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.

Time Shifters: Episode One of the Chronicles of the Harekaiian

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

Time Shifters is a fairly short story. It does a pretty good job of pulling the reader into its world, where, for Akalya, shifting around through time and space is completely normal.

She and others like her blend into the background as they go through life, but someone is starting to kidnap them, and she decides she should do something to save them.

Akalya is a pretty strong character. I like that she’s a fairly old character, and I also like that she definitely had strong opinions about what she liked. I didn’t feel like she was a blank slate.

She’s pretty realistic in her motivations. On one hand, she doesn’t really know the other Harekaiian all that well. But she feels compelled to save them – not because she has some superb sense of justice, but there’s a layer of problems facing her. One of the captives is someone she’s familiar with and wants to help. She’s also worried about the fact that her people are being kidnapped, and she could be next. There’s also a smaller sense of not wanting to turn her back on them. All of her feelings about it are very understandable.

The way she uses her powers to solve problems is interesting. She has a great advantage over others, but she’s not invincible, and she doesn’t know what tricks the enemy is using.

It was a fun read. It did drag at parts where things got over-described. For example, using her powers makes her hungry and she often stops to eat in the book, but I didn’t need to know exactly what she was eating every time. Sometimes she made mental commentary – like comparing shakes in the late 60’s to modern shakes. Other times it was just a list of food.
I think the other weak spot was when she was with Marcus. We get told more about the time they spent together and don’t get shown too much of it, so the connection we’re supposed to believe they formed during their talk wasn’t as strong as it could have been. I also got a little lost in how he got to where he was. She teleported him back in time, and had him bring her food in another place, but after he brought her food what happened to him?
In the spot where it’s initially described, he kisses her, brings her food, and then is sort of forgotten in the narrative. It doesn’t say he leaves or vanishes or anything. It’s like the book just forgot he was there, and the Akalya travels through time on her own. So wouldn’t he have still been left in that time? I got a bit lost at that part.

It was a nice start for a series though, with a strong lead and an interesting plot.

I give it about an 8/10.

Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare (The Guardians)

I picked up this book because I heard about it after the “Rise of the Guardians” movie came out.

First, I’d like to mention how nice the presentation for this book is. It looks beautiful, and it has nice inside art, too. It’s one of the better looking books I’ve seen.

The way it’s written makes me think of a person sitting in a chair, telling a story to a bunch of people around them. It took me a little while to get into it. It definitely has its own, unique style.

It’s very whimsical and there’s a lot of humor in the writing (for example, North, the character, making a compass that points to himself).

It was enjoyable. The characters were likable, and it had a certain feel to its world. It was “Earth” and yet full of magic and everything seemed to have intelligent – whether a beam of light from the moon or an insect.

It had a fairytale like charm, where it could spout out anything as existing in this world and the explanation is “because”. It didn’t worry about trying to explain the science behind things. For instance, a little girl is tossed high enough to reach the clouds, and lands safely because she’s caught. Obviously she’s still be a pancake, but this is the sort of story where cows can jump over moons or trees can come to life and it’s not questioned.

I did enjoy it and plan on getting the next book sometime.

I also appreciate that while, obviously, this wasn’t the end of the series, the book did have its own end. This particular adventure finished instead of stopping a story somewhere in the middle and asking people to buy the next book.

I give it about an 8/10.

The Enchanted Castle (Shioni of Sheba)

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

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I began reading this book. I’m not familiar with Ethiopia or the myths and lore from there.

I loved this story. It hit the ground running and kept going. There was never a chapter where I was wondering, “When will something happen?”

The characters are likable. I liked Shioni, Anni, Nomuula and General Getu. The characters all had their personalities and the side characters felt like people, too.

The plot was interesting and there was a lot of action. There were some parts where characters gave exposition, but by the time they did I cared enough about them to want to listen to them.

That’s not to say everything was perfect.
The narrative does some things I wouldn’t normally recommend, such as throwing around exclamation point, but it worked here. It might have been overused a bit, but I never felt annoyed by it.
The part where Zi wakes up felt a little abrupt as well.

But besides that I don’t have much criticism to give. Even the animals were charming. I loved this image of a horse imagining herself after running away from the enemy:
“Star was not too tired to send her a boasting picture of a pony with wings swooping over the peaks and valleys.”

I think it was a great adventure and fans of fantasy would love it. I give it a 10/10.

Doubt (Among Us Trilogy)

The story has some interesting ideas.
Unfortunately, there was a lot of telling instead of showing in the beginning, on top of which we’re introduced to a lot of characters. I’ve never been good with names, and with the way this story is set up there are both real names and aliases, so right off the bat if five characters are introduced I’m supposed to remember ten names. With the telling instead of showing on top of that, I didn’t have a lot to remember the characters by. We get told “X doesn’t like Y” or “Z is a genius”.
When they text each other a lot of times the book is pretty good about mentioning which alias is who, but not always.

The characters are trying to find their missing parents. It’s a good setup, but Harry is the only one we get much background about. And it was good. Harry had a genius father that people admired, but his father mostly ignored him so he never felt very attached. Instead, he felt more attached to his mother, who actually paid attention to him. I wish we’d seen more with his mother.

I know almost nothing about the other parents people are looking for. It’s like a missed opportunity to get to know each character and their stories.
There are a lot of times when characters look for a McGuffin in a story and it’s fine (for example, pirate stories almost always involve finding treasure, but the treasure is rarely that important to the story). The parents shouldn’t be McGuffins. They should be people the reader is hoping get saved.
There’s a lot of talk about ‘decrypting files’, ‘having secret meetings’, ‘secret missions’ or ‘playing the Truth Seeker game’. All of these things stay vague a lot of the time and take up more of the book than needed, because they discuss them but we don’t see much. I couldn’t even say exactly what type of game ‘Truth Seeker’ is.

I didn’t feel the connection between the characters. Some were there, like Cristal and Kerim. I believed they were decent friends after the time we saw them together. The book pushed for me to believe that they were a lot more than that, though, and I just never felt it.
The same was true for many other characters. I think the book suffered for having so many characters in it. Not only that, but much of the time we’re seeing things from Cristal’s point of view, and she doesn’t understand other languages, which the characters kept talking in.
This left me at points trying to remember who some characters were because we only see them briefly and they didn’t do much.

At times I didn’t understand the motivations or reactions of the characters, either. I didn’t see a reason for Harry to keep information to himself the way he did, and it wasn’t surprising when that backfired. Kerim and Gabriel first meeting each other was confusing because they were fighting, for some reason, and then weren’t, for some reason.
At the end there was a lot of exposition by two of the characters, so it was a lot more telling.

One of the things that took me out of the story was how Cristal couldn’t learn Spanish. Not because she had trouble with the language, but because she and her teacher decided it was hopeless for her to ever learn Spanish after she took classes for two months and had three lessons with the teacher.
People who are fully immersed in a language usually give yes-no like responses and are generally silent for the first three months, and people who have less exposure will take even longer to learn. Even if Cristal had unrealistic expectations for herself, her teacher should have known better.

When the author showed us stuff, on the other hand, it worked so much better. Also at the end of the story, Cristal is trying to deal with beams of light energy coming from her, and yelling that if Harry really wanted to help her he’d help her deal with all the light beams. It was a good visual, and it was funny and showed her personality.

Like I said before, with the scenes she had with Kerim I believed they got along. They had some decent scenes together for me to believe that Cristal would trust him more than Harry. I never felt like it built up to as much as the book was pushing, though.

I think the story is original and the ideas for it were good, but it didn’t carry through in the execution. These same ideas could work great if the story was polished up. I tried to get into the book but had a really hard time connecting with the characters.

I’d give it about a 5 out of 10.