After a Particularly Rough Morning, This Made My Day.

I Just Got My First Review. Eeeek.

Okay, so it's a 3-star review.

Personally, I'm totally cool with that, though. Because to me, 3-star reviews still mean that they liked it, or at least they thought it was okay.

Considering I wrote Family History Part 1 and Part 2 two years ago, though, and had not really looked at them too much since, I'm good with that. I know that I've gotten better. I also know that not everybody is going to like my writing. In fact, I'm surprised anybody's liked it enough to buy it. Especially The Dowry. I'm dreading the day somebody finally decides to review that book...*shudder*.

But honestly, I would rather have a mix of good and bad reviews. There's this one guy on my twitter who is constantly boasting about how his book has something like 27 Five-Star reviews. I clicked the link to his book to see if it was true. It was, indeed true, but there was something else missing - other reviews. That's right, his 27 5-Star Reviews were his only reviews.

Honestly, that just makes me feel like he has a generous extended family or an extensive group of friends.

Anyways, here is the link to Family History: Part 1 with the review. I'll post the text below:

KT Hall's Family History Part 1 is a generational tale about Collie Barrett and her descendants and how they deal with an old family curse. The story begins with Collie and her brief but passionate sexual encounter with a stranger. She gets pregnant from this encounter with Marie. Marie grows up to become a beautiful albeit naïve girl who, like her mother before her, finds herself with child and an uncertain future. 

It's easy to mistake the novel, which is set in the backdrop of 19th century England, as a historical romance. It's not. Far from it. Even though the bulk of the book deals with romantic love, the characters are complex and do not adhere to any kind of stereotype that you might find in romance books. Collie for instance is a strong-willed woman who is quite intuitive about people. Yet, her daughter, Marie, is almost the opposite. It's revealed in the book that while she thought she was pregnant with her beau's child, it was in fact his cousin that she had unwittingly been sleeping with. 

The writing is focused and does not meander. You can tell that KT Hall is a precision writer who values control. In fact, it might be too controlled. The story is divided into different time periods that almost read like thinly connected vignettes. This is a good thing if you like reading snippets of what life is like in 19th century England. However, in this case, you won't know it without the chapter titles. The author does not take the time to world-build so you're left with little to discover about what life was like back then. The characters all talk like it's Midwest USA, 2012. Maybe that's a point, if not the point. Some readers will like it because it's postmodern. For me, at least, it's a distraction and therefore at times it pulls me from the story, particularly when a character refers to someone as a "guy". Would it have killed the author to at least use some English slang--not all the time but at least once or twice--to create verisimilitude?

As for the family curse: I don't think it's ever intended to be a mystery. In the first few pages, you'll find out what it is. And yet, the author never truly delves into it. Perhaps, again, it's because the story doesn't end with Part 1.
Still, despite these shortcomings, the book is an enticing read, one filled with intrigue. When you read this book keep in mind that it's the journey that matters not the destination. It is, after all, just the first part of an even bigger story. I can't wait to find out what happens next.

...my favorite part was "KT Hall is a precision writer who values control."


Yay for first reviews!

I Just Did My First Review. Was I Too Harsh?

The other day, I received a message on Reddit with an offer. The offer was simple: a review for a review. I read/review his, he reads/reviews mine.

I hope he comes through, by the way, because I can't help but wonder if he will.


Anyways, the book in entitled Agents of Light and Shade by S.L. Pineda, and follows the lives of come-and-gone super hero Captain Splendor and the recently released from prison Anton. It takes the traditional comic book-like Super Hero/Super Villain and gives them real, human qualities. The heroes, as it turns out, are flawed; while the villains are not just 100% pure evil people. 


My review from Amazon is below.


"Agents of Light and Shade" stars two meta-humans, Captain Splendor and Eclipser, in a low point in their lives.

The story starts out talking about how Anton, AKA the Eclipser, has just been released from prison after a fifteen year sentence. Meanwhile, Craig, AKA Captain Splendor, is shown to have a troubling gambling addiction and has turned to endorsements from pizza commercials to support himself.

Although it is noted the Captain Splendor is a "super hero" and the Eclipser a "former super villain," it is easy to believe the opposite in the beginning of the story. For most of the story, it is nearly impossible to see the "villain" in Anton/Eclipser, especially when he notes that he "plays by the rules" of Super Hero/Super Villain encounters. Meanwhile, Captain Splendor, a supposed super hero, is characterized as a being with many flaws. He is addicted to gambling (though we never see this first hand; we are only told this through the story of him attempting to repay his debts), he is messy, he mooches off his friends, and of course, we see how truly weak and moral-less he is as the story progresses (as in, unlike Anton, he doesn't follow the rules, and he even breaks out of his "Super Hero" role a few times throughout the story).

What I liked: "Agents of Light and Shade" tells the story of typical Television and Comic Book-like Heroes and Villains and humanizes them. Super Heroes are assigned flaws while Super Villains, as it turns out, are not all bad people. Heroes hold grudges, they gamble, and as it turns out, they're very flaky people. Villains, as we find out, stick together, work hard, and do what they can to support their families.

What I didn't like: The story is filled to the brim with cliches and unnecessary metaphors. Granted, in this novel, they are necessary to some extent, since the entire story is about traditional super heroes and villains. That said, they do not just appear in relation to the characters themselves; they also appear too often in the writing style. For example, there's a portion in the story where the author is characterizing Craig's mom. The author characterizes her with a paragraph talking about how "if you gathered all the bitchy women in the world and had them vote for their top ten favorite living bitches and then had those bitches vote for their favorite bitch, Matilda's name would not come up. She would lose to someone famous like, say, Imelda Marcos or Barbra Streisand. No one with a functioning brain would think of Craig's mother as their favorite anything." The author attempts to be humorous, though to me, the cliches and metaphors often come off as unnecessary.

Also, there are too many characters. Some of them are important, some not. There is a side story about Sara and a cook in her husband's restaurant, Matias. Sara is an ex-super villain and ex-man. In the main story, her only real purpose was to give Anton a job following his prison sentence, to show that "Villains stick together". While the back story is interesting, parts of it do not make sense (for example, I'm still not really clear on why she entered into a sexual relationship with Matias), it is not necessary to the main story, and it almost feels as if it were written in the story to shoehorn in a moral lesson on transsexuals.

Overall: This is an interesting story if the whole "Super Hero/Super Villain" culture appeals or interests you. It is a unique take on the traditional "Hero saves the day, Villain goes down" story that features both humans and villains.

Also: I don't know if this is appropriate here, but the description for the story is took clunky.