Unexpected Applause: The Faerie Guardian (a book review post)

Before I get into the review for this book, I'm going to call your attention back to a post I did dealing with objectivity and subjectivity in responding to books. I'm having a very divergent reaction to this one, so I want to make sure I am qualifying it ahead of time. Remember these:

1. This is good, and I like it.
2. This is good, but I don't like it.
3. This is bad, and I don't like it.
4. This is bad, but I do like it.

"The Faerie Guardian" started off on the wrong foot with me. It's not really the fault of the book or the author. I mean, I'm the one with the thing against first person/present tense presentation. But it is first/present, and I couldn't stop myself from groaning inwardly when I started reading it. And this example is pretty typical of the stuff I've read using first/present, so it did nothing to distinguish itself for me. But, you know, I get that that style is popular, right now, so I can hardly fault the author for choosing the style. I'm just not into it.

So the main character is a "fairie" girl, and I say "fairie" because she's just like a human teenager down to the pop culture references that, as far as I can tell, she shouldn't have knowledge of. In fact, she seems more conversant in pop culture than she does in the culture of her own people. In fact, in her narration she refers to other fairies as "fairies," as in "the fairie stood there," which would be like me saying, "the human stood there," which is not a thing I would ever say nor have I ever heard any human say. Awkward. All of that to say that I had a hard time buying the protagonist as anything more than a human teenager with some convenient magic. And that doesn't even touch that the purple-haired fairie is named Violet.

The other main issue I had with the story also started right up front along with the first/present stuff. Violet is in a boy's room to guard him from a snake fairie thing, and, of course, she sees him sleeping. And, of course, she is smitten by him just from watching him sleeping. Maybe this is just a disconnect because I'm a guy, but the whole romance angle seemed more contrived than realistic to me. There was just no reason for it and it felt out-of-character to for Violet to react that way. I mean, there's no indication that she has a habit of instantly falling in love with sleeping boys, so I need something more from the story than that she arbitrarily had feelings for this one boy because she saw him asleep.

From a technical standpoint, the book was fine, and I can see why people like it (and based on the other reviews, I see that most people do like it); it just didn't appeal to me. The writing is fine. It's well edited. But it's not my story. This is one of those where I can see that it's (probably) good, but I don't like it. For this one, I'm being that guy at the party that goes over and gets a helping of whatever it is everyone is raving over, I put it in my mouth, make the yucky face, and spit it out. Everyone looks at me like I'm crazy. Eventually, like, one other person comes over and pats my arm and whispers, "I didn't like it either."

Unexpected Applause: Up So Down (a book review post)

Let me just say right at the start of this that I really enjoyed this book. It's not spectacular in the sense of The Avengers or something like that, but it's very solid and quiet. In fact, it is much like getting to know people, a little at a time. I want to get that out of the way because some of the things I am about to say might lead someone to believe that I didn't like that book or that it's not very good, but that's not the truth at all. In fact, the book is very engrossing in the sense that you really want to know what's going on in these people's lives, but, if you want a book to pick you up and carry you along, this book is not for you. This book is calling up your friend and saying, "Hey, Bumpy, would you like to get some coffee and hang out a while?" You have to take the initiative, but it's well worth doing so.

Because it's me, let's just get this out of the way:
The book needs some editing and formatting help. Mostly, it's nothing all that serious, an overuse of commas that most people won't notice, but there are some spots where there are wrong words or names and a couple of those spots did make me have to go back to figure out who was talking at a given a moment. There is also some inconsistency in the formatting, but it's hard to say whether that's a real issue or not. For me, there is a minor visual distraction, but I don't know if it's the kind of thing most people pay attention to or not. In a book that's not as well written, the editing and formatting issues would be bigger problems, because they would highlight the problems in the book as a whole, but, here, they are more like swatting at an annoying fly rather than being caught in a swarm of yellow jackets.

Now, the major element in the book that is likely to cause problems for people is something that is there on purpose and which I enjoyed very much: the story is told non-linearly. In general, we don't like non-linear stories all that much, but I think this one worked well. As I was reading it, I kept thinking, "This is like how it is to get to know someone." When you meet someone, you don't get their chronological life story laid out in front of you. What you get are small stories that are shared at relevant times and those things rarely happen in sequence. That is how we learn about Sarah and Bumpy, little pieces of a year or so of their lives connected sort of by theme rather than by when they happened.

So, as I said, I kept thinking about this idea of getting to know people as I was reading the book, then, when I got to the end, in the author's note, Briane Pagel talks about choosing to write it that way because that's how you get to know someone, so, with that intent in mind, I have to say he pulled it off perfectly.

That non-linear aspect to the story is what propelled the reading of it. You find out early on (so this isn't much of a spoiler) that Sarah's fiance has died. She thinks it was murder. So, of course, you want to find out what's going on there. To some extent, Sarah blames her brother, Bumpy, for what happened, but that's complicated by Sarah's guilt over a childhood event between her and her brother for which she blames herself and which causes her to blame herself for, basically, Bumpy's life and how messed up it is. How messed up it is according to her, at any rate. So, then, because she blames Bumpy's irresponsibility on herself, she also, somewhere in there, blames her fiance's death on herself, too. She's a little messed up, to say that least.

The other issue that is potentially an issue for people is the lack of resolution to most areas of the lives of the characters. I will admit that when I got to the end I had a very "What? It's over!" reaction. I was a bit upset. But the farther away I get from finishing the book, the more okay I become with the way it ends. This is not an action/adventure thing where the space ships take off from the previously hidden rebel base to fight the enemy space station and it just ends leaving you hanging. This book is like being in people's lives, and people come in and out of our lives, and it's more the kind of thing where you to turn to someone several months down the line and says, "Hey, you remember Sarah? I wonder what ever happened with that thing with her fiance? Did they decide it was a murder or not?" And the other person says, "You know, I haven't seen her in months. I wonder what did happen with that. Have you heard what happened with her brother?" That's exactly how this book feels to me, like my life crossed paths with these people for just a little while, I got to know them a bit but not all the way, and they passed back out of my life. So it's not that there aren't resolutions; it's just that I don't see those people anymore so I don't know what happened with them. Sometimes, I'll wonder but, mostly, I will just go on with my life.

There's your measure of deciding if this book is for you. It's certainly not your typical fare, and I think that's a good thing. If you need a bunch of action, look somewhere else. If you want to get involved and invested in some characters, pick up Up So Down.

Unexpected Applause: Temporary Anne

One of the things I like about the writing of Briane Pagel is that you can kind of see the questions that must be going through his head that inspire the stories he writes. So, like, with the After, you can see the questions about Heaven and the nature of Heaven that inspired the novel. And, so, Temporary Anne

seems to me to be a logical extension of his exploration of Heaven into an exploration of Hell. And what an unsettling exploration it is.

And, actually, in this instance, I'm glad I can't see what's in Briane's head to give him ideas for all of the horrible monsters he creates for this book. And they are. Horrible, that is. And fairly disgusting. But, you know, when designing minions from Hell, they ought to be.

However, as repulsive as his creatures are, they do not approach the level of repulsiveness that his main character attains. I don't think I've seen a truer example out there of the anti-hero. On the one hand, she's trying to escape Hell, and, well, it's Hell, so you are kind of wanting her to do that. But... well, the "but" is full of spoilers, but there comes a point when the idea of her escaping for any longer is not something you want to see happen.

And, as bad as she is, she is not the worst character in the book.

From a train wreck perspective, reading this book is like watching one. And it's fascinating. If you like horror, this is definitely a book worth reading.

However, there are editing issues. Some of them, most people won't notice. Like the punctuation stuff. But the verb tense mistakes might catch some people, although I'm not convinced that most people will notice.

Overall, I'd give the book a B. Maybe a B- because of the editing issues. Definitely worth $0.99, though.

BUT there's more!

Included at the end of the book is a series of short stories by various writers including one by yours truly. So here's the thing there: I was going to release "The Magic Cookies" as an individual story for $0.99, so, of course, I think the $0.99 price for Temporary Anne is more than worth it. And, hey, "The Magic Cookies" is a funny story, and you should all read it.

I'd review the other stories included except that I haven't quite gotten that far. I finished Anne because that was my priority, but that's it. However, Rusty has a story in there that is, at least, part of one that I've read. I'm not sure if it's the whole thing (because it looks too short from what's in the table of contents), but, however much of that story that's in there (all or part), it's also well worth the read. What all of this says to me is that for less than a buck, this book is a steal.

[Note: Once I finish the short stories, I will post an update with short reviews of those. Except "The Magic Cookies." I can already tell you that that one is GREAT and you should run right out and read it. Oh, wait, you don't need to run anywhere. Even better!]

Unexpected Applause: "Memories"

Note: This review will be full of spoilers. The work is short enough that there's no practical way to talk about aspects of it without actually talking about those aspects of it.

In "Memories," author Alex Hurst has given us a bitter-sweet story of love and its importance no matter what kinds of gender boundaries may exist. From that perspective, it is well worth reading, this look back through the important moments of two lives that have come together. It's sweet and it's sad, and it could, really, be the lives of any two people that have come together in love and lived out their lives that way, which is where the power of the story comes from.

However, I found the vehicle for that story to be... distracting. And, actually, unconvincing. But, first, there is a brief introduction for the audience that spells out what's going on which I also thought detracted from the story. The story itself is really one of discovery or, actually, re-discovery by  the story-teller. I think introducing the story to the audience by telling us that she has entered a shop of memories takes that journey of discovery away from the audience, removing some of the power the story could have as we figure out what's going on. It removes rather than adds to the tension of the story.

The real issue for me, though, was the artificial limitation of "you can choose only one thing" which just made me want to know "why?" I get that the author is using that limitation as a vehicle to stroll the memories of the character and examine them while contemplating the importance of each, but that didn't stop the question of "why" from bouncing around in my head. It reminded me of those silly games people do:
You're stranded on a desert island and can only take one book, movie, food with you; what do you choose?
And I want to know, "Why am I stranded on a desert island?" and "If I am stranded on a desert island, what good is one book going to do me?" And "how am I going to watch this one movie while stranded on the desert island?" And "What? There's going to be a pizza tree there?"
So, yeah, this idea of the narrator only getting to pick one memory from her life before going on to wherever it was she was going really got in my way of enjoying the story itself.

Which may or may not be fair to the author and may or may not affect anyone else, but it did effect me.

Also, there is the issue of the ghostly store clerk, which I couldn't stop thinking about in terms of a static-like TV image after the description of it being like bad radio signal. If the memories are the narrator's and it's her store, so to speak, why is there a sales clerk following her around? And, if she has all the time in the world to choose, why does it keep interrupting with "have you chosen, yet?" Yes, I'm sure some of that is just my own issues. But I was annoyed on behalf of the narrator and wanted to tell the clerk to "go away and leave me alone! I'll call you when I'm ready."

And here's the problem with such a short piece: what I'm saying here makes it sound like I liked the piece less than I did. I enjoyed it well enough. It's well written. There are only a couple of grammar issues (which I can't even remember now, so they couldn't have been that big a deal). And it has a message that, probably, more people need to get. Okay, not probably, certainly. This is the kind of piece that might be able to give people a connection to how a real person feels about the issues being dealt with in the story, and, for that, it's worth the read.

Unexpected Applause: War Angel

Children seldom get a good idea of the lives the adults in their lives lead before they came into them. I'm sure this is true of my own kids even though I do try to tell them stories of my youth. Those snapshot events rarely reveal what a person was really like. And, of course, kids often don't care... not until much later, often not until  it's too late to find out.

That's the basis of "War Angel" by Rusty Carl, a grandchild discovering the secret past of his grandmother.

Not that it was necessarily a secret, he had just never been curious enough to find out about it until she was about to die.

It's a good story, although I'd say it opens more questions than it answers. For instance, Engel has always been his grandmother's favorite, and there is an implication in the story that there's a reason for this, but it's never explained. There is a possible reason within the story, but there's not enough information for it to be more than guesswork which is a bit unsatisfying. For me, at any rate.

The other main drawback for me is that it's too short. There's so much more there that's kind of hinted at and, then, passed by. But it is a good story; it just could have used some expansion.

However, if you're looking for a quick read that will immerse quickly, this may be one to look at. It does grab the reader quickly with the immediate questions it raises.

I'm skipping the technicals this time as I have a copy that I know has transcription errors. Even with these, though, it was a gripping story, meaning they didn't distract me from what I was reading. Most of these, if not all, should be fixed at this point, so it should be even better for anyone else.

I'd say this one is a strong B. Definitely above average. Being able to read it in one sitting doesn't hurt, either, even if I would have preferred something longer.

Unexpected Applause: the After

I'm going to do something a little bit different with this review in that I'm also going to review the author, at least I am to an extent. Book reviews really aren't about he authors but about their products, but I really feel like talking about the author of this one a bit.

One of the things I see most frequently as a "rule of blogging" is to keep your posts short. I get it. I do. At least, I get the idea of it. I don't really agree with it, though. I don't agree with it for this reason: most short posts I see just don't say anything. At best, they talk about the idea of talking about something, but, because the blogger is trying to keep the post short, s/he never more than touches on a subject. Maybe s/he gives a list about the topic, but, honestly, a list doesn't say anything. They're good for a trip to the store but that's about it. The end result is that I don't tend to short posts or spend much more time on them than it takes to scan through it.

Briane Pagel is the only blogger I know that routinely writes longer posts than me. And not just on one blog! Briane writes about half a dozen different blogs, is a lawyer, and has twin 5-year-old sons. And writes books! He's by far the most prolific person I've ever known, and it wouldn't surprise me if, one day, his body of work surpasses Asimov's (generally considered the most prolific author to have ever lived). However, I think Briane is also one of the most overlooked bloggers I know. People are daunted by his long posts, and I think it's their loss. It's unfortunate that so many people are willing to not invest in worthwhile things. Like taking the time to prepare a meal rather than just heating up processed crap. What I'm saying here is that the time you would spend reading half a dozen other posts would be better spent reading one of Briane's posts.

Often Briane is like Kevin Smith, and I like that. Not just that Kevin is dialogue heavy, which I like, but the way that Kevin talks is how Briane writes. Have you ever seen any of Smith's Q&A DVDs? If not, you should go get one and watch it. It's a simple format: someone asks a question; Kevin answers it. But it's how Kevin answers the questions that make it so great. Often (almost every time), he'll go off on some tangent and, then, another, and, sometimes, another, and you're left thinking, "Where in the heck is this going? What in the world could it have to do with the original question?" But he always gets back to that question, and, when he does, there are great "ah-ha!" moments where you see how all of the tangents fold together to make that one story and how a simple answer to the question in no way would have been as satisfying as the story he told. And that's Briane Pagel.

And he has six blogs, so there's bound to be something that you'll like. I follow two of them myself: Thinking The Lions and The Best of Everything. Seriously, you should go check out his list of blogs and try a couple or few out. Don't be daunted by the length of the posts. They're worth the time.

Other than the blog stuff, Briane writes books. I've previously reviewed some of his other works (Eclipse and his Xmas story), and I just finished his latest release, the After.

Considering that this is the third book by him that I'm reviewing, not to mention hyping his blogs, you may make the assumption that I like his work. You may even make the assumption that I really like his work, and you would not be wrong.

So, as usual, let's start with the technicals and get the bad stuff out of the way. Briane's not much of an editor. He admits that he doesn't find it to be fun so doesn't spend much time on it. Fortunately for him, he's really very good without the editing. I'm pretty sure he doesn't do any editing on his blog posts, and they don't tend to have more than the occasional typo. the After, though, could have used some more editing. A lot more in all actuality. On the plus side, there are no consistent errors caused by not knowing any particular grammar rule, but there are lots and lots of left out words, wrong words, and just plain typing errors. There's also an issue with the formatting. The big issue, for me anyway, was that he gets the character names mixed around a few times, especially with Ansel and Austin, which caused me to have to go back and make sure I knew what was being said before I could go on. Due to the sheer number of errors, I'd have to give a "D" on the technicals.

So, if you are a person that has a problem getting into a story due to these kinds of things as I usually am, you may need to skip this one.

Pay attention to what I said though: "usually am." Generally speaking, poor editing is a big roadblock for me, but not this time. Briane's story sucked me right in. His main character, Saoirse, is easy to identify with, empathize with. You want to know what's going on with her. And I don't really want to say more than that, because you should really just experience it for yourself.

Be aware, though, that this is no straight forward story that takes you from point A to point B and you have everything laid out for you by the end. Briane doesn't really write that way. There is much of the surreal in this book, and, as in Eclipse, you don't always know what's real and what's not. But that's okay, because the After is not about the destination; it's about the journey, and all that's really ever important is what's happening at that given moment. It doesn't matter what's real or not, because what is "real" anyway? And that is one of the big questions in the book, "what is real?"

There is an answer. Or, at least, what I'm taking as an answer. But I'm not going to tell you what it is. Maybe, you know, after you read the book, we can sit down and discuss what you got out of it and compare it to what I got out of it, but I'm not going to tell you going in, because, then, you'll just be looking for my answer, and I wouldn't want to ruin the journey for you in  that way.

Hmm... in many ways, reading this book is like looking at an impressionist painting, especially Van Gogh. In fact, there is one scene that made me feel like I was looking at The Starry Night while I was reading it.

At any rate, I would call this a beautiful book that needs to be read by the more than just the few people that have read it so far. The story is so strong, in fact, that it far outweighs the poor editing, and I give the book a "B" overall. This is the kind of book that really makes me sad to have to even point out the editing/formatting issues, but I'd hate for anyone to pick it up and not be able to get into because of that, especially on my recommendation if that's actually going to be a stumbling block. However, it's only $0.99, so, you know, for less than a buck, you have nothing to lose. Okay, so you'd lose a dollar, but it's worth so much more than a $1.00 that it's worth the risk.

Unexpected Applause: Cassastar

So... following on the heels of all the discussion about reviews is... a review. And, probably, this is one I should have gotten to a long time ago, but I have a huge stack of books waiting to be read, so it took a while to get to this.

Alex Cavanaugh is pretty well known in these parts and not without reason. Not only has he written a couple of best selling books, but he's incredibly supportive of other writers. His name gets around. But we're not here to look at the author but his book. His first book, that is: Cassastar.

As usual, let's look at the technicals first:
This is easily one of the best edited small or independently published books I've seen. In the top 3, for sure. I wouldn't know more specifically than that without going through those three books and actually counting up the errors, and I'm not going to spend the time doing that. Although there are a few more toward the end than in the beginning, except for one consistent misspelling of a word by substituting in a homophone for it, all of the mistakes were just things that got missed, like "as" instead of "a" or things like that. There are no consistent punctuation errors at all. Without the rather routine editing issues I've come to expect from independently published works, this became a rather enjoyable read for that alone. I'd give it an A on technicals.

Without getting into the actual plot of the book, I'd say it's a fairly routine space romp. Think Top Gun meets A New Hope with a dash of Battlestar Galactica thrown in for good measure. Of course, Alex does add in his own bits, too, such as the telepathic abilities of the Cassans (and possibly other, more rare, mental abilities that we don't encounter during this first book (well, we do encounter one other, but that would be telling)), and those abilities play a role in what unfolds with the plot, so they're not just icing on the cake, so to speak.

At any rate, the plot is not very complicated or unpredictable, so, if you're looking for some big twist ending or endless convolutions in your plot, you should look somewhere else. Plot-wise, you're going to get a fairly straightforward story. The only real issue with this is that Alex waits to reveal the conflict, or that there is any conflict, until well after the first third of the book. It left me feeling somewhat adrift during Byron's training because it was impossible to tell that anything else was going on other than boot camp.

Of course, the plot is not the point of the story. Cassastar isn't about an interstellar war, it's about the characters, and Mr. Cavanaugh does a very realistic job of drawing his characters and fleshing them out. In fact, there is real character growth in the book, which is not something that's all that common in these days of flashy, all out action all the time. Byron is not the same character at the end of the book as he starts out being. Neither is Bassa. The book is about friendship and how "iron sharpens iron;" the plot is only there to facilitate that journey. In this respect, the book often reminded me of the relationship between Frodo and Samwise in The Lord of the Rings. It's all very British feeling.

It's a solid job of story telling. Good characters. Good action. A nice, entertaining read. There's enough to it to make it above average, and, coupled with the lack of grammar issues, I'd give it a nice, solid "B." It's not great or earth-shattering, but it is good entertainment with some insight into "humanity" thrown in to make it worth the time.

Unexpected Applause: The Last of the Venitars

Yes, it's been a while since I've done one of these, and I'm not doing a very good job at having at least one a month (my own, personal goal), but there have been... extenuating circumstances. One of those was the month of April. I did almost no reading in April that wasn't related to research for A to Z, but I'm almost all caught up now.

Before I get into the review, though, I want to make something clear: I don't believe in reviewing or rating a book that I didn't actually read. I don't mean tried to read, either; I mean completely read. It's fine to state that you couldn't get into a book and, therefore, didn't read it, but I think it's wrong to place a value judgement on something that you didn't actually experience. Why, yes, I do have an example! I'm going to go back, once again, to my son reading Treasure Island (yes, yes, I know! I've been stuck on Stevenson big time, lately! I was even telling my wife the other night that I'm somewhat fascinated with him, but that's a discussion for another time (and not soon since I just posted about him (this is not, after all, a blog devoted to RLS))).

Anyway, my (younger) son has been (mostly) receptive to reading the books I've suggested to him. But we had an issue when it came to Treasure Island, and, since I've talked about this before, we'll just say that I really had to prod him through the first couple of chapters and had to say (more than once), "Have I ever suggested anything bad to you?" The answer to that is "no," by the way. Long story short, he ended up loving the book and (unprompted) thanked me for "making" him read it (which I didn't actually do, I just strongly suggested that he give it a chance). The point, though, is that his initial impression was that he didn't like it and, if I had just allowed him to not read it, any "review" of it would have run somewhat along the lines of "this book was so bad that I couldn't read it." Of course, that was not reality.

So I don't believe in reviews or ratings based off of an incomplete experience of the product. And that story is not meant to imply anything about the quality of the work I'm about to talk about; I just want to make it clear that I read the whole thing, so the following review is not based off of the first chapter of something I decided I "couldn't" read.

Which brings us to The Last of the Venitars by Matthew Irvine.

Matthew is sort of the perfect example of why I wanted to do this whole unexpected applause thing. He doesn't have any internet presence to speak of, but he's written and self-published this book, and I thought, "hey, it would be neat to help this guy out and point people at his book."

The problem came when I started reading it. He's also a good example of why people think that self-publishing is for people that can't make it in "real" (traditional) publishing.

So I started reading his book and realized pretty much right away that it wasn't ready for public consumption. I contacted the author and gave him my thoughts, the main one being that he should pull the book and get some real editing assistance before making it available. I went on to say that I was fairly confident that I would not be able to give the book any kind of positive review if I took it in the state that it was in. Yes, I know: I hadn't gotten any of the story, yet, but the grammar issues were that bad. Bad enough that the first paragraph needs to be completely rewritten.

I do have to admire Mr. Irvine for his response, though:
"Please review it as it is and be as objective, open and critical as you would if you were describing the work privately to a friend. I know there's little point putting your work out there if you're not looking for honesty."


So... That is what I'm going to do. Not that it's an easy thing to do, but it is by request. I even re-made the offer after I finished the book, and he stuck by his first response. At this point, even though I'm going to be giving a review that holds nothing positive about the work in question, I feel it would be wrong not to give the review.


As usual, let's start with the technicals. If I was an English teacher (and I've been that upon occasion), and Matthew Irvine was one of my students, I wouldn't even accept this. I'd hand it back and tell him it's not finished and to get back to work on it. [That's kind of what I did with the offer I made.] However, being a work that's been turned in, it would get an "F" on all of the writing aspects of writing.


The author, evidently, doesn't have even a decent grasp of punctuation and how it works. I'll use the first sentence as an example:
"Once more it stood before him; this ancient beast."
Leaving the sentence itself aside, let's just look at the punctuation. A semi-colon is for separating independent clauses from other independent clauses, not from dependent clauses, so the first correction is to get rid of that semi-colon. Also, you need a comma to set off the adverbial phrase that the sentence opens with, so you'd have:
"Once more, it stood before him, this ancient beast." 
And that's... well, it's just not a strong sentence. Heavy on the melodrama, light on substance. I'd re-write it, but I'm not personally into telling people how they should actually write, but, well, if he was a student in my class, I'd make suggestions about rewording that would give the sentence more clarity.
Let's just leave it at "the work is rife with punctuation errors." And not in a good way. These are the kinds of errors that inhibit understanding. It's not style, it's just a lack of knowledge.


The next huge problem is misplaced modifiers, and these can be difficult for an author to spot in his/her own work, because, of course, the author knows what he means. The key here is, if you can't do it yourself, get some help from someone who can, which means, again, an editor. Here is the third sentence:
"Just to look upon its evil again made his fearful pounding heart feel as though it held it in a vicelike grip with its fingers." 
There are so many "it"s scattered through, it's difficult to tell what's being referred to at any given point. Not to mention that "vicelike" should be "vice like."


Along with the modifiers, there are just poorly constructed sentences, so we get things like:
"Her eyes fell to the floor."
"He threw his arms off of him."
"Her eyes were absorbed by his face."


Ouch.


Every time. Just ouch.


These aren't direct quotes (because I'm not going to go back and find them), but they are some of the ones that stood out the most, and I've given you the essences. Sentences like these can be used for effect but only if they are used sparingly. This work is full of them. Again, not style, lack of knowledge.


To compound everything else, the entire work is written in a very passive manner. I would imagine the author finding at the end of the day that his hands and fingers had managed to type out some words that he would need to go back and read causing his emotions to fluctuate madly and without reason. Sometimes, he would smile at the words he found on the page; sometimes, he would frown, finding that someone actually did something, because he'd find that he would need to go back and change it so that the action happened to the character as opposed to the character actually doing something as simple as walking across a room. Yes, walking across a room is rarely something you will find one of the characters doing, because they have legs that just get up and carry them across the room, and they are somewhat surprised by these actions on a regular basis.


Yes, I'm being facetious, but, again, having a character doing something without realizing it, like crossing a room, can be effective occasionally, it's tedious to read when all of the action happens in that manner.


And I'm not even going to start on the dialogue tags. Not to mention that the author was rarely satisfied with a simple "said," he frequently used words that didn't apply to the emotions being described, especially "teasingly."


Of course, none of this touches on the story.


And the story is where the real issues are, because, honestly, I can put up with some bad grammar for a good story. Well, except for the issue of it being told so passively. That's a real issue for me. But beyond that, things happen for no good reason, and that, from the beginning, was where the problems came in and why I contacted the author to begin with. Again, a good editor could really  have helped with these issues by asking one simple question, "Why?"


In the first chapter, there is a prisoner interrogation happening. The author makes it very clear that this interrogation happens every day in almost exact detail. They have the same conversations, go through all the same arguments, everything. However, on this day, the interrogator decides he's had enough and tries to kill the prisoner. Why? Well, of course, it's because the author needs something to happen to start the story up, but that's not good enough within the context of the story. Why that day? If everything was the same as it had been every other day, a fact, as I said, the author makes painstakingly clear, why would the interrogator do this? There is no inciting event, and it doesn't make any sense.


And the book is full of these moments. And continuity issues. And logical inconsistencies. And characters that serve no real purpose. Well, I think two of them are supposed to serve as some kind of comic relief, but, if that is their purpose, they fail at it by not being funny. The author also goes off on philosophical tangents that don't serve the story at all; they're just there so that the author can debate things like the existence of God in front of an audience. However, he never draws any conclusions from these things and they don't impact anything that's happening, so they come off as "listen to me talk about God."


There is one conclusion, the point of the whole thing, human greed and lust for power is bad and will destroy the world. I don't disagree with his moral, but very few people are ever going to hear it.


I really wish I had something good to say about the book. I kept hoping that a story would emerge that I could be interested in, but it never happened. That there would be some character worth caring about, but that never happened either. Even if all of the grammar issues were fixed, I'm not sure the remaining story is interesting enough to have compelled me to read it. The book is a noble grasp at... something, I'm just not sure what. And it's a good starting point, but, in the end, that's what this book is, a starting point.


There are glimmers of what this book could become if the author looked at it as a starting point instead of an ending point. From that perspective, I think, it's too bad that he's decided to release it before its wings are strong enough to carry it anywhere other than down. I also find it unfortunate in that it makes self-publishing that much more difficult for the rest of us; although, that might not be quite fair to say, because Mr. Irvine is far from the only writer to throw something out into the world before it was done. Put it back in, and let it bake some more! Gooey grammar isn't something anyone wants to taste.


Unfortunately, all of this combines into a final grade of an F. This isn't a book I could ever feel good about recommending to anyone in its current state, and, actually, I'd feel guilty if I let someone buy it unawares, so to speak. This is certainly a book where any potential buyer needs to use that preview function that Amazon has before making a purchase. 

How much are you worth?

Writing a book is hard work. Despite what most people think, not everyone can do it. Like singing. Never believe someone that says, "Anyone can learn to sing," because it's just not true. Sure, anyone can learn to sing better than they already do, but that doesn't mean they can actually learn to sing. And, sure, anyone can learn to construct better sentences, but that doesn't mean they can learn to write.

For the writer, though, despite the amount of hard work that goes into writing a book, writing the book is the easy part. It's everything after where it gets hard. Really hard. Amongst all the hard stuff, like finding an agent, a publisher, or marketing your work yourself, there's one thing that can fall through the cracks. Sure, if you're fixated on traditional publishing, this is something that doesn't concern you, because the publisher will make these decisions, but, for those of us going it alone, pricing is something that can end up being overlooked.

I was reminded of how important this aspect of self-publishing is just the other day, but let me give some background, first.

When I first published The House on the Corner, I didn't know anything about pricing other than what I pay for books. It seemed reasonable to me at the time that people should be willing to pay for my book what anyone would pay for a book from a bookstore. Or from Amazon. I knew that wasn't really true, but it bothered me because, darn it, I'd written a book, a good book, and people should value that. Idealism often doesn't fare well when it comes up against reality.

At any rate, I ended up pricing House at $18.00 mostly because I had to. Amazon gives you a minimum price you have to charge based on the number of pages in your book, so I went $1 and change over what they said, which is my part of the profit. If you set it at the minimum, you don't make anything. This, of course, was for the physical copy of my book. You do a little bit better with the Kindle. But there was a wrinkle.

Because I'm an instruction reading kind of guy, I read all the "terms of agreement" stuff. One of the things it said was that I was not allowed to sell my book for a lower price anywhere else or they could choose to not allow you to use CreateSpace anymore. Although, this seemed reasonable to me, I also didn't want to risk having my book pulled, so I set my Kindle price at $18.00, also. See, in my mind, my book was my book.

But I was wrong.

To Amazon, your book through CreateSpace and your book on the Kindle are two completely separate things. Also, if I order copies of my book, the physical book, I'm allowed to sell them for whatever I want to, because I've already paid CreateSpace for them. In a lot of ways, it's all ridiculous, and it took me some months to work out the kinks. And, really, this is a much longer story, but my issues are not what this post is about; they're just to let you know that pricing is complicated. If you look up at my box for The House on the Corner, you'll see what the current prices are which took me months to get to.

And, before I go on, let me just say that I don't believe in $0.99 e-books. I think they are devaluing to the author. Writing a book is hard work, and a book should be valued at more than $0.99. Not that $2.99 is much better, but, hey, at $2.99 on the Kindle, I make more per book than I make for a physical copy through Amazon, so, yeah... $2.99 it is. Let me stress my distinction here: $0.99 is devaluing to the author for a book. An actual novel. It's a perfectly fine price for shorter works.

Which brings us up to the event that brought all this up. The other day, I set off to buy the next book on my list for my Unexpected Applause posts, but I didn't buy it. When I got over to Amazon to do it, I found that the author actually has the book priced at above $2.99. This wouldn't really have been an issue except that he has the physical book priced probably as low as he can price it which made me think, "If I'm going to pay that much for a virtual copy, I should just by the actual book." Not owning a Kindle (I use the app on my computer), I still much prefer actual books to e-books, because it's difficult to drag my desktop to bed if I want to some reading at night before sleeping. And I would hate to drop the monitor on my face if I fell asleep while reading like I did in college with a text book. Let me just say that that will wake you up in a hurry.

After staring indecisively for several minutes, I put the physical book in my cart, huffed,  and went on to the next book on my list (because I'm not actually placing an Amazon order, yet). I get over to the next book, and it's priced at the expected price of $2.99, but, when I look at it, it's hardly a book. When I say that it's hardly a book, I mean that the page count on the physical book is less than 100 pages. I huffed again. It's just $3, right, but I couldn't bring myself to pay that for a short story. Especially after reading the sample, seeing that it's poorly formatted, and full of punctuation errors. I don't know if the story's any good, but I couldn't bring myself to pay the $2.99 the author wanted. I would have paid $0.99 for it without a problem, but I balked at the additional $2.

Why?

Honestly, I really don't know. I've been thinking about this question for days, and I don't have a good answer. What I do know, though, is how you price your book is important. Perceived value is important. When I perceive something to be worth $1, yet I'm being asked to pay $3 for it, I won't do it. I totally understand wanting to hit the $2.99 pricing mark for the Kindle, because, frankly, you get pretty screwed by Amazon pricing at $0.99. However, if you want to price at $2.99, you better have a product that says "this is worth $2.99." And that's entirely subjective. Which is the problem.

I mean, it's so subjective that The House on the Corner sold almost as well when I had it priced at $9.99 as it does, now, at $2.99, and I made a heck of a lot more per sale that way.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: you have to decide how much you think you're worth. You also have to decide how much you're comfortable with selling. Then, you have to balance those two things out.  For me, the price of my physical book is pretty much what Amazon says it has to be. I mean, I could lower the price, but, then, it would be priced at something scewy like $14.23, so I figure $14.99 works. Because I believe that the price of the e-book should be low enough to make it worth buying instead of ordering the physical book, $2.99 works. And, like I said, I make more per unit than I do when someone goes to Amazon and buys a physical copy of the book.

As a buyer, the real issue for me is paying for something that isn't real. Isn't tangible. But, maybe, if I actually had a Kindle, I wouldn't feel that way about spending more for books on it. At any rate, all of this has made me start thinking from teh buyer's perspective again, which is what you have to do if you want to sell your book. You can't just decide "people should be willing to pay this, so this is what I'm pricing this at." You'll always price too high (a recent study actually proved this: people tend overestimate what other people will be willing to pay for something even though they themselves are not willing to pay that much). So... am I willing to pay $2.99 for an e-book? Yes, I am. So I feel comfortable pricing my e-book at that. Am I willing to pay $2.99 for something that is not book length? No, I'm not, so I will know to never price short stories or whatnot in that price range. Am I willing to pay more than $2.99 for an e-book? I don't think so. If I'm going to pay more than that, I'd rather own the physical book. Yes, I'd rather pay $10, $12, or $15 for a physical book that I can hold in my hand than pay $5 for an e-book. Maybe that's just me, but I do know that it is me, so I have to keep that in my mind, too. Maybe I'd be willing to pay $5 for an e-book if there was no physical book available. That's something I've yet to discover.

What I do know for certain, though, is that I don't want someone paying $15 for my book and feeling like they got ripped off. In the end, that's probably why $0.99 works for so many people. Even if it sucks, it was only a buck, so no big deal. I'm willing to run that risk at $3, but I'm not really willing to go beyond that. I suppose that's why Amazon has those price points set.

Yeah, I know I didn't answer any questions in this post. I don't have those answers. Hopefully, though, I've pointed out that there is a question. Don't just slap a price on yourself because that's the price that seems good or what everyone else is doing. Look at what you're offering and balance out the variables. When I go to buy your book, don't make me second guess myself because of your pricing. Hesitation is a killer.

Unexpected Applause: The Missing Link

In my last post, I interviewed the guys, Bryan and Brandon, from A Beer for the Shower about their new book, The Missing Link.

Okay, so the interview was less about the book and more about them, although we did talk about the book. Now, I'm going to talk about the book. First of all, the Kindle edition is only $0.99, and, at that price, it's an absolute steal. Don't let the cover fool you.

Oh, the cover... I love the cover! Back in the 80s, I used to play Rampage upon occasion, and this cover, which is reminiscent of that game, is totally appropriate for this book. It might look kind of goofy, but, considering the book is about technology and rampaging monsters, it totally works.

The Missing Link is probably not a book for everyone. Not that any book is a book for everyone (although there are two books I think everyone should read), but this book is even less a book for everyone than most books. Mostly, I just think a lot of people won't "get" it. A good test to see if it might be for you is to follow the above link over to their blog and read a few of their posts. If the humor doesn't grab or turns you off, the book is not for you. However, if you find yourself laughing despite yourself, even if you hate yourself afterwards, you should give the book a chance, because it's full of the same humor and crassness as their blog.

The technicals: The front half of the book is marvellously edited with hardly a misplaced comma. Well, except for that pet peeve of mine with commas following a sentence starting conjunction and an independent clause behind. This seems to be a fairly widespread error in comma usage, and I'll browbeat the boys about it later. Other than that, though, the front half of the book is almost squeaky clean. Definitely "A" work, and there were hardly any red marks on their paper when I got finished with that portion. However, the further through the book you go, the more errors crop up. Missing words or mistyped words, like "than" instead of "that." A few incorrect tenses here and there. Unstable formatting, mostly in that the indentations start wobbling back and forth. It's enough to drop the technical grade down into the high "B" range. Still, everything considered, it's a pretty good job and nothing that should give anyone any real problems. Especially the commas. There aren't a whole lot of other people out there that are likely to notice any problems with them.

As for the book, well... I don't like to actually talk about what the books I'm reviewing are about, because you all are quite capable to read that stuff for yourselves. However, I feel compelled this time. Bryan and Brandon give us a look at the chaos that could result from a technological collapse in society. My feeling is that most people looking at the book will think that their take is a bit extreme, outrageous, and over-the-top. I'm not so sure...

Just within the last couple of weeks, I was reading about some problems at some hotel chain or other (I forget which one, and, honestly, it's not important). At two of their hotels (one of them was in Hawaii, the other somewhere on the main land), they had a computer issue which caused all of the guests to be locked out of their rooms for several hours (6-8 or something like that). The hotel uses key card locks, and the computer locked down all the rooms, and no one could open them (this should be a lesson to have manual back-ups available for the staff). Really, this should just be a minor annoyance. Yes, an annoyance, but nothing worthy of violence. Within the first hour (maybe half hour?), police had to be called in because of brawling in the hallways. Widespread brawling. Not, like, just one fist fight. People freaked out and started beating each other up because they couldn't get into their hotel rooms. What the crap? Seriously. What the crap?

So, when violence breaks out in The Missing Link over the loss of the Internet, I can hardly say that the boys have exaggerated.

The characters in the book are largely stereotypes, but they're not the kind of stereotypes that happened because the authors didn't know what they were doing. They're there to give the readers something easy to latch onto, "oh! I know what this character is like!" And, as they said in the interview, they are more caricature than cliche. They're magnified examples of people, but, also, they're there to show us that people are capable of going beyond our stereotypes for them. I'd be hard-pressed to choose a favorite. (Although, I have to admit, I have a lot of empathy for Brent and the blank looks he gets any time he tries to explain anything.) Okay, I'm lying, I love Sir McAffery. Not so much his character within the book, but just the concept of his character. It's genius. And I would say more, but I can't do that without ruining elements of the story.

Also, I love the Alice in Wonderland elements of the story. Admittedly, I was bit put off by it right at first. Molly's experience in going down her laundry chute follows Alice's trip beat for beat, but, as you get into the story and see the analogy at work, it does. Work. And it's a great analogy (as they said in the interview). The Internet is a Wonderland, but it's not a Wonderland that's a paradise. It's insane. Even more insane than Lewis Carroll ever could have imagined. The melding of Carroll's work with other familiar pop culture phenomenon like World of Warcraft and The Wizard of Oz is pretty clever, and I really enjoyed it.

So here's the thing: go over and check out their blog. Do that now. If you like it, buy the book. It's only a buck. It'll make you laugh. Yeah, there are some parts that seem a bit absurd, but, you know, like the deal with the hotel I was mentioning? I'm not so sure that they are. Bryan and Brandon have actually offered up a fairly powerful piece of social commentary, and I think people should really stop and take a look at it. How dependent are you on your iGadget? Is your dependency healthy? Maybe think about spending some time away from it. In fact, put it down right now and go download the book. Oh, wait, you need it to download the book? Curse you Internet!

My grade? I give it an "A-." It's clever. Well told. Interesting. The only thing that drags it down a bit is that they do sort of run a few of the gags a bit too hard. And there are a few redundancies toward the end, but it's just a few. Overall, it's a very enjoyable read with an actual message trapped in there. I'm sure they tried to hide to keep their reputations intact.

Twiddledum loves this!

Unexpected Applause: The Greatest Xmas Story Ever Told [plus news and a smart cookie]

Back in December, Briane Pagel of Thinking The Lions wrote a short story for a contest. The problem here is that when the contest said "short," it meant short. The word limit was a measly 500 words. Briane couldn't do it. Instead, he wrote a serialized story on his blog over about a 10 day time period at 500 (at least) words a day. I didn't count. And what came of it is "Santa, Godzilla, and Jesus Walk Into A Bar...", a/k/a The Greatest Xmas Story Ever Told (By Me). Yes, even the title is a mouthful (the general consensus is becoming that Briane can't say "hello" in under 1000 words (which makes me wonder what he'd be like subtitled (go watch Wayne's World 2 to get an idea of what I mean)).

If you've ever wondered what Douglas Adams would have been like if they'd locked him in a room for weeks at a time to get him to write... oh, wait, they did lock Adams in a room for weeks at a time to get him to write. Okay, if you've ever wondered what Adams might have produced if he'd been locked in a room for weeks at a time with only Twinkies and Jolt cola, you should read "Santa, Godzilla... You know, that's just too long to keep typing; let's just call it SGJWIB. It has that same frenetic energy that Adams has only weirder. Yeah, I know; how can you get weirder than Adams?

Does SGJWIB have flying couches or falling whales? No, but it does have carnivorous trees, and that's saying something. It's also saying something that it really is a Christmas story. Or Xmas, as Briane says it. Or, really, an origin of Xmas story. Except a sci-fi, futuristic story that somehow takes place in the past so that it is an origin. You know, "A long time ago in a galaxy..." No, wait. "A long time ago, right here on Earth..."

Somehow, Mr. Pagel manages to weave all of the essential elements of our Christmas traditions into a linear story. There are the trees, mistletoe, Wenceslas... I think he missed the wise men, but he gets a lot of it in there. No, it doesn't always makes sense, but, then, that's why it reminds me of Adams. I mean, if I could fly because I somehow got distracted from hitting the ground while falling, I would totally do that! And SGJWIB has those kinds of leaps.

Here's the thing, if you're not someone that likes Douglas Adams, first, "what's wrong with you?" and, second, you probably won't enjoy Briane's... almost book. However, if you do like Adams, as I do, you should definitely give SGJWIB a try. At a buck, you really can't lose.

The story is wild and crazy enough that there's not much you can say about it in a critical way. It's one of those things you like or you don't like. I happen to like. I'd give it an A except for one thing: the ending. It felt a little like Briane decided it was just time to end the story and, so, just did that. It's rather abrupt. However, he adds in a twist that makes it (mostly) okay. It's one of those kinds of things that Briane seems to like and leaves you wanting to say, "So... what actually happened here?" But he doesn't answer those questions, so you'll have to decide for yourself.

Anyway, it's a fun read, and I give it a B+ to an A-. I need to reread it before I can make a firmer decision than that, but I'm in the middle of something else at the moment and don't have the time. The link to make the purchase is back up at the top of the post, and, like I said, if you like Adams, for a measly $0.99, you really can't go wrong.

And, now, on to the news:

1. No new Tib story (again) today. Yes, I know that's twice this month, but, well, what can I say? I just haven't had enough silence to be able to do much writing. I hate that that's an issue for me, but it is. Hopefully, I'll have the next part up next week (since the kids will be back in school) and, maybe, have some other Tib news to go along with it. On the bright side, though, this gives all of you another week to read about Tib's first meeting with the Man with No Eyes. And I know you all need that extra week, because I know only two people clicked through to it (stat counters... a blessing... and a curse!).

2. The GREAT peanut butter and peppermint experiment!
We have results. All three children have tried this... concoction, for lack of a better word, and they liked it. All three of them, which is fairly significant since they never all like the same thing. In fact, my middle child says that all of them liking something is a sign of the end of the world, so, maybe, 2012 really is the end.

I can't just let y'all go on the word of my kids, though, so I tried it, too. It's... odd. I can't say that I liked it, but I also can't say that I didn't like it. It's one of those things that makes you say, "wait, let me try that again." My experience with those things is that you usually end up liking them. Sometimes, it takes 30 tries, but you can't ever pass up trying it again which just leads to liking it. More experimentation is required.

3. The Smart Cookie Award

Michael Offutt handed me this award a few days ago. I've gotten to the point where, generally, I try not to continue the viral spread of these things, but I'm making an exception for this one:
1. because I like the name of it.
2. because Michael said he needed to give it to me so that I would have something to talk about other than my dog.

The gimmick with this award is to share four little known facts about anything. Anything is a rather broad category to choose from, so I think I have that covered. Unlike Briane Pagel, who also received this award from Michael, I'm going to stick to "little known" rather than "unknown," because I knew at least one of Pagel's unknown facts thereby discrediting his entire list (he has, thus far, refrained from commenting about this).

Four little known facts:
1. Michael Offutt is envious of my dog ownership which is why he wants me to stop talking about my dog. It's like a little thorn jabbing at him every time I mention

Isn't she SO cute?

2. Although closely related, "envy" and "jealousy" are not direct synonyms despite the generally incorrect usage of "jealousy" that has permeated our society. Mostly, people use "jealous" when what they should be saying is "envious." You are not "jealous" of someone else's success; you are "envious" of  it. You are not "jealous" of someone's new high-priced gadget; you are "envious" of it. Michael could only be "jealous" of my dog if he was envious of the relationship I have with my dog or if, say, it was his dog, but she liked me better.

3. The misuse of the word "jealousy" and its various forms is a particular pet peeve of my wife's. You should all learn to use it correctly so she will not chastise me for it when one of you slips. heh

4. Michael should get his own dog. Dogs have been shown to improve the quality of life of their owners, especially in regards to people that live alone. If Michael got his own dog, not only would it be good for him, but he could quit being envious of my dog and, instead, we could swap dog stories until all the rest of you were sick to death of it.

>sigh< I feel so much better now. It's all in good fun, right Michael? Right? It was a joke! Really! Hey!

Come on... it was funny, right?

Um... on that note, I'm not going to choose anyone specific to pass this on to. If you feel like you have four little known facts that you would like to pass on to the world, please, feel as if you've been granted the smart cookie award. I encourage it!

You know, now, I want a cookie.
Hey, Michael! Where's my cookie? Why didn't I get a cookie with this award?
What do you mean you ate it?
Bah!

Unexpected Applause: The Fourth Wish

My latest Unexpected Applause piece is The Fourth Wish by Elizabeth Varadan. Along with my own views on the book, I am going to add in my younger son's (middle child), since he fits the target audience. And he's having a different experience with the book than I did, so I think it will provide a more rounded picture. Just a note about my son (for those of you that may have missed me talking about this stuff previously): he's the most well-read 10-year-old I've ever known (or heard of). It's not just that he reads a lot (he does), but he's very eclectic in his reading choices. He's read Kafka (how many adults can say that?), Dumas, and RL Stevenson (more Stevenson than me, actually). He's also read Eddings, Douglas Adams, and (currently) Zahn. All of that to say that his view is worthwhile not just because he's in the target audience but because he has a good spread of prior reading material to base it on.

Let's deal with the technical stuff first. Grammar and editing. Fun. But it wasn't too bad. Especially for a piece that wasn't done professionally. The biggest (real) issue is that there are places where there's a word missing here and there. Those always throw me. [I can't complain about this too much, though, as I know of at least one spot in The House on the Corner where I have a missing word (actually, it's just a missing letter, but it changes the word. So far, no one else seems to have noticed).] It can be a hard job to catch all of those things in your own work, and, overall, it's not too bad. There are some comma errors, especially when the author chose to begin a sentence with a conjunction and follow it immediately with a comma when there wasn't a dependent clause present, i.e. "But, I wanted to." When there is just the one independent clause following a conjunction, a comma should not be there. This is one of those pet peeves I have, so I found those annoying. Still, as the only real (consistent) grammar error in the book, I can't complain about that one, either (I mean, more than I am). The only other issue is the author's use of question marks in many places when the sentence is not interrogative. I actually asked her about these, and she said they were purposeful, to show the inflection of the speaker, but I found them more confusing than anything. [I'm waiting to see how my son reacts to them as they are more prominent toward the end of the book, and he is still shy of half.] If I was grading the book (which I sort of am), I'd give it a B on its technical merits, which is pretty good, I'd say.

The story is where I ran into some problems. But, then, it may just be a function of being about 30 years past the target audience. I was unable to engage with the story and the characters. My son, however, is fully engaged. This is one of those stories where the status quo becomes disturbed, and the characters spend the rest of the story trying to put things back the way they were. Possibly, while learning a lesson or two along the way. Mostly about appreciating what you have or being satisfied with your circumstances because they're not as bad as they could be. The vehicle for this is wishes...

I'll make an example of the magic show at the beginning of the book. Once the first wish is made, I found the magic show to be predictable and cliche, but my son loved it. And I don't really want to give any of it away, so I'll leave it at that.

I suppose I'll just say what didn't work for me:

The second wish seemed to just arbitrarily fail. Yes, the wish was supposed to fail so that things good get more messed up, but, really, it wasn't significantly different from wish that fixed everything, so that bothered me.

Daisy's Doughnuts. The whole place just seemed to be yanked out of the 50s, so it just didn't seem right to me. Plus, the kids, inexplicably, bring Christmas gifts to "Daisy;" although, they don't seem to have any special relationship with her that would warrant that.

Speaking of Christmas, the revelation that it is Christmas comes quite a bit farther into the book than I was comfortable with. It took me by surprise, and I had to readjust my view of what was going on in the story.

There's no real motivation for several of the primary characters. At least, none that I could fathom. Especially for Mrs. Seraphina.

And what did work for me:

The relationship between Arthur and Cory and the way they interact with Melanie (even if there wasn't a reason behind the whole "Scorpion Queen" thing (sorry, but that's the kind of nickname you want to know where it came from)).

Melanie's diary and her collection of postcards from her dad.

The struggle of a single mom trying to raise her kids while she's off working all the time and the pressure that puts on the oldest child.

Mostly, though, the story just never came together for me. Not that it was a struggle to read (I mean, there were no feelings of dread any time I stepped near the book like there was with that Turtledove novel I talked about a while back); it wasn't. I just felt like I was back where I started from when I finished and that nothing significant had happened. Now, that may not actually be true if there is to be a sequel, but, as it is, nothing significant happened.

But! See, my son, he likes the book. When I gave it to him, I just told him to read the first few chapters to see what he thought about it. I sort of expected him to give the book back to me and tell me he didn't like it. But, instead, when I asked him about it, he said, "I like it. You're not... you're not going to take it back, are you?" Because it's my book, and he thought I was only letting him read three chapters. It made me laugh. But the book is laying next to his bed, and, I'm sure he'd be finished with it already if he wasn't reading two other books when I gave it to him.

All of that to get to the point:

I think this is probably an above average middle grade book as long as you're one of those middle graders. From an adult perspective, I see it as a pretty typical story, and it didn't thrill me, but my son thinks it's a lot of fun. I'd certainly recommend it for anyone in the 8-12 range. As far as I can tell, it ought to appeal fairly equally to boys and girls. It has a female lead, but my son is enjoying it just fine, so I don't think the central female character is too off-putting for boys.

For a comprehensive grade, I'd give it a C+ to a B-. Currently, I'm leaning toward the C+, but that could change based on my son's final evaluation. Heck, if my daughter likes it, it could go up to a B. At any rate, if you have or know kids that like to read and are in the age range, it's a book worth checking out. If nothing else, it should be fun for them.

And then you can listen to them go on about how to go about getting 5 ka-billion doughnuts for themselves!

Unexpected Applause: Monarch

Let me just start out by saying that I love Michelle Davidson Argyle's blog: The Innocent Flower. I love her writing there, and I love what she has to say about her experiences in publishing. She's honest and open about what she goes through and how things affect her, and it's a nice change of pace from the front that many authors put up about their experiences with their publishing houses. Not that Michelle has anything bad to say about Rhemalda, her publisher, but it's not the white wash, everything is hunky dory you see most places. The all is great and wonderful in the land of traditional publishing that traditionally published authors tend to regurgitate constantly. Michelle has both self-published, Cinders (which I still need to read), and been published traditionally, albeit by a small publisher, Monarch, so she often approaches things with a view from both worlds. If you don't already follow her blog, you should go do that.

Having said all of that, this is a difficult review for me to write. I've been planning on doing Monarch as the first book of my review challenge since well before I had the name "Unexpected Applause" for that challenge.

[As an aside: this is a review CHALLENGE. As in, I also challenge all of you out there reading this to pick up at least one independently published book a month and, at least, read it, but, preferably, review it. People out there self-publishing and going through small publishers need the exposure.]

Michael Offutt reviewed it, loved it, gave it 5 stars, so I was really looking forward to the read when I finally got my copy.
Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the book as much as Michael did. In fact, it was rather difficult for me to get through.
Before I go on, though, let me say a couple of things:

1. The book is a thriller/romance, and neither of those are my genres. The last thrillers I read were near to 20 years ago when I had a brief fling with Tom Clancy. Clancy is probably  the best there is at thrillers, and he only held my attention for a handful of books, even if I did love the ones I read. It just wasn't meant to last. As for romances... I read one once. School assignment.
2. I had issues with the editing. But more on that in a moment.

What I'm getting at here is that the main issues I have with the book are not necessarily the fault of the author. Monarch is not a book I would pick up while browsing through the book store; I wouldn't even be in the right section to find it. As such, I just couldn't drum up the appropriate amount of interest in the story. And, then, there was the editing.

I've never had the editing in a book stand in the way of my enjoyment of the book before. Not that I haven't found the occasional error, but, really, those have never been anything more to me than "oh, one got through." Monarch, though, was different. The issues were so prevalent that I couldn't stay engaged with the story. Maybe, this is just my own personal issue. I haven't seen anyone else mention this stuff, after all, but it was an issue for me.

I actually had a discussion with the author about this stuff, and, although she didn't agree with all of the editing choices, she was willing to sacrifice the grammar to the fact that she didn't lose editorial control over the story. And I can understand that. At the same time, my reaction for myself is "I would never have agreed to that." But Michelle's view was that most of these issues were trivial, and, in the end, she was happy with the product. Which is all that really matters.

So, maybe, it is just me. Maybe the "mistakes" shouldn't have bothered me so much, but they did. Here are the main ones, just so you know what I had issues with. Maybe if I'd known about these things going in and the author's view on them, they wouldn't have caused me so many problems, but the teacher in me kept urging me to get out my little red pen.
1. the word "OK" -- The editor made the choice to use "OK" rather than "okay" in the text. In all places. I can't get behind this. I know people use "OK" all the time, but I don't think that makes it okay to use in a professional paper. Of any kind. You can't use "OK" in Scrabble, so it shouldn't be used in a book. And it was a fairly commonly used word throughout the book, and, because it was "OK," it just glared off the page at me.
2. the word "alright" -- "Alright" has become common in popular usage, but this isn't really a word. Not yet. The correct form is "all right." I know that language changes and evolves, but "alright" is still considered an abbreviated form of "all right," and, like with "OK," abbreviations shouldn't be used in the narrative text of a book. Besides, the correct form of "alright" shouldn't even be "alright;" it should be "al'right."

[Yes, I expect that some of you will disagree with me about one or both of these, and that's okay. My wife disagrees with me about "alright" and says I'm being too much of a stickler, but that's how I feel about it, and it was an issue for me in the book.]

3. There were comma issues throughout the book. Yes, I know that comma usage can be subjective, but there are some actual hard rules, and I tend to believe that hard rules should be followed. Unless you are making a stylistic choice for some reason, in which case the usage should be consistent. The comma usage in Monarch seemed much more haphazard to me. Now, to be fair, most of the "mistakes" are not things the average reader will notice, so, in the grand scheme, they may not really matter, but, for me, they were a huge issue. I'll give you a sample, so you'll understand what I'm talking about:

--p. 1: "A muffled pop from the silencer and it was over."
should be: "A muffled pop from the silencer, and it was over."

--p. 1: "Blood meant death and death reminded him of Annabelle."
should be: "Blood meant death, and death reminded him of Annabelle."

--p. 3: "Footsteps followed him down the hallway and he broke into a run out the back door."
should be: "Footsteps followed him down the hallway, and he broke into a run..."

--p. 3: "He hadn't lived here for two years, but even before then he was hardly home."
should be: "He hadn't lived here for two years, but, even before then, he was hardly home."

--p. 3: "Except now he had been betrayed."
should be: "Except now, he had been betrayed." or "Except, now, he had been betrayed."

That's the first three pages, and those are just examples of the "hard" rules for comma usage. There are two more places where I would have used commas differently, but those are "soft" rule spots. Still, the ones that bothered me the most were the ones like this:
--p. 15: "He could handle the pain, but was glad he'd found the fedora in  the car he'd stolen."
should be: "He could handle the pain but was glad..."
I can't understand the inclusion of the comma in this sentence when they were left out of actual compound sentences.
And there are some places where the comma is inserted after the conjunction, so it looks like this: "blah blah blah but, was blah blahing." (These happen frequently, but I couldn't find a specific example upon a casual perusal.)

As I said, these are probably not an issue for the average reader, but I couldn't get past them. Maybe that's completely my issue. I don't really know. I also don't know how much I may have enjoyed the book if I hadn't been constantly tripped up by the commas.

What I can say is this:
If you like romance, this could be a book for you. There's not one, but two, love triangles, so there's plenty of romantic tension.
If you like thrillers, this could be a book for you. There's plenty of action and squished termites to keep you going. And blood.
Oh, and there are the butterflies.

Michelle has written a book that a publisher thought highly enough to back, and that's a great thing. She's proud of her work, and that's also a great thing.
Monarch isn't quite my thing, but it might be yours. If this feels like it could be your genre, you should check it out. Especially if the grammar isn't an issue for you.

As I said in my first Unexpected Applause post, books are a matter of taste. I didn't prefer this one, but I'm  not saying it's a bad book; it's just one I didn't like. Michelle deserves a big round of applause for not just writing a book, but writing a book a publisher is standing behind. And her writing is compelling enough that I want to read Cinders even though I didn't care for Monarch. And her next book has dragons, so I'm really looking forward to that one.

I hope I've given a round enough view of Michelle and her work that those of you that do like the whole thriller/romance thing will be willing to give Monarch a chance. Despite any issues I had with the editing. I do have to say that I can completely respect Michelle's view that the comma issues aren't that important. I wish I could see it that way, too. Maybe I do just need to loosen up.

As a final note, I want to reiterate this whole thing about getting reviews. I want my book, The House on the Corner, to be read and get reviews. As such, I have to be willing to get reviews that... aren't always so good. To support the idea that reviews are important and that "young" authors need the support of reviews, even reviews that aren't always glowing 5 star reviews, I feel it's important for me to do reviews. If I'm going to do reviews, I have to be willing to give reviews that aren't always great. My reviews won't mean anything if I just say every book I read is great. Like I said before, the fact that I don't like a particular book may clue someone else in to the fact that s/he might like it. But I don't want to hurt anyone's career, either, so, mostly, the reviews are just for my blog.