the Roman Camp were evocative and you could almost hear the clash of practising swordsmen and the debate of tactics.  I also liked that camp followers were mentioned, however there would have been substantially more than one armouress with them.

A well balanced book that sets the tone for the series very nicely.  Strong time travelling fantasy that takes you back to an ancient world we know so much and yet so little about.