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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Review: Beautiful Creatures

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this book up because the movie looked good and I wanted to read the book first. Didn't realize at first that it was a series, but there we have it. After reading this one, I can't say that I'm eager to read the next book, or that I will read the next book, but it's a thought. Maybe for a rainy day when I run out of other things to read.

Overall, the book was pretty good. That's why it got 3 stars instead of 2. I thought the storytelling was good but it was a bit too heavy on the sickly romance aspect. Then again, I'm not a teenager with raging hormones who feels like my heart will explode if the boy I like doesn't like me back. Been there, done that, really don't feel like reliving it.

The magic aspect of the book was interesting, although some of it seemed a bit far-fetched for a fantasy. I can tell it was very thoroughly thought-out, and I'm sure the next book gets further into it because by the end of this one there's a lot of magic happening.

Most of the characters were pretty one-dimensional. Lena was probably the most fleshed-out of the group, including Ethan, from whose point of view the book was written. The one thing I noticed is that he had more feelings than I've ever seen a male protagonist have. I was also very surprised that the book was from his point of view. But he was so in love with Lena from the start of the book that it was impossible to think of him as anything other than a love-sick puppy.

The storyline with Ethan's parents needed to really be worked on, because there is only one moment where we get a revelation about Ethan's mother's death and then it's forgotten like it was never said. His father is spiraling into a severe depression, but the only part that truly goes into it is when Ethan and Lena break into his study.

I appreciate the end of the book, it was pretty neatly wrapped up but still left the way open for the sequel. But as I said, it wasn't enough for me to pick up the next one immediately.

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Review: The Boleyn King

The Boleyn King by Laura Andersen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

[DISCLAIMER: I RECEIVED AN ADVANCED READER'S EDITION OF THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS GIVEAWAY]

There were some parts of the ARC that I received that I hope have been fixed in the final edition of the book. For example, halfway through the book extra "u"s started showing up in words like "for" and "more" and "tomorrow." If the author was going for authenticity, the "u"s were completely out of place because (a) there wouldn't have been a "u" in "for" or "more" or "tomorrow", and (b) "tomorrow" back then used to be written as "to-morrow" not "tomourrow." There were also some glaring typos towards the end, not so many in the beginning. It was a distraction which I hope has been taken care of since the book was published formally on 6/4/2013.

Anyway, to the story.

I was expecting an historical fiction novel but this was more of a romance/mystery. The way the book was set up was that there would be breaks in the text when it was switching POVs from one character to another, but this could have been better accomplished by telling one person's story first, then in another chapter moving to another character. I've found several authors are doing this now, and it becomes confusing and muddles the story.

There are also sections of the story written as a diary, but they aren't signed. Sometimes the author finishes the diary entries and says something like "Minuette closed her diary," which tells us they were Minuette's entries, but again, this would have been better accomplished with a header saying something to the effect of "Entries from Minuette's diary." There was one section where Dominic is writing dispatches to William, and there is a header on those. Some consistency would have been nice.

The book read too much like a mystery novel to me, sort of a "whodunnit" that bothered me since that's not what I signed up to read. There is a plot afoot to discredit William as Henry VIII's son and most of the book is spent trying to figure out who it was, as well as who killed Alyce de Clare, a young woman who supposedly throws herself down a flight of stairs because she's pregnant. None of this is resolved by the end of the book, and no one seems to wonder or care. The reader gets closure in the Interlude at the end of the novel, and it's pretty much what I had expected.

The romance was also strange and forced. I knew Minuette and Dominic would be in love right from the start, because that made the most sense. But the other men who fall in love with her don't seem to work right. Especially the one at the end. That one is too quick happening, and the end leaves it unresolved and pretty much ridiculously laid-out. I didn't enjoy it at all.

Overall, I'm giving it two stars because I did end up finishing it, but it wasn't a great book and wasn't at all like what the description made me think it was. I didn't really enjoy it, especially as a "what-if" type book. It just didn't read as a sincere re-imagining of what the world would have been like had Henry VIII fathered a living son.

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Review: Masque of the Red Death

Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed, but didn't LOVE, this book. The writing style isn't amazing, but the story is interesting enough to keep me reading. It was definitely written for teens, although the main characters act like they are older than they are. I didn't realize Araby was only 17 at first, she was acting like a 21-year-old.

This book is a steampunk-meets-post-apocalyptic/dystopian-future kind of thing. A plague has wiped out a huge number of the population, and it's still killing people daily. Infection is a risk if you don't wear a specially-made mask, invented by Araby's father. Once you breathe through it, it won't work on anyone else, so stealing one from a dead person does you no good.

Araby's twin brother died when she was younger, presumably from the infection (later you find out exactly how it happened), and she blames herself because he didn't want to try on the mask made for him, so she put it on and breathed through it. She makes a silly vow never to experience anything he would not get to experience. This makes her immediately ridiculous to me, but that's how the author wrote it, so that's how I'm going to proceed. I mean, she got to experience growing up, a great depression, having friends, and all sorts of things. But when it comes to boys and love and even sword-fighting, she doesn't want to do it because Finn will never get to. Whatever you say, Miss Araby.

But she's in love with Will, the bouncer at the club her friend April is always dragging her along to. She barely speaks to him at the club, so she knows nothing about him (not even his name at first), until she wakes up in his bed after passing out from a bad high. He "rescued" her, and instead of taking her to the hospital, he brings her home. There she meets his little brother and sister, whom he takes care of because their parents are dead. Neither of them have a mask, and Araby is instantly upset and determines that she is no longer suicidal and must get them masks. Believable, I guess, but it was a bit too quick for me.

Then she meets April's brother Elliott, who convinces her to act like they're madly in love and to join a resistance movement. He asks her to steal her father's blueprints for the mask so that production can begin in a separate warehouse where they can be handed out to the lower classes who can't afford the ones made by Prince Prospero (April and Elliott's uncle who supposedly murdered their father). Elliott wants revenge for the murder of his father, as well as to turn the city around and start to rebuild. Meanwhile, Elliott decides he's actually in love with Araby, and Araby, obviously, can't figure out how she feels about him compared to how she feels about Will. Love triangle, here we come.

The love interests aren't quite believable - Araby falls for Will but has never truly spoken to him aside from in the test room. He rescues her and brings her home with him, and suddenly she's hooked, but what does she really know about him? Next to nothing. Even by the end they're still practically strangers, they each know almost nothing except what happened to Araby's twin brother and what happened to Will's parents. And Elliott is practically abusive to her, and yet she still can't say "Oh I hate your guts you sociopathic moron!"

3/5 stars because I got through it quickly, it was interesting, and I want to read the next book. If the writing had been better and the characters more believable and less like "Oh hi, you're Will, I love you," it would have been 4 stars.

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Review: Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts

Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts by Claire LaZebnik
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

[DISCLAIMER - I WON A COPY OF THIS BOOK IN THE GOODREADS GIVEAWAY.]

Actually, I rather enjoyed this book. It was well-written, funny, sad, pretty much everything you could want in a contemporary-style book. I knew right from the start that Jacob had a crush on Keats, simply because of the way they interacted and the way she seemed oblivious to his adoration. Later on she admits she's known about it forever, but I never got that feeling. Oh well.

Getting to know her sister Hopkins via phone and e-mail conversations was interesting, but then when she shows up in person at the end it was kind of surprising just what her character was actually like outside of a thirty-second window.

I recognized a lot of stuff in this book as being similar to my own family and myself, and pretty much understood everything Keats was feeling (especially as she feels trapped and stagnant).

Overall, a good light read. Not my normal type of book, but it was a nice trip down the sidewalk anyway.

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Review: The Swan Kingdom

The Swan Kingdom by Zoë Marriott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A solid 4/5 because it was wonderfully written. There were a few story problems, such as the very quick ending, but overall it was a fast and fun read. Also, it is a STAND-ALONE!! Hallelujah!

Good for middle- and high school kids, and even adults who are young at heart. It took a while to really get going, but it was nice when things finally started to happen and it wasn't just an overview of what the main character's life was like.

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Review: How Blended are Dust and Fire

How Blended are Dust and Fire by Kieran McKendrick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received an e-copy of the book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

It's really more 3.5 stars instead of just 3, but I didn't want to give it 4. My main reason for this rating is because there were so many made-up words the people used, and most were not explained. In any given sentence there could be anywhere from two to five words of in the language, and half of them I had to figure out for myself. If an author is going to go to the trouble of creating new terms for things, they should not be left to the readers' imaginations. Be specific and explain without truly explaining. I got so lost between all the words that started with "dher" or whatever that it became difficult to tell what the story was trying to tell me.

That language issue aside, the book was a wonderful fantasy novel, a prequel from what I read in the end-note, which sets up nicely for the rest of the series (which I will have to seek out and read now). It was a rather quick read at only 105 pages in the e-edition.

Setting it apart from many other novels is the chapter set-up. Each "chapter" is actually just a character's name, followed by either a few paragraphs or up to a few pages of a character's experience. At times, some characters were introduced out of the blue with these sections, which was a bit confusing. But I actually liked it this way, because the reader gets to experience the chaos of the festival that all the characters are experiencing. It also made for a swifter read. I'm curious how the rest of the series is set up - whether it's like this book, or in normal chapter set-ups.

Recommended for fantasy lovers, over 18 because of violence and sex. If you are capable of diving into a new language and adjusting your vocabulary to it, all the better.

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Quick Deal Alert

Please take the time out of your day to read this blog post by John Kerry, author of Eden at the Edge of Midnight.  If you remember, I gave this a pretty good review and I still feel that it's a great book.  If you want to get a copy of your own, now is the time, as it's only 99¢ for the Kindle, through today only!

Both the author and I would appreciate it if you would write a review, positive or negative, after you've read it.  Like I said, it's a good book and I think some of you may enjoy it.

Plus, it's only 99¢!  Who could say no to that?

(Sorry for the white background on the text, I can't for the life of me make it go away!  Gotta love technology, right?)

Piles and piles everywhere

Image from tumblr.com - I have a feeling that my middle room
would have looked like this eventually.

The to-read piles were growing by leaps and bounds.  Instead of shelving them, I was putting stacks of books on top of my shelved books, weighing down the top two shelves of the open bookcase.  There were also stacks on the floor, on my Aunt Mary chair, and all over the living room.  It was out of control.

But first, let me back-track.  Chris and I have stopped calling the middle room "the library" or "the reading room," as it will eventually be neither.  The basement will become a library-slash-family room, and the plan is floor-to-ceiling bookcases along one wall to house all of our books and other media.  In the meantime, we are attempting to ready the middle room for potential guests and a future nursery for children who have not yet been conceived.

And so it happens that we were in the room one night last week, attempting to clear out the clutter that had inevitably built up over the last year as we threw things in there that we could "find a home for later."  Later never quite came, did it?  Of course not.  But finally boxes were cleared out, piles of books were thrown haphazardly on shelves, and there was eventually an empty space in the middle of the floor in which people could walk, sit, stand, what have you.

Only one problem remained: my books had been put on shelves.  There were no piles anymore.  The open bookcase was no longer leaning forward, shelves buckling under the weight of simply too many pages.  How would I know what I was supposed to read next?  So I created a pile.

Yes, one last pile.  A pile of to-read books, and I would be stuck with that pile until it is finished.  And when that pile is gone and the books have been shelved or given away, I will create a new pile.  And maybe in the next ten years I will finally be allowed to buy new books again, or take books out of the library, because I will be caught up on my to-read pile and will have read every book I own.

Wishful thinking, I'm sure.  But it's the thought that counts.

Review: The Iron King

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was so disappointed in this book it's ridiculous. It has a lot of good reviews, and I know that at least one person I know liked it, but I did not enjoy it much at all. The two stars are essentially for Grimm (the cat), who was the most believable of all the characters, and Ethan (the little brother) who was just so adorable according to my imagination.

Meghan Chase (the extra "h" in the name "Meghan" trips me up because to me, that's just the wrong way to spell it, but of course I'm biased) is the daughter of Oberon and her human mother, who she paints to be totally nuts and bitch-tastic but doesn't seem to be much worse than any normal mother. After the man she believes to be her father (her mother's first husband) disappears, they move to another city, her mother re-marries a man who barely notices Meghan, and they have a son named Ethan who gets all the attention. Meghan is a typical whiny teenager who thinks her life is terrible when she really has it easy (aside from the horrible bully, but really, she was dumb to fall for his apology anyway). Then she finds out she's really half fairy and THAT HER WHOLE LIFE WAS A LIE, and everything changes. And formula from here.

She never actually *does* anything until we get to the end of the book.  Up until that point, everyone does everything for her.  We see Puck helping her in the woods, as well as Grimm, and Ash, and anyone else she manages to blunder into who doesn't immediately try to eat her.  Another reviewer mentioned Damsel in Distress Syndrome - that's exactly it.

[Spoilers after this point]

Review: Third Willow

Third Willow by Lenore Skomal
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

****There are minor spoilers in this post****

I still have no idea why this was on my to-read list. I think I must have entered a giveaway and put it on there, but didn't win, and forgot about it. And the only reason I started reading it was because it was available to read in its entirety from the website.

The book was problematic for me, mostly because nothing actually happens while you're reading. All the action is told in retrospect, in memory, in "thinking back to that moment so many hours ago", which after a few instances can become bothersome but through the entirety of the book is irritating. You get the story in bits and pieces, in all sorts of orders, and through the eyes of the kids who, lord knows if they're even telling it right. Because how far can you trust a child narrator?

Much of the action also seems disconnected from the rest of the story. For example, the stranger in town that the children are scared of, his side story has nothing to do with the rest of what happens, especially since the children all keep silent about what they witnessed and nothing ever comes of it.

Beah's flirtation with being a lesbian doesn't seem to fit either, and neither does her discovery that she's adopted. I suppose the adoption could explain her relationship with her mother, but even that wasn't delved into too deeply. The children's parents show up in the background, without truly affecting the children's points of view. Patsy becomes really good at lying to her parents, who just sit back and take it. No punishment for anything ever gets in the way. And Raz, a background character who has almost no development outside of being smart and gorgeous, simply defers to her father's judgment in everything except one.

The ending was too dramatic for the rest of the story, and I'm not sure I agree with how Hap's situation was handled.

A semantics issue but still bothersome: every now and then the author would slip a little bit of Midwestern drawl into the narration, such as "t'other". It was rare and randomly done, which ended up pulling me out of the story and into a "huh?" type moment. If it were written that way all the way through, it wouldn't have been so glaringly obvious. But it seemed that the author was trying too hard to get the Midwestern dialect into the story.

2/5 stars because I didn't enjoy it, but it wasn't terrible. Just not for me, I guess.

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Review: The White Hawk

The White Hawk by David Pilling
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I guess you could say this book was good, if you like gory descriptions and lots of battle with little plot in between. I am not that person.

I was mostly bored, kind of grossed out, and confused by all the different names. I took a few days off from reading and had forgotten who all the characters were. The copy I read was a proof, so obviously there were errors, but at points there were wrong names which confused me even more.

Not a very enjoyable read, and while I realize it's rooted in history, I wish there had been more story and less description of battles.

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