BookReview: The Blaze Ignites

A little while ago, I posted a review on "Miles of Daisyland."
I gave it four stars out of five. But then, as I back-tracked my previous reviews, I found a most disturbing truth: every review I ever did on my blog are four star reviews..!

I've never thought myself an all pad-on-the-back-hallelujah kind of critic and to discover this fact was rather unsettling.

Then, as I thought about it, I suddenly realized why all my reviews have been positive:
#1: I tend to stop reading, when a book doesn't deliver
#2: I find it both dishonest and disrespectful to post a review on a book I haven't read to the last word.

The result has been that only books that deliver something valuable have found their way to a review on the blog.

This must change, if anyone is to take my reviews seriously.
That's why I've made an effort to grab myself by the neck and fight my way through "The Blaze Ignites."

By now you must have guessed my review of this book isn't exactly a five star review. After all, you lot are bright or you wouldn't be reading my blog, would you?

Ready for the review? Here we go:

The Blaze Ignites
by Nichelle Rae (ISBN: 9780988336018)
Published March 18, 2013 through Smashwords.com

The Story:
Azrel carries the burden of being the physical shell of "The White Warrior," created by the light gods as an instrument to fight back evil in the world.
The White Warrior has been lying dormant for a long time, but as the evil Hathum rises to begin The Second Shadow, it´s up to Azrel and The White Warrior to save the world.

My review:
I´ve had some serious issues with this book.
First and foremost, some of the characters seem unrealistic. The majority of the male characters practically juice themselves in emotional doubts that usually work better with female characters. Rabryn, Azrel´s younger brother, who is one of her main protectors and Ortheldo, who has been like a surrogate father to Azrel since her own father´s death, spend the major part of their inner dialogue on rantings about not being good enough and doubting their every move. Men do have feelings and doubts, but we´re not even close to being as complicated as women. (Slap me on the wrist, if you want...)

Secondly, this book has roughly 123,000 words - to tell this story, 90,000 should suffice.
Usually you would like the story to build up gradually, preparing you for what is coming, extending the excitement and then, BANG! the action gives you what you´ve been waiting for.
In this book, the story is built up gradually, preparing you for what is coming, extending the excitement and then... the author seems to think you need a break and a kitkat - because those are the times when she decides to either give you a recap of previous events, a flash back to a characters history or maybe present you with yet another character´s inner dialogue filled with sobbing and crying and doubting themselves or their friends... And when the action finally starts, you´re just not into it anymore...

However, the plot, the story and the inner life of the characters all have potential and even with these issues, the book is readable and the story makes sense.

I give it two stars out of five.

Where to get it:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/296916

Please feel free to comment on my review weither you agree or not!

Newly Published: Skrymers Glove

Newly Published Science Fiction and Norse Mythology blend!

Note: A special offer for you at the buttom of the post!

Skrymers Glove

War in the Milky Way!Two races, Aseir and Vanes, have allied against the brutal Yetten forces bent on dominating the entire galaxy. During experimentation with the Fyrkat device on planet Earth, two human children, Tjalfe and Roeskva, are abducted by the Yetten and now it´s up to Thor, Loki, Balder, Freya and Sif to rescue them. Unfortunately there is a traitor among them and evidence does point to Loki, Thor´s best friend and Thor struggles with the questions burning inside: could Loki really be the traitor or is something else going on? And will they succeed in saving the children´s lives?

Why I wrote the story:
I´m a big fan of Science Fiction and one of my favorite shows is "Star Gate" including all of its spin-offs (and yes, that includes the SGU-series, which I found to be much more of a brainy series than than the others)

What I particularly like about these series is the way they integrate mythology from all parts of the world: Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology and Norse mythology. The very idea that all of these mythologies originate from visits on planet Earth from various races of the universe is both intriguing and intertextual consistent.

However, as I watched the ongoing stories of these series, I found it increasingly annoying that the Norse Mythology was so badly presented, as in 'flawed.'

For one thing, Thor and co. are called 'Asgards,' which is a funny way (not funny as in 'rofl,' but funny as in 'hmmm... strange...') of using the name of their home as a noun. The correct name of the Norse gods is 'Aser' in Danish (plural) and in English it would be 'Aseir'

But even worse, Loki is depicted as a renegade Aseir, when in fact he´s a renegade Yetten, who has joined the Aseir and more often than not is on the Aseir side fighting against the Yetten.

I wanted to write a story, where these things were corrected and began writing the story "The Legend of Hjarne´s Island," but after some time I got stuck as I began feeling that there was a story before "Legend."

Then one day, when I was surfing the internet and watching Youtube-videos, I stumbled on this video made by Hauke Vagt, a German illustrator and his brother (who´s name I am sorry to admit I don´t know)

The video tells the story of a Swedish diving team, who found a strange object in the Baltic Sea in 2011 and last year they went back to investigate further. Hauke Vagt has produced this video suggesting that maybe the anomaly was an ancient space ship crashing millenia ago.

I was intrigued at this idea and found it to fit very well with my upcoming novel and decided to integrate it in my story.

So, there you have it: Skrymers Glove is the story about how Tjalfe and his sister, Roeskva, were abducted by Yetten aliens, (maybe) rescued by Thor, Sif, Freya, Baldur and Loki and their story started the Norse Mythology!

Skrymers Glove is available at:

Kindle only:
Amazon - UK
Amazon - US
Amazon - DE
Amazon - FR
Amazon - ES
Amazon - IT
Amazon - JP
Amazon - CA
Amazon - BR

Various formats, including Kindle, PDF and EPUB (readable on most devices)
Smashwords - all countries

A gift for you!
If you want the book at half price, there´s a 'new publishing discount' right now, which means that you can get the book for only $2.50! All you have to do is go to Smashwords.com and use this discount code: CL97Z

Enjoy the book! And if you´d like to review it, I´ll really be looking forward to it!

BookReview: Miles of Daisyland

Miles of Daisyland

by Erik Ga Bean May 1st, 2013 - Word count: 10,330 - ISBN: 9781301314393

The story:

Jane, Rod and Freddie plan to rewrite their own history using a home made time machine sometime in the 22nd century. The plan is to visit Jane´s great grandfather, Adrian, and convince him to help them by giving him the numbers to win 1261st national lottery draw in 2008. Will our three friends succeed in making the changes in the course of time, keeping the temporal police from finding out?

My review:

One of the things I appreciate in a book is when the dialogue is authentic and moves on the story. If the dialogue doesn´t catch me, I´m most likely to stop reading after the first couple of lines. "Miles of Daisyland" doesn´t have good dialogue. In fact, it doesn´t have any kind of dialogue what so ever. But, as they say: rules are there to be broken. Sometimes braking a ground rule in writing can make the most impressive effects emerge and with "Miles of Daisyland" this is the case. The book actually gets better without dialogue, because the author seems to use this as a trick to get me as a reader, to consume the story in a very different way than I´m used to. Instead of reading the story as a book, his writing style refers me to sit in the chair beside my grandpa, who is going to tell me the story of when he and his friends from school tried to rewrite their own history. And for all purposes, it works like a charm. I really feel like I´m listening to someone telling me a story in which the storyteller has himself played a part. I was done reading reading the story in less than an hour and I both smiled, shook my head and wondered about the metha physics in time travel. Not many books can do that. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars...

Where you can get it:

"Miles of Daisyland" is available at the price of $0.99 here

New Science Fiction underway - wanna help?

Do you love Science Fiction?
Do you love Norse Mythology?

If so, maybe you will find the idea of a blend between them quite intriguing.

This is exactly the plot of my Science Fiction Novel, "Skrymer´s Glove," which was published in Danish on the 17th of October last year. Right now, I´m struggling with a translation and will hopefully have the book ready for publishing in English within the next few months.

But, alas... I have come to realize I need help. Even though my English is certainly above average, there are issues with grammar and sentence structure, I have trouble overcoming.

This is where you might come in.

I´m in search for people, who love Science Fiction (or books in general) and want to help me edit the book for grammar, spelling and the flow of the text. Anyone participating will of course receive a free copy of the finished eBook (I´m working to find a solution, so that you can get a hard copy, but no promises there...)

This is how it works:

1. Write a comment in the field below or send me an email to: perholbo@gmail.com
2. You will then receive a copy of the draft in RTF, which is a standard format that can be opened by almost every editing programme such as word, openoffice and iPages
3. Read the draft and insert your comments as you see fit. If you´re one of those people who find grammar to be the most important thing in the world, focus on grammar. If your main competence is in the field of making a text flow, focus on text flow. If you prefer doing body count, please do that. Whatever makes you tick. As long as you comment on the text, so that I have something to work with.
4. When you´re ready, send the RTF back to me using the before mentioned email. I prefer receiving all comments integrated into an RTF-file, but if you have trouble saving the file as RTF, we´ll work out that problem as well.
5. I will then read through all your comments and based on them I will edit the book and send it to all of you, again as an RTF-file.
6. If after reading the edited file, you still have comments, please feel free to do so, but this is not an obligation.
7. Based on the second set of comments (if there are any) I will re-edit the book and publish it through Smashwords.com, Amazon.com and other channels and you will receive a discount code to obtain your full and freely readable copy of the book in your preferred format, that being any of the formats listed here.

Hoping to see you participate,
Regards, Per Holbo