Draykon by Charlotte E. English
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Draykon: Book 1 (The Draykon Series) by Charlotte E. English
I really liked this novel. This is not my genre of choice but I think because I had recently read a few books on dragons this came up as a possible choice. This has a sort of YA feel to it at the beginning, but as it develops so does the writing. It took a while to get into this one and it took a while for the world building.
I thought the character of Llandry was quite interesting. She come off as sort of shy and reserved to almost a point of being debilitated by it. I've met a few of these people and Llandry seemed quite real in her fears and anxieties.
I had some difficulty identifying what race Llandry was (perhaps fairy because she has wings) Her parents seem to be a mix but maybe it was just that some have wings and some don't that made this confusing for me.
Eva seems to be of the human race, at least several times human is the word used to associate with her and those she works with. They are sorcerers and summoners.
I was confused about the realms they lived in.
Seven realms are mentioned in the story and shown by the map; they consist of the Daylands and the Darklands. Daylands are kept under the daycloak and Dark under the night cloak. By the map it would be easy to infer that Irbel, Glinnery, Orlind, and Nimdre are of the dayland though the glossary only mentions Irbel and Glinnery. It also seems infer-able that Glour, Orstwych and Ullarn are of the darklands but that is not made clear by the glossary.
In the text we see this which maybe clears up a bit of how the seven are divided.
[Quote]You of Glinnery are Daylanders, as are Irbel and, as far as we can tell, Orlind. Glour, Orstwych, and Ullarn are Darklanders of the Lowers. Only Nimdre has no allegiance: we live halfway in between, faithful neither to one nor the other.[/Quote]English, Charlotte E. (2011-08-31). Draykon (Draykon Series) (p. 282). . Kindle Edition.
Orlind is otherwise mentioned as mostly closed off from people.
To add to the confusion there are the Upper Realms the Middle Realms and the Lower Realms. From the glossary it might be easy to infer that the Upper Realms and Lower Realms are separate from each other and might be existing in intersecting planes to the Seven Realms but its not absolutely clear that the Middle Realms is another plane or the plane of the Seven Realms and the Middle are not in the glossary.
In the glossary Upper and Lower are referred to as Off-Worlds, which reinforces the thought that the middle realm might be the Seven Realms.
[Quote]Nobody knows whether they originated in the Uppers or the Lowers or the space in between: the Middle Realm, which was once a chaos of conflicting influences from both sides.[/Quote]English, Charlotte E. (2011-08-31). Draykon (Draykon Series) (p. 282). . Kindle Edition.
The plot itself became predictable to me about halfway through. The character of Llandry had some similarities in her obsession with the Gem stones with Gollum of Tolkein's Lord of the Ring Trilogy. It interfered with the romance of the story since it was difficult at times to see that her wish to travel with Devary was equal part an attraction to him and her obsession. Predictably the obsession gets in the way of a lot of things.
The predictability of the outcome of the story is important in this novel. I don't want to hand it out because some people might cry spoiler, but I really think the reader has to pick up on this or they might eventually cry Deus ex machina. This novel is far from that, but you do need to pick up on a few things within the plot as it goes along or it will certainly look that way.
I would really love to give this five stars but I am afraid that my confusion about the Realms has caused it to be downgraded and though this may seem unfair, I can't give this five stars when I went away confused about something that is very important to the plot since there is a speculation about whether the upper, lower and middle were meant to be separated as they are. (That's if the middle is the Seven Realms.)
Great fantasy novel for fantasy lovers with well fleshed out characters for the story and I'm looking forward to the next two novels and hoping that they help resolve my confusion.
J.L. Dobias
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Right Ascension by David Derrico
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Right Ascension (Edge of Apocalypse) By David Derrico
I won't say I loved this and I won't say I hated it. It sort of falls between and definitely falls short of what I expected from the description. And unfortunately it's one of a few that I have to agree with the assessment of many that it seems like a rewrite of some of the popular Sci-Fi out there. But if you enjoy the lighter softer side of Sci-Fi it can be an enjoyable read.
Perhaps the biggest problem for many people who found objection is that it doesn't quite live up to the standards of those softer lighter Sci-Fi and even the description it gives itself.
I think also it was a bit jarring to have it start the first chapter with two characters that were probably the most engaging characters and then kill them off immediately. (That's a bit of a spoiler and I'm sorry, but this is an important difficulty with this story.) Chad and Krystal have this thing; two hotshot pilots that are almost on opposite ends of some dipole and yet have this potential chemistry. I got invested in these two and felt really bad when the rug was pulled. Having that happen somehow negated the sympathy I should have felt for the characters who lost these two people. (Well in this case the one who lost Chad since there is no back or forward story involving Krystal.)
The writing is not bad. There is always room for improvement, but honestly it was not anything I felt needed massive amounts of work. It was good and solid with some half way fleshed out characters and some interesting ideas. But I would also agree with people that there are elements too familiar in the makeup of the crew that keep steering the mind to known characters of known Sci Fi.
Also we have a, to be blunt, death-star only owned by the supposed good guys and of course this is a key point in the plot because it is supposedly the death-star that has garnered some superior alien attention. The massive ship Indominable with the doomsday weapon (the omega cannon) that destroys entire planetary systems. Since it's existence causes the mysterious alien race to attack Earth it's key to the plot.
There are a number of elements of this story that are familiar to Sci-Fi fans so the real meat for this novel is the issue of the Moral part. The question of what if everything you have been told about the war with the Korgian Star System was not quite true? What if heroes in the war had to make judgement calls and they weren't the best calls? What if the heroes that saved the day come out smelling a bit tainted? This is what makes this story unique and better. The problem is that it's glossed over too quickly and never fully addressed and then the holier than though people who are taken aback do something later that might actually seem almost but not quite as bad as their predecessors. And that transgression seems to go right over their heads.
We won't even mention that so far as the reader is told these aliens who attack might not know what has been done with this weapon and are only concerned about what it might be used for. And a bit later we do have to ask the question of why they waited 40 years to do something.
If felt like many plot possibilities were missed and many glossed over too quickly for this to come out well as a moral tale. This might be disappointing to people expecting the moral tale to be the bulk of the originality of the story. Perhaps book two will delve into this issue with more clarity.
Sci-Fi fans who like the soft side and don't mind close resemblance to popular fiction should enjoy this as light Sci-Fi and Fantasy. It could have been better and might be in book two, I'm just uncertain where the author is headed with the plot and moral issues. The only way to know for certain is to read the next one.
It is a shame to see some people have left reviews saying they couldn't finish the book, I didn't find it to be bad enough to throw it down and not finish.
J.L. Dobias
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Gunship by John Davis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Gunship(Book 1)by John Davis
I think I download this while I was looking for steam-punk novels, this is not steam-punk. It's more like Firefly with caveat's galore. It might remind some people of Firefly and some people might actually enjoy it. But there are a lot of strange style choices and sense of some sort of rush that starts from page one and goes right through the thing.
The sense of rush itself could be good but in this case it's just damaging. With the style of writing and everything that John Davis wanted to stuff into this story I would have to go against my usual rule of limiting the size and say that he should have made this story much larger to give him time to develop characters and the story in more expansive way. It's really hard to explain without having someone read the story. You have to read this to see. I think that if he'd chosen a style that would have condensed his writing to essentials maybe the length of the story would then work.
The ebook had some other problems that may or may not have been style choices. Either way it causes difficulty reading the story. There are dramatic scene changes that are not separated in any way except the immediate jar (sometimes) that I got while reading. Sometimes I may have gotten scenes mixed in with each other because there was no way to delineate the scenes. Since on occasion a scene break does show up I have to strongly suspect that the missing scene changes may have just never been there, but it's often not quite fair to assume that with a kindle document because the process of conversion often does lose those dramatic spaces.
There is an entire section where we get a shopping list view of every character on the ship and possibly their motivation and such so that this doesn't have to be dealt with in the story and I would rather see something like this developed throughout the story instead of munged into one hill of description. One result for me is the feeling that every motive and every character seem to have been rushed out and I think that creates the feeling of the characters being flat though if the reader goes back to that section they can almost see they are slightly fleshed out. It really ruined the sense of romance for me in the love interests.
I did enjoy the tension of the battle at the end. The climax is helpful in giving the story a bit more depth. I did end up with some issues about how things developed but the largest is a bit of personal preference. I don't mind the female protagonist fighting in dresses and such. It's a common feature of games and comic books. What I have a problem with is when there is clearly no reason for the female to chose that. If it so happens that the battle starts while everyone is at a ball or dance or some swank function then, yes, what they have on is what they have on. In this story in the final scenes there was no logical reason for the character to show up for battle in a red dress. She knew she was going, everyone had time to get ready, and she should have been wearing the same thing the rest of the troops had and maybe even some battle armor. That said she should have been wounded, hurt, bleeding and sorry that she ever wore a dress into battle.I'm pretty sure there is no mention of the red dress being lined with battle armor.
Lastly and this I would not have complained about if the author had made this novel longer with more depth to the characters, but he didn't. This trilogy probably should have been one book and it should have been reworked and condensed. Or it should have been longer with more built in character development. This leaves you hanging, which again is not always a bad thing, but in this instance it seems inexcusable. This is like a short story or at best a novella. It is definitely not 358 pages as is listed. It's probably closer to 100 pages 120 at best.(I'm not sure where they get these page counts from and a word count is a lot better to judge by.)
For those who are concerned about grammar and spelling errors this is not the book for you.
Fans of Firefly who don't mind some light reading with striking similarities might appreciate this. It's sort of SFF with extreme emphasis on the Fantasy part. The vampires, zombies , and pirates are not well defined enough to really be that recognizable and if you don't mind a lot of bloody action then you might enjoy this if you do like Vampires, Zombies and Pirates.
Some more editing, tighter writing, and a bit more character development with a true page count of 350 pages would really help this book. It has a lot more potential.
J.L. Dobias
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Timebound by Rysa Walker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Timebound(The Chronos Files)By Rysa Walker
I like this novel because for me it was a sit down and start running kind of novel. It has an interesting protagonist thrust into an interesting situation. (One that requires the suspension of some reality.) Of course it's a time travel novel, which are becoming a dime a dozen, so it's greatest strengths are the characters in the story. Time travel plots tend to all end up the same with a lot of potential for paradoxes and parallel or alternate worlds spawned from careless actions when traveling in time.(This is why we should never go back in time.)
There seems to be a bit of controversy involved in this story and part of the premise and I will try to stay away from that because I did not see what some people seem to see.
What I loved about this novel is it did something that few recent novels-new novelists-have been able to do. I was so interested in the story itself and the direction the plot was going and my investment in the character that I wanted to read faster than my usual pace, because I wanted to get answers to all the questions my mind was asking. This could in a way be a detriment because it could lead to scanning, which is just plain evil. I reigned it in and read slow enough to keep things in focus.
What I loved next was anomalous for me in that it was the love story because it's sort of split and almost fractured. The main character ends up with two interesting love interest; one that is here and now and real the other not quite so much. I don't usually gravitate to romances. But I was really interested in the details of the building of the crisis which was the series of time-quake like events that were leading to paradoxes and the explanation for how they protect themselves from the effect.
Another interesting thing that doesn't usually happen in my reading is that I got to chapter 17 and thought-I could almost be happy even had it ended then-yet there are 24 chapters and we really haven't done much in time travel by then. It wasn't that I wanted it to end it was just that it could have worked as an end if the author had wanted to leave things hanging.(A number of recent stories I've read have ended worse than this would have if it had ended at chapter 17 and I would have been interested in purchasing the next novel.) So big bonus for me because we got the whole 7 chapters of time travel.
What I liked about the time travel part was that the bulk of it was a single time episode as far as the protagonist is concerned. (There was one character that did describe the sort of time bounce effect where he'd done several recurring trips before success.) For the most part this did not involve a lot of time bouncing which is nice for a change.
One thing that I did find a little odd is that someone is selling a 2.99 review of this novel, which may have fueled some of the rougher reviews. I am not sure if this book requires an in-depth analysis that the reader should pay for. The author did do a lot of research for the time travel part so perhaps that's what that review book is about.(I have not yet decided if I really need to go there so I don't know what value that review has.)
If you love romances and time travel novels you should love this one. If you want to get involved with the controversy that's up to you. I found it to be a thoroughly engrossing read that I couldn't put down.
I definitely want to read more that comes from Rysa Walker.
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In Enemy Hands by David Weber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In Enemy Hands By David Weber (Honor Harrington Series Book 7)
As far as the honor character I really do enjoy the first three book much more than the rest. But in regards to the whole story and series this book is a pivotal part and it does have much more of depth into Honor's Character than I might have previously given it.
This is a long book and it carry's on the tradition of Political Military suspense thriller that David Weber has been building from day one. Everything that seemed extra and unnecessary begins to fold out to useful purposes. There is a lot that is going on with shifting loyalties and shifting party preferences within the military and political climate of many of the worlds that make up the Honor Universe.
We get to see Honor lose a decisive battle and we get to see the real evil of the new regime running the Peeps.
We also get a jarring chapter where through Honor's head we get introduced to the major players aboard her vessel that will ultimately go into battle. I really am not a fan of the shopping list character descriptions but I am willing to be forgiving when the book is already well beyond 500 pages, which this one is. That sense of needing to rush was probably too tempting as opposed to making many more pages and feeding us the information through the action.
There was a lot to handle here and in a small way the description, which comes from Honor's POV out of her head does help in a small way to give us more depth to Honor's character.
This Honor is more apparently vulnerable to the reader this time and I think that helps. She still makes most of the right decisions, but things go poorly and she has to face the consequences. These vulnerabilities have always been there, but her success have always managed to push them most of the way into the background.
I think at this point in the series if you are a fan of Honor Harrington that these books will stand well and be appreciated. I also can see that for someone who jumps in at this point or some future point it might become a daunting task to get into the stories.
Fans of Honor Harrington should love this one SFF Military Political Sociological and even Psychological fans might find this one and the next to be of interest.
Once again for the Horatio Hornblower fans this book parallels one of his in the sense of being a prisoner of war. But as for me any other similarities to Horatio Hornblower it goes well over my head. I have yet to get the enthusiasm to try to assemble a library of those works.
J.L. Dobias
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Honor Among Enemies by David Weber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Honor Among Enemies by David Weber (Book 6 Honor Harrington series)
Having no power for 8 days seemed like the prime time to catch up on the Honor Series. Honor Among Enemies seemed like the turning point for me. The previous 5 my mind would go numb and white noise would start when all the exposition about tactics and armament would begin. I know they are important to the big plot of the series but I was in this for Honor. This book David Weber seems to have perfected whatever it is he's been trying to do all this time, because I am becoming more focused on what is happening in all the other stories that go on in here.
Honor Among Enemies has 40 pages (over 12K words) and two chapters before Honor even shows up. But instead of throwing it down in disgust I read the forty pages and was somewhat entertained. This time being about my third read with this book I have the advantage of having tried to pay attention to what goes on in the exposition. This book has about 8 strong stories within it dealing with various characters who eventually intersect with Honor somewhere along the way and it might be the first book to begin down the path of romance for Honor and Hamish, which is a long and rocky winding twisted road.
This is the first book that when in Honor's POV I actually noticed some character outside of the stiff rigid character she always has to portray. Most of how we see Honor from her own POV is the front she puts up to deal with the tension of the serious situations she is always confronted with. Sure we saw her break down a few times over the death of Paul, but even then we did not see the depth of her personality. Most of the time that depth comes from how others see here through their adoration, appreciation, and idolization of their commander. We also begin to see the growing plot pertaining to Nimitz and the other treecats as something more than just curious pets linked to their human.
As much as it sometimes pains to have to wade through all the politics and intrigue, the flavor for me now has turned toward what I always loved about Alexander Dumas writing. And we are even being introduced to some very interesting Peeps in this book, all preliminary steps toward moving into the next book In Enemy Hands.
I also begin in this and the next novel to be able to appreciate how David Weber manages to almost seamlessly move his POV in and out of multiple character's heads, with no apparent warning, as a scene shoots by . There are a few places where if when I wasn't quite wrapped into the story I had to stop and backtrack to make sure I was really in someone else head just a half page ago.
Overall this book is probably not that much different from the others and it's likely that I just have finally settled into how David Weber tells his story. I still lack the background in CS Forester's Horatio Hornblower series to make any comparisons though I have managed to do some homework in that area because I usually run afoul of someone in the camp who adore making comparisons.
I'm not sure that I'd be able to make many comparisons to the characters themselves other than at best Honor could only thinly be compared to Horatio. As to the battles its a tough decision since CS Forester put Horatio into few if any situation where he'd be in any historical battles, which makes it more difficult to determine if his battles were of any importance at all especially since he was often out of communication with England and not always up to date with the current diplomatic situations. Honor on the other hand does fight in areas that seem of less concern and yet all her battles become historically important in the stories. Also Honor doesn't have a dowdy husband at her home port that she cheats on.
Anyway this is great stuff for those who like their SFF with military-tactical-suspense and drama.
J.L. Dobias
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C-Shapes by Matthew Fish
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
C-Shapes by Matthew Fish
This is a sort of Dystopia novel, a genre that I'm only just warming up to. It contains many elements that look familiar to me already with the few novels I have read in this genre. I like this book a lot though, It had a character that I immediately identified with and then it had a lot of very good character development.
Ethan Chase, the protagonist and person telling the story is just an average guy who in fact prior to day of the great virus had been more of a deadbeat than anything else. Now he's decide to clean himself up and do something useful; if he can.
Imagine a world where half the population has been strricken with something that makes them all seem like a potential threat to humanity. Some suffer amnesia, some catatonia, some are mimics who drift from reality while mimicking those around them and some are downright psychotic. What they all have in common is that they are no longer able to function properly in society and eventually they all pose a threat of becoming what is called Aggro, a state of agitation where they become unstoppably aggressive and begin to kill.
This begins to sound almost like a military secret that has gone awry. An attempt at creating the perfect soldier's that is accidentally unleashed on the entire population. When they go aggro they seem to aggro together and almost seem linked somehow, again almost like the perfect army. But it's a virus and only half the population is afflicted. C-Shapes is a pharmaceutical company that has developed C-Alysium or calm as they call it. This controls the afflicted keeping them from going aggro.
Ethan has gotten the job of being the sitter for two cases of this affliction. One is a memory loss victim and the other is a mirror or mimic. We come into the story on his first day where he is expected to follow specific rules of conduct that seem quite simple and are enforced by graphic examples of what can happen when things go wrong. But imagine one of the cases being an old school friend who you once idolized and is now become debilitate and then imagine another who looks so frail and lost and becomes someone you're easily attracted to. This about sums up Ethan's first day at work. Since he is not supposed to become closely attached or emotionally involved; he's pretty much about to be blindsided.
But things aren't as they seem and Ethan is about to have rude awakening that's even worse than when his parents died from the virus. The world is poised at a moment of decision ready to kill off half of the population that poses such a threat to the rest. Ethan comes into possession of information that could change the way the world sees everything and he's not at all confident about his ability to complete the task he never signed up for.
All of that said I must once again raise a caution to those who insist on perfect grammar. This book will fail that test. My star system does not downgrade for those unless it seriously distracts me from the book. I have some friends though who will have that fingernail on chalkboard reaction too often in this book. I've marked 38 instance and there are likely more and that is more than I usually allow for, but I loved the plot and the character development I didn't feel there were any great out-in-left-field plot twists or that things were rushed along. But there are many odd sentence structures along with the 38 instances of missing words typos and incorrect words and double word that I think that mostly explains why many people didn't finish the book. If the editing had been just a bit tighter many of those people might have made it to the end and I think they would have been satisfied with the overall story.
This is a good novel for those not so picky people who love Dystopic SFF.
The first half of the book is the setup to how things look while the second is the slow reveal of how things really are and it all does fit as long as you don't get distracted by the typos. Given another thorough edit I'd have had no problem giving this a 5 star.
There are editors listed here and I hope they are reading the customer reviews carefully.
J.L. Dobias
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