Take Me, I’m Yours / Donna Fasano

Reviewed by: ?wazithinkin

Genre: Romance

Approximate word count: 50-55,00 words 

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: NO  Paper: NO

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Author:

Donna Fasano, also known as Donna Clayton, has written over thirty published novels with sales in excess of 3.6 million copies. Many of these novels have gone out-of-print with the rights reverting to Fasano. She is giving them a facelift and republishing them for your favorite eReader.

Donna Fasano is a three time winner of the HOLT Medallion, a CataRomance Reviewers Choice Award winner for Best Single Title, a Desert Rose Golden Quill Award finalist, and a Golden Heart finalist. Her books have been published in nearly two dozen languages.

Fasano has two grown sons and lives with her husband on the eastern seaboard of the United States. For more, visit her blog.

Description:

Lainey Adams rescues four year old Abbie Mitchell from a kidnapping attempt. As a reward, Abbie’s wealthy grandfather, Alfred Mitchell, wants to make Lainey’s dream of a large day care center come true. Abbie’s father, sexy single-dad Derek Mitchell, has learned the hard way to never trust a beautiful woman.  Derek is a smart businessman who has become a workaholic and Alfred throws Lainey right in his path, hoping to teach Derek what is most important in his life.   

Appraisal:

Ms. Fasano has a talent for telling stories, and I swear she uses magic. This story hits the ground running with a kidnapping attempt on the beach of a four year-old girl who has gotten away from her grandfather. This author has a way to capture her characters and make them real people and puts them into situations they must work through, and she does it in a totally believable way. Lainey is a smart woman and stays true to her character no matter what it costs. Regardless of what happens, she keeps her integrity.

Derek is taken with Lainey, but because of his pride he has some issues to work through. He has a hard edge because of his history with Abbie’s mother, and the tension was almost unbearable for me. He is a smart man and has a big heart, but I was afraid the odds were too big to get past all of his issues. I was on an emotional rollercoaster. Perhaps I am just a little emotionally vulnerable right now, but I was so afraid I was not going to get my Happily Ever After in this story.

One huge risk the author took in this story was Victor.  He was a peripheral character that played a big part and all we know about him is what is conveyed to Lainey through another character. Although that other character has a shady history, Lainey trusted her and I think this is where my anxiety was the worst. I don’t think it would have lessened my anxiety of the situation if Victor had been more fully developed though.     

One of the delights in this story are the kids, Lainey’s son, Brian, and Derek’s daughter, Abbie, were perfectly written.  I love the way they interacted with the adults in this story.  How the author conveys the interactions of her characters through their actions and dialogue is plain magic. Donna Fasano has yet to disappoint me; this is an intelligent heartwarming story.   

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant errors

Rating: **** Four stars

Rock Star’s Rainbow / Kevin Glavin

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Literary Fiction/Satire

Approximate word count: 145-150,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES

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Author:

“Kevin Glavin's ancestors hail from the Emerald Isle; his surname can be traced back to the Gaelic Gláimhin, meaning "satirist." When Kevin found out the nature of his origins, he decided to make his ancestors proud by taking up the family craft. But it was a dark and stormy road. After receiving his BA in English and MAT in English Education from the University of Iowa, he sashayed like his forefathers--westward. Kevin has taught for some thirteen years, mostly in Claremont, California. In 2008, Kevin got married; he and his beloved wife Brenda have settled just a little farther west--in Orange County--with their dog Ciao, a chow chow/ golden retriever mix adopted after a trip to Italy. In 2009, Kevin formed his own publishing company to learn the entire art of bringing a work to market, in print and digitally, and to maintain creative freedom. In late December of 2009, his celebrity satire, Rock Star's Rainbow, was finally published. Many other fun and exciting projects are currently in the works.”

Description:

“In August 2009, a renowned entertainment reporter was thrown out of a plane over Los Angeles. At the time of his unfortunate death, he was working on a manuscript detailing the strange personal life of one of the most secretive celebrities of our time––Rook. Luckily, this work-in-progress was rescued, although the details surrounding the case remain obscure. Now, assembled here, is that most sought after exposé of the infamous rock star, searching for his lost innocence. Come along and join the quixotic adventure, as it journeys from LA, to Amsterdam, to India, and back. Along the way, Rook struggles with celebrity excess, reignites with his old flame, gets mixed up with the mafia, and must rescue the daughter he never knew he had. From the heights of hedonism, to the depths of despair, this topical parody explores that beast called fame.”

Appraisal:

Even with books I don’t like and think are poorly done, I’m usually able to understand or catch a glimmer of what the author was going for. Rock Star’s Rainbow was no exception. Its satire of fame and the excesses of the rock-star life is a story worth telling. However, the execution of the story fell well short, at least in the eyes of this reader.

The biggest issue was the decision to use an omniscient point of view. Although many teachers may try to dissuade their students from using this point of view, it is a legitimate choice used by some classics of literature. The advantage is that  the narrator knows and sees all, so he, she, or it can tell all, which means the reader should never miss anything important. The disadvantage is that readers like to fill in the gaps (which helps make a story more personal) and figuring things out is one of the joys of reading fiction.

However, my issues weren’t with the generic (although legitimate) complaints with using this point of view, but with the implementation of it in this specific book. My concerns were that the point of view was inconsistent, constantly hopping from head to head and to the observer on high, leaving the reader more disoriented than enlightened. One of the worst instances I saw of this was a case of jumping from the head of one character to another and then back, with the original character then knowing what the other character had been thinking. Even if the narrator, and by extension the reader, knows what everyone is thinking, the characters can’t.

Although my issue with point of view was a persistent and constant irritation, I had several other, more minor problems. One was the occasional continuity error;  in one sentence, the protagonist Rook was on his balcony and the next sentence leaning into the pool to retrieve a soggy cigarette butt, just thrown from the balcony, as if he was magically transported poolside. Or descriptions of the physically impossible (sucking an ice cube with a tongue). Not to mention the narrator who had to show off how great he was at being all knowing, by telling us things we didn’t need to know. An example is when Rook wondered what another character was “doing right this instant,” and then the narrator answered in a parenthetical for the reader, just in case we were wondering too, that “she was just waking up, drinking instant coffee, and thinking about Boudicca.” There were times it seemed like the author was using archaic, obscure or, what seemed like made-up words, not because they were better word choices, but what appeared to be a trying-too-hard attempt to be literary.

According to the description, this book is a “pastiche,” a work that imitates  another, in this instance several classics of literature including Don Quixote and Ulysses. For those who get the imitations (possibly that omniscient point of view was part of that), I’m sure they’re great. However, the story still has to work, or you’re left with nothing except literary masturbation, which is great for the author and voyeuristic literature buffs, but does nothing for the majority of the reading world.

FYI:

Some adult situations.

Format/Typo Issues:

Extensive proofreading and copy editing issues.

Rating: * One star

The Liar’s Guide to South America / Michael Delwiche

Reviewed by: Pete Barber

Genre: Travel/Humor

Approximate word count: 60,000-65,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: NO  Paper: NO

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Author:

Michael Delwiche is a screenwriter living in the UK. The Liar’s Guide to South America is his first novel. He has a second novel (Wait Until The Robots) due out later this year.

Description:

Andrew Mozart is twenty years old, naïve, shy, financially self-sufficient (thanks to a life insurance policy that paid out when his father died) and in love with Sarah, a work colleague. When Sarah leaves for a trip to South America before Andrew has declared his love, he elects to follow her. The book recounts his journey.

Appraisal:

After Sarah has left on her trip, Andrew checks her computer terminal at work and finds her email program still open. He peeks at her inbox and her sent folder and finds out where she is staying. Then he flies to Brazil to try and meet her.

Such a simple premise, but what a great read.

I got through the story in three sittings—never wanted to put it down. Andrew’s naive attempts at backpacking and staying in hostels and trying to fit in among others far more travel savvy than himself makes for a fun journey. His trip was built on a deception, and the longer he continues to track Sarah, the more wrapped up he becomes in the web of lies he has to spin.

His travel decisions are based on what he believes he is understanding from Sarah’s emails (which he continues to look at as he tries to track her down) and as we know, emails don’t always mean what they appear to say. His lack of even a modicum of travel-wisdom (this is his first time away from home) has him making dumb decisions that lead him into one problem after another. But no matter how unlikely the characters he meets and the situations he gets himself into, it never seemed far-fetched to me, quite the opposite. At twenty, I’d probably have done much the same — a scary thought!

Some sections of the book are laugh-out-loud funny, and no matter that he’s a cheat and a liar, I defy you to not like Andrew—I found myself rooting for him throughout.

This gem of a story is what self-publishing is all about. It’s well written, well structured, clever, and wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of being picked up by a mainstream publisher.

I recommend you read it and see how Andrew sets off to South America to find Sarah, and, in the end, finds himself.

Format/Typo Issues:

English Spelling.

Rating: ***** Five stars

Eating Kimchi and Nodding Politely / Alex Clermont

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Memoir/Travel

Approximate word count: 20-25,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES

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Author:

“Alex Clermont is a writer born and raised in New York City. He has a BA in English creative writing from Hunter College and has been an English teacher for the past several years.

Alex has been a contributing writer to Beyond Race Magazine, covering and interviewing independent artists and musicians. He was also the managing editor of Plateau, a quarterly print magazine that focused on independent musicians.”

For more, visit Clermont’s website.

Description:

“Imagine leaving behind everybody and everything familiar to live in a foreign country where you don't speak the language and don't know a soul. Worse yet, you look different from everybody there. People find your cultural norms insulting, and you can't get a date to save your life.

Imagine you wrote a book about your time there...

Eating Kimchi and Nodding Politely is a collection of snapshots that cover the two years that Alex Clermont lived in the country of South Korea as an English teacher. Scribed with a flair for humor, emotion, character and depth, these introspective narratives do more than act as a travel guide. They are creatively written windows into the life of someone discovering new things about himself, the world, and the people who he shares it with-all while stuffing his mouth with kimchi.”

Appraisal:

A few lines from the introduction of Eating Kimchi … jumped out at me as getting to the heart of what the book is about. He described these pieces as “creative non-fiction based on the real things that were happening to me in my new, unusual, home” about “emotions and situations that are universal. Things like death, love, sex, friendship, and food are not confined to one country.”

Although a collection of essays, from very short to relatively long, that each stand alone and were not designed to have an overarching theme, they still form a coherent whole. Clermont didn’t arrange the essays in chronological order, but instead ordered them in a way that I thought made the flow better. Many wouldn’t consider this a travel book, yet it has many of the qualities that some travel books have: a foreign locale with insights contrasting the local culture to the author’s own, and an attempt by the author to better understand himself based on his reactions to his new environment. However, the author is more open and forthcoming about his personal struggles and how they relate to his experiences than the typical travel book, taking Eating Kimchi … more into the ground usually trod in a memoir. An excellent read, both for its insights into life in Korea and how it shines a light on the human condition in general.

FYI:

A small amount of adult language.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant errors.

Rating: **** Four stars

Writing Who You Know, not What: A guest post by Kate Moretti

Today's post is by Kate Moretti, author of the book Thought I Knew You, which we will be reviewing in a couple weeks. Be sure to enter the contest at the end of the post. You can find more from Moretti on her blog.

There’s an adage in writing: Write what you know. Anyone who writes has heard it… ad nauseum. When you’re writing a character-based novel, what you know quickly becomes who you know.

The question I’m most frequently asked is: “How much is your main character based on yourself?” As a standard answer, I always say: Claire is me. This isn’t entirely accurate.  When I first started the novel, I knew nothing about character development. I just sat down and wrote. To make life easier, I based the main character on myself, a classic rookie mistake. Ah, well, you can’t get much more rookie than I was. 

But the truth is a bit more gray. She is me if I had time to reflect and come up with the best way to feel under extreme duress, if I had a backspace button on my words, if I had hours to ponder a sentence. Does that mean, then, that’s she’s fictional? Not exactly. She’s more like the best parts of me. Her relationships are different from mine, but her role in them is largely the same. She’s still a mother of two girls, working part time, trying to juggle it all.

After answering that one, I’m usually asked: “Who are the men?” This question makes me laugh. In the book, Greg, Claire’s husband, is moody, withdrawn, and secretive.  Drew, her friend, is nearly perfect. Of course, I know only one man in my life intimately – I’m married to him! Is he Greg or Drew? Again, it’s a gray truth: he’s both. Greg is my husband’s faults exaggerated to become an issue, whereas in real life, they are not. Drew is all the wonderful parts of my husband expanded and brought to the forefront. Highlighted in a way that I’m sure I forget to notice in real life.

If I had to guess, I’d think this is true for all writers.  We take parts of our lives and make them bigger, bolder, and more interesting.  We take conversations and interactions that occur in real life, then spin them to take on a different meaning or tone. I feel bad for everyone I know now, but I’m not sure I can turn it off. A good example of this is, in Thought I Knew You, Greg and Claire have a fight. It’s a What’s Wrong/Nothing fight, a common avoidable argument.  It’s used in the book to highlight the way they keep missing each other and their inability to connect on any level, yet both with the desire to do so. It’s used to show the fissure in their relationship. In real life, I’ve had this argument with my husband, and it means nothing. In real life, it means that one of us is stomping around, ticked off about something that has nothing to do with the other, and one of us gets tired of it. But that’s barely interesting. As a writer, my job is to take relatable situations and give them meaning, expose a relationship crack. Suddenly, an innocuous argument takes on an unsettling tone.

I’ll probably never base a character on myself again. I’m not interesting enough to warrant two books. But I will probably always build in conversations I have, people I meet, and interactions I observe.  So if we chat in real life, don’t be surprised if you later read about it in a book, with a completely new spin. My mind is always writing. 

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Allah’s Revenge / Pete Barber

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Thriller/Speculative Fiction

Approximate word count: 80-85,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: YES  Paper: YES

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Author:

“I was born into a blue-collar family in Liverpool, England. Like my peers, I grew up working with my hands until an uncanny aptitude for building computer software allowed me to trade overalls and hard-hat for a suit and tie.

I immigrated to the US in the early 90s, became an American citizen, and lived the American dream.

After twenty successful years in the corporate world, I turned my back on eighty-hour weeks and quarterly results and bought a run-down, dog-friendly motel in Carolina Beach, North Carolina. A close friend still refers to this decision as a brain fart; but life is a one-time play, and no one can write, and run a public company.

When the worlds of finance and real estate went stir-crazy in 2005, I sold the business and moved to Lake Lure, North Carolina where, in addition to helping my wife manage a small herd of llamas, I am, at last, fulfilling my life's ambition to write speculative fiction.”

Pete is also Books and Pals most prolific pal; if you read his reviews you’ll get an idea of the kind of scrutiny he’s put his own book through. This is his first book, with another work in progress expected to be released in the spring of 2013. For more, visit Pete’s website.

Description:

“Allah’s Revenge,” an Islamic terrorist group, terrorizes the world using a weapon developed with nanotechnology. Quinn, an English cop, is determined to find and stop them.

Appraisal:

I’m a big thriller reader. Speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, and similar), not so much. What I liked about the speculative fiction portion of Allah’s Revenge is that it involved technology that, while not here today, could be. Nanotechnology is on the leading edge of science; the nanotech inventions and discoveries that figure in this story aren’t hard to imagine as possible in the near future.

There’s also a lot to like about the thriller portion of Allah’s Revenge. Building on a premise (both political and scientific) that could happen someday, it has a likeable protagonist, necessary in my opinion to draw the reader in. If you don’t care about the protagonist, it’s hard to care about his success.

What I found interesting is that, while not wanting the bad guys to succeed, I still found some of them sympathetic at times, and even the most evil of the conspirators was involved in doing something that could have had a positive effect on the world. Since thrillers are plot driven, character development often doesn’t get as much attention, resulting in secondary characters that are cartoonish or caricatures. Barber avoided this mistake, while still leaving no doubt about who the good guys and bad guys were. Thriller fans should find Allah’s Revenge, with its combination of timely concerns and speculation about what the future might hold, a very worthy read.

FYI:

Some adult language and situations

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: ***** Five stars

The “Sex and Violence” stories / Gamal Hennessy

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Short Story

Approximate word count:

The Replacements 3-4,000 words

Afraid of the Dark 5-6,000 words

Bedtime Stories 2-3,000 words

Availability    

The Replacements

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: YES  Paper: NO

Afraid of the Dark

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: YES  Paper: NO

Bedtime Stories

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: YES  Paper: NO

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Author:

“Gamal Hennessy is an author, entertainment attorney and nightlife advocate in New York City.” For more, visit the author’s website.

Description:

These are the first three of a planned series with a new short story each month focusing on “the extremes of the human experience.” (Actually Bedtime Stories contains two shorter stories).

Appraisal:

The title of this series, Sex and Violence stories, tells the tale of what to expect. Each of the three installments I read had some of both. How each element influenced and drove the story varied, but each was critical. The plots swung from futuristic thriller (Afraid of the Dark), to borderline horror (The Replacements), to one that was on the edge of erotica (Bedtime Stories). Other than sex and violence, what all had in common was that they were well crafted, clever stories that drew me in quickly.

FYI:

Adult language and situations.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues except one portion of Bedtime Stories had what I’ll describe as a formatting issue. These were what seemed to be what would appear if using “track changes” in Microsoft Word to keep track of edits. My version was from Smashwords. The Kindle version may not have this issue.

Rating: **** Four stars

The Speed of Winter / B. Morris Allen

Reviewed by: Pete Barber

Genre: Science Fiction

Approximate word count: 20,000-25,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES

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Author:

The author lists himself as a biochemist, an activist, and a lawyer. He pauses from time to time on the Oregon coast to recharge, but now he's back on the move, and the books are multiplying like mad. When he can, he works on his own contributions to speculative fiction. The Speed of Winter is his first published work.

Description:

In a post-apocalyptic world, to assure the survival of the human species a series of ‘arc’ ships are sent into space to colonize planets believed to be habitable.  The story follows one of these ships.

Appraisal:

Note: This review contains some spoilers

For me, this was a book of two halves. The concept of deep space travel on a ship with four thousand passengers was intriguing. Most of the passengers are placed in “Cold Sleep,” a kind of stasis during which they will age, but very slowly. Four crewmembers at a time take ten-year shifts where they stay awake to manage any issues that may arise.

Most of the story takes place as the first batch of passengers is woken when their target planet is a couple of years away. The planet turns out to be uninhabitable, in a constant state of winter—a terrific and compelling conflict, I thought.

And here’s where the second part of the story fell down for me. Only one male and one female crewmember survived the last ten-year shift, and they had a child, which was a forbidden act (until the planet is settled).

Instead of examining the huge challenges facing the humans on the ship who know they are doomed, the author focuses on the attitude of the passengers to the child. At age nine she is raped, twice, and for me, this crossed a line. Although the rape scene isn’t graphically described, it isn’t necessary for the story. Jealousy or anger that the child exists could be depicted without this act. While I could understand that the child would be a touchstone for people’s anger, I didn’t buy-in to the concept that the crew and passengers would become sexually obsessed with her.

The writing is clean and flows nicely.

Format/Typo Issues:

None noted.

Rating: *** Three stars

Last Exit in New Jersey / C.E. Grundler

Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Mystery/Thriller/Noir

Approximate word count: 120-125,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES

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Author:

A frequent contributor to boating magazines, C.E. Grundler says when she’s not writing she “spends far too much time aboard an aging trawler by the name of Annabel Lee.” Last Exit in New Jersey is the first of a series, with No Wake Zone, the second in the series, now available and a third book in process. Grundler is a regular contributor to Write on the Water (a blog maintained by several authors who are also avid boaters and sailors). For more, visit Grundler’s website.

Description:

“Nice young ladies really shouldn't be dumping bodies at sea. Then again, that isn't stopping Hazel Moran, and she can't figure where anyone got the idea she was nice to begin with.

Raised aboard her father's aging schooner and riding shotgun in their eighteen-wheeler, she can handle almost anything on the road or water; it's her people skills that need work. Normally that isn't an issue—most people tend to leave her alone behind the wheel of a Kenworth. But when twenty-year-old Hazel and her father become the targets of some unsavory characters hunting for her missing cousin, their stolen tractor trailer, and a delivery that never arrived, she knows it's time to heed a lesson learned from her favorite hard-boiled paperbacks: playing nice will only end in tears.

It'll take all her ingenuity, not to mention some fishing tackle and high voltage, if Hazel hopes to protect her family and unravel this tangle of greed and betrayal. And anyone who gets too close, no matter the intent, will discover just how dangerous Hazel truly is as she sets in motion a twisted plan to uncover the truth, settle some scores, and not wind up dead in the process.”

Appraisal:

Last Exit in New Jersey is a mystery or thriller, but with qualities mixed in that are more common to noir (the frequent dead bodies and the character’s attitude about them for one thing) and even horror (one of the major characters feels like he’d fit well in a horror novel). When I encounter a mix like this, I find myself off balance in a good way. I’m never convinced that I know where the story is headed, because the typical genre conventions and formulas I would normally expect to  be followed, don’t seem to apply. That’s what I experienced with this book.

The author integrates her interest and expertise in boats into the story with plenty of action on the water, at marinas, and in a boatyard, settings unfamiliar for many readers, which add spice to the story. I wouldn’t call them exotic, but they’re definitely different, unless you’re a diehard Travis McGee fan. I wouldn’t describe Last Exit in New Jersey as “fast paced,” in the sense in which this is usually used in relation to thrillers, because it is longer, with more going on than the typical thriller, but it is not guilty of being the opposite of fast-paced, it doesn’t drag. It held my interest and kept me coming back for more.

FYI:

Adult language.

Format/Typo Issues:

A small number of typos and proofreading misses.

Rating: **** Four stars

Badwater / Toni Dwiggins

Reviewed by: Pete Barber

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Approximate word count: 90,000-95,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES

Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Toni Dwiggins is a technical writer who has turned her hand to writing fiction. She has published two other novels: Interrupt, a science fiction piece, and Volcano, which, like Badwater, is part of the Forensic Geology Series

Description:

Cassie and her older partner and mentor, Walter, are forensic geologists. They are called in by the FBI to help trace some highly radioactive waste stolen from a nuclear storage facility in Death Valley. 

Appraisal:

The opening sequence hooked me. The author did a terrific job of pulling me right into the story by describing a mysterious figure walking down the road. The lead characters—Cassie and Walter—are multi-faceted and interesting in their own right, and the interaction between them works well throughout the piece. Their background (necessary because this is the first in a series) is well explained as the story progresses—no back-story info dump required. I found the nuclear science interesting and the people dealing with the radioactive waste felt real especially in the way they used nicknames for the highly dangerous materials they were dealing with—it humanized what might otherwise have been a dry subject. Having radioactive material as the quest raised the stakes considerably.

The writing is tight. I jarred a little at first with the mixed use of first and third person, but once I understood what was going on, I no longer noticed. My only issue with the story was the difficulty I found in visualizing the scenes. Partly this is because the protagonists are geologists and so they describe the world as a geologist would see it. Partly though, the author didn’t give enough specifics about size and distance, or some similes that would have offered a guide (is it bigger than a football field etc). I often found myself not knowing if something was twenty yards away, or twenty miles. A large part of the end-game is played out in mine shafts and I had no concept of how far, how deep, how tall or wide these tunnels where. There are a couple of maps at the front of the book, which I didn’t see until after I’d finished (doh!). But even so, they aren’t a lot of use when reading on an e-book.

Baring that gripe, this is a solid story. I think it would appeal in particular to readers with an interest in geology and/or with knowledge of the Death Valley region.

Format/Typo Issues:

None noted.

Rating: **** Four stars

Words to the Wise: Book 1, The Awakening / Cornelius Harker

Reviewed by: Corina

Genre: Gothic Horror

Approximate word count: 100-105,000 words

Availability  

Kindle US: YES UK: YES Nook: NO Smashwords: NO Paper: NO

Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Cornelius Harker has reputedly studied gothic literature for several years And  has three degrees He has two more books out at the time of this review: Words to the Wise: Book 2, Towards Darker Climes, and A Dish Best Served Cold, described as a supernatural thriller. For more, visit his blog.  

Description:

Our anti-hero recounts his life since he encountered a man with bleeding eyes, who turned him from alcoholism to wandering the earth in search of answers about himself and his past.

Appraisal:

I did not like the protagonist of this novel, named the Wanderer. He changes his behavior in the book, but does not exhibit growth. He interrupts his storytelling in disruptive ways, and he uses too many words. The Wanderer slips out of his first person limited point-of-view(POV) into a third person omniscient POV in which he can ascertain the motives, emotions, and intent of people he has just met, with no explanation. At one point, the Wanderer says “I became capable of a skill to thwart the most competent of seers. I began to unravel a tapestry of Truth concerning her origins, and which provided me with my first factual taste of things to come.” Even if you take each accidental lapse into omniscience as foreshadowing, it still comes out of left field and is not explored further.

The story would be strengthened by extensive editing, mostly to pare the excessively ornate and archaic language to succinct and arrow-sharp prose. I understand that the genre begs for archaic language, but it does not need to be trowelled on. They should be applied more sparingly.

A few minor examples of the ponderous sentences in this book are quoted below (I’ll leave it to the truly adventurous to excavate the truly abominable sentences encased in this marmoreal quarry of a novel):

Again my slumber was infested with visions of an impenetrable mass that loomed on the horizon of some remote and deserted land, only now it was taking shape. Materialising before me into a solid structure tall enough to smite the clouds above, this fluid accumulation of Cimmerian obscurity was becoming all too frighteningly familiar.

Occasionally I was saluted by the salubrious few whose summer jaunt along the river was undoubtedly an annual custom, but I had neither the will or [sic] the inclination to return their convivial and sedulous gestures. (Salubrious means “health-giving,” and Sedulous means “showing dedication and diligence.”)

Hidden among these ubiquitous and obstreperous sentences are sparkling gems like this little paragraph:

Stillness is something that has always managed to unnerve me. Within silence plots are hatched, thoughts are made and unmade; worlds of the conscious mind are destroyed by will alone. In the hush of peace wars are forged; in the quietness of humanity there is a rage in the soul that goes unnoticed; unspoken words become harbingers of vengeance and hatred while everywhere, everything, everyone changes in those hushed deliberating moments, becoming something they are not for just one second in ten, an instance wherein murderers are made, loathing is developed, and images of wickedness are formed. It is the stillness, the silence of foreboding that most are able to conquer while others are slowly consumed by it.

To summarize, I felt that Harker did his readers a grave disservice by failing to have this novel properly proofread for grammatical errors, for vocabulary faux pas, for continuity of voice, and by failing to have his main character become a more complex person by the end of the book than he was at the beginning. Even in a series, the character should grow and change in each installment.

Harker himself, outside of this series (this is a series debut) and pending a couple more years of experience publishing, has tremendous potential as a writer. I look forward to reading anything he writes in the years to come.

FYI:

This novel contains a few highly graphic, gory scenes, and uses complex run-on sentences with an overabundance of five-dollar words throughout the novel. I am an English teacher who reads Shakespeare and H.P. Lovecraft for enjoyment, but reading this book was like slogging through a swamp. If you don’t read at a university level, you should have an enormous dictionary close at hand (or in your e-reader) to read this book.  

Format/Typo Issues:

There are comma errors and some words don’t actually exist (such as “sanguineous”), and there are some grammatical errors, but many readers will not notice them.

In this frame story, the author used open quotation marks at the beginning of every paragraph in which the Wanderer is recounting his story, as is used at the beginning of an extended quotation. It is not necessary at this length, and he is telling a story, not quoting another person, so it could properly be omitted.

Rating: **Two Stars