Cave of Journeys

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.
(There will be spoilers).

“Cave of Journeys” is a very clean read with a lot of information packed into it. If you’re looking for something safe for kids, there’s absolutely nothing unsavory in here. This is the kind of book where the characters are constantly saying “please”, “thank you” and apologizing when they do something that might be considered rude.

I think another reviewer pretty much summed up the main issue the book has: a lack of conflict. There’s never any tension. The only time there was a tense moment – when the tree became mad at them – it was resolved in about a page. It never feels like there’s anything at stake and everyone always gets along. There’s no danger and barely any disagreements.

It also needed editing. For example:

“When it did tell time proudly displayed it for all to see.”
“He repeated his maneuvers repeatedly…”

There’s also a spot where I felt like a line was meant to be deleted but got left in.

“”…Young man, do you have any questions?” the Elder asked Mattie.
“I like your stories. You make them easy to understand.”
Mattie thought for a moment. “Nope, I don’t have any questions yet.””

The middle line felt out of place. “Then” and “than” are also mixed up constantly in the book. Sometimes they’re used correctly, and then they’ll be used incorrectly several times, so the book is in need of an editor.

A lot of the book is basically characters talking to each other about history, respect, and other lessons. They’re not bad morals to take in or anything, but it is rather exposition-heavy. There also wasn’t really an explanation for a lot of things (like why the main characters were the ones picked to go on the journey. There wasn’t anything they did that couldn’t be done by anyone else).

I’m not sure if the book would hold a child’s attention because of the lack of conflict, but it is an innocent enough read and it might. It could be a nice introduction to Native American beliefs if they were interested in it, and it certainly has plenty of nice values to teach them and a lot of information. It didn’t keep my attention very well because I need more tension in what I read, but if one of the kids enjoyed it that wouldn’t bother me at all.

I’d say it wouldn’t hurt to see if your kids enjoy this book, but it probably wouldn’t hold the attention of many adults.

I give it a 6/10.

Roastmaster (A Coffee Novel)

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.
(There will be spoilers).

I’ll have to admit, the style of this novel wasn’t quite for me, though it might work for other people. If you read the beginning and enjoy it, you’ll probably enjoy the rest of the book.

The changing of tenses was jarring for me. Not only did chapters switch from past tense to present tense, but then there would also be a spattering of “this would happen, that would happen” thrown in there. Sometimes we’d start a chapter with Capri sitting around in present tense and suddenly be talking about something she did last week/month/year. I get what the author was going for with “Capri” being the current story and “John Mallory” being the story from the past, but I wish the tenses had been kept the same.

If this book were a piece of art, I’d say it’s an “abstract painting”. Sometimes things make sense in it, and other times it has the most bizarre descriptions of what’s going on. With how often Machu was described as having a big round head like the moon I could have easily pictured moon from Majora’s Mask sitting atop his neck.

There were odd things like, “She looked up as if she saw a morpho blue butterfly” (just an example based on my memory, it might not be written exactly like that). It left me wondering if there’s a specific way people are supposed to look when they see a morpho blue butterfly. At parts it was very confusing.

In much the same way, sometimes the dialogue was very strange and it would be hard to imagine people actually talking like that.

That said, that doesn’t mean this is a bad book. There’s definitely an interesting story there. John Mallory’s transition from American life to life in Costa Rica was done pretty well. I was actually convinced she didn’t want to leave by the end. A lot of the characters are likeable, and they weren’t stuck in a state of “having to do everything right” or “having to do everything wrong”. Everyone was all over the place in doing right and wrong.

My best suggestion would be to read a preview and see if it’s a style you like, because it keeps the same style throughout.

I give it about a 7/10.

Life, Everlasting

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.
(There will be spoilers).

After finishing the book, I have to say Theresa and Gino make the story for me. Peter is all right. I felt like a lot of his stuff was just there, although there is some payoff at the end.

But Theresa and Gino are great characters. They feel real, and the way they handle their son’s death is portrayed very well. How they treat and feel about each other is realistic, too. They feel like a couple who has been apart much of their life, and who are trying to adjust to living together. While they don’t hate each other or anything, they do have some resentments over their choices. And even though they’re detached from each other there is still a hint of something there.

I liked when Theresa worried that Gino would get upset if she spent money on herself, and being pleasantly surprised when he seemed okay with it. Gino seemed like the type who didn’t talk a lot but he still wanted to support her.

There were parts that offered too many details. For example, discussions about whether to go to X restaurant or Y restaurant. I also never felt like I really knew much about their family in the afterlife. They were mostly a bunch of names for me, while I did get some impressions of the people who were still living.

But overall, I found Theresa and Gino to be great, deep characters going through an incredibly hard situation. I really wanted them to be okay in the end because they both seemed like they deserved it. I liked how they could be detached, but neither was ever portrayed as being horribly wrong or something – they just made some different life choices that the other didn’t agree with.

For example, Gino serving in the military for so long, which kept him away from his family. On the other hand, Theresa constantly letting people mooch off of her and giving away their money. Neither was a bad person but you could understand why they would get irritated.

It’s a touching book. I’d recommend it for anyone who is looking for a somewhat sad story of a family dealing with the grief of a lost son.

I’d give it an 8 out of 10.

I WON’T be linking to this book.

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

One of the first things I noticed about this book was the formatting. The pages all bleed into each other, so the first chapter immediately bleeds into the second chapter, etc. There’s also weird spacing after a lot of stuff, as if someone hit return to space it out instead of using page breaks. It’s not the first time I’ve read an indie book that has done this, but I never really mentioned it before. The reason I bring it up this time is because this is a book about creating kindle books, so I expect it to look good.

The table of contents is a mess. There’s big paragraphs in it, as well as tons of links with “(Untitled)”.

Right at the beginning there’s some images proving that the author earns as much as the book proclaims.
I was a little confused because all of the books the author has available are under $4. So, let’s be generous and say he was making $2 per book sold. He’d have to sell about 7,000 books a month to make the $14,000.
I noticed his books on their rankings seem to be on average somewhere around #90,000 to #100,000, which means he’s selling a few copies, but based on my experience I’d expect them to rank a lot higher if he’s selling that many. I don’t know, it seemed off to me.

It did feel repetitive and like there was a lot of unneeded information. It started off with explaining what a kindle is. The problem with that is that if someone is reading the ebook – likely on a kindle or similar device – they probably don’t need to be told what it is. Likewise, if someone is reading a book about successfully publishing on the kindle, they probably don’t need pages and pages about something like “Why kindles are popular”.
It reminded me a bit of a forensic book I once bought that decided that it was necessary to provide the reader with definitions to things like ‘murderer’.

Then I noticed that in the few pages I’d read it felt like I’d seen some of the same things more than once.

Example:
At 6%:
“If you try to publish in the traditional way, then you might have to wait for months and years to get your manuscript approved and to get a good deal in publishing the book. In the world of publishing, the more you wait, the more money you lose.”

At 10%:
“One of the biggest advantages of Kindle publishing lies in the fact that you will not have to be at the mercy of publishing houses to get your book published. This is a huge benefit as losing time is equal to losing money in the publishing world.”

At 91%:
“The biggest advantage of Kindle publishing lies in the fact that you will not have to be at the mercy of publishing houses to get your book published. So you do not lose unnecessary time and money over such publishing efforts.”

That’s right. I may have even missed one or two, but this is a short book and there’s three examples of it repeating the exact same thing, sometimes almost word for word. It repeats A LOT.

At 19% there’s a big list of ‘example articles’ which are then repeated on the very next page.

I also found it odd that at 12% there’s a graph demonstrating why it’s a good idea to write romance ebooks, because people prefer their romances as ebooks. Why? Because at the bottom of the list was cookbooks, where people vastly prefered those to be printed over ebook versions. And the author is saying that he sells so many ebooks, and almost all of the ebooks he has available are about cooking.
When he gets to talking about cookbooks, he puts up a list of places to take recipes from. Not just the text, but the images, too. People own the rights to their work, so I can’t agree with taking it. The images, as well. Someone took that image and someone owns the right to that image, you can’t just take it and profit off of it. The people who create that work deserve credit and pay for their work.
I can say that if I was reading a book and saw someone using images I had commissioned for my book, I would not be happy.

There were also errors:
“…I am going to show you publishing hot bestseller books and I have break that method…”

“At this point, you should have book with you.”

At one point it threw this out:
“Don’t put a bunch of PLR stuff together.”

But the book didn’t mention PLR or what it was earlier.

A lot of times the book just tells you to go somewhere else, like this:

“If you want formatting tips, it’s available on amazon.com.”

This book is FULL of lists of links that could probably easily be found online.

Also, it showed more examples later on in the book of the author’s success. The problem? The author blacks out all of the parts that would show what book it is. I could easily snap a screenshot of a bestseller, cover the ASIN, and pretend that I’m the #1 bestseller. I have no idea why the author would hide this information if they had books that were bestsellers.

I have a lot of major problems with this book. Of course, encouraging theft and plagiarism is at the top. It’s formatted poorly, has a lot of errors (poor grammar/missing commas or periods/etc) and encourages a lot of copying and pasting of other people’s work. This book was published on Jun 6, 2014. It has 63 5-star reviews (Jun 24, 2014). Need I say more about that? This book pads out its few pages by repeating a lot of the same things over and over.

As a matter of fact, take a look at this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J19FBR8/ref=pdp_new_dp_review

Compare it with this book’s page: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KU7OLXA/ref=pdp_new_dp_review

Look a little familiar? Looks like the author published essentially the same thing twice.

All of this got me wondering, so I did a little more research.
So here we go:
From this book: “The Ninja Secret That Will Allow You To Create Bestselling Kindle Books Without Having To Lift A Finger”
Look what I found over here (http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Buster-Formula-Publishers-Success-ebook/dp/B00JUAJSNQ): “The ninja tactic that will allow you to create bestselling kindle books without having to lift a finger.”

From this book: “He has opened doors again to his Kindle 1-on-1 Coaching Class for a very limited time for $100 per hour. Muhammad will be raise the price to $1000 per hour once he get 5 students.”
Over here ( http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Money-Mastery-Publishing-Revealed-ebook/dp/B00DVWSR40 ): “It not only works for myself, but the many other people that have been through this program. People have paid me over $1800 ($300/hour) to learn this information from me through 1-on-1 coaching on my blog, …”

This book: “Take action today and buy this book so you can start making passive income online through my Kindle publishing method for a limited time discount.”
Other book: “If you want to learn how to make passive income online from Amazon Kindle Publishing, then you absolutely cannot miss out on downloading this book!”

This book: “Simply click the “buy” button on this page and you’ll easily be able to read this book from your computer, Kindle device, tablet or smart phone.”
Other book: “Simply click the “buy” button on this page and you’ll easily be able to read Kindle Money Mastery from your computer, Kindle device, tablet or smart phone.”

It even offers a bonus video just like the other book.

So, there’s more than a little bit about this book that’s suspect. I’m sorry, I couldn’t rate this more than 1/10.

The Book of Deacon

This review will contain spoilers.

I enjoyed this book a lot. Myranda, the main character, is a pretty decent to follow. At first she’s only trying to survive. The northern countries where she lives have been in a perpetual war with the southern country. She wanders from place to place just trying to keep her stomach full enough. After she finds a campsite where the man had died, she happens upon his sword and it leaves a mark on her. Her only thoughts for the sword are to sell it so that she could have her basic needs met, but soon she’s being hunted down by her own country.

She meets a malthrope named Leo, one of the first people she’s been able to talk to freely since she was a child because she’s seen as a sympathizer with the enemy. Malthropes are seen as wicked creatures, so Leo, too, is unwelcomed by the world.

There can be a bit much of Myranda stumbling onto things, but it wasn’t enough to bother me. There were also a few occasions where Myranda had an odd opinion that I didn’t understand.

For example, maybe halfway through the book, she ends up in a secret village kept hidden from the rest of the world. Until then she’d been trudging through constant snow, barely surviving from city to city, didn’t trust the people around her, and everyone pretty much looked the same because most people wore the exact same color of cloak. She was barely surviving and had no friends.

When she arrives in the village it’s a safe haven from the outside world and it has all kind of color to it. But when Deacon tells her how difficult it is to get back out and seems content with staying there, she starts complaining how sad that is. It didn’t make sense to me. She only just got to safety from a world she had no particular reason to be fond of. People were trying to kill her all the time. Why would her immediate thoughts about the village be about how awful it must be to live there your whole life?

It felt almost like she had those thoughts just for the sake of being contrary. I thought it would have seemed more natural if she thought it was the greatest place in the world for awhile, and then changed her mind after being there for awhile and finding that most of the people were only concerned with learning. There was a lot she could have been disillusioned by.

The romance between Myranda and Deacon is close to non-existent. I actually like this. She doesn’t even meet him until about halfway through the book, and when she does there’s no obsession over how the other looks or anything. They start talking a lot and spending a lot of time together as Deacon explains things in the village to her and supports her.

I think Deacon made a surprisingly good romantic interest because he’s so lacking in the ways of romance. His entire life he’s lived in a village that’s all about learning and less about friends. He’s awkward and obsessive about his books, but he’s cordial and supportive of Myranda the entire time. The fact that Myranda was going to him for help and to talk to made sense. Their friendship didn’t feel forced at all, and it was easy to see how both could be drawn to the other – Deacon because it might be his first time having an actual friend in a long time, and Myranda because she’s been so alone in a hostile world.

Deacon doesn’t even seem to be aware of his shift in interests, which makes sense. He’s lived in the village without much in the way of friends, but the people there aren’t particularly hostile towards him, so becoming friends with Myranda would be a more subtle change in his life than in Myranda’s.

They have some differences in views. Deacon firmly believes what he’s been taught in the village, and thinks fate will happen on its own so they can just sit and wait for things to fix themselves. Myranda, on the other hand, thinks she needs to play a more active role in fate.

Overall, I think it was worth a read and I’d recommend it to someone who enjoys a nice fantasy novel. It took a little bit to get into, but I’m rating it based on the fact that I was invested by the end and would continue reading. I’d give it about a 9/10

Moonlight

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.
(This review will contain spoilers).

I usually don’t comment on the covers, but I will mention I like this cover. I’m a sucker for art.

This is a short but sweet book. Because of its length, I’d say the story revolves more around a concept than developing characters. We fly through certain portions of their lives, being told a lot about what happens rather than shown. If you’re looking for a quick, interesting take on a tragic love story that’s fine. It’s a pretty sweet, innocent love story with an ending that is up for interpretation.

The narration is stilted but I believe that’s done purposefully, to make it sound like it was translated from Japanese. I read Japanese translations all the time so it didn’t really bother me. The dialogue sounded more like a historical manga than a modern one to me, but I don’t pick up a lot of romances so it could just be modeled after a genre I don’t follow.

Honestly, the author could probably take this exact same story and flesh it out into something much bigger. As I mentioned, we get told a lot, so it would be easy to expand on parts and spend a lot more time with the characters. The overall story is pretty solid, and it’s a good concept.

It would be a good book for someone to pick up if they’re looking for a quick, romantic read and don’t mind some sad twists.

I’d give it about an 8 out of 10.

Tackling the Imago

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.
(This review will contain spoilers).

This was a very interesting book. Written somewhat like a diary, it follows the story of Gina as she studies English.
I think it’s a great exploration of someone’s psyche. There’s not too much hand-holding – Gina does analyze herself quite a bit, but it’s not done in an unnatural way. She mentions events in her life that have led her to be self-deprecating and desperate for attention. It all makes sense, and in many ways Gina is very relatable. It’s easy to feel for her and root for her.

As a main character, Gina can be amusing and ‘quirky’, but isn’t quirky in a way that feels forced. She expresses a lot of personal thoughts that most people probably have at times, from naughty fantasies to introspection. She can be very humorous and sometimes looks back at her own thoughts and gags when she was being overly melodramatic.

Likewise, her ‘romance’ with D is a breath of fresh air compared to most books. I’ve read a lot of books where the romance can be boiled down to, “I saw him and he was hot, so we’re in love”. In this book a lot of characters take jabs at D’s looks. With the way Gina describes him compared to the way others describe him, you could see a fairly normal looking guy who is attractive to her, and the attraction doesn’t necessarily stem from his looks. She gets a lot of praise from him and they spend time dueling with their wits, to the amusement of both.
A real chemistry is developed between them and built up over the entire span of the book. They both felt like people instead of caricatures who existed to fill a romance quota.

One of the strangest things about this book that I both disliked but understood was the word choices. This book has a bad case of what some would call “thesaurus abuse”. It can take a reader out of a book because it sounds stunted and unnatural, and if you don’t happen to know all the obscure words you either lose the meaning or have to pause to look it up.
Unlike most cases, this actually makes sense for this particular book. The story revolves around characters who are learning English as a second language, and the person writing the entries to ‘practice her English’ mentions things like memorizing words from the dictionary. Someone learning from a dictionary wouldn’t know which words people actually use. Having studied a second language, I can understand that well. Memorizing dialogue or vocabulary doesn’t give you much insight to how people actually speak.

Still, it happens so much that it’s distracting.
For one example, Gina used a word that I’ve never heard anyone say or write before, “simulacrum”. I was curious, “Are people tossing this word about and I just missed it somehow?”, so I looked it up. Google brought up half a million hits. Every single link on the first page was to dictionaries or articles explaining what the word means. Not a single one was people naturally using it in their writing. Other word choices get similar results. “Apotropaic”, “desideratum”, “potvaliancy”… some with far less results than the first example. Every word you’ve never heard of has been dug up from obscurity to make a brief cameo.

The writing style left me confused sometimes. Just as an example of how some parts might be written: Gina might be sitting next to D, go into a metaphorical paragraph about insects or something, and then the next paragraph she’d be running away while ‘pulling her clothes back on’. And I’d be left wondering, “Wait, when did the clothes come off?”

There were also times when the book lingered on something when I was ready to move on. If Gina was anxious about a test I could understand that, but I didn’t necessarily want to read several pages about it.

Overall, it was a good read with a lot of depth to it. It’s a good book to pick up if you’re looking for something different. I give it about a 7 out of 10.

Source of the River

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.
(This review will contain spoilers).

This was an overall enjoyable story. I liked the majority of the characters. I think Kaiya stuck out the most for me.

I was surprised the main characters didn’t meet up with the antagonist longer than they did. The part where they cross paths was actually very short, and the rest of the book is essentially telling two different stories: one story where the protagonists are trying to solve a problem and another where the antagonist is trying to gain power. I can see this is building up to a larger battle in future volumes.

Sometimes the story over explained things.

“The nighttime air in the mountains was cool despite it being early summer. She pulled her cloak a bit closer to her skin, but the chill she felt had more to do with her nerves than the weather. She could sense the magic emitting from deep inside the cave and felt compelled to investigate.”

There’s nothing wrong with the paragraph, but we already know the information provided by the last sentence. We’ve been told it several times by this point and it doesn’t elaborate on how chilly the air is, so the last sentence could be removed entirely.
Sometimes it feels like the author wants to make sure she got a certain point across and repeats things like that. This can take away the ‘punch’ behind some lines, though, because sometimes being succinct is better.

“”She has no cause to harm them now,” Kaiya argued. “She must be stopped, peacefully or not.” Her words were true. She would go to any length to prevent another dwarf’s death. She could not bear the sight of another devastated family.”

Like the previous example, we’ve already been told that Kaiya would do anything to stop this, so it doesn’t need repeated. Imagine if this paragraph was shortened down to this:

“”She has no cause to harm them now,” Kaiya argued. “She must be stopped, peacefully or not.””

Let her own words speak for her. Then the power of what she’s saying isn’t dulled by exposition, and the conversation is less spaced out. Or what about this:

“”She has no cause to harm them now.” Kaiya’s eyes lingered on the mourning family. “She must be stopped, peacefully or not.””

In other words, there doesn’t need to be as much hand-holding.

It certainly wasn’t enough to take away from my enjoyment of the story. I can understand why the author did it, but I think it’s something she can look at when she continues writing.

The love stories also didn’t work for me. I didn’t dislike the characters. It’s just that they didn’t know each other for very long, so when they were struggling with being apart it felt a bit forced. If it was something more like, “She was worried about their safety” rather than “She couldn’t bear to be apart from him” it would have worked better for me. They’d only just met so it would have taken a lot more to convince me that they were sick with love.
And it wasn’t that there wasn’t anything for them to love about each other, but it came off more as “She’s pretty, I love her” and vice versa.

I did like the parents in the book. For the brief time River’s dad was around I liked him. I think Darvil is probably one of the more interesting characters in the book. He both expresses a differing opinion and plays a supportive role.

I liked the setup of the dwarven village. There’s only a few places the book concentrated on, and they’re established well.
The writing is very clean and clear. I never found myself confused by anything that was going on.

This is a good read for people who like fantasy, and I can see the next volume(s) building up to a bigger conflict.

I give it about a 8/10.

Draykon: Book 1 (The Draykon Series)

There will be spoilers in this review.

I wasn’t positive what to expect when I began Draykon. Right away there is a map of the fantasy world, and different areas of the world seem to have different versions of day and night. In some places, it’s always day. In others, it’s always night. And in yet others days and nights come and go like normal.

I liked many of the characters. Eva was good. She was strong, but not impervious to mistakes. I found her attitude towards Vale and marriage refreshing. In many books it’s “true love within five minutes” or “they hate each other but really it’s true love” and other cliches. In contrast, Eva and Vale were companions. She didn’t feel strongly about wanting to marry him, but she didn’t complain either. She became engaged because she felt it was the right thing to do for logical reasons, and she and Vale had a comradery. Perhaps it wasn’t romantic but it was nice to see a couple who were trying to decide what to do with their lives and not necessarily knowing. They treated each other well and had respect for each other.

The world created for the book is nice as well. It’s expansive and consistent. I actually think this is the type of book that would benefit greatly from artwork because I wasn’t always sure what everything looked like, and there was quite a bit of stuff. Things like pictures of Llandry’s home and of the small animals would have been great.

I’d say the downside for me was Llandry herself. It’s not that I particularly hated her – she was all right. I liked that she was a jeweler and had a passion for it.
It was more her anxiety that got to me. Everything she did or experienced she was anxious about. She was a nervous wreck 24/7. It’s possible to do this with a character and be fine, but it got in the way for me in this story because her experiences didn’t have the excitement of everyone else’. While Eva, Tren and the others were off battling wills with dangerous beasts, Llandry was barely able to handle a friendly stranger visiting her home. It made me want to spend more time with Eva and people who were actively doing something.
Also, in contrast with Eva and Vale’s relationship, Llandry brought some cliches to the table. For example, she obviously liked Devary, and when Devary met with a another woman he was amiable with she and Llandry had to be at odds. This sort of thing happens all the time in movies and stories. I much prefered Eva’s relationship.
Even when Eva and Tren became close, it was over a period of time and after going through a lot together, so I prefered both of her relationships to Llandry’s.

The story was good, though. It was colorful and highly imaginative, and it’s obvious a lot of thought went into it. It would be a great read for people who love fantasy.
I give it about a 9/10.

Vampire Romance 1: Erotic Sex Romance of Hannah the Vampire

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.
(This review will contain spoilers).

“Vampire Romance”, if I were to describe it briefly, is essentially a pornographic short story, which I don’t have a problem with. I enjoy stuff like this once in awhile.

I think the main issue is that it reads like the rough draft to a story. There were a lot of errors. Sometimes there would be several sentences with missing words on the same page, and there were a lot of places that needed commas/apostrophes/quotes that were missing.

For example:
“Hannah knew the broken leg.”
instead of
“Hannah knew it was a broken leg.”

There were parts that could have worked great if they were revised. For example:
“The punctures look like nasty snake bites from a giant snake.”

As it is, the sentence is repetitive.

For what the story is trying to be it could work fine if it was fixed up. I don’t mind Hannah as a character, though I’m not fond of her relationship with Jake. At least she realizes it’s abusive and horrible.
A lot of the sex is, oddly, skipped over. A lot of the story is also told instead of shown. I don’t always mind this, especially when it’s such a short story, but there’s only a few scenes centering around the brothel that we really see much of.

Like I said before, I think the best way I can describe this is to say it’s like a rough draft. I’d give about a 5/10 right now.