Review: Author needs to find a critique group and hire an editor
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 28, 2014
This is an incomplete book.  There is no narrative arc and certainly no character arc for the protagonist, Travis Combs.  Instead, this is merely a long episode that concludes with all the characters in the same emotional state as when the story began.  It feels like a cheat when I don't get an end to the immediate story before setting off with the characters on another story.  That's how a series should be written and not just as one LONG book broken up into two or three parts.The dialogue is stilted and overwritten and mostly serves as info dumps.  At one point one of the characters starts off a line of dialogue to Travis with something like, "As you know, Travis, . . ."  INFO DUMP.  Moreover, everyone speaks the same, in overly long passages, except for one of the sisters who calls everyone SIR.  The concept of SHOW don't TELL has not been embraced by the author, who prefers to TELL, TELL, TELL, especially via unrealistic dialogue.  Much of the information about what Travis sees or hears or smells comes filtered to the reader from an omniscient narrator.Most of the characters are at best two dimensional and seem to have been placed in the story so that Travis can have someone to talk to as he educates the reader about survival in the dessert.  Travis is not a likable protagonist. He's arrogant and never listens to or pays heed to what the other characters suggest.The author also switches points of view throughout within scenes and sometimes even within paragraphs.  During the scene with the pack of rabid dogs, I was surprised he didn't slip into the head of one of the mad dogs.The "novel" is rife with punctuation and grammar gaffs along with a few mis-spellings.  Words are left out here and there and some sentences don't make sense when errant words have been left in during an earlier revision.The author mis-uses the word TOWARD throughout, choosing instead to write TOWARDS.  Towards would be appropriate were the writer European or Canadian and were the book geared toward audiences from those places.  He mixes up further and farther as well.  Again, these are all things that a critique group would have warned him about.Perhaps I am being too harsh since the author does admit at the end of the book that he's a new writer.  This could be a good story with revision.  As it is now, though, it should be pulled from distribution and re-worked within the confines of a critique group at the very least or, better yet, a developmental editor.I was fortunate enough to get the book for free.  This is not something worth paying for in its present state and I certainly will not be buying the other episodes.