Review: Enjoyable storyline, too "hurried to production".
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 16, 2012
A common theme -- a young student from a small town, growing in character & scope, from school, to nation, to international, and beyond. Tor the Builder, with the ability to create amulets that, when activated, become complex objects via "fields". Along the way, he acquires friends (and enemies), becomes a hero to many, and discovers much about himself and his family.Counselor might be considered a "bridge novel", bridging national/international and international/beyond in scope. As with previous books, it is externally (and internally) dialog-driven, and generally an easy read, though occasionally meandering as many dialog-driven books are. In general, most scenes apply directly to main plots and sub-plots -- occasionally repetitive. The (5) books of this series (to date) appear to have been written as one continuous book, with several earlier books "broken off" at inappropriate points.I enjoy this style of writing (and this series in particular), and wanted to give this book 4 stars (seldom find a "perfect 5"). Unfortunately, there were far too many errors -- enough to question the author's education level, as a majority of the errors are fully covered in English classes before a person is in their mid-teens.Punctuation errors, such as theres (there's) and were (we're); usage of there, their, and they're; homophones such as poor, pour, and pore; and, simple word misunderstanding, such as corps and corpse.These appear often -- more often near the end of books which would indicate a "rush to production". More than simply "off-putting", these errors break the flow of reading and, will/have cost the author sales.Several additional "passes" through book copy, the first with a strong grammar checker, and the second with an additional reader "marking up" errors, should reduce the number of overall errors while not causing too much production delay...