This omnibus edition of The Replacement Chronicles contains Raven’s Choice, Journeys of Choice, and Choices that Cut.

Two Lives… separated by millennia but nevertheless linked irrevocably.

What possible link could Mark Hayek, an introverted twenty-first century research scientist, have to Raven, a young healer who lived during the late Pleistocene? It has everything to do with an injured Neanderthal man taken captive by Raven’s band while he and his brothers were hunting bison.

After Raven heals the captive, he leaves for his tribe, and she tries to forget him as she struggles to remain within the band. But it’s not possible to stay when several band members make her life with the group untenable. Seeking the Neanderthal man she’d helped and facing her fear of being alone on the dangerous steppes, she begins crossing that grassy land—but a woman like Raven isn’t destined to be by herself for long.

In the future, Mark Hayek is forced into making his own journey when his uncle dies in the Levant. His travels place him firmly in the footsteps of his Neanderthal and Early Modern Human ancestors, crossing the same ancient lands as he struggles against the fate a wayward kinsman has imposed. He’s been made a pawn in a cruel game, but when he encounters a woman being held prisoner in a cave, he seeks a way to save her. Help arrives for the pair, flowing from an unexpected, ancient source, igniting a struggle deep within Mark to accept that the illogical as well as the logical make up existence.

Peoples come and go, one group replacing another over time, and echoes from ancient events have always affected the future, but Mark and Raven discover that in certain environments echoes are able to bounce back and forth, blurring their origins.

A time-hopping tale that should appeal to readers with an interest in the prehistoric period… This debut omnibus unites all three installments of a story that connects a pregnant woman in the Pleistocene era with her modern-day descendant, a researcher who gets entangled in a terrorist plot. The differences between early humans and the Neanderthal Longheads should fascinate readers (At one point, Raven observes: “Stories she heard about the Longheads hadn’t prepared her to expect that the forms below would look so much like actual men. Their bodies were broader, and something was off about their arms and legs”). And the prehistoric world, filled with bison, hyenas, wolves, and two-legged predators, is portrayed in all its harsh, hostile glory. – Kirkus Reviews

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