False Apron Strings

The Pendragon Legend

I am really disappointed in this series. Not because of the story, but because of everything else. The story is a great sword and sorcery tale, but it's riding on the coattails of a great name and a great legend. I'm certain all sales were attributed to that name and that timeless legend. Change all the names and change the titles, and it would be great on its own. The way it is, it is frustrating and disappointing. Of course, there are other issues, but I'm just talking about the story here. 

Aside from all the Pendragon names that have next to no connection with the legend, the books are each uncomfortably short. I looked up the first three books on Amazon and they were all less than 150 pages. So, ten books, three to four books combined into one, would make a very nice trilogy.

The next issue is what can happen when all you do to spellcheck is look for those nice little squiggly red lines in your document. There are LOTS of mistakes - repeated groups of words, words where one letter didn't make it, but it still made a word, words missing altogether. I can't help but think that there must have been a plethora of green squiggly lines, but I'm not that good an editor. 

The worst diversion from the legend was about the sword. According to people in this book, the great Excaliber was used once before to unify the country, but then that king went power-nuts and the sword had to be taken away from him. The unity all fell apart because none of the lords were willing to hand that sword over to one of them, so they reforged it into sixteen different swords to be held in trust until someone else worthy of it showed up. Enter Arthur. 

Arthur is running all over trying to get the different lords to commit enough troops to the cause of running off the Huns before they level the entire country. Most of those lords want to run away - understandable considering the devastation the Huns were leaving in their wake. But eventually, they see the light and he manages to gather enough of the lords together to agree that he is the one. Not something he wants, but whatever. He just wants to defeat the evil enemy and get on with a peaceful life, maybe marry the girl he's fallen in love with, which isn't Guinevere. Since these guys agree to pass the 'Sword' on to Arthur, they gather all sixteen of those swords together and reforge Excalibur. When they said that the finished product - which apparently took only a few hours (red flag) - They decided to see who could lift it. NONE of them could, not even Arthur. Out of curiosity, I made a few inquiries and did some math. A swordsmith told me that the average one-handed sword weighs between 1000 to 1100 grams, and google tells me that equals roughly two and one-third pounds. That, times 16 equals almost 37 pounds. Now I would certainly hate the thought of swinging around a 30+ pound sword, but most assuredly anyone would have been able to lift it, especially since it had just come off the forge and was just resting there, not embedded in some stone.

In a further digression from the legend, it was the Norse queen who killed Atilla the Hunn and she was aided in this hunt by Guenevere who was magical enough to be influential in the remaking of Excaliber as well as shapeshifting into a dragon. The queen rode her to Atilla's 'final resting place.'

Just before I'd finished the books I had, I learned there was another book in this series, but I'm not going to buy it so I can't tell you if there ever is a round table or not. 

This book just diverged way too much for me. 

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Tusk by Wolfgang Pie

Blurb:
Two Ice Age kids are orphaned and left to survive alone in the wild after their parents are killed in a bear attack. Tusk and his sister, Flint, discover ancient cave paintings with a horrific warning and instructions on how to survive a deadly meteor headed their way. Tusk is a natural born leader and believes only he can warn others and lead the clans to the land bridge and the New World. Flint has secrets of her own and a plan with a woolly mammoth to unite the animal kingdom before their world is blown away.

My review:

This book doesn't get very many stars from me, three at the most, though I liked the concept. I love reading other people's ideas about what life might have been like before there was such a thing as recorded history. This book was written for kids maybe six years old to maybe nine years old, but even giving allowances for the age group, I found many things about this story rather annoying. There are some overall concepts I'm willing to overlook, and some I may even agree with. One is the concept that civilization on this world has come and gone more than once, and maybe more than a few times. Another is that clairvoyants or seers, call them what you wish, do exist and always have. 

I have no issues with the world Wolfgang has created, but there are so many inappropriate occurrences that made the story rather frustrating for me, even making allowances for the much younger mind. A family was abandoned, it sounds like in the early winter, by the tribe, because the mother had a broken leg and the shaman said they had to move on in order to avoid the big storm coming. Hmmmm well okay, so that sets the stage, but really? Maybe, maybe not, but it leads me to really dislike this shaman for giving such an order without trying to find some sort of alternative. I mean - a family alone - one hunter - it's a death sentence, if you ask me. And it was, for the parents. But again, it serves to set the stage.

So here are these two kids, the boy is like sixteen and the girl ten, and they're all alone. Now, in this kind of society, kids aren't really kids anymore as soon as they can rub two sticks together or pick up a spear, so these kids should have been pretty much grown up. Okay, so the loss of their parents would have been devastating, so tears are fine by me, even from the boy, but the girl acted pretty much like a whiny brat throughout most of the book. Yeah well it takes all kinds - maybe she was. It makes little difference.

But then comes the rest of the inconsistencies. I do not believe in this era, the concept of a pet was even thought of, probably not even a word for it back then. But okay, so they decide to adopt a baby mammoth - yeah, I might have - they are SO very cute. But did you notice what time of year it is, or at least I think it is. Who knows, maybe it's early spring and this big storm is a spring storm. Anyway, babies are born in the spring. This baby was dumped in snow that was around two or three feet deep judging by how high it was on Tusk's legs when he went out to investigate the sounds of crying. So, in the interest of not starving to death, he brought it home to butcher - only they didn't. Notice, food was a concern. Hunting was a concern. Survival was a concern, and rightly so. And yet Tusk never goes hunting. Instead they, seemingly for the first time, go exploring the big cave they've been living in. Really? For the first time? Hmmmm

They not only find paintings left by their father that foretold all that did happened would happen, they also found paintings with vivid colors impossible to make. Well, okay so their father is something of a seer, fine, but tell me no one but him knew of this other paintings, No one ever explored where they led, and they led way off into the dark, into where 'daddy said not to go there' territory. They went anyway and found a pit with what looked like a mammoth tusk down in the bottom. Further exploration needed. Newborn mammoth to take care of.

Remember the snow? And yet they took the baby out to graze every day. Babies don't graze at a day or so old, and though they had milk from an auroch, which is something like an ox, left behind by the tribe, but not nearly enough to keep a baby mammoth alive long enough to switch to grass. According to the paintings, they would be riding her when she was big enough. Speaking of which, where is this family's portion of that herd? 

Remember the exploration project? Well, it seems they found a memorial or museum full of all sorts of stuffed animals kept in an underground amphitheater-type cavern under their home cave - sorta - or maybe not quite under. Around this big floor there's a bunch of tablets carved in stone and Turk can't read, but his little sister can - how convenient. Absolutely no mention of reading or writing materials before this, just painting to tell the story. Hmmmm

So Flint, the ten-year-old little girl, has forgotten some of the letters, but still she manages to read the whole story in only a few minutes, or that's what it sounds like, and the story is the ancient people who did all this, knew enough to warn the next round of civilization that disaster was going to come again, and that whoever read this needs to get across the land bridge right away. Imagine the clairvoyance of these people.

Four months later and Fur Baby was big enough to ride and they hare off across the country. They've got like a couple weeks to cross the mountains and make it across the land bridge and to high ground before this asteroid hits and destroys everything they know, and it's Tusk's greatest wish to be able to rescue someone along the way, to get at least someone else to safety. Admirable - truly. 

Along in here the timeline gets kinda messed up and I can't get an accurate feel for the passage of time, but kids wouldn't notice, so - whatever. Anyway, Fur Baby takes off after their first night out so the kids are on foot. Things happen and Flint gets nabbed by some hyenas without a peep. I'm sorry Tusk might have been in a huff, but he'd have heard something, hyenas are not that quiet dragging a body, even if she was killed instantly. And no calls after to join the feast. 

So Tusk is all devastated because he trips over her shoe and it's all bloody and that's all he can find of her. I can understand that - now he's all alone - completely. Only she comes back miraculously rescued by Fur Baby (and without a sound).

Next thing she does is she calls all the animals in the area by whirling a bullroarer while standing on top of Fur Baby. Okay, but I simply can't see that working. But somehow she casts a spell over all these animals so they don't kill each other. Notice also that they never get hungry and they still have like maybe a week of travel left. So they get to camp every night and roast their never ending supply of meat, and the grazers all get to graze to their heart's content, but the hunters get to go hungry, happily.

A few days later they come upon some people, and ten-year-old Flint and the shaman hit it off all peachy and these people join their odd procession. I'm sorry - what spell is that? We could probably use something like that today.

A day or so later, they run across their original clan and of course the shaman who abandoned them knew everything was supposed to happen the way it did, and it was all for the best, and now this sixteen-year-old boy is the driving force and motivational speaker for everyone, including the animals, all because everyone knew that was the way it was supposed to be. 

Yeah, so this story has all the necessary elements but they were handled so very poorly. At less than 100 pages, it reads rushed, and if it was edited, I hope that editor doesn't get another job. There were missing words, misspelled words, and utterly wrong words, and I'm not talking about those annoying words that sound right but aren't. And then we come to the formatting. For a kindle, generally a three-space indent is enough, but five is good too, however paragraph indents were all over the place to include some starting very nearly in the center of the page.

Sorry this turned into something of a rant, but if you're going to publish, take some pride in it. I was looking forward to reading this book even if it was written for a child. I was disappointed. 

Rakesh's Story by Malika Gandhi

I was asked to review this book, and I was happy to do so. Amazon lists this book at 48 pages so it's a short read, but it took me more than just a couple hours to read it. Getting my own book ready to go was a major obstacle to reading anything here recently.

But here it is, my review, finally:

Malika, the author, was born in India, but she has spent the vast majority of her life in the UK. It is obvious the ties to her homeland are still strong. She is a very talented story-teller, but I feel she could do better. One gets better with practice and it is my belief that she will go far with practice and the proper feedback.

The story is about a young man named Rakesh who follows his brother, Dilip, on a revolt against the white occupiers. The date is August 1942.  I can't tell for sure, but I think this might be a true story. Don't quote me on that though.

I have never been to India and I don't really know anything about the country or its people or customs. Not really. I've seen pictures and such, but really, aside from being able to point to it on the map, I'm pretty clueless about it all.

I rated this book with only 3 stars because I feel it could have been so much better. It is a beautifully written tale with a lot of tears, but I  didn't feel any passion. These men, these families were passionate about freeing their country from their oppressors; I could tell, but I just couldn't feel it. They went from secret place to secret place to meet and plan what to do and when. And therein is another thing missing from this book - background - scenery - sights - sounds - smells. Like I said, I don't know much about India and Malika failed to take me there.

The Wrong Bus by John Noel Hampton

Are you in the mood for a really touching Christmas story? Please allow me to entice you to read this one.

Here we have a sweet little old lady (white, by the way) living a lonely life with only her best friend and house keeper (black, by the way) as company. With the anticipation of her son finally returning from the war she decides to go shopping, and being a very proper lady, she simply dress properly, no matter if her shoes hurt her feet. It was such a lovely day, she decided to take the bus.

The times having changed since the last time she rode the bus and her hearing not what it used to be, our sweet little old lady ended up a long way from home, tired, footsore, and very confused.

Enter our second main character

This young man (black, by the way), despite all the hard knocks the deck of life dealt him, wanted very much to make his grandma proud. However, to accomplish that, he has to make some hard decisions, like keeping his mother from coming home to visit. He's been trying to save up enough to go to college. There's also her pimp who keeps looking him up whenever his mother goes missing.

Needless to say, boy meets girl, so to speak, but all is not roses. There's quite a few thorns mixed in, and you know thorns draw blood, a little. Is black and white an issue? Since I mentioned it? No, not as much as you might expect. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Read it - you won't regret it. Take my word for it.

Demons of Justice - A Book Review

Demons of Justice

by

Regis Schilken

This story follows Kathryn Comstock from her position as an emergency medical technician to her getting the job as sheriff in her home town, but that is mostly background information, nicely written but I would have preferred the story get on to the point hinted at by the title. The chapters became relevant but I didn't understand that until somewhat later. There were other chapter like that, relevant, but seeming just filler until much later in the book.

I don't write investigative stories. I don't know enough about police investigations to do that. Sometimes I wish I could do something like on the TV show, Castle, but that's not going to happen any time soon, so you're going to have to take what I say with a grain of salt.

In my opinion, such that it is, this story would have been better if it merely started with Kate stumbling in to an unusual chain of missing people and started the investigation from there. There was plenty of people she talked to who remembered sad events, and there were lots of old reports to read through and maybe talk with her brother about - he too, as a cop, had missing people to investigate.

There were a couple flashbacks too, and in my opinion they were irrelevant to the story. We already knew people had died, we knew who they were and how they died, and we knew how devastated their family was; we didn't really need to see the event from any other POV.

Though somewhat awkward, this was a good and quick read. And you won't believe the ending. Seriously - I had no idea until the very end. I started to have a possible clue near the end, and a little later, a possible accomplice, but really the ending will blow you away. My only wish in that department was that it went at least another page or two. Why? Read this book and find out. You'll like it too.  I may one day read this book again, just to see what details I might have missed.

The Quest for the Talisman - A Book Review

The Quest for the Talisman

by

Michael A. Faris

As stories go, I liked this one. A group of people come together to retrieve a valuable item for their king. As you might guess from the cover, Zeppelins were the main mode of air travel. The rest of Michael's world is an interesting mix of technical/mechanical and not, even all the way down the social ladder to what might be considered modern neanderthals. As the main team encounters each society or people/person in their search, the mystery grows. Just exactly what is this talisman and what does it do? Yes, it does something.

As to the author's skill in writing, it was very rough. Actual misspelled words were very few, but there were more in the latter chapters, telling me he spent more time worrying about the front half, than the book as a whole. The most annoying 'error', and it was consistent throughout the book, was every hyphen was an underscore. I have no idea how that one could have escaped notice, as it was frequently used.

Would I recommend this book? Sure, but only if you lock your inner editor firmly away behind many chains, hasps and deadbolts. Like I said, there are many issues with the writing that would drive an editor up a wall.

Though scene changes are duly marked, there were many that were single-liners at best and would have been better left out entirely or lumped together to make at least a page or three, so us readers can have a chance to change channels. Though the changes were sometimes quick and short, they were easy enough to keep track of if you paid close attention to who was who and where they were. As the story progresses they all mix and mingle, and find their own way to the end goal.

Also, though these were relatively few, story threads were started and led nowhere, or appeared from nowhere to make some tie-in more convenient.

There were also issues with the characters that annoyed me somewhat. People making decisions based on no foundation I could determine was one thing. Another was, military people doing things no person with military training would ever do.

But, if you can manage to overlook these things, do read the book. It's a touching story.

The Gift of El Tio - A Book Review

The Gift of El Tio 

 by 

Larry Buchanan and Karen Gans 

Until I cracked this book, I looked upon any memoir with a good deal of trepidation. Like a history text book, those memoirs I've read were always a rather dry recitation of facts and dates. As you might guess, I haven't read many memoirs. Now we come to this book. The Gift of El Tio isn't quite a memoir and yet it is, after a fashion. This book chronicles the change the people of a tiny remote village of San Cristobal, Bolivia went through when an enormous silver deposit was discovered beneath their little village. But that's not the only changes chronicled in this book.

In order for the silver to be mined, the backwards villagers of San Cristobal had to be moved. Their entire village had to be moved - something they were thrilled to do. You see, El Tio promised them a gift, a gift of wealth and a new life. All because the silver discovered by Larry had remained hidden despite all other ventures to find it. The time was right for it's discovery. It was time for the prophecy to come true. El Tio and the silver had waited for hundreds of years for Larry to make his discovery.

Can you imagine, a prophecy, a real prophecy? Really! But like in all things, even prophecies have a flip side of the coin. What is it? Just like Larry had to wait 10 years to find out, and just like I had to wait until the end of the book to find out. You too simply have to read this book to find out. Now that I've tweaked your curiosity. Fuze Publishing is the place to go. The Gift of El Tio is listed under non-fiction and well worth your money. 

As most of you know, my reviews find their way to a writerly subject eventually. We all strive to write in a character arc when we craft our stories. In this book, you will find so many arcs. There's nothing like real life for seeing such a thing. In this book, the villagers of San Cristobal are not the only people to change. They went from a simple people worshiping many minor gods as well as the Catholic God brought to them by the Spaniards. They also saw demons in every dark crevasse and cave along their mountainous roads and trails. Rituals and sacrifices saw them safely through their life. They became very different by the end of the book. Modern, working hard, even harried - too busy to honor the gods.

But they weren't the only people to change. Follow Larry and his wife Karen as they too change. Larry, the stark realist discovers religion, after a fashion, and Karen, who saw the world through rose colored glasses, learned to take the glasses off once in a while.

So, if you want a lesson in character arc, or if you just want a really good read, buy this book. You will laugh out loud and you will cry; I did both, and that too is something every writer strives to accomplish.

Book Review - Battle Sylph by L. J. McDonald

Not long ago, my son gave me this book. Lately it seems like I don't have much time to crack a book, but once in a while, one comes along that simply demands to be read. This is one of those books. Sylphs are a race from another dimension. They are nothing like us, and unless I miss my guess, even their society is massively different from anything we might be familiar with, at least anything of a sentient nature. Man, or more closely, a priesthood of sorts, have learned to bridge the gap between the world of the sylph and this one. Using the lure of a girl, a love-starved battle sylph is enticed through the gate. To complete the rite, the girl is killed and the sylph is named; he is then enslaved to the man who named him, forced to do his bidding in any and all things. Like any sentient society, there are all kinds of sylphs who perform all sorts of functions, but only the battlers are drawn through in this manner.

The king's son needs a battler - he is the heir, and the protection of the kingdom will be up to him someday. A girl is scooped up off the road as she is in the process of running away from home to avoid a marriage to a much older man of her father's selection. Unknown by her captors, her aunt has had some influence on the girl, teaching her to defend herself, at least a little. Stripped and tied to the sacrificial alter,  Solie's mind races. Her only defense is a hair-clip no one found in their haste. Desperate to save her life, she succeeds in getting it free and using it on the prince just as the battler comes through. For the very first time, a battler is bound to a woman and boy does this take the reader for an amazing ride.

There is a list of commands a sylph must obey from the very first moment they are bound, but Solie didn't know any of this. You really must read this book. Everyone reviews by awarding stars, so I'm giving this book four to four and a half stars. The only thing keeping this book from a full five-star award from me is that the girl, Solie, act far younger than her stated age, meaning that though we are told she is eighteen as I recall, she acts more like she is twelve, if not younger, most of the time. Nothing major really, just some things that struck me from time to time. I know that some girls can act rather childish at that age, but still, telling myself that didn't seem to help.

I do hope you like this book as much as I did.

Book Review

If any of you have kept up with my 'Anna of Alaska' blog, or my Facebook profile, you know we're running out of fuel, and without fuel, there will be no internet, or even much writing, unfortunately. Ultimately, I may have to resort to paper and pencil. Gee, I wonder if I remember how to write with a pencil (without grammar and spell-check).

At any rate, in an effort to stretch what we have for as long as possible, the generator has been off for a serious chunk of the day, and though I have a fabulous battery on my computer, it doesn't quite bridge the gap. That 'dark' time does, however, leave room for my second, and much neglected, passion - reading.

Last winter I won four books. It was really quite amazing - I've never really won anything before (nothing worth mentioning anyway). I started one of them right away, but what with the crush of work, it took me a LONG time to finish it.

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AND THE DEVIL LAUGHED by Carole Sutton

Since I'm a fiction/science fiction fan, I'm afraid my review will be a little biased. However I did like the story. Hanna Ford is a woman, a police officer, and in this story, she is working undercover. She is also recovering from having been raped - a serious blow not only to her body, but also to her self confidence as a police officer.

Her undercover job was supposed to be fairly simple. Look into a drug smuggling operation in a small town and try to figure out how it was being done. Being an investigative story, clues and problems were dripped in, keeping me delightfully strung along as Hanna met people and asked questions. Threaded through the story is a second mystery, one that hit much closer to home in more ways than one. A popular local barmaid had been raped and murdered brutally, and the woman happened to be a cousin. Well, I won't give the whole story away. Suffice it to say, Hanna did her best to investigate both crimes, which, thanks to the so small town that housed both affairs, were closely intertwined.

As I said before, I liked the story and I would recommend it. There was one thing that bothered me about it. I'm going to blame it on the genre though. The ending climax seemed hurried. Yes, the events were intense, and there was a rush to save lives and capture the bad guys before they got away, but I felt it was all tumbled together in a rush. What with all the methodical care with details that the rest of the book was filled with, the ending felt jerky. Aw well, that's the writer in me talking.

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The second book I read is a collection of three shorter stories. In BENEATH A CHRISTMAS MOON the stories all took place on Christmas eve. These stories tip toward romance, another one of my not-so-favorite genre. That said, once again I liked all three of these stories. They weren't too terribly cheesy like some I've read.

The first story, LANDER'S MOON by Eden Robins should not have been the first story in this book. Though the story was sweet, the writer made so many of the beginner writer's mistakes, it nearly spoiled the plot all together. The point of view drifted. The two main characters were nearly carbon copies of each other in their actions and reactions to each other. And repeats abounded. If this story was edited, the editor should be fired. Though I didn't see any typos, such mistakes should have long since been weeded out.

The second story, PARADISE DESIGNS by Ariana Dupre was much better. It was a really cool twist on mythology brought to reality. But still, there were actions that were physically impossible and certain details noticed that certainly shouldn't have been. Who looks for compassion in the eyes of a lion when the lion is only inches away. There were minor discrepancies in background details that might be missed by the casual reader. In a house that had a staff, only one such person was ever seen. Maybe that's the way it was, but that's not what we were led to believe. And never before have I read an example of a character being treated like a simpleton. The house keeper gives the guest a map of the house and points out points of interest on it, and stipulates that the third floor is off limits, then she leaves the guest to her own devices. Fine by me - sounds reasonable. But then she hand carries the woman to her room and covers it all again as if she'd never given out the map in the first place. There were other flaws in the details that really bothered me. This story really needs a serious rewrite. However, I'd still recommend it. Get past all the writerly flaws and it's a very nice gentle romance.

The third story, was by far the best of the three and should have led the collection. VAMPIRE'S CHRISTMAS CAROL by Karen McCullough was a heart wrenching, touching story about a man determined to die rather than take a human life to feed his vampire hunger. When Carol Prescott knocks on his door, his plan might not be so successful. Stranded in a blizzard, Carol didn't have much choice. It was either freeze to death out in her car or weather the company of a vampire starving to death. The only flaw I could find in this story is that it was over far too soon, and yet it should not have been longer. And yes it had a happy ending, but I'm not going to tell you what it is. You'll simply have to read it for yourself.

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The third book I read, WHISPERS by Erin Grady, brings together a disparate collection of people in an effort to solve a very very old mystery. The only thing that bothered me about this story was, in putting the pieces of the puzzle together, one piece was left out. By the end of the story all the characters were connected and the connections explained - all but one. It seemed to me that in the effort to tie all the characters together, if this one was not suddenly left out, the romantic thread, so strong throughout the story, would have been thwarted and perverted, so the author decided to cast his piece of the puzzle outside of the box. I think another solution could have been found. For me, that small detail was it's own sorrow, though the romance was now possible. But that's just me. I do like things to be logical, even if twisted and unexpected.

In reading this story, I was sucked in. Every few chapters, a few chapters taking place in 1896 were inserted and they too were enthralling. I really don't care for this format but that's just my opinion. It was successful in bringing all the pieces together at a single point and thus answering all the questions along the way. The only mistake I found was a single reference to ball-bearings. I really don't think there were such a thing as ball-bearings in 1896, not in the wilderness of Colorado anyway. If the horseless carriage had made it to Colorado then, it wasn't mentioned in this book, and I'm not that tight a history buff. I would recommend this book to anyone with a fancy toward hauntings and mysteries. The characters were well developed with complicated histories and their own reasons for coming along on this journey. Read it and join the journey with them.

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I'm working on the fourth book now. SENSITIVITY 101 FOR THE HETEROSEXUAL MALE by Philip Nork. I've only just cracked it. First impressions - though tender, I might have trouble getting through it, but only because reading short stories is very frustrating for me. I'll tell you all about it when I've finished, and I will finish it.