Review: Gets Better as It Goes Along
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 24, 2011
I've seen this novella around the KindleBoards and was impressed with the artwork and at 99 cents there's not much to lose. I'm waffling between three and four stars for my review. It's a solid read for an indie book but probably not as good as some of the reviews here suggest. A lot seem to be done by people who know the author or got free copies and don't usually read in this genre. I like SFR and have read quite a few.I had trouble getting into the story and actually started it two or three times before getting past the first chapter. You get a lot of world building and character backstory thrown at you on the fly to the point where the narrative feels choppy. Some of the world building didn't really have any point in the grander scheme of the story either and just made the opening 20% or so feel cluttered.The pacing too was fast to the point of things happening to people before you'd gotten to know or care about them. We got introduced to Tyler and he was blown up a few pages later. I barely remembered Jake's name before he and Char were shagging. I definitely would have liked more build up for the romance element. The paranormal element too didn't feel set up properly. I see it's in the book blurb but in the actual story this felt like pure dystopian/space opera SF at the start.Though I had some grievances, most of them were over the opening chapters. I thought the story came into its own as it progressed and the author was trying less hard to cram in all the backstory and world building. The fast pace started to become an asset with the adventure hopping along at a good speed. There's definitely no time to get bored during this read.Ultimately I'm giving it four stars because it ended up being an entertaining read and, like I said, it's nice to find something of this caliber in the 99-cent bracket. Also, when it comes to SFR, there are a lot of duds out there from actual presses, so it's nice to see an indie book that does a lot of things right.