Review: would be higher rated, but for serious grammatical problems
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 6, 2012
I might have reasonably enjoyed this book, but it was extremely difficult to read due to serious an frequent grammatical problems.  I might have rated it as high as 4 stars if it read smoothly, but I can't recommend anybody read this book in its current shape.  (I am a glutton for punishment and have an enormous list of errors I can make available to the author if requested.)There are quite nearly problems on every page.Examples:"For once he wasn't too sad or injured to appreciate it." (missing the comma after 'once')"From what he says their whole world uses advocates in their legal system." (missing the comma after 'says')While I normally don't have a problem with the occasional missing comma, this book suffered the issue probably on average 1-3 times per page.Another common problem is the eliding of the term 'that' in important contexts.These kinds of problems create mental 'hiccups' while reading.  Effectively the reader's brain as to backtrack in order to re-parse sentences and figure out what is missing and where, soaking up a whole lot of time.I did make careful annotations of these errors (and there are a whole lot of them).  If there was an easy way for me to share these with the author, I'd do so at the author's request.I want to be constructive here, which is why I've bothered to cite examples of the problems and am willing to help the author fix the book.If these issues get cleared up, I'd revise my rating upwards and provide a content-based review.UPDATEA year and a half later, I clearly recall most characters and plot points in this novel.  I'm going to raise this rating.  I only 1-star for extreme grammar/readability problems, and I suspect that hasn't been fixed, but the fact that I recall this novel at a glance after 18 months of reading a book or two a week means that it left an impression.