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Quiver
Book by Gehlert, Jason
288 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2005
About the author
Jason Gehlert
53 books13 followersI am a 31 year old author from Poughkeepsie, NY and I write horror and sci-fi. I currently have three books out entitled Quiver, a werewolf trilogy. I also have several other works coming out the next three years as well. My publisher is a small press out in California, and I frequently do book tours and signings across the NY Hudson Valley area."
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February 6, 2009Quiver by Jason Gehlert
Review by Nickolas Cook
06/12/06
Oh, boy...this is one of those moments when you hate being an honest reviewer, because you know it ain't gonna be pretty.
Jason Gehlert's QUIVER is a mess.
The grammar is poor, the writing is substandard, and the dialogue is, at best, laughable. What this book needed was an editor, and some time for the author to learn his craft, and some basic grammar and punctuation rules.
None of that happened in QUIVER.
Instead, we're given such dialogue as: "Well, ever since Grant, the Doctor, and Stuart were engulfed in the explosion, I was appointed Sheriff." Hank answered back as his fingers tightly clasped around each other in an angry motion.
Any writer worth his salt could pick out about half a dozen things wrong with this sentence. Some of them small, stylistic even, and maybe not too noticeable to someone who doesn't make a living with words, but too many basic rules being flung to the self publishing winds. In this profession, you're only as good as your last book. Readers remember. And they rarely forgive bad writing.
But to be fair, the story isn't the worst thing I've read. You can see an honest attempt at a decent take on the werewolf sub-genre. There are some scenes that have a tiny spark of originality. But there are far too many sloppily written that plopped to the page as if they'd been shate from the arse of a Z-grade horror film--unoriginal, clichéd, predictable scenes.
Gehlert even commits the most amateurish of writers' crimes: He puts himself in the story as a news announcer.
The sudden transitional shifts from one character to another come with no warning, and it's jarring. Enough to make you go back and re-read to make sure you didn't miss a page or paragraph.
There are so many missing commas and various punctuations that I gave up trying to count them.
There are tons of misspelled words. Simple ones, too.
There and their; then and than; too and to...yikes.
The adverbs fly so wild and free in QUIVER that you have to duck to keep them out of your eye.
Helpful rule for writing: Show, don't tell.
Please.
Add them up and it screams AMATEUR, SELF-PUBLISHED MESS!!!
All those complaints aside, the story suffers from more than just cosmetic problems. Gehlert has simply too many characters doing too little to motivate the story. The opening alone is fraught with too much background thrown in as Prologue (yet another rank amateur move; this is a ploy so overused in horror that it should be outlawed for the sake of intelligent readers), and then kills off what seems to be the main character. We then move to Grant, now the Sheriff, who is the surviving son of the Sheriff from the tiresome prologue. Again we're led to think this is the main character because we're given the standard horror fiction relationship with a new girlfriend after his wife's death (oh, by the way the dead wife makes an appearance for no other reason than to tell Grant it's okay to pursue his new flame), and her son- who just happens to be a bit psychic to boot. Grant confronts a slimy reporter, chains him to a bench and allows him to be attacked by a werewolf. But, hey, don't feel too bad for the bitten reporter because Grant is suddenly killed by the, now, lycanthropic reporter who is in the hospital after being attacked by another werewolf. And then a doctor (or is it Doctor?) shows up and he schemes to exploit the reporter werewolf, and you're probably wondering why I don't use their names. Because at this point it doesn't matter, they all die in an explosion.
Egads!
No, we're not done yet.
Then we shift POVs yet again to several main characters, some of which live and most of which do nothing but move around in tight little clichéd circles of non-activity and spout way too much extraneous dialogue.
The new magic word for today, class, is EXPOSITION.
Learn it. Love it. Live it.
Exposition should never be a glaringly obvious slap in the face. Unfortunately, Gelhert hasn't yet learned the fine art of making it work for the story. His attempts at explanation come off sounding like a badly dubbed Tokyo film.
It's frustrating, really. Because I can actually see there might be a writer worth reading somewhere buried beneath this mess. My suggestion to Gehlert is to seriously buckle down and learn the basics. Read a heck of a lot more books outside the genre. What you've got here is a puerile regurgitation of badly written 80s horror fiction.
Bottom line: Until Gelhert learns his craft, and the basic rules of grammar and punctuation, the writing isn't worth the time or money.
--Nickolas Cook.
Review by Nickolas Cook
06/12/06
Oh, boy...this is one of those moments when you hate being an honest reviewer, because you know it ain't gonna be pretty.
Jason Gehlert's QUIVER is a mess.
The grammar is poor, the writing is substandard, and the dialogue is, at best, laughable. What this book needed was an editor, and some time for the author to learn his craft, and some basic grammar and punctuation rules.
None of that happened in QUIVER.
Instead, we're given such dialogue as: "Well, ever since Grant, the Doctor, and Stuart were engulfed in the explosion, I was appointed Sheriff." Hank answered back as his fingers tightly clasped around each other in an angry motion.
Any writer worth his salt could pick out about half a dozen things wrong with this sentence. Some of them small, stylistic even, and maybe not too noticeable to someone who doesn't make a living with words, but too many basic rules being flung to the self publishing winds. In this profession, you're only as good as your last book. Readers remember. And they rarely forgive bad writing.
But to be fair, the story isn't the worst thing I've read. You can see an honest attempt at a decent take on the werewolf sub-genre. There are some scenes that have a tiny spark of originality. But there are far too many sloppily written that plopped to the page as if they'd been shate from the arse of a Z-grade horror film--unoriginal, clichéd, predictable scenes.
Gehlert even commits the most amateurish of writers' crimes: He puts himself in the story as a news announcer.
The sudden transitional shifts from one character to another come with no warning, and it's jarring. Enough to make you go back and re-read to make sure you didn't miss a page or paragraph.
There are so many missing commas and various punctuations that I gave up trying to count them.
There are tons of misspelled words. Simple ones, too.
There and their; then and than; too and to...yikes.
The adverbs fly so wild and free in QUIVER that you have to duck to keep them out of your eye.
Helpful rule for writing: Show, don't tell.
Please.
Add them up and it screams AMATEUR, SELF-PUBLISHED MESS!!!
All those complaints aside, the story suffers from more than just cosmetic problems. Gehlert has simply too many characters doing too little to motivate the story. The opening alone is fraught with too much background thrown in as Prologue (yet another rank amateur move; this is a ploy so overused in horror that it should be outlawed for the sake of intelligent readers), and then kills off what seems to be the main character. We then move to Grant, now the Sheriff, who is the surviving son of the Sheriff from the tiresome prologue. Again we're led to think this is the main character because we're given the standard horror fiction relationship with a new girlfriend after his wife's death (oh, by the way the dead wife makes an appearance for no other reason than to tell Grant it's okay to pursue his new flame), and her son- who just happens to be a bit psychic to boot. Grant confronts a slimy reporter, chains him to a bench and allows him to be attacked by a werewolf. But, hey, don't feel too bad for the bitten reporter because Grant is suddenly killed by the, now, lycanthropic reporter who is in the hospital after being attacked by another werewolf. And then a doctor (or is it Doctor?) shows up and he schemes to exploit the reporter werewolf, and you're probably wondering why I don't use their names. Because at this point it doesn't matter, they all die in an explosion.
Egads!
No, we're not done yet.
Then we shift POVs yet again to several main characters, some of which live and most of which do nothing but move around in tight little clichéd circles of non-activity and spout way too much extraneous dialogue.
The new magic word for today, class, is EXPOSITION.
Learn it. Love it. Live it.
Exposition should never be a glaringly obvious slap in the face. Unfortunately, Gelhert hasn't yet learned the fine art of making it work for the story. His attempts at explanation come off sounding like a badly dubbed Tokyo film.
It's frustrating, really. Because I can actually see there might be a writer worth reading somewhere buried beneath this mess. My suggestion to Gehlert is to seriously buckle down and learn the basics. Read a heck of a lot more books outside the genre. What you've got here is a puerile regurgitation of badly written 80s horror fiction.
Bottom line: Until Gelhert learns his craft, and the basic rules of grammar and punctuation, the writing isn't worth the time or money.
--Nickolas Cook.
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