Sunday, May 13, 2012

Review: "The Speaker for the Trees" by Sean DeLauder

Title: The Speaker for the Trees
Author: Sean DeLauder
Available: Kindle
Summary: "Hedge is a typical human--fat and bald, not pretty but not ugly, with a round, doting wife, and a farm where he tends beehives. Except Hedge is not a typical human. In fact, Hedge is not human at all, but a plant sent by the Council of Plants and the Plant of Ultimate Knowing to observe humanity and determine whether or not humanity is a threat to the universe. A task he has blithely performed for twenty years. Until the night he receives a message to report back to the Council and realizes he has to leave everything behind.


Pursued by an agent of the notorious Visitors, whose appearances have heralded the end of civilizations, torn between his fellow plants and an awakening affection for his earthwife, Anna, and armed only with a toaster, Hedge must find a way to save humanity from Visitors, plants, and themselves."
Source: I received this free from the author in exchange for an honest review.


Review: Apparently, I'm on a funny indie book kick. My non-indie reading has not been so much with the funny, but this is the third humorous indie I've read in a row. And you know what? I love it. They've been a blast.


This one was a riot. I had only meant to read a couple chapters this evening, and ended up finishing the whole damn thing! (Mr. DeLauder, if my characters haunt me because your story delayed my writing of theirs, I'm sending them to your doorstep.) There are some truly precious lines. The "Touchdown!" scene -- you'll know it when you read it -- nearly put me into a giggle fit.


The story is pretty hysterical. I love the idea of the plants. The story had some philosophizing about big topics, you know, like the nature of God and the future of humanity, but never got the feeling that it was trying to be more than it was. Remarkably. It really gave me that loony, funky feeling that the first book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did. Dry and witty. After the day I've had, I needed it too.


5 Fireballs for this one!


...will try not to light the plants on fire.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Review: "Luna for the Lunies!" by Ira Nayman

Title: Luna for the Lunies!
Author: Ira Nayman
Available: Smashwords
Summary: "Luna for the Lunies! is the third collection of Alternate Reality News Service stories. Robots who rue their consciousness! Alien invasions foiled by bureaucrats! A successful conclusion to the war on squirrels! Humorous science fiction journalism has never been so...so...science fictiony!"
Source: I received this free from the author.


Review: First off, I received this free from the author for background/research so we could do a character interview for my author-ego sister site miadarien.com, but I liked it and it's indie, so I decided to review it.


That being said...


This is a very interesting book. It's not for the uptight politically correct, and it's not subtle in its satirical nature or targets. But if you can loosen up, it's quite amusing.


The format is interesting and takes a little getting used to. It moves from news story to news story from the Alternate Reality News Service, over several categories. In between the categories there is a short story about the Editrix-in-Chief, Brenda... who has a last name I can't spell from memory to save my life.


Sometimes it felt like it got a little weighted down and dragged a bit under it's own sense of humor, and when it got too much into obvious present politics (referencing real life politicians today, etc.,) then it lost me a little but that's just 'cause it's not my thing.


But literary diseases? Apostrophisis... I spelled that wrong, I'm sure... but that was great. I think I've known people who've had it, really. And the Editrix-in-Chief break-ins to the science reporters article towards the end was just hysterical. The reporters and their ways of writing their articles were also funny and enjoyable.


Over all, I give it a solid 4 Fireballs. And I'm looking forward to this upcoming character interview between Brenda and another Brenda from the multiverse...

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Review: "The Dark Lord's Handbook" by Paul Dale

Title: The Dark Lord's Handbook
Author: Paul Dale
Available: Smashwords
Summary: "To become a Dark Lord is no easy thing. The simple ambition to hold dominion over the world sounds straightforward but it's not. After many spectacular failures, Evil wrote an easy to follow Dark Lord's Handbook. It had been hundreds of years, and the Handbook was seemingly lost in the annals of time. But then the Handbook found its way to a new contender, Morden. He had better be a quick study."
Source: I purchased this on my own.


Review: I really enjoyed this book. It was a lot of fun, which is certainly what a description like the above promised that it would be. The extended description reminded me of a line from "The Princess Bride" which is among the annals of legend for late twenty-something geeks everywhere, and thus drew me right in.


It had a lot of wry humor, poking astute fun at our archetypes for epic fantasy. There was more than a dash of social satire. It had much grey in characters pretending to be black and white, and some fun and funny stuff going on all around them. Some of the Deathwing stuff particularly amused me, mainly just the idea of the domestic life of dragons. Yet all the way, it gave you what it was poking fun at: an epic fantasy.


There were times that I found it dragging and kind of wandering, but it wasn't ever enough to drop me out of enjoying the general narrative or make me want to stop reading. I liked the ending, really, but it was missing that extra something that made me "close" the book and go: wow! Even so, it was an incredibly solid and enjoyable read that I would recommend to anyone who likes a dry wit and well-played satire.


I give it a solid 4 Fireballs.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Review: "Thaw" by Kelly Allan

Title: Thaw
Author: Kelly Allan
Available: Smashwords
Summary: "Isabel “Isi” Simmons died. Only, she’s living to tell the tale. On an Alaskan lake, when she was three-years-old, Isi and her family were ice skating when her world – literally – came crashing down. The ice cracked and they splashed into the frigid waters below, fighting for their lives. The fight was futile, however, and Isi and her parents went under. Now Isi is starting her final year of high school. Her grandmother is sick, her best friend is leaving and her math classes are threatening her graduation. On top of that, she’s the freak at school – with her inhumanly cold skin and dead parents – and struggles to make friends. When newcomers to the area find an interest in her, she is more than on the defense. Memories of the day her parents died come flooding back to her when they’re around and it drives her crazy. Why and how did she make it out of the water but her parents didn’t? It’s a mystery only she must solve. THAW is a mixture of retold Alaskan Indian tales, about a young girl attempting to defeat an elusive monster."
Source: I received this free from the author.


Review: I actually read this as a Beta before it was published, but the author has assured me that there's been no major changes, so I feel safe writing this review without re-reading. (Though I may do that down the line!) I remember liking this book so much that I wanted to tell people about it, but I couldn't because it wasn't published, so I'm very glad that it is now!


This is one of the few YA-ish stories I've read where a female MC did not make me want to reach through the pages and strangle her. I don't know what my issue with YA MC women is, but I have one. I have it with female MCs a lot, though, as it appears for me in some adult fiction, but more strongly in YA. I guess I just have issues. Anyways.


I liked this book a lot. I started reading it chapter by chapter at the crit site that I was at for a while, and when I stopped being active, I wanted to read the rest and Allan was nice enough to send it to me. It had me pretty riveted. I read it in something like two or three days.


I found Alaska as a setting to be new from the books I usually read and I really liked the Alaskan mythos she wove into it. My heart now forever belongs to Dexter. Isi is the "outsider" teen without ever lapsing too far into emo outsider, and she moves things along herself. Although she occasionally needs saving in some ways, she does it herself otherwise.


I remember I had some small issues here and there, but I don't even really remember what they were now, so I guess they weren't that big a deal. I just really enjoyed the story, so I'm giving this 5 Fireballs. I hear rumor that if this book does well, she might write another one. So go out and get this book, 'cause I want another one!

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Review: "Quest" by Michayla Roth

Title: Quest
Author: Michayla Roth
Available: Amazon
Summary: "Two powers, two quests, two fates...two mortals struggling against the very forces with which they might have aligned themselves, had they been given the opportunity to choose. Two mortals, light and dark, locked into one intense battle. A battle of which the end has already been written in blood. A blood not their own, just as the battle is not their own. And yet, they must fight.
The year is 2E739, the second millennium since Euroclydonus, the last epic battle to shake Wundyrr's foundations. Two thousand years of peace--at least between mortal and spiritual elements--and now, the hidden script of a writing called simply "the prophecy" threatens to immerse the world of Wundyrr once more in a hideous battle, the likes of which could very well rival the infamous Euroclydonus.
Tiernan Lebonn is the single last link between Wundyrr and vitality. Should he fail in his impossible quest to seal evil once more within its fiery prison, the shadow will rise up to devour not only him, but also the world he calls home.
His counterpart, Shiloh of Cheokk, has been steeped in darkness since the day she was born and is bent on winning her own glory through the very disaster Tiernan is trying to prevent.
For either one to claim victory, they must completely lose themselves within the essence of their quests and trust that the powers to which they have surrendered will bear them up in triumph.
But as with any battle, only one can claim the victory. Or perhaps neither can."
Source: I received this book free in exchange for an honest review.


Review: Once again, I see the reviews of others and wonder if we were reading the same book.


This book, and thus this review, are a source of great conflict for me. There is firstly the fact that I want to say every indie book I read is spectacular, but I can't. I hate to not be able to only say great things about a book that has been entrusted to me to review, but I won't lie. That's not fair to anyone.


So. I liked the ideas of this book. I'm a sucker for a Good versus Evil tale. I like epic/high fantasy, as it's long been my first love. I liked the characters as the embodiment of these concepts. I like some of the parallels to Christianity. Big quests are great, too.


I really liked the ideas of this book, but I feel that, for me, the execution of them fell down.


Detail: in EPUB version as read on my dinosaur Sony e-reader, this book was 385 pages.


For the first hundred pages, I found it very over-written and over-drawn. Honestly, if I hadn't felt an obligation to finish this, I probably would have stopped reading it. It struck me as an epic story that was trying too hard to be epic. Every verb, every adjective, every adverb was very active and strong. Taking both "show, don't tell" and "be active, not passive" too far. It's possible, in my opinion, to do.


The characters were overdrawn. Too exaggerated. And repetitive. By page 100, I was thinking: "I got it, I got it. Tiernan is good, faithful, doubts his strength, but has to save the world, he cannot afford to fail. Okay, Shiloh is evil, has been made evil, has her own quest, hates the world, will not fail." I didn't need it repeated every other page.


Now, after that, it started getting a little better. But it wasn't really until after two hundred pages or so that the text finally settled down. Characters and exposition and dialog were still a bit over the top, but it wasn't nearly so bad and I could fall into an easier reading flow.


Unfortunately, it came a little too late. While I started falling into the story more during the final hundred pages, I'd been put off too much and I was just not invested. I didn't really care who won or who lost, or what happened. As such, the ending didn't grab me the way it should have. It didn't surprise me at all.


The pacing felt kind of odd to me, and events that should have been big and dramatic were practically glossed over while scenes that should have been simple were dragged out unreasonably. Scenes, Perspectives, events and characters come in and go out that seem to lack any real build up or point. (Maybe I'm just blind, or just wasn't reading close enough. Maybe they'll come up again in the sequel promised in the Author's Note.)


I would love to be able to say that I fall in with all the other reviews I saw and just rave about it, but it just wasn't the novel for me. Epic stories shouldn't try so obviously hard to be epic. I'm a girl who likes more subtlety in these things. I believe that Roth has talent, but just put too much into this. Had the first couple hundred pages, and some to follow, been streamlined and tightened. With impact used sparingly and a better flow and pace, this would have been just my type of story.


But that's also just my opinion. I am most obviously in the minority on this, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm sure there are many people who won't mind the things that bothered me and will love this book, because it does have things going for it. Still, it wasn't for me and I wouldn't feel honest giving it more than 2.5 Fireballs.