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Wiklow
Cami Ramirez has been missing for two months. When four of her friends return to their hometown for summer break, they find she did not disappear without a trace. She left them a trail of clues. The first is Wiklow, a book they made as children, recording all their adventures with strange creatures in odd places. The second clue is a note from Cami beckoning her friends to follow her. Follow her to Wiklow. Was it more than childhood imagination? Was it all real? And most importantly, can they go back?
222 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 19, 2017
6 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 13, 2020
This book definitely could’ve done with more editing time. And a real publisher.
The story itself is pretty decent: a blend of Narnia, Last of the Really Great Wangdoodles, and all the other “human children travel to mythical land and save it” stories. The characters have interesting back stories, and are pretty believable. But the writing itself is......let’s just say it’s easy to tell it’s a first book from an aspiring author. There’s a lot of simple and strange mistakes in wording that could’ve easily been fixed in editing. Things like:
• “All at once, the room began to synchronically dance.” First, the sentence itself is clumsy. Perhaps “the room began a synchronized dance” might be better phrasing? Second, synchronically means “concerned with the events or phenomena at a particular period without considering historical antecedentssynchronic linguistics” while synchronously (the word that should be used if the sentence stays as is) means “occurring at the same time; coinciding in time; contemporaneous; simultaneous. going on at the same rate and exactly together” per dictionary.com.
• “The boat drained itself of water to reveal three seats between the elephant adorned sterns.” - Boats don’t have multiple sterns, they have a bow (front) and a stern (rear).
• “Theo smiled smugly, resting his right hand on the hull of his own machete.” - I think the word you’re looking for is hilt, maybe? Or handle?
• [A girl was found drowning, so] “He put her ear to her chest and listened....no breath.”
• “They said she should turn herself into [the King].” But within context, it means she should turn herself in to the king, not transform herself into the king.
And the narrator voice of the book can’t keep straight whether Tucker is going by his nickname (Tuck) or his full name (Tucker) from on sentence to the next. In my mind, characters can use or not use nicknames with impunity, but the narrator should be consistent throughout a book. But, maybe that’s just a personal preference. 🤷🏻♀️
Speaking of personal preference! There are issues with the typesetting as well. The biggest one is that throughout the book, wherever there is a word that ends in “f” (of, off, half, etc) there is an extra space between it and the next word. E.g. “The base of the cliff was surrounded by a large number of boulders of every shape and size.” This problem was also illustrated in the quotes above. There are several points within the first few chapters where a paragraph break got deleted, causing the next paragraph to be shoved up into the previous one leaving a large awkward space between sentences. Like so. This is also found elsewhere, but even a lazy editor should’ve caught the ones in the beginning chapters, unless they didn’t read it at all. Also, there is at least one spot where, for almost a full page of dialogue, the font and size of the quotation marks changed noticeably. That section ended with an extra set of marks within the narration, and then the font goes back to normal.
Maybe I’m just being nit picky because I’m couped up in my house, but I feel like if you go to the trouble, and presumed cost, of getting your work published through a small, independent publisher that specifically says they have a dedicated book designer who “has a wealth of experience in design, layout, and illustration that reaches into multiple publishers and the Hallmark company” (per the Electric Moon Publishing website), then things like botched paragraph breaks, font changes, and general font issues (those f’s!!) definitely should’ve been caught. The publisher also has a proofreader and a copy editor who should’ve caught things like boats with two sterns, and characters accidentally transforming into other characters when they meant to give themselves up to them instead.
I’m all for indie publishing companies that help out the little guy and “focus on the author,” but this particular one let this first-time author down big time, in my opinion. And this particular author, I feel, let her audience down, too. I’m sure this was in the works for a long time, and I feel really bad that I’m being so critical. Unfortunately, it could’ve used a bit more polishing before being sent off to the printer. If the author happens to see this, hopefully it helps to make her better instead of making her angry.
The story itself is pretty decent: a blend of Narnia, Last of the Really Great Wangdoodles, and all the other “human children travel to mythical land and save it” stories. The characters have interesting back stories, and are pretty believable. But the writing itself is......let’s just say it’s easy to tell it’s a first book from an aspiring author. There’s a lot of simple and strange mistakes in wording that could’ve easily been fixed in editing. Things like:
• “All at once, the room began to synchronically dance.” First, the sentence itself is clumsy. Perhaps “the room began a synchronized dance” might be better phrasing? Second, synchronically means “concerned with the events or phenomena at a particular period without considering historical antecedentssynchronic linguistics” while synchronously (the word that should be used if the sentence stays as is) means “occurring at the same time; coinciding in time; contemporaneous; simultaneous. going on at the same rate and exactly together” per dictionary.com.
• “The boat drained itself of water to reveal three seats between the elephant adorned sterns.” - Boats don’t have multiple sterns, they have a bow (front) and a stern (rear).
• “Theo smiled smugly, resting his right hand on the hull of his own machete.” - I think the word you’re looking for is hilt, maybe? Or handle?
• [A girl was found drowning, so] “He put her ear to her chest and listened....no breath.”
• “They said she should turn herself into [the King].” But within context, it means she should turn herself in to the king, not transform herself into the king.
And the narrator voice of the book can’t keep straight whether Tucker is going by his nickname (Tuck) or his full name (Tucker) from on sentence to the next. In my mind, characters can use or not use nicknames with impunity, but the narrator should be consistent throughout a book. But, maybe that’s just a personal preference. 🤷🏻♀️
Speaking of personal preference! There are issues with the typesetting as well. The biggest one is that throughout the book, wherever there is a word that ends in “f” (of, off, half, etc) there is an extra space between it and the next word. E.g. “The base of the cliff was surrounded by a large number of boulders of every shape and size.” This problem was also illustrated in the quotes above. There are several points within the first few chapters where a paragraph break got deleted, causing the next paragraph to be shoved up into the previous one leaving a large awkward space between sentences. Like so. This is also found elsewhere, but even a lazy editor should’ve caught the ones in the beginning chapters, unless they didn’t read it at all. Also, there is at least one spot where, for almost a full page of dialogue, the font and size of the quotation marks changed noticeably. That section ended with an extra set of marks within the narration, and then the font goes back to normal.
Maybe I’m just being nit picky because I’m couped up in my house, but I feel like if you go to the trouble, and presumed cost, of getting your work published through a small, independent publisher that specifically says they have a dedicated book designer who “has a wealth of experience in design, layout, and illustration that reaches into multiple publishers and the Hallmark company” (per the Electric Moon Publishing website), then things like botched paragraph breaks, font changes, and general font issues (those f’s!!) definitely should’ve been caught. The publisher also has a proofreader and a copy editor who should’ve caught things like boats with two sterns, and characters accidentally transforming into other characters when they meant to give themselves up to them instead.
I’m all for indie publishing companies that help out the little guy and “focus on the author,” but this particular one let this first-time author down big time, in my opinion. And this particular author, I feel, let her audience down, too. I’m sure this was in the works for a long time, and I feel really bad that I’m being so critical. Unfortunately, it could’ve used a bit more polishing before being sent off to the printer. If the author happens to see this, hopefully it helps to make her better instead of making her angry.
Displaying 1 of 1 review