Review: A Mount (Olympus) of Potential, but Needed Better Execution
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 23, 2014
Right off the bat, I have to say that I loved the premise of this book. It showed a wealth of creativity and a real penchant for writing unique and memorable stories. Reading the summary was enough to make me want to buy it, which is unusual, as I typically go off the recommendations of friends or stick with authors that I've read in the past. However, this stuck out, particularly because the author is so well-versed in Biology, so I assumed that this would be in the high-science variety of science fiction, a section of the genre with which I am familiar and a fan. With all of that as the lead-up to reading the novel, I must say I was slightly disappointed, not in the quality of the story or the intention of the author, but of the writing itself. There were those brief, beautiful moments when I felt myself being drawn into the story, losing myself in the imagined world of Pericles and his mythical creation/adventures....but then I was promptly tugged out by a nearly illegible passage, a glaring syntactical mistake, or a leap between two ideas that was impossible to follow.The reason I give this book four stars is because as I trudged my way through some of the more frustrating sections, I could see the work and creativity that had been poured into the narrative; I just wish that there had been a few rounds of edits and proofreading to bring this book up to snuff. If you don't mind doing a bit of close reading to discern what something is intended to mean, then this book will be wonderful. I did enjoy it at times, and I think the author has a real talent for painting a landscape with his words, particularly given his cultural background and experience in that part of the world. He could see the images he was trying to describe, and in many cases, he succeeded in sharing that vision with the reader. It was the too-common stumbling block passages that interrupted my enjoyment, not necessarily the story itself. It's hard to criticize a non-native speaker for not being perfect...you'll have to make that decision for yourself!