Review: Could have been better.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 31, 2012
This book died the death of a thousand cuts for me.  It's not a bad book.  The story isn't bad, the characterization isn't too bad, and I didn't feel disappointed by the time that I finished reading it.  Most of it made sense, and some of what didn't could be covered in a later book.So why three stars, and not four?  (Why not five?  This book is never in contention for five stars.)  For starters, the dialogue isn't very good.  Before I began reading self-published books, I would have called the dialogue terrible, but this dialogue is actually fixable.There are also numerous proofreading errors throughout the book.  Irritating, basic things, like writing "Hero's" when it should be "Heroes."  There is some overcapitalization.  You don't have to capitalize Everything.  (Unless Everything is the start of a sentence, the proper name of a place or person, etc.)  That's pretty common error for a new author.The polish is also wanting.  Amusingly enough, it's better towards the end, despite the fact that there are also more errors towards the end.  Perhaps the problem is that the beginning is over-polished.  After the first couple chapters, I wanted to burn every thesaurus in existence.  The writing definitely starts out in purple-prose territory.My guess is that most of the author's proof-reading and polishing time was spent on the first few chapters so that the sample looks good to prospective buyers.  If so, this backfired. And to prospective readers, you should be aware that the last half of the book is much better than the first.In conclusion?  Better if I'd bought another book, but I don't completely regret it.