Review: Disastrous Writing
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 2, 2013
I love SHTF/TEOTWAWI action books.  I always read most of the reviews when selecting a new book to read.  Before purchasing "Battle for Cedar Creek", I took particular note of the review by Will H. Douglast.  His comment won me over.  He said, as I have copied for you below:"I generally don't write reviews, but in this case wanted to comment on an exceptional writing style with good editing. Nice to find an author that has a good grasp of the written word."Having read the book now, I am stunned by that review.  I am a prepper who has read extensively in this genre.  I'm also a good writer with exceptional grammar skills - I could probably add nicely to my teacher retirement by editing SHTF books.  Trust me when I say that this book is anything but well written.  Yes, the story line has some interest; and as others have noted, it places women in active and dangerous roles - that's a worthy and different approach.  I was delighted to see that the author got the ladies out of the kitchen.  The overriding problem, however, is that the editing was anything but good.  If this book was indeed edited, the author needs to bring a malfeasance lawsuit against the editor.  I almost stopped reading early on in the book because the errors were so egregious.  But, I forced myself to finish so I could write an informed review - it's not fair to write a review based on a partial reading, which some people are known to do on Amazon.Where to start for some examples to support my statement: Well, let's begin with the word "where", which was spelled as "were" countless times throughout the book.  The same applies to "women", which was spelled as "woman" about 99% of the time when the plural was called for.  For heaven's sake, if you're going to make females a focal point of your book, you would think you'd understand the simple difference between the singular and plural (woman/women).  Folks, when an author makes these types of mistakes repeatedly, it's not just a matter of poor editing - anyone qualified to publish a book should never make those types of errors to begin with, much less constantly.  There were numerous grammatical errors as well.  One of the misspellings that really jumped off the page was "fan-fair" for "fanfare".  You've got to be kidding! - can someone presuming to publish a book be that ignorant.  Another source of irritation while reading is lack of commas where needed.  The author especially needs to learn when and where to use them.The supreme irony with this book is that the author does have many well-constructed sentences (maybe half of the total book), some with 50-cent words that most folks would have to use the Kindle dictionary to understand.  It just does not add up that the same person could produce those, and then alternate with so many punctuation, spelling and grammar errors.  It's almost as if the author used a Thesaurus from time to time to come up with advanced vocabulary words, and then fell right back into his normal weak skill set.  Most writers who have these types of issues are consistently bad the entire book.  But with BFCC you get one paragraph that is beautifully written in every regard with no mistakes, and then the next paragraph appears to be written by somebody who never got past 7th grade, and did poorly up to that point.  That sentence reminds me of another word used incorrectly, "passed" for "past" - the author would have written, ".... who never got passed 7th grade".  I don't mean to throw 7th graders, who I taught for over 30 years, under the bus.  I realize that many of you do have better writing skills than this author.  Had I counted the errors, as I often do - teacher habit, I would not have been able to complete the book.  I'm certain that the total would be in multiple hundreds.I did give the author two stars instead of one because the overall story line did hold some interest.  For readers who enjoy this genre and want books that deliver not only an interesting plot, but better writing skills as well, read my other reviews.  I have given five stars to some authors that also have some of the same type issues as this book, but their stories were much better, and their issues were miniscule compared to those in BFCC.  Don't settle for mediocrity.  Of course, if you don't know any better or you gladly settle for books that have that many errors, encourage Yellen to write some more.