Balcony of Fog

by Rich Shapero

Decamp with an innocent toiler and his mysterious female companion to a metaphoric world in the clouds—a strange, vertiginous perch that reveals startling insights about the twisted dynamics of love and power.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Romance, Paranormal, Dystopia, Novels

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2020

About the author

Rich Shapero’s novels dare readers with giant metaphors, magnificent obsessions and potent ideas. His casts of idealistic lovers, laboring miners, and rebellious artists all rate ideas as paramount, more important than life itself. They traverse wild landscapes and visionary realms, imagining gods who in turn imagine them. Like the seekers themselves, readers grapple with revealing truths about human potential. All of his titles—Beneath Caaqi's Wings, Dissolve, Island Fruit Remedy, Balcony of Fog, Rin, Tongue and Dorner, Arms from the Sea, The Hope We Seek, Too Far and Wild Animus—are available in hardcover and as ebooks. They also combine music, visual art, animation and video in the TooFar Media app. Shapero spins provocative stories for the eyes, ears, and imagination.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

…how many stories like theirs, Arden thought.
People who escaped to the sky with high hopes, lived a short life there and disappeared.

I am no angel. I can be bought. I guess that is how this review came to be. I spotted an ad in my daily feed of Literary Hub. The come-on was a chance to win an iPad. In return for filling out a form to enter, the sponsor would send a copy of a book that sounded, at least, readable. Sometime later the book arrived at my doorstep. Sadly, it was not accompanied by any digital devices. As most newly arriving books do, this one sat in a TBR piles awaiting its turn. I did not get to it until December. I confess that I felt an obligation to read it, after having entered the mini-lottery. I was also confronted with a bit of a logistical bind. The weeks leading up to Christmas have been filled with much more activity than normal. The cost of this was my during-the-day reading. A book that I should have finished reading within two weeks has extended to six, and is not yet fully read. Most weeks, I have a few read books sitting about awaiting their turn in the review queue. Not with the loss of my daytime reading. I needed a quick read, in order to keep alive my string of weeks posting a new review. I hate, really, really hate missing a week, and was willing to read and review this outlier just to be able to check that box. It does not make me a bad person, just a weak, and maybe borderline corrupt one. Thus, an actual review of a book I would normally have merely marked as read.



In a post-apocalyptic world, Arden had the misfortune to be born to the toiler class. He has the double-misfortune of working for a sadistic creep straight out of central casting. On coming to after a prolonged bout of beating and further suffering, Arden wakes covered by a tarp, bloody. [Ok, who put the tarp over him, or took him down from the place where he had been dangling and taking shots from the creep? While we may presume it to be workmates, it is never specified.] He’s been secretly building a boat to escape this awful place, which makes one wonder how he has been able to get away with such a project undetected. We do learn how he makes his way from his abode, his cell, to his boat-building place, but how is the place kept under wraps? It is while he is en route to his boat on waking up after his beating that he encounters Estra.

Violent storms are all about. He sneaks Estra, a stranger to these parts, back to his cell for protection [really?] They are instantly smitten with each other [of course they are], she having recently fled a cloud-god named Ingis, who is the source of the local extreme inclemency. Seems he wants his companion back. They talk of a desire for freedom and love. [anyone? add justice for the tri-fecta?] Estra talks Arden into heading up into the clouds to get away from his toil-heavy existence on solid land.

There is a bit on the idiocy of religion as the ground-dwellers seek to appease the gods of bad weather with the sacrifice of people.

The way out is up, through straw-like tubes that descend from on high, [what causes these things to descend? Why do they descend here? Do they appear everywhere, or just in some places?] and which are filled with liquid. [A fleeting version of a space tether? A riff on a tornadic cone? Or beanstalks with a giant at the top?] Arden and Estra will be drawn up if they can get into one of these, but they have to imagine themselves lighter, which she does well and easily, but not so much Arden, who can now see through her skin.

“What’s happening?”
“You’re graduating,” she said, “from solid to vapor.”

So, just imagine yourself lighter, that’s all. As only a gazillion diet programs down here on solid land can tell you, it ain’t that easy. I was reminded of the teaching methodology of the esteemed Professor Harold Hill, and the experience of one John Carter when he wished himself from an earthly cave to the plains of Barsoom.

There is clearly a problem with the nature of the lofty existence portrayed here. When Estra tells Arden that he is graduating from solid to vapor, she is telling him that he has also changed from living person to a spirit, in a way. But if one can then return to that earthly existence, it makes of spirituality a temporary and thus much less meaningful level of existence. Even as a major transformation of the self, it becomes more of a vacation than a true metamorphosis.

So these two become vaporous, literally, which I thought was fun. Try to imagine what life might be like if you could pass through things, or have them pass through you. Might come in handy if, say, high speed objects were hurtling your way. It did seem odd that Arden and Estra [sharing first syllables with the first couple is surely a coincidence, right?] are able to sit on vaporous seats and lie in vaporous beds without passing through. Shapero offers us a look at what sex might be like in such a state.

Once aloft, an unoccupied cloud ship just happens by that they can control, which is stunningly convenient. And it turns out that clouds can eat smaller clouds, very much in a big-fish-eat-smaller-fish way. (“Every cloud has a primitive gut, Estra said. “for most, it remains dormant until they die.”) Are all clouds floating ships? With munchies? If not, what is it that makes one a potential mode of transportation and others lunch?

The romantic couple carry on, and on, and on about their love for each other, but there is a problem. Her old bf, who is in charge of a gigantic cloud-ship with a massive face on the front, Ingishead, [As this is a particularly electrical, large, and dark vehicle, we presume Ingishead to be linguistically akin to thunderhead. Of course it could be, more simply, evidence of an over-inflated ego.] keeps getting bigger and more pissed, in his relentless pursuit of Estra.

Is their love as real as it was quick to spark? Is it rock solid or as ephemeral as vapor? Are her motives pure? Are his?

The story is billed as the power of love vs the love of power. Fair enough, there is very much a conflict between those two. There is a somewhat interesting turn as the desire for safety forces one to battle, but engaging in battle, and the preliminary requirement of bulking up to prepare for battle, changes the combatant. Does need for power necessarily become a love of power?
As in order to be rid of the still growing Ingrishead, Arden and Estra need to make their ship large enough to engage in battle with him. In an interview on his site Shapero offers some his takes on the world, including this gem on the organization of human societies.

Purposeful planning only happens smoothly when we shrink our numbers back to tribal size. A tribe with elders and a chief and a visionary or two can agree on change and affect a tribe’s fate. The leaders of most modern nations cannot. And the best corporations are run as dictatorships, where one person can overrule everyone else. Large numbers of people, each with a bit of power, can’t agree on anything.

So, efficiency uber alles, I guess. In the same interview, he seems to take an opposite view.

Most of the good things in life come from small. And most of the bad things come from big. Humans like growth, but we often lose sight of the fact that big means power…most of our atrocities come from the abuse of power; and from the big and powerful, we have gotten our worst atrocities.

So, the battle between centralized and large versus “the good things” and small seems to be part of Shapero’s own personal world view contradiction, and a central source of the primary conflict in the novel.

I found that, overall, this was not one of the better books I have ever read. The characterization was thin, the leaps of faith required to accept the things posited here might require that one have been born on Krpyton. The plot stuttered, interrupted with far too many instances of Arden and/or Estra waking up. One must be engaged with the characters to sustain interest, and I found I was not engaged with either of the two primaries.

On the other side of things, I expect we have all looked up at the sky and tried to make sense of the things we have seen up there, clouds in the shape of faces, or familiar objects. This was used to great effect in the 2005 film War of the Worlds, in which alien invaders hid their craft inside clouds. Shapero clearly has had such thoughts himself. What if the things floating across the sky were ships instead of lightly organized collections of water vapor and dust? The ancients imagined lightning bolts being flung by gods from Olympus, why not from a god-like being riding a huge cloud instead?

There is a wealth of imagination on display in this book, some interesting, some derivative, some just odd. Memory cleansing is not new to fiction, but the methodology used here is novel. Cranes as an externalization of one’s thoughts was interesting. But the method shown here for maintaining journal writings just seemed bizarre.

Sometimes, I expect the author lost track of his own material. Estra reveals to Arden that their vapor form life expectancy would rival that of their life on Earth. Yet later in the book there is a line that implies that they can remain in that state forever. It’s not time we seek in eternity. It’s growth. This is in addition to it being an eye-roller of a line, which sounds like something Shapero might have used back when he was a venture capital guy in Silicon Valley. Sometimes it felt to me that things were maybe taken a step too far. There is a sex game that Arden and Estra engage in that was extremely off-putting.

There is a series of video bits for the book on his site. Each explains a piece of the book. Some are quite interesting, and their application to the novel is quite clear.

You should know some things about the author. As noted above, Shapero was a money guy in Silicon Valley and walked away from that with tens of millions of dollars, and the freedom to do with himself whatever the hell he wanted. He had it in mind to write the great American novel, and published his first try at this in 2004. He hired people to hand out copies at colleges across the country. Judging by the comments I have seen, it may be the literary equivalent of Plan 9 From Outer Space. I linked a couple of pieces about this in EXTRA STUFF. His subsequent books, distributed in like manner, received comparable responses. Shapero is also a musician, and has sought to merge his two interests, having formed companies to sell, or at least promote his material.

One part of putting reviews together is to search the web for interviews with the author. There were none to be found, other than those on his own sites. I also look for author portraits other than the ones that authors want us to use. Again, pretty much scrubbed clean. I found all this a bit disconcerting.

Bottom line is that while there is definitely creativity on display in Balcony of Fog, and an attempt to address some real underlying human issues, it was not a particularly good read. It felt unsatisfyingly thin, a vaporous book that would have benefited from a more solid foundation.

“The past isn’t love,” Estra said. “Love is the future.”

Whatever.

Review posted – January 1, 2021

Publication date – January 15, 2020

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter, Instagram, GR, and FB pages

Items of Interest
-----Idiotprogrammer - Wild Animus by Rich Shapero: a Modern Masterpiece? by Robert Nagle
-----Free books on campus are a little suspicious By Mckenzie Moore - On an earlier work by Shapero

Songs/Music
-----Rolling Stones - Get off of My Cloud

[Delaney · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think this had some deep meaning to it, but it got lost in the lack of character development, world-building, and overall explanations in everything.

On page three, he faces some kind of confrontation with a man. I do not understand their relationship or what really happened there. It was unclear and lacked a couple of sentences to make it easier to connect certain actions.

On page 10, he meets a woman who, as a male writer, is of course naked and "beautiful" even though there is a lack of why she is beautiful. How does she even look like? How does Arden, the main character even look like? WTF is happening?

By page 23 they bone. Not just once, they bone twice. And then he describes her breasts to be like "driftwood." Afterwards, they plan to escape together from this random area Arden lives at because they LUVV each other.

And this is all happened in chapter one.



I am not sure if Rich Shapero intended to be humorous, but I found how bad it was to be comedic. Like: wow, clouds eating other clouds and we are cloud people now by swimming upwards to the sky. Instead of going after the villain, who is Estra's ex, we are just going to write poems with our fingers and they'll turn into cranes, and when we have sex, our bodies LITERALLY become one because, yeah, boning! And now we are going to eat each other and then throw it up from our bodies and call it this "Cannibal game." This game is actually non-sexual, but also WTF.

It was a trip on acid through this entire novel. There are random words that are capitalized and I am not sure why they are. And just the overall lack of explanations. Where am I? How do the characters look like? Everything was so surface level, I felt like I was just reading words, instead of delving into a story, the entire time.

Also, the main villain is this Ingis/Ingishead guy who is a cloud god? Sky god? Not sure. But Shapero creates this weird and toxic love triangle between Ingis, Estra, and Arden. And it's to illustrate how love of power is dangerous and power of love too. But it's poorly explained and executed so it didn't have the impact it was supposed to have with me.

Welp, it gave me a good laugh, but I think I need to go find a good read now.

[Pandora Clairmond · Rating 1 out of 5]

First of all, I received TWO copies of this book at my home address around July 16th from the publisher. I DIDN'T ask for them. I asked on my Instagram story to NOT be sent more and today I received THREE more copies. I contacted the publisher via Instagram and complained. Basically, they accused me of lying and insisted the copies were prizes for some giveaway that I've "entered." I know for a fact that this a lie because there is no way anyone in my household entered the giveaway. The first time we heard of the book, the author, or the publisher was when the first two copies arrived. The company has also blocked me on Instagram for complaining. After doing some research, I have discovered another Goodsread review complaining about a similar incident.

Despite all of this, I still gave the book a chance and tried to read it. However, I couldn't make it past the first few pages. I couldn't get into the book because it bores me to death and it doesn't make any sense. It's completely unusual that I wasn't able to read the whole book because I am an avid reader and I enjoy reading pretty much anything. There's very little I won't read. Normally I would chalk it up to a one time thing and try other books by the author, but I do not appreciate being sent so many unsolicited copies. To Too Far Media: STOP sending me copies please. I've already asked you twice. Please remove me from whatever mailing list you've placed me on.

[Jerusha · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was sent to my home address from the publisher with out my consent to get my address. I previously read and reviewed a book of this guy who is disgusting and now he has found my address and sent more crap. My address is PRIVATE information and this not appreciated. I will never read this author again.

[Lor · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book was given to me for free by a random man peddling a cart full of them, and i still paid too much. rich shapero owes me money.

by the way, he's a millionare who started his own publishing company so he could actually publish his books (what other publishing house would take them?), and he hands them out on college campuses for free because he's so desperate for people to read them.

a short list of the worst things i discovered while reading because yes, i unfortunately read the entire trash heap:
- several typos
- randomly switching perspectives with no warning throughout one chapter and never again
- some sentences were nearly incomprehensible with all his made-up lingo that is never elaborated upon in the slightest
- dialogue that reads like early-2010's cleverbot
- prose that is so uppity and full of itself that you could just tell the author jerks off to his own typewriter. some passages were so empty and boring i dissociated
- instalove that puts YA novels to shame. grown men clown on the YA books that have their 16-year-old protagonists ready to die for each other after 3 days (standard teen bullshit, let's be real), but these grown adults were proclaiming their love within an hour of meeting
- female love interest is introduced naked. her tiddies are compared to driftwood
- gratuitous references to said driftwood-tiddies
- abused woman's trauma is written so incredibly poorly i'm beginning to wonder if this man has ever talked to a woman before
- manic pixie dream girl for daysss
- magical memory-wiping tub that simultaneously fixes all their problems and doesn't work at all???
- abuse victim reenacts her trauma with the main character, who quite literally gets off on it
- gratuitous horniness for boats
- surprise vore
- wanna know the only thing worse than the woman sacrificing herself to further the man's arc? WHEN THE MAN KILLS HER TO FURTHER HIS ARC AND IS MORE UPSET THAT SHE CAN'T BE HIS MPDG ANYMORE THAN THE FACT THAT HE MURDERED HER

you know what would have been so cool? a dystopian novel set in a world of perpetual, torrential storms about how trauma can manifest itself after escaping an abusive situation and how power can corrupt someone beyond the point of recognition. guess what we didn't get? a novel that successfully creates this world and explores these concepts with respect, grace, and nuance.

tl;dr: suck my dick, richard. go live out your retirement on a yacht you're weirdly attracted to and stop pushing your shitty books on unsuspecting college kids.

i'm calling my therapist

[Carrie (brightbeautifulthings) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Arden’s world is a post-nuclear dystopia where he’s always been a slave. When a mysterious woman appears from the sky, he’s determined to help her. In return, she helps him, and they both escape to a cloud world where they’re free to fall in love. However, the cloud world is ruled over by Ingis, a god-like man and Estra’s former lover. To ensure their freedom, Arden may have to become the thing he hates the most. I recieved a free copy from Book Riot. Trigger warnings: character death, slavery, torture, violence, violence against women, explosions.

I usually reserve my one-star ratings for books that are actively offensive as well as bad, but I’m not sure I cared about what happened in this book enough to be offended by it. It is very male-centric though, and its lone female character reads like Shapero has never met a human woman in his life. Its misogyny is kind of deceptive, since at first I thought I was reading some insta-lovey romance (seriously, you met your True Love five minutes ago) disguised as a weird fantasy novel, but nope. The true purpose of this story is testosterone-fueled male dominance and female helplessness, with a grand finale of men beating their chests and wailing over their lost loves and innocence and whatnot. (I’m dramatizing for effect, but you get the idea.)

The world-building is strange, so strange that I’ve never encountered anything like it–and fervently hope to never again, but that’s another issue. The earthly dystopian premise turns out to be totally irrelevant, since all of the novel’s action takes place in the cloud world where humans are immaterial and can captain ships and create storms with their emotions and willpower, apparently. I wasn’t very interested in it, and most of its absurd quirks are never explained to any satisfaction. Why is there a memory-wiping “vat” in the sky? We never find out. The characters are flat caricatures of human angst, and while Arden does have a discernible character arc, it’s… way questionable in its message. Still mad this was a review book that I felt compelled to finish.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

[Debbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I never won this book from Goodreads, the author sent me this book and said I had won it. I did try to read it, the first couple of chapters I was pulled in by the characters and the story. But after that I was totally confused about what was going on. I gave this book two stars for trying. The author needs to be more honest especially who he sends his books too. Don't tell me I won when I didn't, that lie will not get you a honest review. 😒

[Quirkyreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book through a giveaway sponsored by TooFar Media.

I rather enjoyed this one, the reason being it reminded me of “A Voyage to Arcturus” by David Lindsay. Try giving that story a go before reading “Balcony of Fog”. It can change your perspective of the story.

So don’t write the story off yet if you can’t get into it. Give it a break and try coming back to it later.

[Igenlode Wordsmith · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book wasn't quite as bad as initially I thought it was going to be, in that it did eventually pick up some kind of interesting plot theme — the risks of seeking to become ruthless in order to defeat ruthlessness. The actual ending was unexpected and I didn't find it particularly dramatically satisfactory, but it is at least less of a cliché than one might have predicted.

Unfortunately the central love affair is arbitrary and deeply unconvincing, the science-fiction setting at the start is poorly established, the violence is contrived just to make the protagonist look good (if they can winch in Arden by his safety harness, why don't they simply winch in Neely?), and the whole thing is clumsily and inexpertly written and full of purple prose. It really doesn't help that the author is using all these nautical metaphors but appears to have no practical knowledge of boats (hint: 'sheets' are ropes, not sails, a sailing ship doesn't have a raised bridge in the centre, and the idea of attempting to caulk the seams of a newly-built boat — even above the waterline — while it's afloat is not going to work).

You really don't want to describe your hero as "finning his legs and flexing his trunk" unless he actually is an elephant (and/or a mermaid). "Wind rusked the billows" — it chewed on them toothlessly? "He put his arms around her, and as they pressed together her face lost its border. The rays of her iris were sage-coloured spokes, and the hub was a fathomless pupil". "As the contact was made, a fresh hurl of rain rapped against the window". "The love she poured into you, like cream down the throat of a white orchid" - seriously? Pouring milk products into flowers is supposed to be an appealing mental image? "Long pink clouds lay side by side like fish steaks on a blue platter"?
"He curled there, muttering to himself, full sentences at first, then phrases and fragments, losing connectives to the cold. People and objects went next, along with any hint of future or past; until his rambling was nothing but a stream of rhymes ending in I-N-G. ... He crossed the borderline of dream, and continued reeling off gerunds in his sleep."

Even when it's not ludicrous, the prose is seriously overwritten: "A grooved arcus roiled at the base of Ingishead's neck, pale scuds churning on either side. ... The corded neck buckled, and the storm's face descended, its chrome beak gleaming, brow trenched with a murderous rage.". I was astonished to find multiple books by the same author listed in the credits, because this reads like an amateur's unedited first draft; there are gleams of potential in there, but I find it hard to imagine any publisher's reader getting beyond the first scene. To be honest, if I'd picked it off the shelves of a library, looking for reading material at random, I'd have put it back; if I'd found it published as fanfiction on the Internet I'd have bailed out before the end of the opening chapter. The only reason I read grimly through to the end was because it was given to me by a friend as a book festival freebie (and, looking at other comments on Goodreads, I'm wondering if anyone has ever purchased a copy at all, or if all the books out there are unsolicited promotional material).

Because of the nonstandard format, I can't even give this away — no charity shop would take a flip-book the size of a pocket diary. So it will have to go into the bin: the only book I think I've ever done that to. Maybe it works better as "an immersive story experience on tablets and phones", but here it just reads like self-published, self-indulgent dreck.

[Patricia (Irishcharmer) Yarian · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a flipping waste! Too bad there's no half stars....no wait...I really am torn with even "awarding"a single star!! And I can truly say I most certainly gave it an honest try to find a redeeming factor in this book. Did I say book? Well hell, it is a hard cover.....would I pay for something like this? Oh hell no, not in this lifetime or any time!!
Is it worth telling , or hinting, you'd maybe like to read this? Nah....not worth your time!
So go grab a good cup of java juice (or tea) get another book off your TBR pile/shelf, settle in for a good read and leave this piece of crap in the "to be donated" box. (Not worth your time) --P/ (and I thought this would be a good finish for my challenge....well I DID meet my challenge 😀👍😁 (YAY) too bad it was such a loser!)--- 💖💝 happy New Year everyone!!

[Kay Stephenson]

I also received a copy of this in the mail but I did not enter a contest for it. I am upset that the publisher was able to get my address from Goodreads (or their parent company Amazon). I can see that others have also complained about this. Please take the time to write to Goodreads and complain so they will take this security issue seriously. They need to contact the publisher and find out where/how they got our addresses.

[Brennan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was just....a whole bad experience.

[Allison Krulik · Rating 1 out of 5]

Weird, just weird. I didn't actually finish the book because I wasn't all that interested and honestly just confused half the time because of all the wordiness.

[Cat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won a copy of this book through Goodreads. It pains me to be honest, but that's what we promise in the deal. This is not my type of book. It dwells in fantasy, post-apocalyptic times, savagery, mystics, power in what we normally consider uncontrollable weather patterns. The writing is okay, the plot not easy to follow, and there's no grand ending thought or impression to ponder. I'm so sorry to give this a 2-star rating; it just wasn't for me.

[Elyse]

People need to read the fine print!

I'm just laughing at all of the 1-star reviews from idiots who don't read the giveaway that they are entering!! They see "WIN AN iPAD" and then enter their address and email address. Book Riot has been putting on an iPad giveaway for a few months now and EVERY entry wins you a free book. EVERY ENTRY. I just entered a 4th time. I have not won an iPad yet but I want to so I will keep entering (the giveaway ends and they put on another one, it's not multiple entries for the same one, you cannot enter multiple times with the same email address).

If you would like to enter the current giveaway and get the free book: https://bookriot.com/giveaways/sign-u...

[Erin]

Giveaway Win???Kind of?

[Emily Perkovich · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book from a Goodreads giveaway. I didn’t hate it, but I am glad I didn’t pay for it. There is little to no character development which makes it difficult to keep up with dialogue and character purpose. The first 50 pages of storyline are so rushed that I had no idea what/why things were going on, and then I was just suddenly expected to believe that two characters, whose only real distinguishing factor is their names, have now fallen in love and are running away together. A good portion of the middle of the book was descriptions of what sailing through the sky was like, but there was rarely dialogue or action to create progress. It felt less like world building and more like someone trying to tell me a story quickly before they run out of time and ending up repeating themself because they feel nervous and rushed. My biggest issue is that even with the descriptors I couldn’t picture much of anything. For large chunks of the book, I completely zoned out, and just had a vague idea of what had just happened. The idea behind the book seemed solid, but the execution was off and not polished.

[Barb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book from the Goodreads Giveaway program, and I thank the publisher for sending me a copy. I wish I could provide a favorable review, but I agreed to an honest one and that’s what I’m giving.

I found this book to be almost unreadable. The turgid prose and under-developed fantasy world were off putting from the start. The characters were lifeless and limp, with dialogue that bored me to tears. I found the premise, which sounded intriguing in the synopsis, to be poorly presented and puerile. The two main characters meet, immediately become lovers but have no deep connection.

I wasn’t able to finish the book, bailing out at around the halfway point. It was just too painful to continue. Definitely not my style.


I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Goodreads Giveaways.

[Chris Hughes · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's not often I even think about not finishing a book once I start, but I came very close to doing just that with this one. The plot was very thin, very little character development, and the descriptions of the world were way too flowery and added little to understanding what was going on. The whole thing was very confusing. The ending was very abrupt & disappointing. I first thought this would be some sort of post-apocalyptic science fiction, but it turned into a weird fantasy about life in the clouds. This is probably one of the worst books I've read in a long time - I reserve 1 star for books I can't finish, but this is barely 2 stars.
NOTE: I was sent this book by the publisher. I've got no idea why.

[Desiree Reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating at 2 stars for "it was okay", which accurately represents how I felt about this book. I finished it, and I liked parts of it, but I can't say that I enjoyed the story enough to rate it 3 for "liked it".

The book started out with a sci fi-like scene in a dystopian future, which seemed like a good premise. Then Estra mysteriously shows up, literally out of the blue, and our main character Arden takes her in and hides her, at high risk to himself. All of this is rather surprising, as he's just met this woman and knows nothing about her at all.

Then the story veers into something more like a many times handed down fairy tale as Arden and Estra leave America to live in the clouds and have to hide from Estra's former lover or perhaps both lose their lives.

In short, the book gives the impression of something from a high school creative writing course: Strong on imagery and feeling, but short on actual logic. Perhaps that is the point?

As a side note, I think the novel would be better marketed with a fantasy-type cover evoking a fairy tale. As it stands, the light bulb for electricity, and the clouds within, while accurate to parts of the story, confuse the reader who would likely be expecting more science fiction based on this image.

A big thank you to Rich Shapero and Book Riot for the kindness of providing me with a complimentary copy of Balcony of Fog.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

One star

This book was...weird? I have no problem with the genre, but the subject matter almost didn't make sense at times. All the characters had the exact same voice to the point of almost not being able to tell who is speaking at times. I couldn't finish this book because I had zero interest in the characters. I didn't care about them at all. Its rare enough for me to dnf that I was quite disappointed. I can't rate something I couldn't even get through higher than one star.

I felt the author was trying too hard to be deep/meaningful?

Also, I noticed that so many people seem to have gotten this book unsolicited, which is quite weird. There were also hundreds of books given away which also seems odd. When I entered the giveaway, I hadn't realized just how many books were being sent for free.

*I did receive this book as part of a giveaway but that in no way impacted the review.*

[Courtney Lake · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book as part of the Goodreads giveaways.

This was a beautifully written story, but it was all flash and no substance really.

The imagery was gorgeous, I loved the descriptions of the cloud realm and the cloud ships. It was magical and breathtaking. I would have loved to see that world actually explored.

But the plot.... It is clearly an allegory for life and chock full of symbolic meaning. But that's all. I didn't really get invested in the story once they reached the clouds. At first I was really into it, when the overseers burned Ardens boat and they were escaping to the clouds I was really excited. But once they got there it went "Plllpth"

To be frank, it struck me as the kind of story that high school English teachers would have you read and do projects and write journals and do dissections on the symbology and 'meaning' behind.

Estra is the most boring character I have read in a while. She is nothing but desire and to serve as an object for Arden to moon over and to teach him how he 'should' be. But she seems to recognize that about herself and hates it. So at least there is that.

Arden is also boring, but as the narrator you get to see his emotions and his thoughts throughout the story. So he has that depth to him. I feel bad for him, because he had such a strong start of a story and I really was rooting for him to "win". But even though he won the battle, he absolutely lost the war.

[Neva Womack · Rating 1 out of 5]

I went into reading this book with an open mind. But the further I got, the more I disliked this book. It was written (just in my opinion) while the author was in a LSD fog. I realize it was supposed to be based in a post nuclear world, but it was just too far out there for me.

[Vernon Luckert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Review is of a free copy. My review of this book will be almost the same as my review of this authors book "The Hope We Seek". Neither book is interesting, entertaining or well written. The author may have a good idea of what is in his head, but he does not have the necessary skill to convey his ideas to others via the printed word.

[Kelli Santistevan · Rating 3 out of 5]

What kind of perspective might we need to recognize, and accept, our irreconcilable desires for harmony and power? In a storm-ravaged corner of post-nuclear America, Arden is left for dead after a brutal beating from his superior. On waking, he encounters Estra, a lost woman of mysterious origin, whom he smuggles into his cell. Desperate, and now in love, the two resolve to escape to the place from which Estra has come—the cloud realm.

I won this book from an iPad giveaway I entered on Book Riot. I didn’t win an iPad but I received this book just for entering the giveaway. I decided to read this book on the TooFar Media app instead because of the interactive features that the app provides for the book. I liked the videos and the bonus music track that was included in the book. I wanted to read this book because it sounded interesting to me and I liked the interactive elements of the book but I was so confused about what was going on in the book. This book was so weird and it didn’t make any sense to me. Would I recommend this book? No. It’s not that good but if you like books that are weird and don’t make any sense then this is the perfect book for you.

[Kira Simion]

I won a copy of this book through a giveaway online. Thank you for sending it to me and writing it, Rich. I will review it honestly with a family member as I received two copies as part of the giveaway. So one for me and another.

[Suzy Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very unusual story, set in a Post-Apocalyptic Universe, which asks questions about love, desire, greed, power, civilization and savagery.

A toiler named Arden, who mends sluices, is imprisoned in a tribal camp. This camp has a kind of sacrificial temple, and cells where workers are kept. Arden secretly builds a boat, and hides it. He plans to escape. He has to change his plan when the officials discover it.

A woman named Estra appears in the scrub.

She is a cloud person, and together they run away, rising on a cloud-boat into the sky. Is the sky the home of souls, and is this boat like the sky-boat of the ancient Egyptians? Perhaps not. The sky may be a place for dreamers and lost souls, but the visceral world below is mirrored in the heavens. Laws of power find their echo, except for the fact there are no tribal laws, only a kind of overlord of the skies. It emerges that Estra knew this overlord, Ingis before. The dynamics of conflict and turbulence are depicted in meteorological metaphor. The two rivals wanting to conquer Estra and devour her, fight to become bigger and bigger, more and more powerful. Only one can be the Demi-God, ruling the sky realm.

The world-building in this book is the product of a huge imagination. The story is a myth, a kind of political allegory, and even, a surrealist painting, a trip that at times feels hallucinogenic. In places, the writing is sensuous, when love and its illusions is portrayed as a kind of cannibalism. There is pathos in the tale; perhaps love is the great deceiver, and it is our fate to meet our God alone.

Rich in metaphor, complex in its psychological constructs, this book asks questions that are challenging; makes us see the human condition with a clearer vision.

Thanks to the publishers for providing me with a hardback of this book, which I decided to review.

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

What did I just read?

Unlike most of the reviewers, I did finish the book in its entirety, but it certainly did not help me understand.....anything really about this book. There is one review on here that was obviously written by the author, and honestly it explained the book better than the book itself.

Now, if you love bad books, this one is perfect for you. All of the author's attempts to be serious or meaningful had me laughing because of how bad it was. I'm kinda upset I didn't get 3 copies of the book like some people did because I want to use the book as a White Elephant gift for Christmas.

If you wish to read actual good content, this book is not for you. However, if you want to read something so bad its funny, I would definitely recommend this.

[Arlene]

Could not get into it. It was like it should have been book 2 or 3 of a series. And then I got
another copy in the mail. It was bad enough I didn't order it in the first place. Now I have
2 I have to get rid of.

[Carolyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disclosure: This book was received as a promotional giveaway via Goodreads.

Perhaps I wasn't in the right frame of mind but no matter how hard I tried I wasn't able to connect with the characters or the story. Maybe I'll come back to it in the future but as of today I didn't enjoy it.