Review: Awkward and rushed: two very bad aspects of any story
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 05 13, 2011
"Photographs and Phantoms" sounded like it was going to be a fantasy story with a hint of romance in it; unfortunately, it turned out to be an awkward mixture of erotic, supernatural, historical, and medieval genres that just did NOT mix well at all.STORY - Amy Deland is a photographer, who has a bit of magic in her blood.  She's never really believed in her family powers before, but when some of her photographed customers start to die after having a snake appear to be strangling them in their picture, she calls for the aid of the Order or the Round Table to help her figure out what is going on.WRITING STYLE - First of all, the Order of the Round table is not really explained much in this story, but it appears to be something much like the Knights of the Round Table only with magical powers.  That's how I interpreted it anyway.The beginning definitely has potential, but everything falls apart in the middle of the story.  A completely inappropriate sex scene is included, and like other reviewers have stated, it just starts to ruin the book.  It starts to take away from the creepy, science fiction feel to the story; and it also started to make the book (especially the ending) feel rushed and not developed enough.The story is rather short; it can probably be read in about 30 minutes, and this was another reason that it wasn't developed well: the book simply wasn't long enough!  The lack of development also led me to not really care about the characters or what happened to them, which is not good since I really want to like the characters.Another thing I didn't like was that I felt like the time period wasn't conveyed well at all.  Except for the clothing details, I'm not sure I would have known this story takes place in 1855 were it not that I was told in Chapter 1.  I'm not saying that the author had inaccurate details, I'm just saying a lot of the things seemed to be out of place in this time period.However, I do want to note something good about the author, and that is her ability to not write monotonously at all.  Although I didn't particularly care for this book at all, I do have to admit that her writing was interesting enough and did catch my attention at the beginning, although it also lost my attention later in the book.OVERALL - Although the plot could have been amazing and Cindy Spencer Pape could have possibly written a fantastic novella, most aspects in the story clashed with each other and made the book quite bad, to be honest.  I would possibly love to read a pure fantasy or science fiction novel by Pape, but for this story, I highly recommend skipping it and reading something else.