Review: Needs editing, among other things
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 21, 2013
The author gave me a free kindle copy of this book. This has not impacted on my ability to review it critically and honestly.20/07 - I'm 3.5 pages into the first chapter, so all I know so far is that there are werewolves, there is a woman who is a self-proclaimed paranormal expert and the narrator of the story and it's set in London. Within the first couple of paragraphs I notice some clumsy phrasing and figures of speech written the wrong way around. A few examples: "...is for sure a scary situation." would probably flow off the tongue better if it were "...is a scary situation for sure.", "It takes what looks like ages to cross the sand..." should definitely be "It takes what seems like ages to cross the sand..." and I find the fact that the author uses the words "Gnaaarl!" and "Growwl" to describe the noises the werewolf makes a little silly - it kind of reminds me of the scene when the Cowardly Lion is introduced in The Wizard of Oz movie and instead of actually growling, the actor says the words "Ruff" and "Growl". On a high note, I did think that Klein's description of the dead body with the heart ripped out was very good, it easily created a gruesome picture in my mind.24/07 - I'm finding the main character's (don't know her name yet) frequent use of the phrase "For sure" a little irritating. I'm even less sure about William the ghost using the same expression. Even after the very detailed description of William (I see a Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise Interview with a Vampire lookalike), when he says "For sure" in my head he suddenly turns into a green-felt clad leprechaun.The main character's inner voice is a little wordy for my taste, I think this book would have worked better, flowed better in my head if it were written in 3rd person. Then we wouldn't have to have a running commentary on what the main character is thinking in order to know where the story is going and what the other characters are doing. The story is promising, but complicated - we've got werewolves, shamans, time travel/visions, ghosts, magic fire and bathwater - who knows what I'll find on the next page.10/08 - As you can tell by the length of time that has elapsed since my last review I have been a bit naughty regarding the reading of this book (especially since it's a requested review), but I have been having problems finding motivation to get back to it. I have just finished a reasonable length paragraph about the background behind a particular toy that can be found in Robyn's favourite cereal box. When I got to the end of the monologue regarding Captain Zap, I asked myself "Why do we need to know so much about Captain Zap? Surely we could have simply been told that he's a figurine from a cartoon series that Robyn loves and has spent weeks/months/whatever collecting all the different characters. Does it matter to the story that direct quote"He's a brave twelve year old living in the year 3000 in the super-technological Futurecity. He is aided by Bold, his faithful dog, a master of telekinesis. He protects his defenceless fellow citizens from the evil Red Frog, an enormous alien frog from planet Pond, who seeks to conquer the Earth."? I don't think it was necessary to the story and I think it, and a few other passages like it, distract and, well, slightly bore the reader. At the moment I want to know what happened, as well as 'give it a good go because the author personally asked me to review it', but if I come across other similarly overly descriptive passages, I confess, I will probably skip them.Ok, you got a smirk out of me with direct quote "You brute! That was my favourite tie!", but you got numerous grimaces with Robyn's insistence on describing pyjamas in the singular instead of the plural as in the following sentence direct quote"Guido, a fat guy with thick glasses wearing a teddy bears pyjama,". Also, whose uncle calls their niece, "Niece", at all times? Why doesn't he use her name? It just doesn't sound right and interrupts the flow of the narrative. The following sentence is a perfect example of my confusion over the use of the "niece" direct quote"Besides, I've been drunk a thousand times since I learned who niece really was", in that sentence, if I didn't know better, I would have begun to believe that "Niece" was her name, not just a familial title like sister or cousin. Also I believe that in England (as in Australia) CSIs are actually known as Scenes of Crime Officers or SOCOs. To be continued...14/09 - I'm sorry Louisa, I really tried to have this read and enjoyed by mid to late August (as requested), but I just couldn't get into it. There were no glaring problems, just lots of little niggly ones that combined to irritate and put me off the story (I think I gave enough examples above). Another reviewer said that they liked the way the characters addressed each other formally (maybe that's why Robyn's uncle constantly called her "Niece" instead of Robyn), but that didn't work for me. I didn't feel like the characters were being formal with each other, I felt like the author was reminding us of what the characters names were, over and over again, in case we forgot (or something). I think William, the ghost, is the most promising character, with a lot of scope for LOL one-liners. Once again, Louisa I'm sorry I didn't enjoy this as much as we both had hoped. Thanks for the opportunity to read it.