Review: Facing the Music and Living to Talk About It

Facing the Music and Living to Talk About It by Nick Carter
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

[DISCLAIMER: I won a copy of this book on the Goodreads Giveaways]

I turned 30 this year. It was hard to admit, harder to deal with, and I still don't feel like I'm in my 30's. But one thing I promised myself was, I am not going to spend any more time reading books I don't like, just because I have this masochistic tendency to finish every freaking book I start.

Unfortunately, Facing the Music and Living to Talk About It is one of those books that's going to have to be put down and never picked up again. I wanted to get at least 25% of the way through before I let go, just to give it a fair shot. But that 25% was brutal. This is a disorganized, rambling piece of self-help, and it did not do a darn thing for me. What bothered me even more than the "If I can do it, so can you!" reiteration was that he kept saying things like, "I wish I'd written this book sooner so I could have given it to my sister and maybe she wouldn't have died." I know that he didn't mean it to come across as arrogant, but my goodness did this scream "Her death was all my fault even though it wasn't!" I feel for you Nick, I really do, and I wish your sister had gotten better too, but this book was not going to save her life.

I have always had a huge soft spot for Nick Carter. BSB were my boys. Okay not really. But I always loved them, especially Nick. Nick, you are not a writer. You should keep singing, because as you said in your "strengths" chapter, that's what you do best. I love you! Really! I promise!

As a sidenote: When I entered to win this book in the giveaway, there was next to nothing about it being a self-help book. This book, as I remember it, was marketed as an autobiography with bits of advice for people on how to get through the tough times. As you can clearly see, I'm not the only one who had this impression from the description provided back in September. Now, I don't know if the publisher or Goodreads have changed the description several times since then, but I can tell you that what's up there now ("This book is Nick Carter’s autobiography and self-help hybrid in which he chronicles his struggles with a dysfunctional family and the unimaginable rigors of becoming an internationally successful pop-star at the age of 12.") was not up there when I entered the giveaway. If it had actually been autobiography instead of self-help with a few anecdotes about his childhood and time with BSB, I might have liked this. A suggestion to Goodreads, then: Add a time/date-stamp for edits because it's misleading to put up one description and then change it later with no proof of the old description.

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Book Trailers

Book trailers are starting to show up for even the most indie of books, authors creating them as promotion for something they've self-published, and even the big names are getting into it.  I think the first one I ever saw was on TV, for a James Patterson novel, probably one of the Maximum Ride series.  Then I saw one for either Janet Evanovitch or Nora Roberts (I can't remember because, honestly, I don't really care about them as authors).  Now I'm seeing them online for almost every book that's coming out.

My first thoughts when I saw the one for a Maximum Ride book were, first, what on earth is this, and second, if they wanted to advertise it on video why not just make a movie out of it?  I know, thirty seconds is a lot easier to do than two and a half hours, but I never thought of books as a "visual" media.  By giving a character a face, I felt that it took away all the excitement of trying to picture him/her for yourself.  And yes, I know a lot of books give characters a face with their covers and possibly inside art, but I never found that to be inhibiting, while for some reason the visual on the screen stays with me more.

Some trailers are simply scenery shots, with shadowy figures and other such nonsense, usually the mystery ones.  I can kind of get that, since they don't really show anyone, but again, if I know it's a mystery why do I need to see a trailer to know whether I'm going to like it?

Movie trailers are certainly an interesting and biased media, considering how much I loved the trailers for John Carter and hated the movie (this is not an uncommon occurrence).  I've heard a lot of people even saying that Frozen was marketed completely wrong with the trailers, and it's actually a great movie even though the trailers make it look pretty, well, dumb.  I haven't seen it yet, so I'll reserve judgment.

But if that's the case for movies, how could a book trailer possibly help someone who wants to pick out a book to read?  All it's going to do is tell you the plot, right?  And maybe make it look exciting.  I don't really get it.  To me, there's nothing more a book trailer can do for me that the synopsis can't (unless the synopsis is two sentences long telling me only "You'll love this book because it's a great story about love and blah blah.  And it's a mystery."  I've seen those before and thought it was dumb).  And if I wanted to watch the book, I'd wait for the movie, right?

At this point in my book searching, I don't watch the trailers or pay attention to the photos people post in their reviews of stars they say "are" the characters.  This happens a lot on Goodreads.  I rarely read past the first few lines of a review either, unless I'm specifically looking for a reason (not) to read a book.  The synopsis does it for me (and sometimes - okay, a lot of the time - the cover).  Book trailer?  No thanks.

Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Neil Gaiman is an author whose works I buy without question. One time I was given a $250 gift card to Barnes & Noble (best day ever) and I used it to beef up my collections of Gaiman, Bradbury and Pratchett. I bought this book as a signed first edition, pre-ordering it months ahead of publication just knowing it was going to be beautiful. And it was.

A lot of the hyped books don't really meet my expectations, and I'm often left disappointed. In this case, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was perfectly marketed, and deserves every award and accolade it has won this year, including the Goodreads Choice Award for Fantasy (and the book which received the most votes overall).

The synopsis on Goodreads pretty much says what the book is about, but it doesn't give you the story. And it's a story only Neil Gaiman could have written. It's mystical and child-like, but through the eyes of an adult who doesn't really know what he's remembering. It's simple and lyrical and wonderfully rich in imagery. The storytelling is masterful. Suffice to say, I loved every moment of it.

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Review: The Forbidden Book

The Forbidden Book by Joscelyn Godwin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

[Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the Goodreads Giveaway]

Overall, this book was just "okay" for me, but since it wasn't bad I didn't want to just give it two stars, so that's why it gets three.

Minor spoilers after this point.

I enjoyed the mystery aspect of the book, but felt that it was trying to go in three different directions, none of which matched up quite as well as it seems the authors had wanted. It's one part mystery - who killed Angela and kidnapped Orsina? - one part mysticism - the Baron's magical powers and those he is trying to pass to Orsina - and one part, well, just plain weird - the Baron's influence over his "students" in getting them to blow up monuments to make it look like the Muslims are behind it. I understand where the authors were trying to go with that last bit, but I really don't think they arrived.

Inspector Ghedina is a fool of a character, Orsina's weak, as is Angela, and Leo is the only one worth much of anything in the grand scheme of things.

The sexual aspect was... well, gross. Again, I get where the authors were going, and I see its relevance to the story, but it kind of grossed me out. Plus the fact that Orsina just (view spoiler)[glosses over her attempted rape and says she'll have to figure out how to live with it, then moves on to something else (hide spoiler)] kind of makes me feel like she's vapid and shallow, with no real emotions to speak of other than her love for Leo.

I guess if you were a fan of The DaVinci Code and other such nonsense, this book might appeal to you. I didn't mind it, it wasn't offensive, I just didn't really find it compelling. And there was so much Italian in it that even with translations it was distracting.

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Review: Sorcerer's Luck

Sorcerer's Luck by Katharine Kerr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Simply put, I love this book. It is so imaginative and original, and full of history and magic and all sorts of fun!

Maya Cantescu meets a sorcerer while she's drawing portraits at a local fair. He draws her into his world with the offer of a job, and since she's barely scraping by she talks herself into it. Maya isn't just any ordinary girl herself, though - she's a vampire. No, not the blood-sucking kind, but the kind that feeds on other people's energies. She could easily kill someone if she took too much, but she has trained herself to only take smidgins here and there. This has barely worked for her, but by the time she meets the sorcerer, Tor, she isn't at the peak of health.

It seems like love at first sight, but as we get further into the story we find out that they have known each other a lot longer than Maya first thought!

There's also the hitch that Tor is a were-bear. Can Maya keep him locked in his room every full moon so that he doesn't go off gallivanting around the countryside eating small children? And what really goes on behind that locked door every cycle?

Most of the action focuses on Tor's uncle Nils, who has a huge vendetta against him for some perceived slight. It takes probably half of the book to figure this out, but that's hardly where the excitement ends!

The masterful writing coupled with a great story has really turned out a great book. At the end we're left with the set-up for another book, which is awesome, because I seriously can't get enough of Maya and Tor, her brother Roman, and her kooky friend Brittany.

5/5 stars, highly recommended to anyone who loves fantasy, adventure, romance, magic, mythology, and just enjoying a darn good read.

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Review: The Knife's Edge

The Knife's Edge by Matthew Wolf
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I found The Knife's Edge on Kickstarter and figured it sounded good, and I wanted to support a budding author, so I backed it. I can't say I regret backing it, but it doesn't end up anywhere near the top of my list of great fantasy. Unfortunately, there were too many problems with the book for me to ignore.

Kail, Karil, and Kirin - these are three different people. I couldn't keep them straight for the life of me (I'm good now that the book's over, but seriously, all three of these characters' names showing up within a few pages of each other and I was screwed). Add to that the fact that Kirin is also Gray, and one character keeps calling him Kirin, well, I got all sorts of mixed up. Plus, there's a voice in his head that talks to him when he's confused...is that supposed to be Kirin talking to Gray? Does he have schizophrenia? It's never explained, but he listens to it without any real questioning.

Kirin/Gray (from now on just Gray) goes off on an epic adventure to save the world after he's attacked by a bunch of monsters. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's how I'm going to summarize it. The monsters are sent after him by Vera, his dead girlfriend, who is apparently working for someone else and herself at the same time (apparently with no repercussions, but whatevs, girl don't care!), and everyone wants Kirin dead. I still have no idea what these monsters look like, by the way - I imagine the Verg with triangle heads. And the Saerok look kind of like this:

I have no idea why, but that's just where my mind went. Anyone else remember that Angel? Yep.

Anyway, Gray has a sword that killed Vera, his now-dead girlfriend(or something, that becomes questionable later on and kind of creepy in a way...) and he's terrified of it but he doesn't know why because he doesn't remember who he was. And he goes on this epic quest, meets a couple of folks who become his sidekicks no matter how hard he tries to ditch them, and learns how to harness this magic power that's within him, which is actually kind of cool. Eventually he comes to terms with being a "savior" and, with the help of Ronin who are supposed to be evil but aren't really (their backstory isn't completely explained), goes off to save the world.

The Ronin didn't make a ton of sense in the whole scheme of things. Their story is only given in bits and pieces, and while by the end we kind of understand why they are seen as evil but are really good, it's a little too late for me.

Going beyond plot and into printing, I understand that this was a Kickstarter and therefore not a "professionally" published book. However, the author had made numerous mentions in the campaign of proofreading, polishing and perfecting the book over several years and it's finally ready for publication. I beg to differ. The first hundred or so pages weren't so bad. There was the odd extra comma, a few spelling errors, and maybe some weird out-of-place sentences. But by the time I got halfway through the book they were literally everywhere. It was like whoever had proofread this thing had gotten that far in and said "Screw it, I'm done, no one will notice anyway." Well, I noticed. There were spelling problems, horrible grammar, weird punctuation, floating half-sentences, wrong words, wrong characters, and "he's" and "she's" everywhere without identifying who that he or she was.

I was ready for it to be over about 150 pages before it was, even though we hadn't even gotten all the story yet. This wasn't a bad book, obviously I'm in the minority when it comes to those who didn't like it, but I didn't enjoy it very much and would not pass this on to my friends (unless they *really* wanted to read it, in which case, just let me know and it's yours).

Sorry Matthew, it was a dud for me :\

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Freebie Alert: Diary of the Gone

I know I just reviewed this, but since I gave it 4/5 stars I think this deserves its own post.  Diary of the Gone is up for free on Amazon for Kindle!  If you own a Kindle or have a Kindle app (I caved and have an app on my phone now) you can read it for free.

Remember to leave a review if you download!

Review: Diary of the Gone

Diary of the Gone by Ivan Amberlake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[Disclaimer: I received a copy of this ebook from the author in exchange for an honest review.]

I really appreciated that this was a one-off novella and not a new series. The story had just enough creepiness to make it scary, and at the end was wrapped up neatly.

I don't normally read horror or scary books because, well, I get freaked out pretty easily. But this was just this side of fantasy so that I wasn't really scared so much as wanting to know what was *really* going on with that diary and the dead people that Callum sees.

The writing was done well, and it seems like the author has gotten a pretty good grasp on dialogue since the last book of his that I read. I enjoyed the flow and got through it in a couple of hours (hence the novella part). I was left with a few questions, like why did all the animals leave the forest? There could have been a bit more done with that in the beginning, when Callum and Nathan find the dead deer in the swamp. Some of the story felt rushed, but overall it was a good read.

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Review: Dominique Ick Lessont and the Dragon Knight

Dominique Ick Lessont and the Dragon Knight by Eric Tripp
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Dominique Ick Lessont starts off as simply Ick, the grandson of the Dominique Anna. In case you can't figure that out, the Dominique is the leader of the people. This isn't explained until about halfway through the book, by the way.

Anyway, Ick's people are attacked by a mysterious (at first) army, and he has to help defend the humans of the world. He befriends the elves, meets a witch, becomes a dragon knight, and all that jazz. Oh, and there are also several prophecies that intertwine, of course.

That's not to minimize what happens, but it was a pretty predictable story, complete with deus ex machina at the end. **SPOILER** Missing character? Of course he'll come back and heroically save the day! **END SPOLER**

Most of the time I had a hard time remembering that Ick is supposed to be 16. He acted much more like a young teen, maybe 13, except when he was fighting. I also had trouble with the writing style, as it felt like it was being written for children, but then had several gory battle scenes. The battle scenes weren't that great either, unfortunately, and the end of the battle in the last few chapters came too quickly after the "surprise."

The book needs some serious proofreading, because there was a multitude of misspellings, wrong words, and generally bad grammar.

Overall, a semi-cheesy, not altogether satisfying, standard YA fantasy that leaves much to be desired.

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If you have read my review and are undeterred, you can download a copy for free from Goodreads here in either PDF or ePUB format.

Review: Lighthouse Island

Lighthouse Island: A Novel by Paulette Jiles
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

[Disclaimer: I received a copy of the ARC from the Goodreads Giveaways]

I'm giving this 2 stars instead of 3 because it was just okay for me. I didn't love it, I didn't hate it, I mostly just wanted to read it and be done with it. I had a major problem with the lack of quotation marks in the dialogue because I had a very hard time figuring out when a character was speaking and when the narration ended and became dialogue.

Style-wise, again, it was just okay. There was too much exposition, and it took way too long for anything to truly happen. There was also a continuity problem, when a character's death was clearly described, but later in the book he's still alive. I couldn't figure out if I had misread, or if this was an error that has been fixed in final publication, or if it was really supposed to be a plot twist (which I found poorly executed).

The ending dragged on too long. I have a problem when books end too suddenly, but this one should have ended about 70 pages before it did. It felt like the book had actually ended, and another book had started. Maybe it would have been better if that's what had happened - I kept saying to my husband, "It's like she's started the sequel and included the first 1/3 of the next book in this one without noting that it's another book." Introducing several new characters only that close to the end of the book seems pointless. Not that I want another series, but this seems like it should have been at least a duet. OR, she should have written more and made it just a longer book.

Since this doesn't come out until October, I have no way to tell if any of this was changed in the final version. But I don't see myself spending the money on the hardcover or even spending the extra time on re-reading the finished copy. It was an interesting idea, but I don't think it was fully successful.

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Review: The Beholder

The Beholder by Ivan Amberlake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.]

***There is one minor spoiler in this post***

It's more of a 3.5 than a solid 4, only because there were a few plot points I took issue with and the writing style wasn't my favorite, but the book itself was very enjoyable and a fun read from a great new writer.

At times I felt like I was reading a cross between Harry Potter and The Matrix, which isn't awesome but it isn't terrible either. It seemed like maybe the author was borrowing a little blatantly, but it wasn't plagiaristic, more like an homage that might have been trying too hard? But I thought the fact that he combined fantasy and sci-fi so smoothly was very interesting and done quite well. Actually, it seems like he's brought the sci-fi into the fantasy and made them work as one entity.

One plot problem I had was that at one point it is stated that the city is empty of the Unsighted, those who don't have these powers that the main character discovers. Later in the same scene, it is mentioned that the Light Sighted are coming to take the Unsighted out of the city. Since their entire purpose in appearing was to remove the Unsighted from the city, maybe that scene should have been a bit more clear as to who exactly was still in the city.

The ending was interesting and while I sensed there was going to be a (SPOILER) big betrayal (/SPOILER) pretty early on, I had anticipated it from someone else. Good job on the twist there.

Overall I had fun reading the book, and got through it pretty quickly (two sittings). Despite its shortcomings, I think this author is on to something awesome here and I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.

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Review: The Tattered Banner

The Tattered Banner by Duncan M. Hamilton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

[DISCLAIMER: I RECEIVED AN E-COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM THE AUTHOR IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW]

**There are some spoilery parts in this review**

The Tattered Banner is an almost-book. It almost gets deep into magic, almost has action and adventure, and almost has a conclusion. Instead it felt like the author was trying to tackle too many concepts at once, and they didn't quite connect in the right way. There's a sweet spot that authors try to hit, where everything works and the story comes together; this almost made it.

Soren is a poor street urchin who barely gets by day to day. He doesn't expect to live past his teens, but he still struggles on, all the while enjoying watching his hero, Amero, fight in the arenas. He practices his swordfighting by emulating Amero, and after Amero sees Soren fighting off a merchant from whom he'd stolen bread, Amero takes Soren into his service and sets him up at the swordfighting academy.

At first Soren is an outcast, and poor at his craft, but he learns and grows in his studies and soon bests all of his classmates. He has magic to thank for all of his talent, but magic has been outlawed for centuries. No one gives him information so he just bumbles around blindly, bit by bit learning a little more about his "powers." The Gift and the Moment are both explained in different ways, but the Gift is the most prevalent apparition.

On top of all of that, he falls in love, visits distant lands, is betrayed, and ends up not really having a path in life to follow. His directionless ambling through life has not prepared him for a career, and he seems unready for just about every challenge put in front of him, despite his Gift. His arrogance gets the best of him, and he realizes he can't control the one thing that gives him an advantage against others.

The time spent in Ruripathia becomes almost an afterthought once it's over, which is a shame because if Soren had spent more time reflecting on what happened there he may have discovered the direction in which he was heading sooner. He also ignores a lot of warning signs around himself and often gets himself into trouble with his irrational charging-in.

The ending of the novel was a stock villain-explains-all-while-believing-hero-will-die scenario, which kind of left me rolling my eyes, mostly as it had already been inferred throughout the rest of the book and revealing everything in a dramatic monologue defeats the purpose of foreshadowing.

While it seemed more like a series of vignettes in the life of a swordsman, the concept was well thought-out and could have been made more solid with a lot more exploration of the magic aspect, as well as the relationship with Ruripathia. The barbarian raids towards the middle-end of the book seem to not have done anything for the story except to propel Soren into a position of desirability for clandestine work. This could easily have been achieved, possibly better, by turning him into an assassin-for-hire as he had initially worked out with the illicit trader, as opposed to for the "government." Then again, I'm not the author - perhaps the barbarian hordes did serve a purpose, but they needed to be worked out a little more.

Overall I enjoyed the story, found it hard to keep track of some names, and felt that not enough detail was used with many aspects of Soren's abilities. It appears that this is only book 1, though, unless the ending truly was an ending, so maybe there will be opportunity for expansion in book 2. Recommended with reservations, if you can get past some missing details and recognize a good attempt at a first novel. It shows promise for future writings if any are forthcoming.

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When Authors Don't Like Your Review

Lately I've been doing a lot of reviews.  This is in part because I've finally started winning Goodreads Giveaways again, but also because I really want to let authors know what I think of their work.  If it's an older book I might not bother, but if it's relatively new I want to put it out there.

One thing I really try to stay away from in my negative reviews is cattiness - "This book was terrible!  Never read this book!" - and instead offer real constructive criticism - "I didn't like this part and this is why."  We all mess up sometimes, though, and I can get a little mean (perhaps my review of Scapemaker could have been taken as one giant F YOU to the author even if I meant to help...).  Part of that is because I just wasted a ton of time reading a book that I thought really wasn't good, and part of it is my own sort of literary ego, where I want everything I read to be amazing and if an author can't put something amazing out then they shouldn't bother writing in the first place.

Obviously, this is the wrong type of attitude when reviewing, but it happens to the best of us, and I am not without my faults.

One thing that I've noticed, however, is that authors who do not have a huge publishing house behind them tend to take the negative reviews a bit too personally.  Recently (within the last six months or so), I've had a couple authors reach out to me in what felt like a spiteful way because I had left them bad reviews.

Generally when that happens, I feel a little hurt, I take it personally, and I overreact.  The last time I asked if I was being crazy reading way too far into a comment, but at least others saw it too.  I try not to comment back right away because I want to cool down and take the time to read their comment and find out why they are so mad at my honesty.  Is it because I said they weren't interesting?  Is it because I said the book was poorly written?  Is it because I said it needed some editing before it hit print?  Whatever the reason, it obviously struck a nerve.

The best way for me to handle these situations is to address the comment calmly, if at all.  Sometimes I just ignore them, sometimes I only respond to one aspect that I feel I can defend without going all psycho-nasty on them because I just know if I respond to anything else you'll see one heck of a cat-fight going on.  And that's far from how I'd like to see any author represent him/herself.  Also, I don't want my future bosses to see me being nasty on the internet.  You know they look, admit it.

Anyway, I know how poorly I take criticism of any kind, so I try to look at the author and project myself onto him or her.  How would my review have made him feel?  How did my words hurt her ego?  And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.  But if I can stand by it, then it stays up.

I'm honestly interested: Have you had an author react negatively to your bad review?  Have you ever left a bad review?  Has an author ever thanked you for a bad review? (I've had that one happen, which was interesting.)

Review: Hooray For Me

Hooray For Me: A Foggy Memoir by Ello Black
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

[DISCLAIMER: I RECEIVED A COPY OF THIS FROM THE GOODREADS GIVEAWAYS IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW]

I *really* wanted to enjoy this book, because it sounded so funny and interesting. Unfortunately, it just didn't live up to expectations. I read the little introduction, explaining that the spelling and grammar wasn't going to be standard because it's just the way she writes, which is fine, but I couldn't really get past it.

This book is a series of vignettes about Ello Black's life. It was too short to have any depth to it, and none of the stories related to each other except for the fact that they all had at least something to do with her dad (some more than others). Yes it was funny, and yes the stories were biographical, but at some point there needs to be cohesion and that cohesion just never came.

It was also difficult to read because of the voice. It was as if she was speaking the book to me instead of writing it, but that's not really how I enjoy to read. Dialect is one thing, but there should have at least been some proofreading done to make it grammatically correct. I know that she said in the intro that she isn't grammatically correct and that's just the way it is, but there's only so much of it that I can take before I start getting out my red pen.

I wish this had been more of a cohesive story and less of separate essays on various parts of her life that, frankly, weren't all that extraordinary in the first place. The chapter on her father's death was certainly heartbreaking and the chapter in which she recounts being bullied struck a chord with me. But the rest felt like filler.

Ello, you seem like a cool person and I hope you keep on being your bad self. And thanks for the book. It just didn't do it for me.

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Review: Desdaemona

Desdaemona by Ben Macallan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is hard to review. I enjoyed the story, sort of, but didn't particularly click with the story-telling. Jordan's storyline never quite did it for me. And his complicated relationship with Desi was confusing because I never figured out whether he truly felt anything for her or if it was all her aspect pulling him along. I felt like I was being dropped into the middle of a series, rather than the beginning of one. The plot twist was not foreseen and I was left wondering "Well what happens next?" by the end. Not sure if I'll read to find out.

Not a bad read, just not up there with my favorites.

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