This is what happens.
Every time I try to keep up a blog, I tend to get bored and wander off. Or other parts of life intrude and I don't feel like writing so I find other things to do and just skip it. Yeah, I'm terrible. But hey, I just finished reading a book but I didn't like it very much. I've heard from a lot of other authors that you should only review books that you like because you never know when the book you are reviewing might be by an author that has more pull in the industry than you do. I'm sure that's very wise advice.
Unfortunately, I'm not a very wise person at times. I also probably broke some cardinal rule by choosing a book solely based on having an author with the same name as me. I'm sure this will not in any way backfire horrendously.
Enchanted: Calling the Quarters by J. S. Little
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
If you like Wicca and want a book that doesn't have a lot of violence or harsh language, perhaps this book will be better suited to you than it was to me. I figured that the main problem I would have would be the romance part as I keep imagining that I don't like romance and yet I like books like where a lot of the plot is focused on a romance, at least the 'how will people work out the difficulties' part of it. And if this book had more of it, I might have liked it a lot more.
First let's get the major stumbling blocks out of the way. I don't mind present tense writing but this uses third person present tense and quite a bit of the time the prose feels like it's someone reading stage directions for characters. I was not a fan. I think first person present would have worked a lot better, or third person past tense. Mixing them, at least in the way it was done, felt awkward. There are also a lot of sections with info dumps and 'telling' the reader about scenes I really wanted to see. Brandon (the male lead) is said to have had horrific nightmares where he is tempted by an evil god and right when it sounds like we are going to get to see this in action, the story cuts away. One of the other large issues I had was that the characters, whether an old woman (who appears to be in her 30's) or a child or the most powerful witch to ever live speaks, there are times when their dialog sounded the same. Grandma sounds like a teenager some times and other times demands to be treated with respect as an elder.
The tone of the book shifts around quite a bit. In the beginning there's an almost salacious quality with Brandon ogling Anna, Alina's twin sister and the book seems to take a perverse joy in showing us his dirty thoughts through Alina's telepathy. But there is hardly any word more harsh than "Darn" or "heck" throughout most of the book. At first Anna (the evil twin) is shown accidentally tearing the soul out of child and later casually magicking away a mans tongue but as the book progresses, nothing ever comes of it. The super evil bad guy isn't shown doing more than calling someone a 'wench' one time and being given implied evil because he is Very Bad.
I guess after the first chapter or two, with the super model magical twins, the casual abuse of magic, the leering poon-hound of a leading man billionaire it sounded like this was going to be a trashy fun book with sex and violence even if the format wasn't my favorite. But one love spell later and the international ladies man and next up to be Evil Incarnate, Brandon, is a slightly possesive, super-faithful, handsome as all hell boyfriend.
Here's a few things I learned in the book :
50 million dollars is enough to feed enough people that it makes the entire nation a better place and pisses off the big bad guy because it weakens him (by making people happier and the world a better place).
"Electric" is a common adjective used to imply bright green. Perhaps this one is true.. I'm color blind and I always associate "electric" with blue-white so what do I know.
Having character names represent their power level.. well okay, I guess that can work, but having a lot of characters, in the same family all have names that start with "Al" or "An" is very confusing.
Stephen King was right, adverbs are the devil.
Talking about powers makes me long to have those powers shown in action rather than just talking about what they might be able to do.
And now a few things that really just pissed me off but this could be spoilery: <spoiler>
The Quarters are called only once.. and never released. I'm not Wiccan but I was married to one for quite a while and this struck me as very odd.
The bouncing around between using All Hallows Eve and Samhain as the date of the Big Battle. These seem to be Wiccan witches of some fashion, I don't know why All Hallows Eve kept being mentioned when they talked among themselves. Eventually it shifts to just Samhain which makes a lot more sense.
Alina's primary power (each witch has one main power, like the x-men) is healing, she's a super-healer and can even resurrect people. When she gets tapped to be the prophesied One to fight the Battle against the evil Abeddon, her primary battle plan is to walk in, kill everyone (all of the witches that Abeddon has kidnapped/seduced to the dark side), take the magic throne, then resurrect everyone. Personally I would have felt some tension if she had to actually worry about killing her mom and sister who joined Abeddon. But no, just blitz the whole castle, take the throne, res your party and it's good.
None of this matters though, because her boyfriend, who's destined to be the next super evil power guy, steps into the Battle and fights Abeddon instead of Alina while she sits on the sidelines. For hours. She has the power of 10,000 suns and just sits by while Evil and Going-To-Be-Evil slug it out.
Brandon wins, then turns Evil and tried to kill her but she turns into an owl and he falls to his death. Oh, and she becomes a new Goddess (even though the text says god) that the witches now worship. And she makes it snow in Florida. </spoiler>
Wish I could recommend this but it just lacked the kind of story I generally like. I did finish it though and that puts it ahead of those Area 51 books. And it did have some hilarious 'Grandma making penis jokes' for a few lines but that was about it.
Unfortunately, I'm not a very wise person at times. I also probably broke some cardinal rule by choosing a book solely based on having an author with the same name as me. I'm sure this will not in any way backfire horrendously.
Enchanted: Calling the Quarters by J. S. LittleMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
If you like Wicca and want a book that doesn't have a lot of violence or harsh language, perhaps this book will be better suited to you than it was to me. I figured that the main problem I would have would be the romance part as I keep imagining that I don't like romance and yet I like books like where a lot of the plot is focused on a romance, at least the 'how will people work out the difficulties' part of it. And if this book had more of it, I might have liked it a lot more.
First let's get the major stumbling blocks out of the way. I don't mind present tense writing but this uses third person present tense and quite a bit of the time the prose feels like it's someone reading stage directions for characters. I was not a fan. I think first person present would have worked a lot better, or third person past tense. Mixing them, at least in the way it was done, felt awkward. There are also a lot of sections with info dumps and 'telling' the reader about scenes I really wanted to see. Brandon (the male lead) is said to have had horrific nightmares where he is tempted by an evil god and right when it sounds like we are going to get to see this in action, the story cuts away. One of the other large issues I had was that the characters, whether an old woman (who appears to be in her 30's) or a child or the most powerful witch to ever live speaks, there are times when their dialog sounded the same. Grandma sounds like a teenager some times and other times demands to be treated with respect as an elder.
The tone of the book shifts around quite a bit. In the beginning there's an almost salacious quality with Brandon ogling Anna, Alina's twin sister and the book seems to take a perverse joy in showing us his dirty thoughts through Alina's telepathy. But there is hardly any word more harsh than "Darn" or "heck" throughout most of the book. At first Anna (the evil twin) is shown accidentally tearing the soul out of child and later casually magicking away a mans tongue but as the book progresses, nothing ever comes of it. The super evil bad guy isn't shown doing more than calling someone a 'wench' one time and being given implied evil because he is Very Bad.
I guess after the first chapter or two, with the super model magical twins, the casual abuse of magic, the leering poon-hound of a leading man billionaire it sounded like this was going to be a trashy fun book with sex and violence even if the format wasn't my favorite. But one love spell later and the international ladies man and next up to be Evil Incarnate, Brandon, is a slightly possesive, super-faithful, handsome as all hell boyfriend.
Here's a few things I learned in the book :
50 million dollars is enough to feed enough people that it makes the entire nation a better place and pisses off the big bad guy because it weakens him (by making people happier and the world a better place).
"Electric" is a common adjective used to imply bright green. Perhaps this one is true.. I'm color blind and I always associate "electric" with blue-white so what do I know.
Having character names represent their power level.. well okay, I guess that can work, but having a lot of characters, in the same family all have names that start with "Al" or "An" is very confusing.
Stephen King was right, adverbs are the devil.
Talking about powers makes me long to have those powers shown in action rather than just talking about what they might be able to do.
And now a few things that really just pissed me off but this could be spoilery: <spoiler>
The Quarters are called only once.. and never released. I'm not Wiccan but I was married to one for quite a while and this struck me as very odd.
The bouncing around between using All Hallows Eve and Samhain as the date of the Big Battle. These seem to be Wiccan witches of some fashion, I don't know why All Hallows Eve kept being mentioned when they talked among themselves. Eventually it shifts to just Samhain which makes a lot more sense.
Alina's primary power (each witch has one main power, like the x-men) is healing, she's a super-healer and can even resurrect people. When she gets tapped to be the prophesied One to fight the Battle against the evil Abeddon, her primary battle plan is to walk in, kill everyone (all of the witches that Abeddon has kidnapped/seduced to the dark side), take the magic throne, then resurrect everyone. Personally I would have felt some tension if she had to actually worry about killing her mom and sister who joined Abeddon. But no, just blitz the whole castle, take the throne, res your party and it's good.
None of this matters though, because her boyfriend, who's destined to be the next super evil power guy, steps into the Battle and fights Abeddon instead of Alina while she sits on the sidelines. For hours. She has the power of 10,000 suns and just sits by while Evil and Going-To-Be-Evil slug it out.
Brandon wins, then turns Evil and tried to kill her but she turns into an owl and he falls to his death. Oh, and she becomes a new Goddess (even though the text says god) that the witches now worship. And she makes it snow in Florida. </spoiler>
Wish I could recommend this but it just lacked the kind of story I generally like. I did finish it though and that puts it ahead of those Area 51 books. And it did have some hilarious 'Grandma making penis jokes' for a few lines but that was about it.
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