Seeking The Storyteller

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.

The book could use editing for various things. I had a PDF file, so I can’t say if things were same in the Kindle version, but here’s a couple examples:

Page 7: “Alix was disgusted by the thought.
The figure…”

The indent for the first paragraph is shorter than the indent for the start of the next paragraph here.

Page 17: “He crouched in front of, Yvonne and slowly looking him over.”
Page 25: “He says that he was attacked first”
Page 34: “Other times, Fagan and Xaver would hang out at a bar, drinking tall mugs of beer that Alix would distasteful, preferring a classy, well-aged wine.”

I understand how easy it is to miss an error in hundreds of pages. An editor would help catch more of those as well as help clean up other things. For example,

“Fagan – Randall to his parents, but only because they believed in calling him by his dreadful first name – stepped out of the driver’s side and expertly closed his door without any sound.”

They’re just starting a hunt and the part about his name doesn’t belong. It would be better to find a way to work it in, if necessary, another time. Or, better yet, show it. Have his parents use his first name when talking to him.

There was also something odd that I haven’t seen before.
In places in the book a word will be crossed out. At first I thought this was perhaps the author making some sort of remark and then continuing on with the story, but then it also appeared in spots where that wouldn’t make sense.

Page 91: “He tried to keep his voice steady but (it) this new information was a bit disturbing.”

Since there are two authors, it makes me wonder if something like this happened while they were passing the document back and forth between each other and changing things, and somehow some of the corrections are still in the text with a strike-through.

And sometimes there’s things that don’t make sense. Cyn is given a button down shirt. She chooses to only button the top part so that her stomach is still exposed. Two pages later she’s asking if she can have a coat because she’s cold. If she’s cold I would imagine the first reasonable thing to do is button up the shirt.

As far as descriptions, I usually had a description to go with a character except for the group of Scough. When they were introduced, there was a paragraph of description for them, and I wasn’t sure which description went to which name for a lot of them.
There was a lot of repeatedly used words as well (everyone chuckles all the time).

There’s also the issue of Alix and gender. I didn’t care if he wanted to be considered male or female, but this is a tricky subject. For awhile it wasn’t clear if Alix wanted to be regarded as male or female or if he didn’t care what people called him, but by the end of the book it was clear – Alix repeatedly and consistently wanted to be considered male. He had a desire to go back to his previous life, but in his current state he wanted to be considered a man.
It’s one thing for demons on another world to be uninformed and confused about it, but for the people around Alix it was disrespectful when they would change pronouns on him or decide at will to go against the gender he preferred to go by. Tackling a subject like this, it’s necessary to understand what would be considered okay and what wouldn’t be, otherwise characters can come off like jerks when they aren’t meant to be. Luckily I don’t recall too many situations where Alix was addressed in person as the wrong gender, although people did bring it up his original name several times.

There was one other issue that came to mind. I believe Cyn was supposed to be 15. I don’t know the ages of all the people who expressed and interest in her, but at least a few of them were old enough that they should be locked up for it. I’m not sure how old Mira was, but I was under the impression she was pretty young, too.

All of that aside, I can say I did enjoy the story and I think there were a lot of good, fleshed out characters. The copy I had, at least, had many errors that were still included in the text for some reason. I think with an editor to go over it, and to comb through and get rid of errors, telling-instead-of-showing, repetition and inconsistencies, this could be made into an exciting, fast-paced adventure. There’s a lot to work from and the world that was built up was fine and the characters were overall enjoyable. I’d love to see this book fixed up.

Right now, I think I’d give it about a 7 out of 10.

Hallowed: The Collection by Donald White

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.

The first thing I noticed about this book was the formatting. I had a mobi file, and there were no page breaks. The table of contents starts right under the copyrights (on the same page), and then the story starts right under the table of contents, instead of each having their own pages.

It opens with something to set the scene to connect the stories. That’s an interesting enough concept since most short story collections like this don’t bother to link them.
However, picturing a bunch of people in robes standing around a stone table and reading the tales can be pretty humorous at moments. Why?

Well, imagine a hooded figure standing in a circle with other cloaked figures, reading a scroll. Now, imagine that cloaked figure reading this from the scroll:
“That pool boy is sooo handsome.”

I keep picturing the cloaked figure adding some sass into that line.

The author also threw in lines with exclamation points, which made it read more like a comic book instead of a horror story.
“”So do I,” she smirked, patting him on the rear!”
“Even in the darkness of the room, he could make out the face of a woman in the reflection behind him!”
“There, in the darkness of his bedroom, was the face of a woman staring back at him!”

There were some good ideas here. For example, in the second story the idea of having children jumping rope to a rhyme, and the rhyme changing to be a little more sinister each time could work well in a scary story.
But the execution was lacking.

For example, I spent much of the second story confused because it goes right into mentioning the “realms” and “the mist” without explaining anything about them. I had no idea what the setting was supposed to be or why the main character seemed to find it all normal. The text bounced back and forth without making it coherent, so he would be entering “the mist” and then suddenly he would be somewhere where kids were jumping rope.

“Lady Killer”, I think, was one of my favorites both in the story and writing style. Both of the characters were interesting, and there could probably be a series written about Lisa. “The Hound” was also pretty good. “The Thing in the Shadows” was fine, too, although it had purple prose breaking up the story that I thought was unnecessary.

“Temple of the Life-Giver” felt like way too much was crammed into a short story.

The writing improved significantly from “Lady Killer” and on, but it still maintained the issues the previous stories did to a lesser extent. When I started reading the book, I thought I was going to end up giving it 4 stars after the first few stories. It started off with way too many italic thoughts, and the writing in the beginning didn’t build suspense for me (you can see some of the quotes from above). The latter parts of the book felt a lot different. The characters were built up better in most of them and the writing was more polished.
Still, because the writing did get better later on I bumped it up to to about 5 or 6/10 stars. It would be great if an editor looked over the work to fix it up.

Midnight Guests and Other Weird Stories

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.

This was a collection of stories and I’ll discuss each briefly. I’ll try to avoid including spoilers in the summaries, but when I discuss them further it will include spoilers.

“Salazar’s Flamenco Dancer” was sort of like a discussion about a cursed painting. It felt a little like if a friend was telling you about something weird that happened.
“Hidden Canyon” was about a boy who has to kill a bear in order to be considered a man in his tribe. He comes across a strange beast that seems intent on killing him.
“Chimera” was about a woman suffering from sleep paralysis and seeing a strange snake man in her bedroom. It’s written as a letter from her to her doctor explaining what happened.
“Old Billy” is about the groundskeeper of a cemetery and a kid who lives nearby it and visits it often.
“The Wind in the Hollow” follows a young man who is attempting to sell his farm after it’s been considered cursed, and shows why people consider is cursed.
“El Curandero” is about someone visiting a shaman to get help.
“The Bells of San Xavier” is a poem. My eyes glaze over when I see poetry, so even though I read it I couldn’t even begin to describe what it’s about.
In “Skull Valley” the story is told through diary entries and is about an ancient book that has been found and people who are attempting to translate it.
In “Eyes of the Pine” a man is driving to meet his friends at a camping site when he gets strange texts warning him not to text and drive.
“Midnight Guests” is about a team of ghost hunters visiting a ranch to help explain a mysterious light that was appearing in the distance.
“The Ballad of Red Feather” was another poem.
“Biting Words” was a story about a woman attempting to find a hotel and get to her party. On the way, she keeps getting interrupted by homeless asking her for things like donations.
“We are Seven” is about a small schizophrenic girl and her hallucinations as she leaves the asylum and is taken in by her aunt.

The first four stories I felt were okay. Reading the first one was like hearing an anecdote about what happened because of a curse. There’s some follow-up on how the painting came to be cursed, but I felt like that was the weaker part of the story.
The second had a good set-up. The character was likable enough that I was interested in what would happen to him.
The third I was interested in what would happen to her, but the story never left me feeling threatened. Sleep paralysis can be a very frightening thing in and of itself so it’s a good enough set-up, but I think describing the creature see saw and it essentially standing there trying to look threatening took away from the story. I just didn’t think it was scary.
And for the fourth, it had some interesting parts but was confusing as well. At the end I still wasn’t sure why some of the stuff with the tree was happening, or how it could happen. I didn’t see a connection between spitting out gems and killing people, and even if I were to just say “supernatural tree” I’d still be wondering why it has a ton of gems. This probably could have been fixed if instead of gems coming up, something like jewelry was coming up. Then, when the boy sees the man killed and buried under the tree, there would be a connection to how jewelry ended up there.
“The Wind in the Hollow” was one of my favorite stories from this book. It’s the longest one, and gives the most time to build up the characters. One of the things a lot of horror films have a problem with is making people care that something is happening to the characters, but here I genuinely felt bad for the characters. There was some time to show who they were and what happened. When it got to the scary scene and the narrator was caught in the middle of it, it was scary and had me flipping the pages to see what would happen next. The story stays pretty strong throughout and ends in a way that makes sense, though a little too much time is spent on things like talking about directions in a cornfield. I think it only had two weaknesses that stuck out to me: one was the explanation, which I felt like it was thrown in there. There wasn’t much that hinted about what the explanation would be until a character tells the narrator. The second was I didn’t have a clue who the narrator was for much of the story. I do think this story is worth a read, though, and I liked it very much.
“El Curandero” left me confused. The story was mostly going into the man’s place and seeing weird things. While I’m sure some of it would be strange to see in person, it never felt that menacing. Nothing quite seemed like a conflict or climax or anything in it.
“Skull Valley” had a decent premise. I was let down by the big reveal because it left me wondering, “How long could they get away with this before a bunch of police were raiding the city?” If people were disappearing when they went into a small town, especially if there were witnesses to horrible things happening there who could report it, it probably wouldn’t last very long. At least at the end the narrator was thinking of calling the cops.
I think this story had a case of people not being believable. Even when the characters felt threatened and people were obviously doing things to get at them, they stuck around when they could have easily driven away.
“Eyes of the Pine” has a really good premise for the story. It’s modern and it was creepy. Again, the payout at the end felt a little forced like some of the others, but I feel like this story could really be good. It started out very ominous and you could instantly connect with how creepy it would be to be in the character’s position.
“Midnight Guests” was another one where I felt like the explanation was a bit weak. It’s very hard to write the payout for a scary story, because the moment the scares are explained it tends to take away the fear.
I did enjoy the two main characters for the story. I was invested in them and I was interested in hearing about the mystery. I think the build-up was good.
“Biting Words” had the same issue as “Skull Valley”. I could understand the character to an extent. She was a woman out at night in a dangerous area trying to find a party. Being approached by a strange, large man would be a scary thing for her. That’s perfectly understandable.
She reacted in a way that didn’t make sense to me, though. Instead of trying to politely get away from people she seemed more like she was going to provoke violence. When she’s the smaller person and most likely to lose a fight, it doesn’t make sense for her to needlessly aggravate people who she already believes are unstable. The only one that made sense to me was the elderly woman. The woman was in poor shape and non-threatening, so the main character wouldn’t have reason to believe anything bad would happen to her for yelling at the old woman.
I could believe her thinking bad things about the people, but it seemed overly short-sighted for her to readily voice her opinions about people when she thought they might hurt her.
I think the last story, “We are Seven”, had the best connection with the beginning and the end. There are clues beforehand that connect to the explanation given at the end. The character here, even though she’s mentally ill, is fairly understandable. It’s easy to see why she would like her friends and dislike other people. When she meets the priest we can see why she would try opening up to him at first and get increasingly annoyed when they talked about her as if she wasn’t there right in front of her.
I think the interesting part about this story is that she could very well be mentally ill for most of it to happen with nothing supernatural involved. I think only the part with the priest didn’t make much sense to me. If it had been changed a little, in a way were it could have happened even if her friends weren’t real, it would have been better. For most of the actions in the story I could see a way where she could have done something herself and then seen it as her friends doing it. For example, she could have easily overheard someone speaking about a stolen ring, and later on her friend tells her an explanation for how the ring got stolen. It could easily have been information she overheard or made up based on what the character herself knew.
The very end was a little strange but I think the overall story was a good one and the main character was interesting.

As a whole, the book had a few strong stories, a few weak stories, and several stories that were in the middle. One of the strong points for the author was making characters that the reader could get invested in. This isn’t done very well in a lot of horror.
The endings and explanations for a lot of the stories left something to be desired. Some came out of nowhere with no hints. I think the last story was the strongest when it came to this.
A lot of the stories had good ideas that I could see being molded into something really good with some work.

There were a few errors here and there but not enough to distract from the stories.

My favorites were “The Wind in the Hollow” and “We are Seven”. They happen to be the two longest. I think “The Wind in the Hollow” had the best scary scene in the entire book, as well as some good characters that readers could feel for. “We are Seven” has an interesting protagonist. Her character can be horrible yet understandable at the same time, and she could carry a story if done right.
For a lot of this book I would give around 6/10 stars. For those two stories though, I’d give around 8 or a little more.

The Lost Party (Red Dust)

I was given a free copy of this story in exchange for an honest, non-reciprocal review.

This is a short story, so it’ll also be a short review.

I enjoyed this story. It left me wondering what was going on until nearly the end. The main character is searching for about sixty people who have gone missing. He finds a diary, and the entries reveal how they went from a large, enthusiastic party to a small party, barely still moving on.
It’s not very long and kept things moving well enough to hold my attention.

It does need an editor. There were many places I saw that could have done with better word choices or that needed something like another comma. I wasn’t a fan of the use of present tense, either.

If someone is looking for a very quick read I would recommend it. I’d give it about a 7/10.

The Beethoven Incident

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest (non-reciprocal) review.
(Spoilers within)

“The Beethoven Incident” is a fairly fast-paced and light-hearted read. I didn’t get the feeling that it was meant to change someone’s life. It felt more like it was just meant to be a quick bit of fun.

There were parts I enjoyed, such as Mark calling Nicholas his dad and Valeria catching on quickly that it wasn’t true, and seeing how different periods in the past were changed.

There were also major issues, though.

Here’s an example of one of the paragraphs:
“Quite right.” He turned to his pilot, “Well, Ernest?” Ernie punched a few keys and looked at his control panel. “In a minute, Nick” he replied. “I just gotta scan the payload for mass and volume. We’ll be all set.” He punched a few keys and grinned at Mark.

This was very typical of the story. Multiple people would all have speaking parts jammed into the same paragraph. Many times I wasn’t sure which character was meant to be speaking. The “punched a few keys” is repeated twice. Periods instead of commas also bothers me.

Exclamation points were used too often. Random words would also get capitalized a lot.

Examples:
“I’ve got a Kid…”
“You are Americans, No?’ The Officer asked.

Besides the writing issues, there were also parts of the story that were a huge issue for me: the biggest part probably being Valorie. There’s nothing wrong with Valorie in and of herself, but it felt like she was put there to “be the girl” and her capabilities seemed unrealistic and forced.
Any time a woman appeared in the story everything seemed to revolve around how sexy she was, even if it made no sense for the characters to be attracted to her. For example, women that were from the 1800’s. The story does mention how much the place smells because the people barely bathe and and feces is left everywhere and such, but when a woman comes on scene the fact that she barely bathes isn’t taken into consideration. I think how dirty and smelly she is would play a large part in how much a man over a hundred years in the future would be attracted to her.

Valorie suffers this same fate. They meet her in the 1960’s and the first thing to be mentioned about her is how beautiful she is.

…he thought she was just about the prettiest girl he’d ever seen.

She starts off in a very stereotypical female role – trying to heal people.
She also turns out the be smart, but as I mentioned before it felt like that was just forced onto her rather than being a natural role. The majority of the story happens within a span of about thirteen hours. In those hours she figures out how to make a program on a machine she’s never seen before to reverse the polarity of time. Not even Ernie, the man who lives in the future and does this for a living, knows how to run her program. I’d like her to be smart but that’s way too unrealistic. It also doesn’t hold, because just a few chapters later Ernie is working out a problem with the time machine that “not even Valorie” can do. Why not? Just because. So it establishes her as being a genius who can figure out things in an impossible amount of time but then it takes it back.

The way the men treat her also feels like they come from a few centuries back. They’re often patronizing and treat her like a child.

“What’s this “we” stuff, honey?” he (Ernie) replied.

I don’t think he would say that to another man. I would hope that in the future men would be a little more respectful of women.
That doesn’t stay consistent, either. One page later Ernie has gone from being condescending about letting her participate in their mission to this:

“Let her go, Nick.” Ernie suggested. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. Maybe she’ll be of some use out there.”

I felt really disappointed with Valorie’s character because I ended up feeling like she existed only to be a love interest and her abilities were thrust on her to try and make her a strong character and not because it made any sense for her. Ernie even brings up that she’s a virgin, which bothered me. He didn’t bring up whether Mark was a virgin or not. It could have worked if he had also poked at Mark about being a virgin, but it just seemed like it was brought up so she could be ‘untainted’ for Mark.

Even at the end when she is running the time machine while Mark is outside and he gets attacked, she ends up hitting the attacker with a pipe. Then, of course, the attacker goes after her and she has to be saved. It made no sense at all because the reason she was running the machine was because only she understood how to use the program she made, and Nicholas and Ernie were both there. Why did she go out only to need rescuing? Why didn’t either of the other two help?
The main characters often felt interchangeable, but I was most disappointed with Valorie because she had so much potential and came out flat. Her romance with Mark was strange to me as well (remember, this story happened in a very short span of time), making it seem even more like she only existed to be his love interest.

To me this is the rough draft for a book that could be really good but it needs a lot of editing. I was mulling over what to rate this, but I’m going with 4/10 because I’ve certainly seen worse.

What Happened to Tasha Blue?

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest (non-reciprocal) review.
(Spoilers Within)

I enjoyed this book. It had a good mystery that left me wondering.

PROS:
– I was very interested in what happened. I really wanted to find out what happened to Tasha.

– I enjoyed the characters. They were done very well and believable. From Floyd and Deena’s close comradery to Cheryl and what was happening in her head.

– The author was very good at making you invested in someone.

– Although there is a lot of telling in this book it actually didn’t bother me. I liked hearing about a lot of the characters.

– Towards the end I thought the explanation of why Maria didn’t want to work for Cheryl was great. Of all the characters I think Cheryl’s had the most interesting wrap-up, even though it was a fairly short mention.

CONS:
– A minor one but sometimes similar phrases would be repeated relatively close to each other.
For example:
“She had always moved well.”
Next paragraph, “Cheryl still moved well…”

Or there was occasionally an odd break, like here:
“Preston?” she said. Like she hardly remembered who Preston might be.

This didn’t happen enough to bother me a lot though.

– I wasn’t completely satisfied with the conclusion. To be more specific, I wanted to understand Tasha’s motivations better. At the end I felt like she made a really huge move for someone her age and I didn’t quite understand what prevented her from waiting a few more months, or even why she completely cut off ties with her mother. We know she lied about her reasons, which leaves us wondering about the truth, so all we had was a character deciding that maybe she was impatient to get on with her life. If that was the only reason it seemed very extreme considering what she put everyone through.
I could get some sense that her mother might have been blind to things, but what we were shown as most definitely being true didn’t seem to add up as being enough of a motivator to do what she did.
At the same time I’m left with an eerie feeling because I’ve known someone quite like Tasha’s mother – the type who practically worships their child, thinks they can do no wrong, and wears blinders when it comes to her kid. So even though I didn’t leave the story with a clear motive for Tasha, I’m left with a kind of dread, wondering what her mother may have blatantly ignored.

– There were a few parts that dragged on a little bit.

Despite that, I truly enjoyed this read. I liked the way the author fleshed out the characters. I’m glad the book spent a lot of time with Floyd, because I enjoyed his approach. It was easy to keep reading. I wish there had been a bit more about Preston and Tasha and the exact circumstances there. It was mostly the bits that dragged on and the ending that I wanted a little more from that took this from ten to eight for me.
8/10

Beasthood (The Hidden Blood Series)

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. There will be spoilers.

I’m not a big fan of romance, although I don’t have anything against it. I can still get into a story if it’s built up well.
And I don’t have any intention of discouraging the author from writing more. Even though I personally didn’t like the book I do hope she finishes this for the people who do like the book. The story ended on a cliff hanger and I’ll admit I’m mildly curious about the answer.

The story also had a strong start. In the first few chapters we’re introduced to Jaz and her recent problems. She had a traumatic experience a year ago that she’s still attempting to recover from and people are skeptical about what she believes is the truth. It sets up a good conflict where people on both sides can be understandable.

There were some parts, particularly at the end, that were exciting.

I should explain why I’m giving this book the score that I am, though. I’ll try to be thorough.

There were some small issues the book had. There were a lot of parts with telling rather than showing.
Two examples I can think of off the top of my head:
When Jaz suddenly starts talking to Maria we’re informed that they’d gotten to know each other over the course of the last few days. We don’t see it. One day they’re strangers, and the next time we read about them Jaz has developed a connection with her.
Another example is when Jaz is given the nickname “Skin”. I’m not even sure why she was given that nickname. She just has it one day and everyone starts calling her by it (this is towards the last half of the book, too, so the sudden switch was jarring).

This could have been fixed easily in some parts.
Example: Nik was itching with impatience but he was very good at self-control. He reined it in and told himself over and over again that it would take time. Just wait, he chanted inwardly.

This is a lighter example where we’re told that he has a lot of self-control.

Compare it with a simple revision like this:
“Nik was itching with impatience but held it in. Just wait, he chanted inwardly.”

It’s more succinct and instead of being told he’s good and self-control it shows it more.

Another example:
“…and Saga -a dark-haired, curvy woman with long black hair who was the Spokesperson for Weaponry and Training Facilities. All her family had been killed years ago in the civil Pack wars; her only relation she knew of was her distant cousin Fraya, who was standing behind her.”
This is the first time I think we’re even hearing of Saga and all of this is dumped on us.

There was also a habit of using “-“s a lot. I believe it was only said twice, but it also says Jaz’s eyes are kyanite colored. I wouldn’t say this was a major issue the book had because I don’t recall anything else where a bizarre word was used instead of a simple word, but saying something like “blue” or “deep blue” would have worked better in those two instances.

Some parts didn’t make sense to me.

“The night sky was clear: he’d seen when he’d gone out for a smoke not long ago. He didn’t smoke; that just proved how stressted out he was.”

If he doesn’t smoke then why does he have something to smoke in the first place? As a non-smoker, I don’t find the thought of smoking relaxing at all. There’s no addiction so there’s no drive to do it. Taking a deep breath would be far more suitable.
There was also a part where someone was wearing three inch heels during construction work.

Those were the minor issues I had.

The issue that I had with this book that I couldn’t get over was the characters actions and how the actions were treated.

I was frustrated by chapter 12 because no one had even attempted to talk to Jaz despite numerous opportunities for them to do things in a far less traumatic way. Even after finishing the book there was never a good explanation.

They expect Jaz to like them and eventually come to trust them, but they didn’t talk to her, comfort her, or even attempt to bring her into their group in a civil manner.

To explain it better: Jaz has recently been introduced to a relative of hers named Erica. Erica invites her to vacation with her somewhere. Jaz ends up in a car with her, her husband and a driver.
On the way there they drug her orange juice and she ends up getting very sick. She doesn’t know they drugged her. She just thinks she’s sick.
She has to throw up, so before they arrive at their destination she makes them pull over so she can throw up in the woods. While she’s throwing up she notices two people in the woods.

And because she sees people in the woods? She gets grabbed and restrained by the driver, operated on while she’s unconscious to remove her toenails, as well as prodded in more intimate areas to check if she’s fertile, then thrown into a cell and held captive for days.
Not taking into account the fact that they drugged her and made her sick to begin with, the way they handled her seeing people in the woods made zero sense.

Much later in the book we see that the two people are incredibly severely punished for having been spotted, because it “forced them to bring her in the way they did”. Why? I have no idea. She barely knew any of the people she was with and she saw people in the woods. She had no reason to believe they were connected to each other, or even that there was some sort of problem with people being in the woods.
The group she was with could have easily shrugged and said, “Must be hunters”, or hikers, or something. Why they chose to assault her, kidnap her, mutilate her, violate her and hold her hostage in a cell instead bewilders me. They kept her in a cell for days without ever trying to explain anything to her.
Even if they didn’t think she would believe their explanation – which was reasonable – that doesn’t mean not explaining anything. Even if she didn’t believe them, talking to her would have given her an understanding of what they believed and why they were doing what they were doing.
They could have told her their beliefs, dealt with the fact that she wouldn’t believe them right away, and as she changed they could have explained that the things she was experiencing were part of the change.

Almost anyone could have brought her in better than they did.
On top of that they dump sensitive information on her while she’s going through all of this, like telling her she’s adopted and fertile.

To start with, it was unnecessary for them to do an invasive test to see if she was fertile without her permission.
Imagine if instead the broke the subject of her being adopted while on the way their, opening up communication and giving her a chance to ask questions. They could have later brought up that it was possible she really was fertile, and let her decide if she wanted to be tested or not.

That wasn’t the end of it.

There’s a huge problem in this book with the characters showing no respect for Jaz. At 25% through, for her that she should take a shower. They don’t ask her if she wants to take a shower or tell her, “There’s a shower over there if you want it”. At this point in the book they’ve gone out of their way to make me dislike them and every part that shows Driver being sad that Jaz is hurt rings as hollow, because they’re making no attempt to do anything but hurt her.

This book suffers from a huge problem of the characters acting horrifically, but it doesn’t treat it as if they’re acting horrifically. We’re supposed to brush aside what they do and accept them as good guys.

For example, here’s a passage:
“I want you to tell me,” he pushed, gazing at her, unblinking.
She exhaled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She then nearly recoils from him when he approaches.

“He eyeballed her. “Is that why you’ve never asked what you are?” he questioned. “You’re afraid?”
She shook her head -more to tell him to shut up than to say no.
“You can’t run away from it.”
“Stop. Okay, just stop,” she snapped.
He blinked and closed his mouth.
She huffed. “I’m just trying to deal with one thing at a time, so will you just back off.””

Then he sits down by the wall and stares at her (though a bit later it says he’s looking at the ground), as if it’s only going to be a few seconds for her to deal with being kidnapped, mutilated and held hostage among other things. This guy is a jerk even when he’s supposed to be being nice. He’s pushy, invasive, and he’s sitting in ‘her’ room staring at her. By all rights that should be absolutely terrifying for anyone in her position. He just asked her if she was scared because he got visual clues that she was probably frightened, and he’s doing this anyway.
This isn’t even mentioning that she was clearly uncomfortable around him and everyone had left her alone with him multiple times already. And continued doing so.
She gets manhandled by him several times in the book, too, all the way through.

They complain that she doesn’t ask questions, but when she does they don’t give her answers. Like, “Who is Lora to you?”
A huge portion of the drama of this story could have been resolved if anyone tried to communicate with Jaz.

When she’s helping with construction another member of the group continuously harasses her and no one does anything about it. We don’t see much of it, but we are told that it happens for days, and Jaz is in a whole group of people.
This cultimates in Fraya challenging her to a duel. We’re eventually given an explanation for why people didn’t try to interfere with a duel, but we’re never given an explanation for why everyone allowed the harassment to continue for all of that time.
Before Jaz was there, Lora is constantly harassed and doesn’t tell anyone because she’s “not one to complain”. Based on how openly she’s harasses and abuses Jaz, I can only assume pretty much everyone knew Lora was being attacked this way regardless of whether she said anything or not.

Somehow Jaz ends up being pinpointed as being guilty of being harsh or cruel, and she’s constantly apologizing when she’s the one owed an apology.

There are so many issues getting attached to characters in this book. Jaz trying boxing for the first time with Carr could be nice – if it wasn’t for the fact that he was allowing her to be harassed and threatened for days prior without doing anything to protect her or even complaining about it.

“She’d been warned. Driver had tried to tell her. She’d been too much of a coward to ask about it. To get his or Maria’s advice. She’d shunned any that was given to her. She’d made anyone stop if they spoke about it, changing the subject or bluntly telling them to move on. Now she regretted it wholeheartedly.”
She was drugged with something that will make her body changed without explanation, operated on without explanation, held in a cell for days without explanation, been harassed without anyone trying to stop it, had knowledge purposefully held from her over and over again for weak reasons, and it’s her fault that she doesn’t trust these people enough to ask them about something?

Both Lora and Jaz can be petty, too. They discover that Nik slept with Fraya once years before he met either of them, and this is a big deal for some reason. Jaz’s virginity is also brought up a few times as if it’s something to be ashamed of.

After getting in a fight with Fraya, Jaz says this:
“”I don’t know what came over me.” she met his eyes. “Will I be punished?””
When I read the fight scene, based on everything else in the book, I was afraid something like this would happen. Fraya was threatening her family. This is something that she should be reporting to people. Instead Jaz says what I wrote above.

“That would be cruelty, and there’s very little a despise more.” [sic]
Nik says this at one point. He brutally punished two people because Jaz saw them in the woods. He’s manhandled and terrified Jaz several times. His words don’t ring true, and I didn’t know how Jaz could believe that statement when she’s witnessed the opposite.

“He stepped forward in irritation. “Stop telling me what I will and won’t understand, what you can and can’t explain and just tell me. Right. Now.””
Nik yells this at Jaz. This is what Jaz should be saying to all of them.
Moments later he’s yelling at her about breaking curfew. Which is, again, something she wouldn’t have done if anyone had bothered to explain to her that she could be murdered if she went out at night.

During the whole book these things were blaring at me. The book wanted to sweep it under the rug and move on, but I couldn’t ignore the questions pecking at my mind. Things like, “Why in the world did they have to treat her so inhumanely?”, “Why isn’t anyone doing anything about this blatant harassment?”, or “Why is the book making out Jaz to be the one who is out of line all the time?”. I needed much better explanations for their actions than what I got.

It’s clear other people have enjoyed the book but I just couldn’t get into it for those reasons. Still, I wish the author luck, and perhaps I will enjoy a different book from her in the future.

I give this book a 2/10.

Path To Success : The Failure Factor (Eagle Success Series)

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest (non-reciprocal) review.

PROS:
– This book has a positive message to keep trying despite failure.

– It has some nice examples of people who failed many times before they succeeded.

– It was a quick read.

CONS:
– This book needed some serious editing.
“Show me someone who would come out to say he is a failure or that he loves failure and I would show you a man that does only exist in planet Mercury!”
“But is mistake really a bad thing?”
“To answers this question”
The book is full of errors like these. It’s difficult to take a book about success seriously when it seems like every paragraph has an error in it.

– There are parts where it repeats or rambles.

I think the entire message could have been written as a more concise essay. I appreciate the message it’s trying to give people to inspire them to keep trying, but unfortunately it was riddled with mistakes. It might be good if you need a little pep talk.

I’d say something like a 4.5/10 or 5/10.