Steven

I was hoping for better.

Revisado: 10-07-20

The book has a promising premise. A series of children were born several years ago, all of them with magical powers, and when each one dies, one of the others absorbs the power. This means that they are all hunting each other. Meanwhile, Reshi, the main character and one of the children, is a man falling in love with another man, a mage hunter. It’s a friends become lovers story with magic. It should have been fun.

Unfortunately, the actual prose hurts the book. The writing is dull and pedestrian. The dialogue has been cut and pasted from bad TV shows. There is no snap, no glitter, no wittiness. Instead, you wince as dialogue made of wood and tin clunks from the page. The plot reads like something you would find in a D&D module, complete with D&D combat terms. You can almost hear the DM say, “Roll for initiative.”

The author has a number of annoying tics in her prose. Some version of, “I did this as he did that” or “As this happened, that happened” shows up several times on every page, for example. It happens so often, in fact, I started predicting when the next one would have been. I had about an 80% success rate.

The magic isn’t well explained. Sure, it has rules, but we never learn what it FEELS like to change into a cat, or how it FEELS to fly through the air as a crow, or how it FEELS to slither on the ground as a snake. All we get is something like, “I took my cat form as Vellin shouted at me, and I ran into the woods.” Reshi is obsessed with dancing, and he looks for places to dance everywhere he goes, but when he starts into it, we get...nothing. What does dancing do for Reshi? How does it make him feel? Is it the rhythm, is it the exercise, is it the socialization with no consequences? Is it a stress reliever? We literally have no idea. Nothing in this book is visceral, even the romance. I didn’t ache for Reshi’s love, I didn’t care if he and his new boyfriend end up together or not.

The ending is completely predictable. I knew right off what was going to happen. I knew what was going to happen to the antagonist. I knew what was going to happen between Reshi and his boyfriend. I won’t spoil it, though if I think about it, there’s no way to spoil a predicable ending.

The only reason I finished the book was because I was a third of the way in when I began noticing this stuff, and I stuck with it out of a dogged determination to see if the characters would turn out to be interesting by the end. I was unfortunately wrong.

I wanted to like this book. I really did, and was unhappy that it disappointed me. With some polishing, and the red pen of an editor or agent, this book could’ve been pretty good. Maybe if the author find a good writers group, the next project will be cranked up a couple levels. Fingers crossed!

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A Pleasant Nightmare

Revisado: 04-06-13

This is Steven Harper, the author of NIGHTMARE. Naturally, I feel the story for the book is strong--what author wouldn't?--but I bought and downloaded the audio version because I was dying to see how it came out.

I have to say I was a little nervous about it. The narrator can build or destroy a book on audio, and what if I didn't like this one?

I needn't have worried. The narrator for the entire Silent Empire series is P.J. Ochlan, and he's awesome! He even gave Kendi an Australian accent. The voice he gave Ben is pitch perfect, exactly the way I imagined him in my head. It melts my heart, to tell you the truth. I lived with Kendi and Ben and Ara for years, and they became in a way very real to me. I miss them terribly, and would love to write more books about them. Hearing their voices on an audio book made he unexpectedly ache for my Silent Empire people again, and it's a testimony to Mr. Ochlan's narration.

Several sections made me shout and cry and rewind so I could listen again. I loved it. Now I have to decide if I'm going to wait for my complimentary codes or go on to DREAMER.

--Steven Harper Piziks

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