Redemption

William of Archonia #1

by Jarod Meyer

William had a tough life, and when it comes to a sudden and inexplicable end, he realizes that he is far from prepared for what comes next. He is not only plunged into a new world, but another place of existence... Archonia.

And in Archonia, the physical limitations of his previous life no longer bind him. Walking amongst ancient philosophers and heroes of old, he soon discovers that not only is he much stronger than he remembered, but powers once reserved for fictional superheroes lie just within his grasp.

But as in life, his existence in Archonia isn't simple or easy. WIlliam quickly discovers that by Archonian standards his soul isn't pure, and in a twist, he wasn't supposed to be broughy to Archonia at all. His one chance to remain in paradise is to become a Guardian, the strongest and most honored of warriors. He must learn to harness his true potential, fight the ingrained bigotry of this ancient world, and an unsuspecting plot that might just bring it all down around him.

William's only chance at a second life is... Redemption.

270 pages, Paperback

Published February 14, 2017

Reviews

[Sad Sunday (Books? Me?!? NEVER!!!) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was suggested to me by author, Jarod Meyer.



But sadly, 2* are the most I can give it. I will try to give my best constrictive criticism as I can (not my usual emotional babble with sprinkles of faded out sarcasm.)

“If this place isn’t cool, we can always go check out hell.”.

So, the hell is below, proceed on your own risk.


“That is because they are judging you by the way you look, young one." I somehow hoped that afterlife will be without judgement and all will be friend, and there will be tons of glitter, and kitties, and... So, lets all accept the fact that even after death you will be judged by how you look. #sadface

“We all have an Archonian body." <...> "We are all a projection of our soul." <...> "No matter what you looked like in the mortal world, you’re beauty is limited only by your mind in Archonia" <...>"They seemed to be the same age. Each one was radiant and beautiful." I am a little confused. People in Archonia are made of flesh and blood aka bodies, or they are just imaginary projections than depend on their own wishes? Like, if I want to have Jennifer Lawrence's blonde curls in afterlife, I am ready to go? Or if I imagined that I wanted a fifth arm, I can have one? Then why if your looks are limited only by your imagination, nobody wanted wings, steel skin, antennae, super long mustache, ummm, and other cool stuff? Why look beautiful when you can have whatever you want? And why William goes to wash up, not just imagines himself clean and nice? (And antennaes, of course!) If people are only projection of soul, shouldn't it project what your soul might look like - dark and creepy if you are an evil and viscous person, and nice, clean and happy one, if you like to mediate, smile, dance in the rain and etc.?

“Dear God!” William breathed loudly. “What is the matter?” Brock asked, stopping to look at William, thoroughly confused. “There is a…process on Earth, called abortion…” William started to say. “Rest easy, William. There is an Archonian woman who collects those unborn souls from the mortal world. It's nice that abortions are taken care and explained so early in the story. But come on, William just woke up in a Fantasyland and I bet abortions would be the last on his list of questions, especially if he is a man, uncaring, angry (as said in the beginning of the story), soldier, and just died. That sounded a little unbelievable to me.

“What about the children who were never born?” William asked, stopping. “Well, as soon as a man’s seed meets a woman’s egg a soul is formed, though it is just energy and has no defining characteristics.” But that woman collects that energy of no defining characteristics and they grow happily ever after in Archonia? So, abortion souls are not the same souls like of the children that are never born? In my opinion, both are death and should receive the same treatment.

They are innocent, so they are brought here and raised by loving couples or matrons that wish to raise them. Many of these people you see have never lived. It might be authors personal views, but I feel like abortions are judged here even before it was stated, that unborn child's soul has no characteristic. When is the moment then when soul forms a characteristic and is not energy anymore?

"The physical world is full of sorrow and hatred,” Agree to disagree. Kim Kardashian seems to have a pretty awesome life.

“Cousin, I prayed to the creators for years that I would see you again. I was so worried that my family would mourn me too much and not be able to live their lives to the fullest." What is "mourning too much"? Yes, it's nice to care about your relatives and their pain, but for me it sounds like quite stereotypical thinking. Like, you have to stop being sad a year after funeral and "live your life to the fullest". Pain is very personal and I think losing a relative is very hard. The pain doesn't go away, it just loses it's sharpness, not the existence.

“Abuela? Is anything from the bible true?” I am sure it's The Bible. I am not a spelling Nazi, don't worry.

“You don’t actually build muscle here. Your body simply reflects the strength of your mind,” she said, striking hard. Ummm, so why they are training? I am sure you can learn tactics and movement, but if your beauty is only limited to your imagination, can't you speed, wit and mind be limited to it too? And if your body reflects the strength of your mind, shouldn't you read books, perform mental calculations and exercises, telekinesis and other stuff?

She had lived during a time when women were not supposed to be soldiers, and yet she joined the revolution anyway. Her father and brothers were killed trying to bring freedom to a group of colonies in North America. In the end, she gave her life for the same cause. She lived a very good life, and only killed those who attacked the helpless. She had been selected and brought to Archonia when one of the watcher Guardians decided she was worthy. <...> “Good! They told me I could not be a soldier back on Earth, but I proved them wrong. I would love to help you prove them wrong as well,” she responded. That's repetition. I don't think that it's needed to repeat same think in dialogue that was just explained above in a paragraph. Dialogue is one of the ways to drive plot, it's always nice when it tells something new about the plot, background or the characters. I had problems with dialogues in this books. They seemed to shallow to me, telling nothing new or just reacting to environment, but "Oh-s" and "Ahhh-s" are not helpful or very worthy to a reader.

“Come with me, I will take you to the waiting room. Please feel free to help yourself to any refreshments. I do need to go over some of the basic rules my mistress’s house. If your name is called and you’re not there you, will lose your appointment. If the mistress desires a break you will lose your appointment. If you displease the mistress in any way, you lose your appointment. If you lose your appointment you will be asked to leave the premises immediately. You may only have one appointment in your lifetime.” Why it is so hard for a woman to get a dress in afterlife? :/ The whole scene with mistress/seamstress reminded me a lot of "Pretty Woman". If fancy shop doesn't attend you, just go do a different shop, guuurllll.

Ovaria: Another city that dwells within the light.. Etymology - From New Latin ovarium, from Medieval Latin ovaria (“bird ovary”), from Latin ovum (“egg”). Noun - ovary (plural ovaries). So, the city is just called ovary? Fun stuff.

William and Angelica - Author gives you facts, that William served in the army, he works in the mine, and etc. but that doesn't reflect much of his character, personality, gives no background and justification to his actions. Author describes the hardships William endures, but his reaction is mostly "meh". He is just "The Dude" while Angelica is "Nice Girl Next Door". She is just nice. And nice is not the perfect characteristic for a character. That's makes them cardboard.

Overall style - I found it rather telling, than showing. Reader gets all the details and facts, but it's rather dry. It's full of action and stuff happening, but it happens to quickly or described with overused adjectives "nice, wonderful, brave, amazing" and etc.

I know what a hard job is to write a book and I think William of Archonia is a great exercise for the books to come. Even if I wasn't a fan of it, I wish author all the best in the future and many more series to come.

[Stephanie Gillis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Below are all my notes but overall I did not enjoy this. I found everything to be very surface level world-building and character building. I didn’t really like anyone a lot of people acted out of the established character, especially William and Katrina. There were several moments that I was just frustrated with the lack of research that was done for the historical figures presented in this book. It just felt like the author had an idea of what said historical character was without bothering to just look it up so it became very frustrating and I ended up having to fact check so much just to see if he had actually accurately represented that he won. There were some glaringly missing points to this afterlife. The sheer lack of LGBT characters makes is questionable, because there are discussions of other things, but not once Do we see a queer character having made it to this Heaven like place, there is talk of what abortions are, and I can’t tell if the author is pro life, or pro choice because of how this discussion is it’s also an unnecessary moment in the book there’s a lot of those there is an unbalance of POV changes and there’s a lot of repetitive narrative so overall I can’t recommend this book. I don’t think it’s good I think it is poorly done. It could’ve been better. There was potential for this to be an interesting story in combining all of these world, religions and historical figures and mythology’s, but it was just so poorly executed that this shouldn’t exist.
If you want really detailed notes, I just copied and pasted all of my voice notes. I took on my phone whilst reading this.

Redemption
I started notes on pg 51 but before that it was just telling and boring. Here we have our heaven and people still judge you for your looks
Pg 57- “as soon as a man’s seed meets a woman’s egg a soul is formed” prolifer
But then apparently those souls are collected and brought here and raised? So they are much better for it so half way prolifer?
Pg 59 so they tried to spread word on earth but it triggered mass suicides so they just said fuck those people???
Pg 62 the Mona Lisa fancying herself as a model is a Fucking joke. Do some god damned research.
Pg 65- Angelica meets a random guy and is immediately dishearten by him potentially being married because that’s all women think about in the fucking afterlife
Pg 66 also why does she have people to bathe her but William had to do it himself?
Pg 69 - there’s a Latin District?? Why? Why would a division of cultures be necessary in heaven?
Pg 71 why is marriage a thing in heaven if they can’t have kids. Is gay marriage a thing here cuz something tells me it’s not. Is there divorce too? Or what? Why why why the worldbuilding is seriously lacking? If people can choose what they look like is anyone trans?
Page 75 why if Brock stature is a reflection of how long he’s been there why are the council members not 50 feet tall?
Also, William meets Zeus freaks out, and then immediately is sarcastic towards the god of fucking lightning really?
This whole book is just taking every culture with barely any research or new wants and throwing them together
Page 77 fucking Theseus is here no way should that asshole be in heaven
I don’t get why William is constantly whining about all they don’t like me here and then proceeds to be a fucking dick to everyone
Pg 87 Oh my God he has done no research. He said Achilles was defeated when an arrow shot by a lucky foe crippled him. Do you not know? Do you not know?
Page 89 now we are stealing from Star Wars when Yoda trains, Luke lift the impossible heavy thing
Page 91. William is never moving on. He’s never gonna be enough he was never enough in life and he’ll never be enough here. Also, this is so much telling.
Page 96 I don’t understand why we have this measurement of time it makes no sense and doesn’t really serve a purpose
Also, the formatting for the dialogue is poorly done and needs to be edited
Page 99. Our Japanese character is benkei who is from the Heian period. But he has given him 20 katanas when in his life, he was said to only wield seven weapons, not all of them katanas
Also, saying he wore 20 Japanese katanas is redundant. There are no other katanas katana is a Japanese sword.
Page 100 and now we will glaze over ancient China and Chinese culture to just be the bare minimum surface level research great
Also I think he meant zhang fei but he writes
It as Chang Fei…..
And is such a stereotype
Why is there a physical training if their bodies aren’t real?
Again based stereotypes, we have a guy named Juarez and he does the thank you amigo with a Spanish accents like come on
Page 106 William seriously does the say something in Spanish mine are you? Are you joking?
Over 100 pages in the POV balance is way off Angelica now only has her second POV
Page 116 “the stones pick up the sound waves and deliver them back as if they came straight from the instrument that is why the sound is carrying so far off. There is nothing like that in the physical universe“ so Abuela has never heard of a speaker or radio
Page 124 Lawrence Echard did not wear bifocals. They were not even invented when he was alive.
This whole book just wants to amalgamates every religion and culture without having any background research or history just the authors idea the best idea of what those cultures and histories are and it loses any and all weight that it has to it because it’s so superficial
Page 129. The author has just put Allah in this book as a woman whereas I’m fairly certain Allah has no gender, so what the heck
Page 132, so this story really lacks following its own rules, because Juarez apparently killed a man as well, killed his bishop because he was a rapist and murderer, and yet they were angry about William getting in for also killing someone, even though he didn’t want to, and was forced to by his superior officer, so where is the equality there?
Page 133 William assumes a woman is immediately attracted to him, because she apparently seems to gravitate towards him. Every time they sparred this is Katrina, who the author says I will like I have a bad feeling.
Page 130 50 look it’s a male rider commenting on a woman’s figure, especially her breasts great
Apparently, Katrina was in the Civil War, and she was a woman fighting in the war because her father and brothers were in the Civil War, and she wanted to fight like a man because she’s a big tough girl who wears one strip of fabric across her boobs
So again, she can fight in a war and kill people, but William is tainted for doing the same goddamn thing
OK so she wasn’t actually a soldier. She was just defending her home and trying to help the army.
Page 138 “thank you nobody has ever talked with me for so long“ excuse you. What about Juarez?
Page 139 there is no age of the Vikings. There is certain centuries that Vikings existed. They didn’t get their own age. It’s an occupation during the ninth and 11th centuries.
Page 142 Williams calls meredox for having greasy hair you can’t have greasy hair everyone’s so pretty, and the a pitta me of their best thoughts
Page 154, so Chang Fei says you can’t help each other destroy your urns but then Juarez starts telling them how to do it

Page 156 I’m getting very annoyed with William constantly whining about other people having privilege and stuff when he has a literal, cis white man, and he never acknowledges that even with his hardships he has privilege

Noticing just a bunch of quotation marks where they’re not supposed to be in this needs another run through

Page 164, so William is just attracted to any woman he meets because now we’re back to thinking Angelica is beautiful and Angelica is just toxic positivity

Angelica rolls around in the grass because he answered her question about his favorite things as chocolate and it’s just so funny Kill Me

Page 166. I refuse to believe that William world traveler in the military, doesn’t know what empanadas are.

Page 174 Angelica has medical training now since when she was a fucking missionary
He literally uses the phrase. Her medical training kicked in twice with in a few paragraphs.
Page 192. This is just a personal annoyance, but why does the girl always have to choose the bow and arrow as her weapon based on Katrina‘s character you would think she would do something with more brute force given her entire personality

Page 194 we just keep repeating the same thing over and over again with William he gets to another level and he meets some jerk and he’s reminded how people always treat him so bad, and he pity pities himself, and then inevitably does something to impress everyone. This is now like the I don’t know fourth fifth time we’ve gone through the same narrative.
Page 199 OK I’ll give him one laugh for the gogo gadget spear line
Page 205 these timelines make no sense between the two POV’s. I thought Angelica was on her pilgrimage and now all of a sudden she’s where William is for no other reason, then probably to make him just drool over her beauty again so I guess she’s actually back from that pilgrimage, but why did she even go if it was like one chapter long and there was nothing that really happened


Page 231 again, Katrinas armor and stuff makes no sense for her character. She’s a brawler. Why does she have a delicate murmur and Tunic again bow and arrow like why why she’s a brawler why is she wearing a diadem? Why she’s a warrior why would she wear that into battle? It makes no sense other than aesthetics.
Page 243, so he takes the Egyptian goddess nephthys who is the protectress of the dead and mistress of the house and makes her a fashion designer why
Why do we care about all these material things and why is she smoking a hookah? What the hell?
I can’t help but notice that every time Angelica or William comes up against a foe they are usually a POC character and then suddenly they’ll meet the nice white Greek character usually that suddenly takes them in and shows them kindness between Achilles, taking William and defending him and now we have a Dona taking an Angelica after her terrible appointment with nephthys

Page 259 I’ve got a feeling we’re going to have some Angelica versus Katrina jealousy unnecessary pitting women against women

Page 263 William doesn’t make any fucking sense he’s having a grand old time and just at the mention of the jerks name he runs off to start something like have you learned nothing about this world at all

Page 267 again, this author is so dependent on genders so he keeps making gods brother and sister, where it makes no sense he says Brahma and Ammun spelled incorrectly are brother and sister. Neither of them have ever been categorized one as female, but gods also just don’t have gender he’s so dependent on this

Page 277 so for this whole book, we have only had the two POV‘s of William and Angelica, but all of the sudden in the middle of Williams chapter. We’re going to get Brox POV just because none of our two characters are in it, and they need to argue about him. He should have cut the scene.

Page 281. Once again, we have a random character, looking unkempt that goes against what is establish in the beginning of the book where everyone looks pretty all the time.

Page 295 even this small shift in William thinking oh I could just side with Meredox and try to gain favor, and stuff is so out of character
Pages 326 to 328. I am so confused by this what what is happening I don’t understand at all just what Also again random insert into Williams POV because he’s unconscious now, if you’re going to do this kind of crap, you have to do it earlier in the story so it’s not so out of place

I hate that Katrina is suddenly all like Labory worried about him and constantly needs to hug him like it’s so out of character for her
Page 332 OK so the last confusing part apparently is because it was really his evil twin brother all along and he’s not a bad guy that’s a dumb trope

All right, final thoughts number one at the very back of this book they put the signets of hangaku gozen with William being wrath and Angelica being jealousy, but it makes no sense to put this here because we haven’t gotten to any real points of any kind of sinful evil downfall so I don’t know why that’s in the back of this book overall this book sucks and I hate it and it’s poorly researched. It’s surface level, worldbuilding surface level, character building and needs serious rewrites, but you know it’s already published so whatever I really didn’t like it. I thought William was a terrible character. The POV balance is way off even just between William and Angelica if you wanted to actually have balance Angelica needed a lot more page time and then the random change of POV at the end within Williams chapters is very unbalanced. It needs editing there’s a lot of typos there’s a lot of weird Formatting uh yeah this book just needs a lot more to stars I’ll be generous with two stars.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this story.

William starts out as a character that doesn't really care about much and doesn't have any friends. He's down on his luck and doesn't have anything to look forward too.

He works on beating the odds, proving people wrong and proving to himself that he was worth something.

I was not expecting the religious overtones in the book and at first I thought it was a little much but as the book progressed they made more sense and seemed to fit more.

This was a great first book from a new author and I look forward to reading more by Meyer. His characters had great depth and you grew to care for them. The story had a great flow. I recommend reading this book if you enjoy reading about someone who struggles and works towards beating the odds.

[Butterfly Bridge Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book has a very interesting story line. But its more than that. There is real meaning to the main character William. If you want something bad enough you will do what ever it takes to get it. Changing how you are, how you treat and think of others and yourself.

How badly does he want to become a true guardian, being among the best ans greatest of warriors. What would you do to change how you see yourself? You will have to read it to find out if William can slay his own demons to stay where he would be the happiest or does he have to return to his own time and place.

I enjoyed the book, it's a good read with lots to offer.

[michael fultz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Experience like no other

Wow,this tale has me thinking what we have all been taught,this story makes matrix seem tame,thrill ride jumping into super fast pace adventure,leaves me spellbound,excellent

[Alan Pierce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story. Give this debut novel a read.