Review: Alaskan Fire Review
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 12, 2012
This novel is far too long, especially the first half, where Blaze agonizes over and over about her physical appearance and shakes in her boots or runs, screaming, into the woods.  After the fourth or fifth iteration, I was ready to quit reading.Time passes in the first half without much at the beginnings of chapters to let the reader know that it is now two months later (or whatever).  Author could stand to improve on her transitions.But then, about halfway through, she has a personality transplant.  All of a sudden, she is imaginative, and curious, and not afraid.  No real reason, except that the novel would have gone nowhere with another 300 pages of self-centered fear and loathing.  Some basis for her transformation would have been good.On the positive side, there were very few errors of grammar, spelling, or sentence structure.  What a pleasure for the reader (me), after slogging through so many Indie books written by English fail students.The plot was engaging, though unevenly paced (the final event was a zoom-through of just a few pages).The author has a real "ear" for dialog, and does a superb job of making one character's "voice" distinct from the others.  That went a long way toward redeeming the novel from my initial impression.All in all, average (3-star), with potential in the future for higher ratings.  Author, in my opinion, needs to re-read, review, edit.  Not everything that is produced by the keyboard needs to end up in the final version.