Raef Eisman is a capitalist powerhouse who also is well over 100 years old, although he doesn't look it. He has no memory of his youth, he only knows that every generation, he must reinvent himself and pass himself off as one of his younger male relatives, as new blood to run his powerful company. It's a strange way to live, but Raef has grown accustomed to it. His closest confidant is William Hills, his right hand man, but even Hills doesn't know all of Raef's secrets.
When Raef's young daughter, Paige, disappears along with a handful of other passengers during a mid-oceanic flight, the wealthy businessman spends a fortune trying to locate the girl, to no avail. As the years go by and he continues his hunt, leaving his company for others to run, it seems hopeless. One day, during a terrible storm, Raef's car plunges into the Thames River and when he emerges, he has been transformed into a 14-year-old boy with no memory whatsoever. He is taken in by a group of teens known as the Longcoats, whose sole goal is to protect the unsuspecting human race from rips in the multi-dimensional seams that allow horrifying beasties of all shapes and sizes to infiltrate the clueless populace at large. They deem the new boy "Eastwood" and so his journey begins.
It soon becomes clear that there are much larger forces at work. The Cassandra Foundation financially backs the Longcoats and the group is spread all over the world and beyond. The Cassandra Foundation is interconnected with a group of seemingly ageless ethereal beings known as the Fae'er and overseeing it all are The Builders, who lay in wait each Age to decide if the human race has proven itself worthy of existence. So far, we've failed throughout eternity and the next benchmark coincides with December 2012.
The Fae'er and consequently, the Longcoats, find themselves searching for some long buried artifacts needed to preserve humanity, but they aren't the only ones looking. An organization called GRID, led by General Ari Kriegmacher, who is secretly working with a demon named Warujja, is also on the hunt for these items and both teams have no problem exercising deadly force.
The London Longcoats are a charming bunch and include leader Monarch, brawny Russian Hummer, his boyish Aussie girlfriend Tucker, Vector, Lion and Castle, all young men from London, and Jax, a French girl. Eastwood finds a kindred soul in Jax, although the girl is still quite bristly. As the group unites with other Longcoats from across the globe in order to beat the GRID agents in finding the missing components of the royal scepter, it will take all of their strength, willpower, and courage if they are going to survive, much less retrieve the artifacts.
That is the short and skinny of Endworlds. There is far, far more to it, but revealing any more would take away the surprises that lay in wait for the reader. Keep in mind that I have condensed three e-books worth of content into one review, so there is a lot to digest with this series and it is far from over. At the end of Endworlds: 1.3, Endwords 2 is teased and since you are left hanging as to where the rest of the artifacts lie, along with an open-ended storyline about Raef's missing daughter, Paige, there is definitely more to come.
Do be advised that this book is not for the science-challenged. Endworlds boldly waves its science nerd flag high. So if you don't like physics, could care less about fabricated vicious creatures that can get captured in a trenchcoat designed to not only house them for years at a time, but also turn the wearer invisible at any point, and don't want to read about demons (or should I say Daemons), magical people who don't age unless they leave their community, and the coming destruction of Earth, then Endworlds definitely isn't for you. There's some heady science stuff contained therein, so unless you really dig sci-fi, you may get lost or bored slogging through the science stuff. What's here is entertaining for the sci-fi crowd, however, but it is best taken in smaller portions, as it was designed. I just happened to read all three back to back and it was a bit much to digest.
