Review: Paranormal Alaska
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 15, 2013
A young woman, Blaze, has decided to take a leap of faith to pursue a long held dream of owning a fishing lodge in the Alaskan bush country.  As the story opens we meet Blaze as she is traveling to the remote lodge she has purchased, apparently sight unseen, and learn that she is 1) quite tall 2) has a very low opinion of herself 3) has recently lost her father 4) discovered she was adopted at the reading of his will 5) has a bachelor's in business.  She arrives at the Lodge, meets Jack, the obnoxious handyman/caretaker she has hired, apparently without checking any references and inspects her property for the first time.  For the next 200-300 pages were are told these same things over and over again.  OK, to be fair we are told a few other things as well, but these five bits of information are repeated many, many times.  About the midpoint of the novel more action takes place, we learn quite a bit more about both Blaze and Jack and the story becomes quite interesting.  The story reaches a great climax but then continues for another fifty to hundred pages.In the introduction the author mentions that she is direct publishing this series and has chosen not to use a professional editor.  I think she might want to re-think that decision.  This is a 581 page novel that really should run about 200 -250 pages.  The same few bits of information are told repeatedly while other aspects are left unexplained.  There are some huge plot holes and, particularly in the last hundred pages or so there is too much plot, almost as if the first half or so of the next novel has been tacked on.I really liked this story, the premise is imaginative, the characters have great potential, the setting is wonderful.  I think that there is a really good story in here, one that has the potential to rivaling the TRUE BLOOD series in story lines.  It would be better though if the novel were trimmed down considerably, cutting out so much of the repetitions, eliminating some of the extraneous plot points, closing some holes in the plot (explaining the hierarchy among the supernatural beings) and some plain inconsistencies (Blaze is supposed to be smart, have a degree in Business but bought a remote lodge, sight unseen without a solid business plan).  Even with the flaws this was a great read, I just think that it could have been better.