Camp Arcanum

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

The basic story is three men, Marc and his two employees, Eleazar and Michael, go to a new town in order set up a renaissance faire. This new town is full of witches and such, though, and they end up dealing with magical forces. Marc falls for a pretty witch, Brenwyn, but she has a sleazy ex-boyfriend who wants her back (Jeremiah). It’s well-written. The author puts in amusing asides and keeps a sense of humor throughout the book.

Marc said nothing, but he said nothing in a very churlish and hostile manner.

(In response to demons being summoned on the property, Marc says:)
Steve would never get liability coverage if the insurance companies found out.

The flow is generally good and its easy to read the majority of it. The banter between characters is good. I thought the personality clash between Eleazar and Michael was handled well, and even when Eleazar was insensitive (Michael is gay) it felt like it would fit his character, and he probably wouldn’t even understand what was wrong with his actions (trying to make Michael appreciate women).

Action was written well and there were a lot of clever set-ups.

There are some errors, though not enough that it took me out of the story. The biggest one I saw was “We’re men with power tools and were not scared!” because the line was copy and pasted several times with the typo in it.

So, why the rating?

It didn’t always work for me. I was fine with Marc’s movie date with Brenwyn at first, but when flipped out he dealt with it the worst way possible just for the sake of hurting Brenwyn and causing tension. In that situation, where he thinks he might be having a delusion, I understand why he would want to leave, but shouting that he didn’t want to be near her wasn’t necessary. He didn’t even try to make an excuse, which seems like something most people would do. Not even a “I’ll explain later, I just really need to go now”. He went straight to yelling at her. At the same time, she really doesn’t take the hint here or later.

Then he was cutting down trees and pretending they were the witches, including Brenwyn. I get why he would pretend they were the other witches, but why her? Brenwyn hadn’t done anything to make him mad. She invited him out, he had a panic attack, and she tried to comfort him doing it. There’s nothing rageworthy that she did (yet). She invited him to a rowdy movie event with witches. He was warned it would be rowdy and crazy. It turned out to be rowdy and crazy, then he gets mad that it was exactly what he was told it would be.

About Brenwyn herself – at first I was fine with her. Although they had some decent banter, I was never charmed with her, and I pinpointed the reason why after a bit and it got much worse later.

The main thing is that she presents herself as a mind reader, and not a tactful one. She’s constantly saying or doing things that, if she isn’t reading your mind, make it seem like she is. This isn’t charming. Imagine, for a second, if someone hopped onto your computer and started reading all your private e-mails, then came over to you and started reciting things from your e-mails. Would you be thrilled? Probably not. It’s a huge invasion of privacy, and even if you had someone who couldn’t help reading minds they would still have to learn how to handle that in a graceful, less creepy way that wouldn’t send off alarm bells.

Here’s an example: Privately, while discussing with his employees how to hire some workers, Marc says he wants people with “Strong backs and weak minds”. This doesn’t get put in the ad. Later, when he visits Brenwyn, she says that he’s looking for “strong back and weak minds”, the exact same thing he said in private.

Now, let’s give a different scenario. Say you knew a woman who went into a town to do some work. She meets and attractive guy. That guy starts very blatantly mentioning things that she said in private. Would you suggest:

1) She be charmed by his odd behavior.
2) She put on her running shoes and run, run, run as far as she can from the creepy stalker.

Just because it’s reversed and it’s a woman saying creepy, stalker-like things to a man doesn’t make it better. She doesn’t have the right to invade his privacy, and if she can’t help it then she could easily try to at least seem normal. She could have told him the same information without using the exact phrasing that he said in private. It’s like she’s rubbing it in his face that she knows things she shouldn’t, and the book gives her a free pass because she’s ‘hot’.

I mostly overlooked that part of it and could still enjoy the book just fine “because story”, but then she did something that was just heinous to me.

“With some luck,” Brenwyn continued, “I could get you placed in the same room where your brother hung himself. You would have to get used to sleeping without sheets, of course.”

No. No. On what world is this a person you would ever want to speak to again? Marc confessed, albeit admittedly very soon after meeting her, that his brother had tragically committed suicide after a lengthy time suffering from schizophrenia and this horrible incident still haunts him. A good person who has only known him for a little while does not turn around and shove that in his face. On top of that, she does it because of one of these situations:

Summary:
Marc: Oh, hey, there’s a fire down there. I better make sure it’s safe.
Brenwyn: No, don’t go down there, it’s dangerous.
Marc: Why?
Brenwyn: I’m not going to tell you!
Marc: I can’t just let people have unregulated open flames in the middle of the woods. Tell me why it’s dangerous.
Brenwyn: No! I refuse to tell you things to let you make an informed decision and fully intend to make this decision for you (and then will undoubtedly get mad when you didn’t blindly do what I said)!

Most of the time in things like YA novels you’ll see guys doing this to women. Making a decision ‘for their best interest’ while refusing to explain anything ‘because’, so the female character doesn’t get to make their own choice and if they don’t nod their head and listen to whatever the guy says they get mad, even though it’s their fault. It’s not any more fun when the roles are reversed.

I can understand in books when the villain refuses to share information, but I hate when allies randomly decide to hoard information for the sake of making something unnecessary happen. And guess what? Marc goes to check the fire, and she still doesn’t explain, so her plan of “not explaining and telling him not to go” doesn’t exactly work.

I enjoyed the fight after that, though I didn’t understand why Marc didn’t immediately destroy the second circle that the “man in red” (anyone reading will know exactly who it is the second the fire pit is mentioned) stepped into. He knew to destroy the first circle so they wouldn’t be safe, so why would he let him just hop right into a second circle? Especially when he was up to trouble. There’s no way it could be said that he didn’t believe in any “witch stuff” after what he’d seen. This could have been fixed with something blocking him from being able to destroy the second circle, but as it is he just didn’t.

Then there were nine people in total, Marc took out seven, and five were left standing. That left me confused.

As I mentioned, Brenwyn started out okay for me. The mind reading stuff I thought would have been irritating to deal with in person, and no one likes a know-it-all, but I was willing to overlook it. Then her mentioning the suicide in such a terrible way happened. Then not informing Marc of what kind of danger he was walking into. And then, when he starts avoiding her, she won’t stop coming around, and that whole stalker scenario comes up again.

Jeremiah calls Marc to inform him that he’s an amplifier for magic and that’s why people want him, and that gets him more upset at Brenwyn. He also tells Marc that Brenwyn had cast a charm spell on him. When she finally pops up to confront him in person she acts like he’s not allowed to decide he’s not interested. Not only has she been continually coming around when he’s obviously avoiding her, but when he flat out tells her that he doesn’t want to see her she gets threatening.

“You had best leave the woods as soon as you can,” Brenwyn snarled.
Nothing short of dynamite is getting me off my job site.”
“So be it,” Brenwyn snapped.

Then she summons lightning to hit a nearby tree. At this point I thought the book was going make her just as much of a villain as Jeremiah, maybe even more so – which was interesting! It would have been awesome to switch things up like that, and something I wouldn’t have expected in the beginning. I really hoped the book would let her turn out to be bad. Unfortunately, shortly after that Marc is hanging out with his two employees and says this:

“And she never hurt me the way I did her,” he said finally.

This is the note I made for that line: “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?”

First, by this point he knows that she was interested in him because he was a magic amplifier (later corrected to “fixing magic”), and it hasn’t been that long so her saying she loves him isn’t convincing in the first place. Second, the way she brought up his brother’s suicide was even worse than the way Jeremiah did. She kept him in the dark about danger, didn’t care if he didn’t want to see her, started threatening him when he told her to go away, and this isn’t even taking into account some of the physical injuries he got because of things that she could have prevented or at least told him something about. In a way she comes off worse than Jeremiah because he’s not trying to act like an angel. Heck, he at least told him the truth about why people wanted him. If Jeremiah hadn’t told him how long would she have strung him along in the dark?

Marc, on the other hand, told her he didn’t want to see her. Marc’s right, she didn’t hurt him the way he hurt her. She did way, way unforgivably worse, which is all forgotten and the book treats this as if Marc did something horrible. He had good reason to be mad at her. Even though her casting a charm spell on him turned out to be false (which then just makes it weird again that even the gay man is infatuated with her… The way they treated her made a lot more sense if it was a spell, and she uses it plenty later so she definitely abuses this power) she still wanted him like a magical accessory and didn’t tell him about it, among other things. Even if he didn’t have a reason to be mad at her, he has every right to decide he doesn’t want to date her. The reason she’s getting mad is because she won’t leave him alone when he obviously and blatantly says he wants to be left alone, and then he gets mad and yells.

From memory, besides the first encounter I described at the movie before, the worst thing Marc did was bring up the fact that she slept with Jeremiah before. Which was really strange. The first time it was brought up it was handled fine and he didn’t make a big deal about it, which makes sense. A 38 year old man should not be shedding tears that a woman he has met had a life before him. But the second time he acts as if she was sleeping with Jeremiah while she was with him, which was bizarre.

I held out hope that how enchanted they were by her would be because of a charm spell but it didn’t happen. Even the text acknolwedges how weird it is with “It was embarrassing to admit he’d fallen so hard for someone he knew absolutely nothing about.“. Instead, all blame for the problems was placed on Marc and Brenwyn was treated as a sweet, pure angel who was wronged.

This made the latter part of the book aggravating for me, because there was such a great opportunity for the book to take a new, interesting direction and it went into something so overused. She mopes. Everyone bashes on Marc for “being stupid”. Including Marc. It gets frustrating to watch everyone blame Marc for… something, I’m not sure exactly what other than “not wanting Brenwyn” or “being mad at Brenwyn because she did things he should be mad about”.

(Said by Brenwyn) “Don’t be cruel,” she said,” as much as Marc has done to deserve it.”

Seriously, what did he do? I read the whole story and the most he did was yell a few things. For some reason there’s no real blame on Brenwyn for anything. Marc tries to make up with her. Etc etc.

There’s an end fight scene with a giant demon that goes fine. There is a girl that Eleazar was having a one-night stand with there. I was puzzled why the three guys from out of town were handling the demon far better than someone who lived in the area. Hasn’t she heard of this kind of stuff all her life? Why was she having a break down? There was plenty of reason to be scared but she didn’t have to be useless. The book even calls her a “hysterical female”. The rest of the fight went pretty well and she luckily didn’t take up too much of the time.

The fight ends with Brenwyn returning the demon to his ‘caster’ (Jeremiah) and Marc being horribly injured. It drags a bit there as Marc gets sent to the hospital and we suddenly get some things from the hospital staff’s point of view. Then there’s more stuff that makes me think even worse of Brenwyn.

Apparently, Jeremiah has killed several people using magic. Some guy named Throckmorton shows up who has been investigating the strange deaths surrounding Brenwyn and Jeremiah. So, he’s listing off things like someone nearly drowning in her tub while taking a shower, someone being mauled to death by a bear, and someone else getting pecked to death by birds:

“…Hodgkiss, mauled by a bear – in the outskirts of Cleveland. Kiyoshi Tayama, pecked to death by a ‘murder of crows,’ as you said in your statement.”
“The inquest said it had to be chickens.”
He went on with no acknowledgement of her little jibe. Throckmorton had no sense of humor.

He is describing horrible, brutal murders. Not just that, but of people she at least had contact with. The book writes it as if I’m supposed to find him bad for not finding this hilarious, but the fact that she’s making jokes about the brutal murders of people she knew does not make me think highly of her. This is another instance where she just comes off as worse than Jeremiah to me. She’s upset that this man investigating deaths that are constantly happening around her had, at some point, thought she was involved. Because not only are people not allowed to break up with her, they’re also not allowed to suspect her of things if people keep getting brutalized or murdered around her.

Then he gets into his suspicions of Jeremiah being involved in the murders, and if it hadn’t already been cinched for me this would have done it.

“So, you won’t do anything to help?”
“You do not know the terrible price for fighting him on his own terms,” Brenwyn said. “I am not afraid of him, but what I might become. It is best to simply let him destroy himself.”

So Jeremiah is blatantly murdering people and her choice of action is, “I’m going to sit and watch and let it iron itself out”? When she went to the movie date with Marc there were three hundred other witches she was hanging out with, and it was established she knew them all and was popular. When Marc fought Jeremiah, there were nine people, including Jeremiah. If three hundred witches wanted to do something to stop Jeremiah, I think they could. And “magically murdering people when I feel like it” seems like a thing they would want to put a stop to.

At least three hundred people should be able to figure this out. She’s condenscending and rude to this guy who wants to stop the murders and then sits around and watches murders happen when she has an army she could raise. Later on she says, “If only I could punish him-“. Considering what the book has shown us, I think she could more than sufficiently punish him if she bothered.

Jeremiah walks in after Throckmorton leaves and sexually assaults her. She retaliates, and it’s treated like it’s a bad thing that she defended herself. I know this is supposed to be some sort of control thing, but you’re allowed to defend yourself when you’re attacked. You are not bad if you defend yourself. You have every right to. I’m not sure why she stayed to chat with him for so long, though.

When Jeremiah goes home the demon that was ‘sent back to its caster’ has finally shown up and torn his house apart. I was excited to see what sort of fight there would be, but there wasn’t one. He doesn’t even really cast a spell. He tells it to go away and it does. That’s it. A bit disappointing after the last fight.

Marc gets healed up by the witches and things end with Jeremiah mad about his house and plotting revenge and Marc recovering in the hospital. It’s obviously meant to go on after that. The overall story was mostly easy to read, it just had so much potential that wasn’t taken advantage of. Unfortunately, Brenwyn’s band of witches never show up for a demon fight or anything. We actually don’t see too much of them. The whole idea of Brenwyn using Marc was brushed to the side to have her be a flawless love interest (or, at least her flaws are ignored by all). At the end, when the demon shows up at Jeremiah’s house, it just leaves.

The writing is enjoyable, so the missed chances can be extra frustrating because I wanted to read them.

This book suffers because it centers around how great Brenwyn is and how she can never be anything but awesome. This sometimes even pushes other characters out of mind. For instance, Michael has just learned that his boyfriend, Lance, is one of Jeremiah’s gang. We never see much of them together but it’s told that they were getting along well. When Michael asks Marc about Brenwyn, Marc answers:

“Can’t you two obsess about your own sex lives?” Marc snapped.

Marc and Brenwyn’s relationship takes the center stage, so they can mope about each other all they want, but when Marc tells Michael to worry about his own sex life right after he found it his boyfriend is McEvil there’s no apology or interest or anything. It seems mostly forgotten that he just lost his boyfriend. The obsession with Brenwyn messes up the book, which is just another reason why it would have been great if the obsession actually had a threatening origin.

There are a lot of unfortunate implications in this book and if you’re sensitive to that I would recommend against reading it. For example, in the beginning of one chapter there was this:

…he had found a lovely Lithuanian communications student with a diminishing facility for English as she reached her maximum capacity for alcohol. They had been able to communicate on a much more primal level…

Upon starting this chapter, my first thought was, “…So, Eleazar raped a drunk girl?” which I doubt was the intention of the author. It colored the beginning of a chapter in a dark light when it began with that. Then there are other things that some people will recognize. The bisexual character being portrayed as highly promiscuous and wanting to have sex with pretty much everyone. Marc, the gay man, “threw like a little girl“.

The one that worried me the most was Michael’s relationships, though. From the beginning Eleazar doesn’t think Michael appreciates the female form like he should and did things like leave blow-up dolls for him. I wrote that off as Eleazar being an idiot. I didn’t mind it too much because it fit his character. Michael started dating Lance, as mentioned before. We don’t really see much of them. But then a woman who works for him, Anietra, catches a beam before it hits his head and smiles at him, and “Michael found himself responding in spite of being her supervisor. And her being a girl, and all.”

That instantly struck me as a “No, don’t.” When I hoped it was just him being more amiable towards her it said: He just couldn’t ever tell Lance. Why? He’s gay. It shouldn’t need to be said, but gay men aren’t into women.

It’s not mentioned again in the book. Then, when Marc is upset about Brenwyn and they’re at their base of operations, Eleazar pulls out some stand-ups Michael has created for target practice for the ren faire. The last one uncovered is of Brenwyn.

So – you’re in love with her, too?” Eleazar asked.
“Don’t ask me to explain.” Michael said with a shrug.

Later, when Michael is at the hospital with Eleazar and Brenwyn, Brenwyn touches his hand.

With her hand on his, Michael felt a rush of love and confusion, with just and aftertaste of terror, a mix of emotions he’d only felt since he’d come here to Arcanum.

This plot point isn’t resolved in this book, but I really, really hope this isn’t Michael being ‘fixed’ and liking women. Not only does the book have him show interest in one man and two women, but the gay man turns out to be the evil bad guy and the women are, of course, good and wonderful. On top of the bisexual being the big bad. Maybe it’s not the intent, and I hope it’s not. People who aren’t gay or bisexual, or haven’t been around gay or bisexual people, might not realize that things like the “promiscuous bisexual” are hurtful stereotypes.

Since the plot point hasn’t been resolved in this book I can’t say for certain where it’s going, but I think a gay man reading this book would probably be pinged by Michael’s sexual interests. People have tried to “fix” gay men in horrible, cruel ways in real life, and it’s still a thing (though thankfully becoming less popular these days). Just like lesbians have to deal with the awful thought process some people have that “they just need to find the right dick”, gay men have to deal with the same thing. Like Eleazar in the book thinking he can shove boobs at Michael and he’ll suddenly like them. You wouldn’t think that I could shove a penis in a straight man’s face and he’ll suddenly be into it, would you?

So, to wrap things up, it’s written well, it has a good flow, there’s some nice action, there’s clever banter, but the love interest is treated like a goddess in all she says and does and subjects are brought up or brushed over that may offend some people. You’ll probably be able to tell whether or not this will bother you based on the review.

I give it a 6/10.

I fell ill so it took me awhile to get this up.

Dead Scary: The Ghost who refused to leave

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

The story is simple enough. In this tale the main character, Adam, can see ghosts, or “Earthbound Spirits”. He’s always been able to do this and considers dealing with them a normal part of life even though his parents can’t see them and don’t believe they exist. His family inherits a dream home. Unfortunately, the ghost who lives there, Eddie, is stubborn and demanding and won’t leave. Adam has to deal with Eddie all by himself.

I’d say there’s mostly two characters in this book: Adam and Eddie. Other characters tend to exist to fill a role, like Adam’s parents being big disbelievers, or his little sister being easily scared.

The story moves along at a good pace. The first strange I noticed was incomplete sentences. I think there were more of these at the beginning of the story than at the end, but there were still several cases.

His voice was as posh as.

Ghosts are pure energy, so teleporting is as easy as.

Every time I ran into one of these I stopped to re-read and make sure I hadn’t missed something.

There were also times it just said stuff.

That must’ve been a good answer, because Mom gave me a quick smile and Eddie rolled his eyes and disappeared. We’d only just moved in and he already seemed to be fond of Emily.

His action doesn’t show him being fond of her at all. It’s just said out of nowhere.

So, the story goes along, Adam and Eddie can’t stand each other, and Eddie decides to use his connections in order to force Adam and his family out of the house. Apparently, because of his high position in the Earthbound Spirit world, he can get the Council to send Warrior Spirits in order to force them out, and Warrior Spirits can essentially destroy a person’s soul or something.

There were two things about the plot that boggled my mind.

One: When Isabel says, I don’t see why the Council can’t sit them both down and force them to work things out.

The response she gets is:
The Council doesn’t have the authority to do that.”

The Council can send the elite supernatural assassin squad but they can’t ask them to try and talk it out? This isn’t even attempted.

The second problem is that Adam is a child and is the only one who knows about the spirit world, and they’re expecting Adam to convince his family to leave their brand new house. How? Young children are the ones who make those sort of decisions. You can’t just hand them a magazine listing other houses and expect Adam to hop on over to the next home. It made no sense for so many people to expect Adam to be able to do that.

This book is meant for grade schoolers who may not even notice those things. It definitely taxed my suspension of disbelief as an adult, but kids might just chug along and not care.

It otherwise has a fun story to follow along with that the target audience will probably love so, despite the issues I had with it, I didn’t have a hard time reading it. I give it a 6/10.

Sleepy Beach: Beginner Reader

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

This is a short children’s book. My review of this book is probably going to be longer than the book.

I actually have a few things to say about the files. I was given a few options, including audio, so I decided I would just download the mobi and read that on my iPad. The file was about 26MB, so pretty big for a mobi file. I transferred it over and opened it up only to discover it only had three pages. The cover and some text credits.

Confused that I seemed to have gotten a credits page, I listened to the audio file, where it was obvious there were supposed to be pictures to go along with it. So then I tried to epub file and e-mailed it over to the iPad, and the iPad would just sit there and think about it forever when I tried to open that one.

Finally, I opened up the epub on the Kindle Previewer on my computer and had to read it on the computer.

The story is fine for a children’s book. Not too much really happens and the artwork is nice.

There was a page were a few pages where the text was far too light for me to read it. I’m not sure why the text is like that on those pages when it’s dark on the others. The biggest problem for this book would be readability. The font chosen for the text might be a font children would have trouble making out (I recall reading “swam” as “susan” when I was glancing over it). There’s also the pages where the text is way too light on a white background to read it.

(Having tried the mobi file on Kindle Previewer, it seems to work there. It didn’t work on my Kindle app on my iPad. Now I can see why the text was so hard to read on the epub – on the epub file white squares were showing up behind the text. On the mobi file the text is directly on the picture. So on pages where the text was white against a dark picture, it looked like white text on a white square on the epub.

Hopefully people who buy this book don’t experience any of the issues that I did.)

It’s a kids’ book and you get pretty much what you expect.

So I’ll give it a 8/10. and hope that my problems were unique.

Bright Fire (Bright Fire Series Book 1)

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

I received a mobi file for this book that didn’t work and ad to read a PDF file instead(definitely not preferred). That should have been a bad sign from the beginning. If you send a book for someone to read, please make sure the file works.

This book is written in first person present tense, which right away made it a more difficult read. It’s very hard to do right, and I can’t say it’s used well here.

There are many other problems in the writing, too.

“…Am I staring at my locker without really seeing it.”

“What was that about?” my mother asks as I shut the car door. “I’m not sure.”

As you can see, it switches speakers without making a new paragraph and even puts words in the wrong order or leaves out words sometimes. It’s full of errors. The writing also didn’t invoke emotions. There was one time when it got close, but I’ll address that later.

The premise of this book has a difficult one to build on right away. It makes Hades the villain, which is an unfortunate problem with modern day literature. The book references “Hell” and “the Devil” many times, confusing Hades for someone like Satan when they couldn’t be more different.

Hades isn’t only far more reasonable and not very villainous, but he’s tame compared to the other Greek gods. Extremely tame. Just compare the things he does to what Zeus does, including the way he treats women/his wife. Kidnapping his wife is obviously bad, but the myth needs to be taken in context of the times and “kidnapping whoever you like” wasn’t exactly uncommon in any the myths. This is a culture where “ritual abduction” was a thing, so it wouldn’t be right to take it exactly the same as you would from a modern day viewpoint.

So, right from the start it lacks research because it confuses Hades for Satan. Hades is not Satan. He is nothing like Satan. As a friend told me, “Hades isn’t any more the devil than Zeus is the Christian God.”

When she goes to see Alec after her parents are murdered mysteriously and there’s obviously something supernatural involved she slaps him for suggesting something unusual. It was bizarre. She heard her dad’s voice in her head and everything that happened to her parents, then acts like Alec isn’t only weird but physically assaults him. I could understand disbelief, or even still having a hard time accepting it, but after she just told a bizarre story she gets offended when he gives her a bizarre answer.

The book informs us of many things instead of showing us.

“Is that so?” She looks at him like he is cow dung on her shoe. I can tell she’s the brains of the duo; that means the guy was the braun.

She hasn’t done anything to show this, nor does she ever show this. We’re just told it.

Then there is a huge problem setting them up as the ‘heroes’ of the story. They bump into a homeless guy who starts ranting at her. Alec breaks his hands. And then they leave.

When he’s mentioned not long after by her she says:

“Yeah, that’s it!” I jump up. “Oh! Do you think? But no that guy was just a homeless man.”

A homeless man with two broken hands. This is trying to set up Alec as being protective of Dell, but instead it makes him look like a madman and makes Dell look like a psychopath. She saw him break the hands of a harmless homeless man and that is her reaction to the event. He grabbed her shoulders, yes. They have the right to get the homeless man away from her, but he was not attacking her. How he even knew about ‘Bright Fire’ or anything is never explained. He simply existed to yell at her and then be attacked and tossed aside.

The man may very well have been mentally ill and Dell had no problem with him being left horribly injured on the streets. How is that man supposed to get help for his injuries? This is a case of protagonist centered morality at its worst. Because it’s Dell who matters in the story and the homeless man is a nameless McGuffin, it doesn’t matter what happens to him and the story and characters just move on. But this is a terrible way to set them up as the supposed good guys or show that Alec is protective.

Let’s just put it this way: Would you start off your story with Alec blowing up a busload of orphans because the bus ‘might have hurt’ Dell if he didn’t? If you do, you have to climb up a very steep mountain to convince me to root for the characters. This story started me off almost right away with “These characters are monsters” and expected me to forget about it.

Because the mobi file I received for this didn’t work, I had to read it on a PDF and couldn’t highlight and take notes the way I would have wanted. Instead, I was bookmarking pages where there was an issue and hoping that I could remember what the issue was. The problem is I ended up bookmarking almost every page.

The book takes place over probably less than a week, and in this week I’m expected to believe that the main character has formed tight bonds with brand new people. With Cass, it might have been a matter of hours before she happily accepted Cass as her foster mother and was making it out like they were extremely close.

Another example of the book informing us of things came later when Dell notes about Alec and Lyla (Dell’s best friend):

I’ve noticed recently that they both seem to have put aside their issues and get along. Even rely on each other.

At first I wondered, “What issues?” And then I remember back at the beginning of the book Lyla called him a freak for some reason. It’s not explained well and worked against how likeable she was. She didn’t know about the attack on the homeless man or anything. She only said that because she thought he was a weird high school boy. However, there was close to nothing about it for many chapters – so much so that I completely forgot that even happened by the time Dell says this. This whole thing also takes place in maybe a week, probably less, so it’s all strange to talk as if a lot of time has passed. I also don’t remember Alec and Lyla interacting much.

There was another part that did make me uncomfortable with Hermes:

“Four; Pan, Priapus, Autolycus, and I just had a beautiful little girl Angelica. Some texts say I had a child named Hermaphoditus. But come on seriously, I would never punish a child with that name.”

Aside from the fact that a Greek god is talking like a modern day teenager, and the errors (including the misspelling of “Hermaphroditus”), I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the name being a punishment because it’s long – which would seem out of place because many of their names are long – or because of the meaning. There’s also the possibility that he means it would be embarrassing because it’s two names combined, but I don’t feel like there is a ton of research in this book so I’m hesitant to believe that’s the reason.

It’s not explained at all why it would be a bad name, though, so it leaves it dangling in the air that it could be implying hermaphrodites/androgyny is a bad thing.

There are quotes in the wrong places all over.

“My stomach drops and I choke back the bile rising in my throat. I feel Alec squeeze my hand a little…

While it would be interesting if Dell was suddenly narrating her life aloud, that’s probably not what is happening.

At the beginning I mentioned there was a part in the book that almost brought some emotion into it. They fight three sirens and kill them, and after that she discovers the sirens had a child who was hiding nearby. That is a great moral dilemma to have and a good reason for the protagonist to second guess her actions. However, on the next page the conflict is resolved by simply explaining that sirens can’t feel grief so the kid was fine. It got so close to having something of substance and immediately washed it away so that the main character wouldn’t have to feel bad.

For a book that is supposed to have huge conflicts, it feels like there’s little that the main character has to go through. Her parents die, but somehow I never felt anything for that. We not only barely see them, but she had the worst foster parents ever. For some reason they didn’t tell her about the Greek gods or anything, leaving her vulnerable and ill-prepared to protect herself after they died. There doesn’t seem to be any reason they did this other than to let her be confused and traumatized (or, to create forced conflict for the main character).

Cass is kidnapped. I also felt nothing because they hardly knew her. Despite being immortal, she did stereotypical modern day mom stuff (example: getting freaked out because Alec and Dell slept in the same bed).

Then there’s the physical trials they go through, like when they go to the Underworld.

They go through the Chasm of Lost Souls, where what starts as a good idea is wasted. Each soul is trapped in a mound, and if someone steps on that mound the soul can pull them in and take their place, essentially. But, apparently if they get grabbed all they have to do is stab the soul with the dagger they have and that works just fine, so there was almost no danger.

The next trial they face they have to walk across a bridge, which would be apparently no problem if someone didn’t drop a soda in the river (seriously, that’s what happens. Why are they littering in the Underworld? I’d be mad if I was Hades.)

Like with the “dropping of the soda”, problems seem to occur because the main characters are incompetent. When they go to fight the sirens they supposedly discuss strategy at length. Yet, when they get there and meet the first siren, the male character is immediately lured away into her trap and Dell is knocked out cold. What strategy were they discussing?! This is the most obvious thing sirens do and they were completely and entirely unprepared for it (not to mention what a terrible idea it is to bring a male character for that in the first place).

Then there’s the romance. This is a case of “romance without the romance”. That is, instead of writing out romance the story goes with “it’s fate” or “they’re soulmates”. I never felt like they were close, I just felt like I was told it, especially since they barely knew each other.

So, the book didn’t work for me on many levels. The writing style, the relationships, the portrayal of characters (especially ones who were supposed to be immortal and old), the challenges… It all needs an editor to fix these issues.

There are some ideas that could be built on (killing the sirens and leaving a child behind, the Underworld looking like a nice place, etc), it just doesn’t do much with it right now. If the author gets the funds for it I would recommend looking for a good editor to go over this story with. It would probably have a lot more impact if Hades was portrayed as his original self as well, rather than just the big bad.

I give it a 3/10.

Ariella and the Blood Curse

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

This particular book was written by a father and daughter team, so before getting to the book I would like to congratulate the daughter on writing. It’s good to see a father encouraging and helping his daughter out, and regardless of how the review turns out I do hope she keeps writing. What she writes at fourteen and what she writes at twenty-four will be very different, and skills can only be honed through practice.

That said, I will be reviewing the book as it stands on its own, because in the end no matter the age of one of the authors the product will be judged based on its quality. Its what you have to prepare for when you publish.

The basic story of this book isn’t too unfamiliar. It follows a young girl in a fantasy world as she joins a group of powerful fighters. I’ve seen a few books like this. Whereas most books like this spend half of the book just getting the main character into the group, Ariella joins her group relatively quickly in this one and the plot revolves more around a blood curse that is poisoning all of the crops.

I do think the book missed some opportunities. When Ariella first ended up in a “Knot” with Eleazar, I thought it would have been cute if she had said that growing up with her brothers had prepared her for it, especially since her brothers had been so over the top. Eleazar isn’t the first annoying boy that she’s dealt with.

I also would have liked her to react to Micah’s personality more. She thought he was cute, which was fine. She had a crush. But no matter what he did that didn’t seem to sway at all. He’s cute, and therefore it doesn’t matter what kind of personality he has. This happens in a lot of novels. I would have enjoyed it if she became disenchanted with him when she finally got to know him. It doesn’t matter how cute someone is, if they’re always frowning they aren’t going to be much fun to be around. I rarely see this done and it would have been nice, especially to acknowledge that personality matters in attraction, too. Plus, if she’s been daydreaming about him, it could really burst her bubble to see that he wasn’t anything like she had imagined.

It doesn’t even mean that she could never like him. She could grow to like him for who he really is, but that’s a lot different than the simple “He’s hot” route.

There was a part where Ariella first met Karlov and she woke up and told him to address her by her title. As it is it seems like the only purpose for this is to cause tension, and there’s no real explanation for it. Not long before she had been telling her captain how it was fine to call her “Ariella” because she wasn’t going to have the title anymore soon, so demanding that someone use her title not long after that seemed to contradict how she was previously. This could have been easily fixed, though. She had just been ‘drugged’ or whatever, and had just woken up. If she had done it because she forgot where she was or was groggy and out of it, that would easily explain why she was suddenly demanding him to use her title. Left as is there’s no real explanation for the sudden shift.

I was waiting for awhile for Ariella to comment on Eugenie’s lack of manners. Being a noble isn’t simply a matter of always doing whatever you want. Imagine for a moment if Ariella’s mother acted like Eugenie did. She wouldn’t be very well respected or liked. Nobility could be considered like medieval politicians, and there are those who are clever and charming and those who greatly fail at being either. The thing is, in a place where being a poor noble could get you assassinated, your reputation would be pretty important. Being a princess, Ariella would be well aware of that and is in the best position to comment on it, and it would make sense for her to mention that Eugenie was lacking in the etiquette expected of nobles.

One last thing I had hoped for was when Ariella decided to spy on her mother and the other monarchs during their meeting. I had hoped that she would bring her mother in on it.

There were a lot of errors in this book. Missing periods, capitalization problems, commas and periods used in the wrong places, wrong words, extra spaces… It does need a serious edit because the errors were all over.

All of that said, it was a pretty fun book. The characters were mostly enjoyable. Though there are ten in their Knot the story mostly follows a few of them, which is a good thing. When a book isn’t very long there’s not enough time to develop a ton of characters. I didn’t find myself getting annoyed with Ariella much, and thankfully even though the story starts with her crush on Micah it isn’t the focus of the story. It barely gets mentioned throughout most of the book, which was a relief. Too many books like this have the protagonist obsess over a guy she likes. There was a hint of, “Why doesn’t her opinion of him fluctuate at all?”, but it’s not brought up enough to ruin the reading experience.

The plot was interesting and it didn’t waste too long getting into it. As I mentioned before, most books like this spend a good portion of the time moving their protagonist into the new group, and then they have to start up the plot after their character finally gets there. Because Ariella pretty much goes straight there the plot is able to start up right away. The soil and crops are being fill with blood and all of the food is withering, putting the country in a state of peril as they run low on food. A situation like this would be devastating pretty quickly, so the stakes are high.

Each of the characters get a chance to do something, which is good. There’s never a feeling that one character is standing around doing nothing or letting everyone else think of everything. This is a problem in a lot of books, especially books with female protagonists, where they’ll wait for everyone else to make the decisions. It didn’t feel like the extreme opposite, either, where Ariella was the only one capable of doing anything. It struck a good balance.

The book also did another good thing. Though it’s a series, it didn’t just stop in the middle of the plot. It wrapped up the plot for that book and carried onto the next thing. Too many authors these days think writing a series means writing one story, chopping it up and then selling it separately. To me that’s like chopping up a single fruit and calling it a fruit salad.

Each book should have a satisfying conclusion for that book and there should be a good reason for it to be separate from the rest. This book had a comfortable beginning, middle and end even though there’s clearly more to wrap up in the future.

I would be interested in seeing what happens in the next book in the series. I hope the problems in the first book get cleaned up.

I give it a 7/10.

Deep In The Bin Of Bob

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

To say that “Deep In The Bin Of Bob” is a strange story would be an understatement. The story starts from one bizarre scenario and rapidly switches to new outlandish scenarios. In the beginning, “Deep”, the main character, follows a woman into her home, which is completely dark and lit by glowworms. There’s a bottomless pit in the middle of her kitchen, and she has things like a hippopotamus skin stuffed inside of a bear skin. It just gets stranger from there as Deep goes through the building working his way towards the roof, where a hot air balloon has crashed into it and he’s convinced someone needs help.

If I were to describe what the story was like, I think I’d pick “Jacob’s Ladder” as something similar. It’s kind of like reading a fever dream.

Like the main character, this book tries very hard to be deep, and in a lot of spots it works. There’s a lot of parts that will make you think. The writing is very stylistic, spending a lot of time describing scenes in detail and using a lot of metaphors. The author is good at painting strange, surreal scenes in a way that can be pictured. There’s even the odd morbid but entertaining thought:

He would sit the owner down, and tell them how sorry he was, but their dog had been murdered by gravity.

Deep minded the sinkhole, he minded the sinkhole very much.

However, the book does get majorly bogged down by its own need to follow that style and be overly lengthy. One of the first issues I ran into was metaphors that make no sense.

His muscles felt heavy, like he was walking on toothpaste.

Walking on toothpaste could be a good description for the floor, but how does it relate to how heavy his muscles are?

His voice was thin and curly.

Thin I could maybe equate to weak, but curly? You can say that someone’s hair feels like a poodle’s fur – that brings up a very specific image and feel. You can say something smells like grass. People know what grass smells like. But if you say something was like flying the way poodles do or sounded like grass screaming it doesn’t add anything because it’s meaningless gibberish. Poodles don’t fly, grass doesn’t scream, putting those words into a sentence just pads it out with confusing chatter. It feels more like metaphors being shoved into a sentence because there’s a metaphor quota rather than something that adds to the description, and they take away from the time of more meaningful things.

Then, there are parts where things are shoved into paragraphs that have nothing to do with anything. In one part it’s talking about giants, caves and the smell of the air, and then there’s this:

Deep imagined Christmas day being a war between those who wanted to celebrate, and those who wanted to get it over with.

And then it’s back to describing the size of the cutlery the giant is using. What did that sentence have to do with what was being described? Why is it there? It didn’t add to the situation at all, had nothing to do with what was being talked about, and is never mentioned again. It’s a random thought barfed into the middle of a scene. There’s also many times the stories repeats things.

There are entire scenes in this book that could be removed without losing anything from the story, and parts that feel shoved in there. For example, there’s a scene where Deep ends up in a room with Truman, Churchill and Hitler, and it’s about how dropping atomic bombs is a bad thing and how people fight wars and such in the name of God. The scene revolves around Truman and Churchill’s guilt, essentially, and them being in a match to see who’ll take the ‘blame’, sort of. This scene didn’t really have anything to do with anything else going on and could have been completely taken out, but with it in there I couldn’t help but keep thinking how someone very, very important was missing from this scene if it was trying to make a point about what happens in war.

What about the Emperor of the very country that was being talked about? He’s not even mentioned. So the whole scene plays out like it’s touching on the most obvious – atomic bombs are bad – and sweeping by anything deep about it. On top of that, it’s just sort of there and interrupts the flow of what was happening (Deep chasing “Loony Jikininki” to get his pig back).

To be honest, I had to force myself through a good portion of the book. These sort of odd, random scenarios constantly happening just made it seem like Deep was walking from one random scene to another with little rhyme or reason. Many times I’m not even sure how he got into a scene. There was a part in the middle where everything turned into ‘words’ and the book started talking about what the reader on the Kindle was thinking (I actually don’t have a Kindle to begin with) that didn’t work for me at all because of this. It tried to set up a scenario with a dog dying and the reader not wanting the dog to die, but I was impatiently waiting for that part to end so that something could happen. Because the story meandered about I was just waiting for it to go somewhere. I actually still don’t see a need for that part even after finishing the story. It’s like a movie that’s sitting on a landscape shot for too long.

I liked Richard the best as a character I think. Most characters in this book couldn’t really be considered a character. It was more like Deep walked in on them somewhere and they started monologuing about stuff. Richard was probably the only one who stuck around and had her own thoughts about different events. Deep could be a character, and Beena at the end could be a character, but everyone else is a monologue. They don’t really act or talk like people. It suits the story well enough but it means there’s a limit to how much anyone can be related to.

That said, after getting through all of that the ending itself was pretty good. Not necessarily the parts with Hitler, but the parts that actually had to do with Deep and what was happening in his life. I liked his talk with Beena, and I liked his realization of who some people had been previously. I thought that part was particularly well done after painting Beena out to be almost like she was someone perfect before.

The ending was good. Not necessarily “good” in the happy sense, but it suited the book. It was enough that I was glad I read the book, even if at times I had to keep pushing myself forward. I do think this is probably a book that someone could read twice and look into what happened earlier after they know the ending.

If things like child molestation, gory imagery or suicide are something that you want to avoid, then you probably shouldn’t read this book.

I give it a 6/10, because even though I thought the ending was good I have to remember how hard it was to push myself through some of the chapters.

Law of the Land (The Scofflaw Series Book 2)

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

I fell ill when I started reading this book, so it took me longer to get through than it normally would and might have affected might perceptions. Regardless, these are my thoughts.

Right away I knew this book would have a major problem with characters. At the beginning of the book there is a list of characters with short snippets about who they are. This is a very short book, so having that many characters listed meant there wouldn’t be enough time to develop them all. I understood who a few of the characters were, but there were definitely many who were little more than names to me.

There were quite a few errors littering the text. I always knew what the author meant to say, but there was plenty like this:

“Salvage,” Cazmeran corrected., “Are you…

…the creature growled and pointed up the mountain with he spear.

These sorts of errors were common.

The story also just sort of ends.There’s no real conclusions, nothing is pulled together. It’s more like we got the first chapters of a story. Now, I understand this is a series, but stories still have a beginning, middle and end.

Consider television for a second. There may be an overarching plot for a season or entire series, but each episode will feel complete in and of itself. This is becoming pretty common as more people write series where books will just ‘stop’ without anything having been solved, and you’re expected to buy the next book. Instead of feeling like a series it feels more like a single book that was chopped up and sold in parts. There’s no particular reason for these chapters to be separated from the rest.

That said, it was a fairly fun book. It was easy to read and had a fast pace. I wouldn’t mind reading more into the story. I enjoyed some of the conversations Taelyn and Cazmeran had. I didn’t have a problem following along with the story save for some of the motivations/plans of the gods (mostly because there are so many and not a lot of time to show them). There was one particular chapter that opened up describing Sarith that I thought was done particularly well. I wish that sort of time had been devoted to more of the characters, because I really got a feel for who he was in that chapter.

It isn’t a bad book to pick up if you’re interested in reading a book revolving around the politics between gods and a boy chosen to go on an adventure. Just be aware that it does have a lot of errors and you won’t get any sort of conclusion.

Also, people who are sensitive to rape may not want to read this book. There isn’t anything particularly graphic about that subject, but it is brought up a lot.

I give it about a 6/10.

The Gertrude Threshold: A Novella

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

The Gertrude Threshold is about the life of one family at the end of the world and what they’re doing at the end. Each chapter focuses on a character and the trial they’re going through, what they’re choosing to do and their thoughts on it.

Sometimes I got lost because it bounces back and forth between times and I would start reading a section not knowing if it was what was happening ‘now’ or if it happened ten years ago. It was also very verbose, which some may like but isn’t my personal preference in writing styles. It could completely lose me at times.

There was also a time when a man hunted down Ellen and I was just wondering why and how. How did he know where to find her when she’d been somewhere completely unexpected for over an hour, and then was wandering around? How did this man who is starving to death have so much energy to even do this? This is a time when everyone could be dying in an hour or two, they’ve been starving for a long time and are weak and covered in burns and such. I just felt weird that he tracked her down in a place where so many got lost during this whole story, and he didn’t know her or where she stayed exactly.

I’ll also admit I was confused on the setup of their place. I get that they were underground, but I had a hard time picturing exactly where she stayed in comparison to people like the thug. It sounded like they were separated – and the enforcer yells at her asking why she’s in the same area as him and such – but then it didn’t feel like it with him going down the same path she did when she was on her way home.

The voice for the child characters also fluctuated between sounding too juvenile to too adult. (Ky (5) thinking, “The boom-booms had gone away”, which sounds more like a toddler. On the other hand, a girl about a year older than him saying, “The whole universe was breaking in two”, which sounds a bit old for her.)

The overall writing was good and the formatting of the book was fine. The worldbuilding, besides having confusion about things like placement, was solid. I knew exactly what was happening to the world and what kind of conditions the people were living in.

Oddly, I think the character I liked the most is Brandon. In the beginning he says he hates his five year old grandson, Ky. But at the same time he’s the only one there with Ky throughout this entire book. His mom has left to go to ‘Church’, and after that she wanders around and goes other places. His dad left to talk with a ‘client’ he has a crush on, and then does some drugs and stuff. You can understand why they’re having issues considering the world is ending, but the cranky old grandpa is the one who stays with him, and despite his assertions that he didn’t like him it feels like he still has standards. When the earthquake and such are happening, and his weakened body is being broken even more, he holds onto Ky, despite wanting to let go and just die.

The Gertrude Threshold is probably more realistic about what an apocalypse would look like than most books. People weren’t able to fashion out enough space underground for everyone. Only a few had ‘compartments’. People are starving to death, even those who had come from wealthy origins. People are covered in sunburns, ash, and supplies are just about out for everyone. From the start I got the sense that the characters were going to die and there wasn’t anything they could do to magically fix it. It was just a matter of how many hours they had left and what would get them first. This might be too depressing for some, but if it’s the type of book that grabs you then this is a good book to check out.

I give it a 7/10.

Families

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

I’m honestly not sure what to say about this one. I’m very confused by it. The book was presented to me as an interview with a candidate for the President of the United States. However, I doubt “Citizen N” is a real person. There was very little information about this book. Even trying to look it up I couldn’t find more. I considered e-mailing the author to ask for clarification about what I was reading but I decided against it. This is what is put out there, and this is the information other readers would have.

So, here’s the information:

“The book is an interview with Citizen N, a candidate for President of the United States. In this short interview, he discusses the family structure and how it relates to our social problems here and around the world.”

My first feeling is that this book is just a way for the author to right their opinions by creating a fake interview. I’m not positive, though. It could be based on a real interview somewhere. And that’s all the book is. It’s a transcript of an interview, which probably isn’t real. I don’t really know what to say about that. I disagreed with some things, agreed with others, but I didn’t feel like anything was said in the book that struck me. When I read I usually don’t try to judge other people’s opinions or anything like that, but this felt more like rambling with an occasional point.

Some spots I felt were misinformed, like saying that people would only play games on things like the iPad instead of reading, so it’s not a good way to get kids to read and only buy them print books. The e-book market is huge because people are reading on devices a lot. I like print books, but I will admit I’ve read a huge number of books on an iPad compared to the few I read in print, and this is quickly becoming the trend. It’s just more convenient and cheaper to use a device (if you don’t take into account the price of the device, that is, and even then if I had as many print books as I did e-books the price of the books and the shipping would add up to a lot). Like this, some of the opinions felt dated, like someone who was out of touch with the current generation and technology.

There were also some errors.

I think my overall issue with this book is that I don’t understand why it exists. I don’t know what the author was going for exactly, or even if I’m correct in my assessment that it’s just some way for the author to write down their opinions. It’s short and it wasn’t awful, although it did ramble sometimes like I mentioned. I just don’t know why it was made or who it’s meant for. I could barely even find mentions of this book anywhere, Goodreads or otherwise. The author really needs to elaborate on what this is about. The author has a responsibility to present their book in a clear way.

I give it about a 5/10.

The Return (Second Coming Book 1)

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

(Spoilers within)

I’m just going to say it right off: This book didn’t work for me.

I’ve read some other reviews and I agree with some of the things they said and disagree with others. First, I agree that there are no characters in this book. I can summarize everything about a character in one line.

Sarah: She donates to charity and such and is horribly rich.
Peter: He runs a big shipping company place and is horribly rich.
Regina: She serves some guy and wears very impractical clothing. Also, as a woman who is sexual, she’s of course pure evil and loves torturing and killing people.

This is honestly about as much as I can tell you about any of these characters. They’re cardboard cutouts with names attached.

This book also desperately needs editing. It’s not one or two errors. There are errors everywhere.

You’re dad would be proud.

Thankfully, it was so expense that is was sold only in small jars.

The tenses will change, quotations marks are often missing, words will be missing and sometimes I’m not even sure who is talking. There’s even at least one spot where it suddenly switches to first person POV, and doesn’t have italics or anything to mark it off as thoughts. At another point a character thinks about doing something, and in the next two paragraphs announces that she’s done it when she hasn’t even left her spot yet.

Onto the plot. Geoff accidentally stumbles onto a Templar book while on vacation. For some reason this becomes the obsession of his life. Luckily, like all characters, he is ridiculously wealthy and can travel anywhere on a whim to research whatever he wants. Besides the fact that it doesn’t establish why Geoff cares so much about discovering the secrets of the Templars, it also doesn’t explain how he does a lot. For example, he goes to “library after library” and pours over books and manuscripts. Then we’re immediately told that the pieces “were starting to fall into place”. What pieces? I have no idea. We’re just told he’s discovering this stuff and figuring things out somehow. We don’t know what he read in the books, how he read between the lines and came to conclusions he did or what people on the street tell him. We’re just told he looked at books/talked to people and now he knows stuff.

At one point he’s at Oxford University and leaving the library. He notices someone else is there and immediately thinks he’s being followed. Like so many things in this book, I immediately ask, “Why does he think that?” There are plenty of people who go to that university, and lots of people stay late on campuses. I’ve even seen people sleep in random places like lounges or libraries. It’s not that weird to see a person there.

One of the things I disagree with other reviewers on is that the book needs to be longer. While I understand their opinion and why they would say that, I would say that there is a ton of useless text that can be taken out and replaced, like one point where the bad guys deal with a crooked taxi driver which has no bearing on the plot. The majority of the book reads like a list of events.

When Peter and Sarah go out on a date, we’re told things like what time Peter went to the hotel, what they ate, and a list of places they visited. We’re even told:

They seemed to have endless things to say to each other.

But we don’t see any of their conversations and we’re not even told what they’re talking about. The book tells us they have a lot in common, but I couldn’t tell you what any of those things were. Then there’s needless explanations, such as saying “It was obvious they had missed each other very much.” after they hugged. We shouldn’t have to be told that. It should be obvious when reading it, but it’s not because the writing lacks any impact. There are no emotional connections to any characters.

Which is why I disagree that the book needs to be longer. Instead of telling the reader a list of places they went, the author could have focused on one place and shown and actual scene with them, talking and getting to know each other. It could replace the needless text with something that shows us who the characters are as people.

The roles Sarah and Regina play might be upsetting to some. Sarah basically exists to have a baby. On the other hand, Regina basically exists to be sexy and evil. I don’t recall seeing any other female characters in the book, or, if there were, they were very brief. Whether they’re good or evil is summed up quickly. “Sarah donates to charity, therefor she’s good”. “Regina likes kinky sex, therefor she’s evil”. It would be so easy to do more than the cliche with these characters. Maybe Sarah donates for shallow reasons or for basic good publicity, but isn’t necessarily more generous than anyone else. Maybe Regina could have taken in “pets” who had been abused in their lives and she watches out for them. So much more could be done with them without making them flat characters, but it doesn’t happen in this book.

Sarah is part of a long line of women who will supposedly give birth to the savior at some point, yet her mother doesn’t bother to tell her anything until she’s dying. Sarah takes it surprisingly well. Everyone takes everything surprisingly well.

Even parts of the story are flat like this. For example, in Chapter 97, “Pilot’s Seat”, I could have summed up the entire chapter in a sentence and skipped it. I already knew exactly what was going to happen. Follow along and see if you can guess:

Peter, not long before this, studied how to fly a plane. For part of a month. They’re in the middle of an air fight. Suddenly, the plane he’s in starts diving. He knocks on the door to ask if the pilot and co-pilot are okay. No one answers. Can you write out what happens for the rest of the chapter? I bet you could and you’d probably be 99.9% accurate.

Then there are some major questions in what makes sense. For one, when it’s discovered that Sarah is going to have a boy, the doctor makes a note that the Davidson family had a pre-disposition for having girls. I don’t understand why he would make this note, though, because it’s the sperm that determines the gender of a child and the doctor would know that. Basically, Peter’s side of the family would be the one that would be looked at, not Sarah’s. The only reason the doctor makes this note is for plot convenience.

Later, they tie a man up to a bed and poison him to death. They then simply declare that when the police find him they’ll think he died of a heart attack during sex. Why would they think that? There wouldn’t be any signs of him having sex. Just taking his trunks off doesn’t mean everyone will conclude he was having sex.

Other times the good guys don’t take advantage of obvious situations. An attempt is made on Sarah’s life, but they don’t do anything to make it appear that the attempt was successful, so the bad guys find out right away that she didn’t actually die and continue trying to kill her.

There was also one particular uncomfortable moment for me:

He had also deceived quie a number of gullible, so-called, “intelligent” people into believing in global warming…

Regardless of my thoughts on the subject, when I read that line it felt like a jab at readers who believe in global warming. And:

It was not a place for the average pedophile priest or lesbian nun.

In my personal experience, the priests and nuns I know probably would not put those two things on the same level.

Even after all that there was still another major problem. The good guys were ridiculously overpowered. At one point I made this note:

Below deck, the Argo was outfitted to house 300 Templars with eating and sleeping accommodations.
Versus Regina.

Yes. 300 Templars, and on the bad guy side we’re shown Regina. I really didn’t feel like the good guys had much to contend with.

It finally sets it up towards the end that the bad guy has access to millions of people but it doesn’t feel like it throughout the story. It’s constantly Regina versus everyone. Not only that, but it readily sets up the Templars are being better trained. The Templars have more information, boundless resources, and another organization helping them. For the vast majority of the book the bad guys felt like the underdogs, not the good guys.

The books also feature protagonist-centered morality that can make the good guys seem monstrous by accident.

At one point, while people are trying to kill his pregnant wife, Peter is contacted by a business partner who tells him that there’s some trouble with him being accused of wrongdoing in Panama City. For some reason Peter decides he should go deal with this, even though they’re being pursued by people who want to kill his wife and it would be easy to locate him if he went to meet a regular business contact. Also, he and his wife have access to any amount of money they could possibly desire, so he doesn’t even need to do it.

But he goes anyway and of course gets himself and a Templar caught. Then they’re held hostage on a ship. The Templar, Hodgeson, is tortured while Peter can hear him from another room. He knows that Hodgeson is tied up in the other room. Suddenly a storm hits, and it conveniently breaks down the door so he can escape! So our hero goes to try and help Hodgeson, right?

Nope. The ship is sinking, he knows Hodgeson is tied up and has been enduring torture, and he knows he can hear him from where he was and had seen the room that Hodgeson was in, but he didn’t even think about trying to save the other man. He doesn’t even try. He hops right off the ship and leaves the torture victim tied up to sink with it, barely sparing him a passing though. Hodgeson is barely mentioned after that. Keep in mind that the only reason that Hodgeson is even there is because Peter decided to stupidly go do regular business in the middle of a life or death situation (not to mention he didn’t consider that they might spot him meeting with his business partner and then follow him back to Sarah).

This is exactly why the book has so many problems. Imagine, for a second, if we changed that scenario a bit. He goes to save Hodgeson, but the door is not just locked, it’s also strong and heavy. He tries to find a way to get him out but eventually has to come to terms with the fact that he’s unable and he has to save himself. Devastated, he leaves the man behind and blames himself for not being able to save him. Wouldn’t that have some more impact than him bounding off the ship and barely even remembered Hodgeson later?

And on top of that, he’s rescued by a fishing village later. These people are obviously poor. They don’t even have a telephone. So, after he’s gotten back to where he belongs and again has access to ridiculous amounts of money, does he ever think about these people again? Poor people who saved him, provided him with food, gave him a place to rest and even gave him transportation to where he needed to go? Nope. He got what he needed from them so they’re long forgotten.

This is protagonist-centered morality. People besides the protagonists are fodder – so much so that even the protagonist themselves don’t think much of them, and it can make them look unintentionally like horrible people. He knows someone is tied up and tortured on a boat but he only thinks of rescuing himself. He’s a super rich man taking things from very poor people and it doesn’t even cross his mind to repay them.

The plot of the bad guys was to take over the world, mainly by “stopping the prophecy” and putting in their own Pope. Now, Christianity is a major, major religion, no doubt. There are 2.2 billion Christians, out of 7.2 billion people. But if you look at that from the other side, right off the bat that means that 5 billion people don’t even follow the religion you’re taking over. Then, keep in mind, not all Christians are Catholics. So, remove half of the Christians and you’re down to 1.1 billion. Now, keep in mind: how many of them can be described as “devout”, and how many mostly go about their lives and don’t really pay much attention to the Church?

So, now you’ve nominated your own Pope. That’s nothing to shake a stick at but it’s hardly “ruling the world”. If the new Pope ordered Christians to kill people I doubt there would be very many who would listen. They’re still people with their own minds. In some places Christians have been greatly dropping in numbers these days because people have decided they don’t agree with the Church. If the Church started doing weird things that people didn’t like you can be sure that the number of followers would drop even quicker. It felt like this plan wouldn’t be quite as great as it might first appear.

In my opinion, the book needs a giant edit. It reads like a series of events, none having any particular emotional impact. “They went here, then they went there, then they…” Trying to think of something good to say about it, all I can come up with is that the general formatting was fine and the cover is nice. I give it a 2/10.