Review: Gripping horror tale but author is in need of a good editor/translator
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 3, 2014
Rarely do I have the urge to to revisit myriad fictional characters I've met in the hundreds of mediocre free Kindle ebooks I've consumed. But I found myself returning to the central character portrayed in the Rebekka Franck Series I'd read last year, four linked short stories are packaged in a (hypothetical) box set.Star reporter, Rebekka Franck is a compelling central character. A single mother, separated from her PTSD ex-husband, Rebekka leaves the travails of the big city for the idyllic rural life. In an attempt to mend a stormy relationship with her daughter, she moves back to her hometown, only to find herself caught up in a web of horror set in the sleepy coastal village. Rebekka stumbles upon a hot news lead with her punk hacker-photographer boyfriend, replete with serial murders, and a massive political cover-up. When Rebekka gets too close to the source, she becomes a target.The storyline, set in modern Denmark, considered to be the "happiest country" in Scandinavia, is frightening in its film noir tale of depravity. This horror tale suggests that something indeed is rotten in the State of Denmark.Danish-American author Willow Rose has a fertile imagination--a la Stephen King, she has a good sense of plot and decent structure, and she has a pretty good grasp of the English language. But punctuation and syntax errors abound. I can forgive the odd misplaced homonym, or the incorrect usage of pronoun, etc. I can even work with holes in the plot, or snags in the storyline. But when she tries to hammer Danish idioms and sayings into English, word-for-word, it throws the reader out of the story. it's too much work to decipher what the author is trying to portray. Not an optimum outcome in a mystery-horror book. It's hard trying to wrap one's eyeteeth around her odd sentence structure and wooden dialogue. Is she writing her stories in Danish first, and wrestling them into English--or is she having a go at it in a language not her own?However, there's no excuse for lazy writing: Willow Rose often uses the same noun verb, adverb or adjective in linked sentences--minimal employment of a thesaurus would wor wonders for her writing skills. The role of the writer should be transparent--the writing itself shouldn't interfere with the storyline. To do her stories justice, Willow Rose could really use the services of a strong copy editor whose native language is English. I read the tale to the very end, but too much was lost in translation. Or rather, because of a lack of a good translation.