Expedition: Into the Rift

By: John B Hammond

Narrated by: Kim Churchill

When Alex left the Air Force, she thought her days of adventure were behind her. But when the United Nations offers her a mysterious assignment, she can't resist. Tasked with leading the first team through a portal to another world, Alex must grapple with the concept of being a leader. But the other side isn't at all what Alex expected, instead she finds a classical fantasy landscape littered with the myths of Earth's past. While they start out as secretive observers, the team's mission is soon jeopardized, and Alex is quickly thrust into the middle of the power struggle of a corrupt kingdom.

©2024 John B Hammond Author (P)2026 John B Hammond Author

A Fantastic Expedition!

Great dialogue- intriguing characters- loved the adventure and the plot. The story kept me interested and engaged the entire book. John is a fantastic writer! I can’t wait for the next one!

Excited for book 2 in this series!

Original, fascinating story & characters. Held my attention throughout. The narrator also does a great job!

Good read with room for growth

I thought this was a good book. It had a fun premise and I felt like the pacing was done pretty well. It’s also a very short read so I think it’s worth the time spent reading.

This was the author’s first book and there’s definitely room for improvement. I felt like there wasn’t enough exposition at the beginning. The main character Alex gets a job as the leader of a top secret mission for… reasons? I have no idea why she was chosen or why people thought she was qualified. We get a hint of her backstory in the beginning of the book, but barely anything and not enough to explain her presence in this situation. She also is the last one to arrive, seems to have been a week late, and that is also not explained. Everyone else on her team seems to have gotten a week to prepare for the mission, but they leave as soon as she gets there. There didn’t seem to be any sense of urgency for why the leader of an international military top secret operation needs to leave for the mission immediately without any debriefing or preparation. It just happens. I think we could’ve used either some explication or some time with her team preparing for the mission so that we could’ve used either get to know Alex, get to know the team members, and maybe understand a little better why each of them was there. We know little more than that Alex is two years retired from the air force. Why was she specifically so important they needed to pull her out of retirement or even had her on their radar of someone to ask to lead their mission? Why did they need someone from the air force when the initial purpose of the mission didn’t involve any flying? Hopefully he will dive more into it in the next book? Maybe the moment has passed and we just won’t get any answers. It just doesn’t make sense why she’s even there in the first place. And for everyone being from the military, no one really felt like they were from the military.
Then I felt like there was a lot of telling rather than showing. I was told people have certain personality traits or qualities rather than seeing the characters exhibit those traits.
Basically, I feel like the book could’ve benefited from being a little longer to help us get to know the characters better and understand why it makes sense for the characters to have been recruited to this mission.

There is room for growth, but I had a good time reading it and I’m interested in picking up the next book and seeing how the author grows as a writer.