Review: Story has some potential, deserves a rewrite
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 26, 2014
Having my kindle read stories to me, (text to speech,) saves me a great deal of struggle with grammar.  Always a good thing, especially in self-published works.  The truth is, I'm pretty easy going on these anyway.  These authors do not have the same resources at their disposal as the big publishing houses do.  Holding the authors to the same standards of excellence in editing before publication, would limit my access to this medium.  I find reading works from many different unsigned authors enjoyable and so I tend to be a bit more patient in the details.  Unfortunately, my Kindle cannot save me from bad pacing.  I can't tell you how far I am into this at this point, as the pacing is confusing to say the least.The story however has potential.  The creativity in the writer is there, it's the mechanics of bringing the readers along in a comfortable pace that is missing.  It has moments that feel so rushed that you want to yell to the author to stop and continue describing what we are seeing.  Then we have other moments where we feel like we are all but about to wait for a season to change to move beyond a particular scene.  Those moments are rare.  It is the rushed scenes that do this work the most harm.Also, there was clearly no understanding of what was being described in the book.  The research phase is incomplete.  At one point the author is describing the ornate contents of a huge curio cabinet.  "Someone's traveling souvenirs.  Everything from Fabergé eggs to Grecian vases.  There were items from all over the world.  It was an impressive collection probably worth thousands of dollars."In actuality, "The cost of a Faberge egg varies based on how ornate it is and how old it is. The most recent one to be sold was at a cost of 9.58 million dollars US. These are very rare and very collectible. They come from House of Faberge in Russia and can cost up to 28 million dollars US. The price is this high because of how rare they are and that they are each one of a kind."There is a cure for this sort of error.  As writers, (for me, it's just a hobby,) we can't write about what we don't know anything about.  If we want to describe something that we are unfamiliar with, we have to spend the time researching.  This story felt like a good effort from an author that would do well to study the craft a bit more.As far as this story, I would recommend it for anyone looking for something that they are not planning to be terribly critical of.  I like to listen to my Kindle while cooking or cleaning.  It's often just a distraction.  A bad book is unendurable for this.  Not the case at all for this story, which I do plan to finish.  There has been a good bit of predictability at times, but again I think this comes down to not understanding how to push the story along without resorting to cliché relationship interactions between characters.If this author enjoys writing, I think they should continue.  If you are looking for a really well written, tightly edited work, this is not it.  But, it's not bad for what it is.