Dark Deed or Virgin Birth?
Who is the father of Charity's Child? 16-year-old Charity Baker has her own crazy ideas but even her loyal friend Joanne find them hard to believe.
Attractive enthusiast Charity joins the Crabapple Christian Fellowship and a number of the ‘Crabbies’, including Alan the assistant pastor, fall for her charms. When Charity shocks everyone by revealing that she is pregnant, Alan is the prime suspect.
As the story reaches its disturbing climax, darkness is revealed in unexpected places and we learn with Joanne that many things in Charity's life are not as they seem.
This powerful tale of teenage sexuality, religious fanaticism, self-harm and other highly topical issues explores the struggles of two young women striving to break free of cultural expectations and oppression.
I really wanted this particular book to do well: from email discussions with its author I knew it had an interesting central premise; and that she is a fluent, entertaining writer.
This is almost a good book, but it’s spoiled by duplications and lapses in logic. In the first three pages, when Charity is introduced, there are several passages which tell us how lovely she is: by the third one, I was irritated by the repetition, and consequently by her. And if the church around which the story centres only has a congregation of seven or eight people, how can it afford both a pastor and an assistant pastor, both with families, neither of whom seem to have any other means of support?
These problems, and the odd punctuation errors (an unnecessary question-mark on page two; a misused comma on page seven) meant that I had reached my quota of mistakes by page nineteen; but the potential of the story kept me reading a lot further.
I'd really like to see this book perked up: I wasn't keen on the illustration used on the front cover, which is dark and muddy-looking; the back cover copy really needs to be re-written as it is full of cliché and does little to spark my interest. As for the text, it needs a strong line-edit and then it might just stand a good chance of commercial publication.
Number of pages of the main narrative read: nineteen
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Life Cycles: Neil Killion
LIFE CYCLES is a ground-breaking new theory on what life is all about. It is both controversial and evidence-based and states that we live our lives in symbolically repeatable twelve year cycles. There are two important years and this is where we see fate take a hand in unusual ways.
Designed to entertain and inform; details from the public record are used to dissect the lives of world leaders, showbiz personalities, criminals and ordinary citizens. You will learn about your life's symbolic meaning and be introduced to a whole range of new terms and icons.
You won't read anything quite as original and intriguing and you will never look at your life the same way again.
This book has an eye-catching cover which I liked, despite the lack of information it gave me about its genre; and its central premise—that the same twelve-year cycle resonates through all our lives—is interesting enough.
However, the book is let down by poor writing, confused and sloppy logic, the author's preference for rhetoric over substance, and the lack of any real information in the text, which is all based on rumour, conjecture, supposition and hype. I counted six clichés in the back cover copy alone. The book lacks any real substance and I didn't even finish the prologue before finding my full quota of fifteen errors in this one.
Number of pages read: three
Designed to entertain and inform; details from the public record are used to dissect the lives of world leaders, showbiz personalities, criminals and ordinary citizens. You will learn about your life's symbolic meaning and be introduced to a whole range of new terms and icons.
You won't read anything quite as original and intriguing and you will never look at your life the same way again.
This book has an eye-catching cover which I liked, despite the lack of information it gave me about its genre; and its central premise—that the same twelve-year cycle resonates through all our lives—is interesting enough.
However, the book is let down by poor writing, confused and sloppy logic, the author's preference for rhetoric over substance, and the lack of any real information in the text, which is all based on rumour, conjecture, supposition and hype. I counted six clichés in the back cover copy alone. The book lacks any real substance and I didn't even finish the prologue before finding my full quota of fifteen errors in this one.
Number of pages read: three
Thursday, 5 February 2009
Girl Without A Country
A rare intimate account of a resourceful girl's adventures as she sets out on her own in a quest for knowledge and freedom. It is an inspiring story of hardship, courage, and hope, told with wit and charm. Born stateless in a village in Germany, without any citizenship, the girl without a country has to satisfy the demands of the law for non-citizens. She seeks a better life by immigrating to Australia, but not before falling in love with an American soldier. Their touching love story develops across the oceans. Trying to obtain a visa to visit her love in America, she is forced to return to Germany to have her passport for foreigners extended. The irony is that she has to be in Germany first before she can receive permission to return to Germany. A girl without a country has no right to travel. She manages the impossible by taking, without proper documentation and without resources, a remarkable journey from Australia to Germany, travelling through Japan, Hong Kong, Bangkok, India, and Turkey. The reader is held in suspense as, against all odds, she finally succeeds in her quest. Readers may more deeply appreciate their own citizenship after reading this book.
While I don't doubt that the author has had a more-than-usually difficult life, I'm afraid that this book did nothing to help me sympathise with her.
Judging from the back cover copy, it’s unlikely that English is her first language and so it's possible that much of the clumsiness in the text is due to an over-literal translation from German to English: but as you know, I judge books here against the standards of mainstream, commercial publishing and so won’t accept any such excuses.
There were many careless errors: on page six I found both "proof reading" and "proofreading" in the same paragraph; and then on page nine there was this sentence: "We were nine children in our family, and I was the youngest of the five girls, having three younger brothers." I realise it's possible that the author had an older brother too, or that maths isn’t one of her strong points: but errors like this are not going to endear this story to anyone.
The combination of clumsy phrasing, the heavy use of cliché, and the abundance of careless errors took me to the third page of the main narrative—page nine in the book.
Number of pages read: four.
While I don't doubt that the author has had a more-than-usually difficult life, I'm afraid that this book did nothing to help me sympathise with her.
Judging from the back cover copy, it’s unlikely that English is her first language and so it's possible that much of the clumsiness in the text is due to an over-literal translation from German to English: but as you know, I judge books here against the standards of mainstream, commercial publishing and so won’t accept any such excuses.
There were many careless errors: on page six I found both "proof reading" and "proofreading" in the same paragraph; and then on page nine there was this sentence: "We were nine children in our family, and I was the youngest of the five girls, having three younger brothers." I realise it's possible that the author had an older brother too, or that maths isn’t one of her strong points: but errors like this are not going to endear this story to anyone.
The combination of clumsy phrasing, the heavy use of cliché, and the abundance of careless errors took me to the third page of the main narrative—page nine in the book.
Number of pages read: four.
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
The Proviso: Moriah Jovan
Religion Money Politics Sex
Knox Hilliard's uncle killed his father to marry his mother and gain control of the family's Fortune 100 company. Knox is set to inherit the company on his 40th birthday, provided he has a wife and heir, but he never really wanted it in the first place.
Now, after his bride is murdered on their wedding day and his backup bride poses such a threat to his uncle that he's tried to kill her—twice—Knox refuses to fulfill The Proviso at all. Then he meets a woman he may not be able to resist long enough to keep her safe.
His cousin, notorious and eccentric financier Sebastian Taight, would have raided the company long ago to destroy the uncle he despises. For Knox's sake, he did nothing—until their cousin Giselle barely escapes assassination. The gloves come off, but Sebastian may have jumped in too deep, as the SEC steps in, then Congress threatens to get involved.
Giselle Cox struggles under the weight of having exposed the affair that set her uncle's plot in motion—twenty years ago. As Knox's childhood sweetheart, she is also the most convenient way for Knox to inherit. Their uncle has twice tried to eliminate her, leaving her bankrupt and hoping to get through Knox's 40th birthday alive.
None of them want the company, but two people have been murdered for it and Giselle is under constant threat because of it. What they want now is justice, but as embroiled as they are in their war, the last thing they expect to find on the battlefield is love.
The big problem with this book wasn't with errors in punctuation (although there are several, including a comma splice in the acknowledgements), but with a confusing narrative which is compounded by frequent errors in sentence construction. There are several instances where it isn't clear who is carrying out the actions described; and there is a lot of repetition. On page three we're told that valuables are cheap, which seems illogical; on that same page we're told that the “collected gasp was palpable”, and on page eleven the outrage is described as palpable too.
This book runs to a staggering 696 printed pages, then the numbering begins again at one and goes up to twelve. I assume these twelve pages are from the sequel but it's not made clear and it's immaterial, as I'd found my fifteen errors before I'd read to the end of page nine.
Number of pages read: nine
Knox Hilliard's uncle killed his father to marry his mother and gain control of the family's Fortune 100 company. Knox is set to inherit the company on his 40th birthday, provided he has a wife and heir, but he never really wanted it in the first place.
Now, after his bride is murdered on their wedding day and his backup bride poses such a threat to his uncle that he's tried to kill her—twice—Knox refuses to fulfill The Proviso at all. Then he meets a woman he may not be able to resist long enough to keep her safe.
His cousin, notorious and eccentric financier Sebastian Taight, would have raided the company long ago to destroy the uncle he despises. For Knox's sake, he did nothing—until their cousin Giselle barely escapes assassination. The gloves come off, but Sebastian may have jumped in too deep, as the SEC steps in, then Congress threatens to get involved.
Giselle Cox struggles under the weight of having exposed the affair that set her uncle's plot in motion—twenty years ago. As Knox's childhood sweetheart, she is also the most convenient way for Knox to inherit. Their uncle has twice tried to eliminate her, leaving her bankrupt and hoping to get through Knox's 40th birthday alive.
None of them want the company, but two people have been murdered for it and Giselle is under constant threat because of it. What they want now is justice, but as embroiled as they are in their war, the last thing they expect to find on the battlefield is love.
The big problem with this book wasn't with errors in punctuation (although there are several, including a comma splice in the acknowledgements), but with a confusing narrative which is compounded by frequent errors in sentence construction. There are several instances where it isn't clear who is carrying out the actions described; and there is a lot of repetition. On page three we're told that valuables are cheap, which seems illogical; on that same page we're told that the “collected gasp was palpable”, and on page eleven the outrage is described as palpable too.
This book runs to a staggering 696 printed pages, then the numbering begins again at one and goes up to twelve. I assume these twelve pages are from the sequel but it's not made clear and it's immaterial, as I'd found my fifteen errors before I'd read to the end of page nine.
Number of pages read: nine
Monday, 2 February 2009
Sorry For The Delay....
Due to a few sign-in problems I've been unable to add to this blog for some time. I'm happy to say that those problems now seem to be resolved. New reviews should appear from tomorrow.
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