Category Archives: 2.5 Stars

Blood Bound (A Gallows Novel) by Sharon Stevenson

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in 2 Stars, 2.5 Stars, 3 Stars, Book Reviews

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This review actually covers the first three books: Blood Bound, Demon Divided, Fate Fallen

Star Rating

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Two stars is all I can give this one. I enjoyed the characters but the story was a little rough. While I liked Sarah, her flippant jumping from boy to boy did not seem believable. She went from Ben, to Dev and Ray, to just Ray, to War.

This book almost lost me right from the beginning. Shaun and Sarah Gallows walk into a nest of about twenty vampires and kill them all as if it were child’s play. It didn’t seem hard for them. The characters were never in danger. The tension was zero. The only cost: vampire dust made Shaun cough. It got a little better and there were eventually some more difficult tasks that actually cost the characters more than coughing up vampire dust.

I eventually got into the first novel, if barely. Sharon hooked me more with Shaun than with Sarah. I identified enough with him to want to keep reading even though other parts of the book had me wanted to throw it out.

Star Rating

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2-1/2 stars is a slight improvement from book 1. But again, book 2 was just barely good enough for me to keep reading too. I think the Shaun and Elle relationship really worked—that subplot made the least sense. The real plot was just a confusing mess. The repeated teleportation to Melissa’s house didn’t work for me. I found myself bored until Shaun actually fought Melissa’s Vampire father. Then all it took to destabilize Melissa was a single comment about how Melissa’s dad should have removed her curse but didn’t? Really? She got all emotional from that? I didn’t buy it.

Star Rating

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I give this three stars, and Sharon once again showed improvement. I had a hard time believing Shaun was as stupid as he came across to start the novel. But I kept reading. I’m two books in and I’ve overlooked a lot of terrible writing already, why stop now right? This is like when you watch B-movies but you just can’t stop because they are so bad that you keep going.

This book showed a little more depth and character growth. Sharon exposed the magic system just a little bit more. The plot held more tension and there was a whodunit element to the novel.

The characters seemed to be in plenty of distress. There was less, though still some, random jumping around of characters. This time it was Ellie, not Shaun, who jumped around a little crazily.

The novel’s premise

Shaun and Sarah are fallen angles and basically Buffy-the-vampire-killer types. This is their story.

Parental Guide

Profanity:
The books come with the following warning:

Warning – these books are Adult Modern Fantasy, not YA. They are littered with profanity and may be considered sexually rampant by more conservative readers!

I thought that meant there might be a dozen f-words. Yeah. She used the word an absurd amount of times. The word “littered” in her warning is quite accurate, because the extreme amount f-words cheapened her story and became a major distraction, especially in book 2.

F-Word counts
Blood Bound: 37
Demon Divided: 87
Fate Fallen: 41

Sexuality: There is sex, but it isn’t graphically described. Sarah and the demon/vampire have a sexual relationship. Shaun gets it on in the kitchen with a werewolf in book three.

Violence: Lots of violence. Plenty of blood and gore, though not always, for example vampires turn to dust when killed.

Editing

Quality:
Blood Bound: Poor. I made almost 40 highlights and most were editing issues.
Demon Divided: Poor. I made almost 30 highlights and most were editing issues.
Fate Fallen: Poor but improving. I only made 21 highlights and most were editing issues.

It seemed there is a language barrier I had to deal with. Sure the book is in English but I live in the western United States. I couldn’t find details on where the author lives exactly but the novels are set in fictional Scotland cities. The language issues involved much more than just an extra u in words like color/colour. There were missing words in a lot of sentences and it was distracting. However, some sentences were repeated with the same missing word, making me think the word wasn’t missing but excluding that word is just a dialect issue. So I am left wondering if all my highlights are editing issues or language differences.

The dialog was pretty good as the character interaction goes, but the dialog formatting became a major distraction. The author needs to start new paragraphs between one character talking and going into a separate character’s view. It is one thing the exclude dialog tags, it is another to have what looks like a dialog tag actually just be the next paragraph and suggest the wrong person is talking. Below is an example where Shaun is talking and then immediately after the quote, she has a tag indicating it was Sarah talking.

Sharon Stevens needs better editing and a few more rounds of proofreading to clean up these self-published stories.

“I don’t know about that.” She sighed. (In this sentence, Shaun is talking even though Sarah sighed—I think.)

I found myself lost and having to re-read sections quite often. A few times, I never figured out what was going on and just moved on. As I write this I am still astounded that I actually finished these books.

Imagination and Uniqueness

It got better. The imagination was weak to start book one, but it improved over the three books. The world grows with her imagination.

Characters

Shaun is a pretty good character. He is a flawed protagonist. He is described as having a missing eye, do to a fight with werewolves that happened earlier in his life.
Sarah starts out as an invincible, annoying brat, who crushes on bullies. Not really likable. It took a while before I cared for her as a character.

She did a good job with Ray and Dev. Sometimes side characters blend together, but these two didn’t blend at all. They are different and easily identifiable.

Magic System (fantasy)

I am still confused about what can and can’t be done with magic in this world. If the author has rules, I haven’t figured them out yet. A few things are done well, such as Sarah and Shaun’s ability to release a spirit from this world.

eBook Quality

Quality: Acceptable
I normally do poor, average, or high. But Sharon Stevenson was different and it was quite acceptable. She took a very plain text and completely featureless approach to formatting her eBook. The good news. It pretty much worked. Her books flow just fine. The simplicity prevented the formatting issues many indie authors face. She successfully pulled off not letting the eBook formatting get in the way of her story, which is most important.

Blood Bound, Book 1 has a very good cover. However, I thought the quality of the covers for books two and three were significantly worse. I think she needs to redo the covers for both books.

About the Author

Sharon Stevenson likes to read a lot and watches a bit too much horror. Here is a quote from her blog:

I spend too much time indoors and probably watch too many horror films. Some of my favourite things are; Alone time, people who know when to shut up, having a drink, eating pizza (usually after having too much drink the night before), reading books, adult swim cartoons, bad horror and sci-fi movies, proper good TV shows like Dexter & The Walking Dead, and last but not least having a laugh with my hilarious other half – this would usually include some of the above.

Gargoyle Knight by William Massa

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in 2.5 Stars, Book Reviews

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Star Rating

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I found this book on the Fantasy and Sci-fi Rocks My World Facebook page. The cover looked awesome. The premise sounded like a story I would love. I so wanted to love this book. I was so excited to start reading it.

I expect my novels to be at least 350 pages. I prefer more. I am usually annoyed if the novel is only 300 pages. Imagine my surprise when “The End” arrived at page 214. I felt like I only got half a book—OK, maybe two-thirds of a book.

I had a really hard time reading this book. It took me almost two weeks. I usually devour a good book of 400+ pages in a couple nights. If they are really good, I give up sleep to read them. This one never kept me up reading it.

The writing didn’t work for me. William Massa chose to tell this story using the omniscient perspective. It seemed awkward to jump from one character’s thoughts to the next character’s thoughts.

A good rewrite is needed, not to change the story (well, maybe to add substance to the book’s awkward shortness) but to tell the exact same story with different sentences. Most the sentences seemed awkward. Many of them must could have been better sentences. He just couldn’t figure out how to make me as the reader feel the character’s emotions. Let me give you an example:

Her fear stood in sharp contrast to the ecstasy flickering over Cael’s gargoyle features.

This sentence is a telling sentence. Rhianna feels fear. Cael feels ecstacy. Those feeling contast. However, because he used the verb “stood” it seems like an active sentence, but it really isn’t. Stood is really just an alternate for the verb “was” in this sentence. In J. Abram Barneck’s article, Painting away passive voice, he explains that replacing the passive voice verb with an active voice verb is the first step, but that first step is not enough. Unfortunately, in this book, it seems the first step was as far as the author got in improving his passive voice sentences.

Overall, the book is probably worth the $2.99 it cost, especially if you like Gargoyles, which I do.

Book Details

Gargoyle Knight by William Massa self-published under Critical Mass Publishing on April 20, 2014. It is 214 pages

The novel’s premise

Cael and Artan are brothers in medieval Ireland. Artan is the younger brother, but is chosen by their father to inherit the throne due to Cael’s delving into dark magic. Using the power of the evil god Balor, Cael creates gargoyles and destroying the kingdom, killing Artan’s wife and children.

Flash forward to modern New York where Cael and Artan are stone Gargoyle statues. They are awakened when the Eye of Balor, a broken gem, is mended by blood after Rhianna cuts herself on jagged edge. Can Artan and Rhianna stop Cael before bringing on the apocalypse?

Editing

Quality: Below Average
Their were minor editing issues. For the first seventy pages or so, it appeared typo free but the typos increased in the rest of the book. In fact, there is one line that has a random j at the end:

“How’s my dad?”J

There were other typos. Along with the typos there were also some end quotes that were backwards.

Imagination and Uniqueness

The uniqueness is the one shining star in this book. I love Gargoyles and hadn’t yet encountered a Gargoyle urban fantasy. So this was a first.

The overall story was well-imagined but when it came to the fine details, the story was like a Monet painting; lacking the details up close.

Characters

Artan is the good Gargoyle. Cael is the bad Gargoyle. Rhianna is the daughter of an archaeological and finish her masters thesis in archaeology herself. There were other minor characters, but the book was too short to really get to know any character other than Artan and Rhianna.

Magic System (fantasy)

The magic was minimal and used by Cael. It seemed to be an evil gift from the dark god Balor. There was no “good” magic. The magic seemed to be mostly used to create Gargoyles and prepare for a ritual to release Balor into this world.

eBook Quality

Quality: Average
The book has an amazingly well-done cover. I loved the cover.

The inline table of contents was noticeably absent, but that doesn’t matter much in eBooks as there is a table of contents in all eBooks when you click Go To…

There were some issues here and there. Inconsistent use of the ellipsis. Unnecessary double spaces between paragraphs. End quotes that actually incorrectly beginning quotes.

Parental Guide

Profanity: No swearing at all that I recall. While there is no swearing in the Gargoyle Knight, there is an F-word at the back of this book in the teaser to his other novel Silicon Man.
Sexuality: Minimal to none.
Violence: The battles have violence. There is red blood and black gargoyle blood. And a head is cut off.

About the Author

William has lived in New York, Florida, Europe and now resides in Venice Beach surrounded by skaters and surfers.

He is the writer of FEAR THE LIGHT, GARGOYLE KNIGHT and SILICON MAN.