Category Archives: Reviews

Book review: Concrete Underground by Moxie Mezcal

19 Sunday Jun 2011

Posted by in 'Show me the free' challenge, Free reads, Indie writing, Reviews, Writers

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Concrete Underground

Concrete Underground by Moxie Mezcal

It’s been a while since I’ve done a book review on here. Not because I haven’t been reading (or reviewing, for that matter), but simply because most of my reading of late has been of traditionally-published books. In this blog, I highlight independently-published works which I’ve enjoyed.

Looking at the last 20 books I’ve read, about one in five are independently published. The quality has varied, but generally they’ve been good. Concrete Underground stands out from them in a number of ways. For one thing, it is uncompromisingly violent and raunchy compared to the rest – not something I usually seek out in a book or movie. Yet the physical abuse and sex scenes are written in a very matter-of-fact way, which doesn’t negate their impact, but carries the reader along without making him or her cringe in horror or embarrassment.

The book is also interesting in that it raises more questions than it answers. My response to reaching the end of it was to start reading from the beginning all over again, as I wanted to try to work out what the answers to those questions are. The writing was of such a high quality that this was not any sort of hardship.

Concrete Underground is also different from my other recent reads in relation to its genre. It’s been described elsewhere as ‘postmodern pulp fiction’, which is as good a description as any. The book is a mystery, with a morals-free, Mexican investigative journalist main character who is looking into the activities of a search-engine company’s CEO. The story takes a sideways look at the overly-monitored lives we lead today. One passage that sums this up stood out:

…the age of surveillance is only a symptom of the new hyper-narcissism that has infected our collective reality tunnels. We invite the surveillance cameras into our homes because they are proof that someone is paying attention to us.

If you’re willing to try something new and aren’t put off by adult content, I highly recommend this novel. It’s not always a comfortable read, and may leave you feeling more confused at the end than you were at the beginning, but it is definitely worth the ride.

Audio books: pros and cons

20 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by in ereading, Free reads, Reviews

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I mentioned in my last post on statistics that I had been listening to a few audio books from the library, despite having thought previously that I wouldn’t be making much use of that particular variety of ebook. My thinking had been that audio books are fine for long car journeys, but that they didn’t really fit into my current lifestyle very well, since long car journeys don’t feature in it much.

Well I have to eat my words on that, as we have listened to four audio books since my original scepticism. One was so-so, the other three very good. As I mentioned before, the experience of listening rather than reading a book is different in important respects. For one thing, it takes a lot longer to listen to a book than it does to read one (part of my original prejudice against them, I admit). There’s also the problem of the narrator actually intruding on the book. The second book I heard was The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde. It was very well done and I enjoyed the narration. The two books after that were the next in the series, Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots. In these, the narration was generally good, but there were some things that jarred with me. For one thing, the books are written from a first-person viewpoint, and Thursday Next, the protagonist, comes from the town of Swindon, Wiltshire. So the Lancashire accent of the narrator seemed…odd.

The second narrator also pronounced some things differently from the earlier one, so that ‘Spec Ops’, the abbreviated name for ‘Special Operations’ was pronounced ‘Spesh Ops’ by the first one and ‘Speck Ops’ by the second. Now I know this marks me out as a complete pedant, but the lack of consistency bothered me (couldn’t they just have asked Jasper Fforde which one he preferred?). The occasional mispronunciation of words can also be annoying. Of course it’s perfectly possible that I’ve been pronouncing those words wrongly all these years – but in a text-based book, it’s not something that I have to worry about. The prosody (the stress on words) was sometimes off, too. On a few occasions I found myself thinking that the author probably didn’t mean the sentence to be read with the emphasis on that word. Distracting…

There’s a social aspect to an audio book that’s very different from a text book. I really enjoyed the way that my husband and I were laughing at the jokes in the Thursday Next books as we heard them. It was a shared experience in a way that ‘regular’ reading can’t be (unless you’re a member of a book club, I suppose, but even then, you’re not experiencing the words at the same time as each other). The two later books in the Thursday Next series were only available as printed books from the library. We’ve both read and enjoyed them, but not at the same time. And there’s that element of book-jealousy, too, as one of us had to read them before the other. This only happens occasionally, but the problem reached a peak with one of the Harry Potter books, Order of the Phoenix, I think, where we were reading it in shifts. Audio books avoid that problem neatly.

The other problem with audio books is that it is easier to lose concentration than it is with a printed book. Some interruption can easily distract the listener and, before you know it, you’ve missed a key part of the plot. Price is also something that concerns me about audio books. Since mine have all come from the library service, this isn’t something I can honestly complain about, but the audio book version of The Eyre Affair is $31.93 at audible.com, whereas the ebook is $10.99. That seems like an enormous disparity: quite hard to justify, I’d say. Is this a tax on laziness?

A tale of two semi-autobiographical novels

12 Wednesday Jan 2011

Posted by in 'Show me the free' challenge, Reviews, Websites, Writing

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Hm, that title doesn’t roll off the tongue too well, does it?

One of the wonderful things about getting an ereader is the availability of out-of-print classic books. Project Gutenberg is a good source, but you can also find them at places like Feedbooks, Open Library, the Mobileread site and ManyBooks. It’s a chance to catch up on reading all those books that you feel you really should have read, but haven’t.

This month, I’ve read two books from Project Gutenberg which, on the face of it, might be thought of as quite similar. Tom Brown’s Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes, was published in 1857 and tells of the experiences of a Rubgy School student. David Copperfield was first published as a book in 1850 and follows the life of a young author, including his days at school in Canterbury. In both books, the character of the boys’ headmaster is an important one.

If I had not looked up the dates of publication, I would have said that the Hughes book was much older than the Dickens one. Its style and content is more formal, more didactic, more moralistic and much less enjoyable to read. Then I thought perhaps it was a difference in the age of the authors, but no: they were both in their thirties when their respective books were published. I’m not at all surprised that Dickens was so popular during his lifetime, and continues to be so today, while Hughes remains relatively unknown. It seems that Hughes was well aware of my concerns with his book, as he said (according to Wikipedia):

Several persons, for whose judgment I have the highest respect, while saying very kind things about this book, have added, that the great fault of it is ‘too much preaching’; but they hope I shall amend in this matter should I ever write again. Now this I most distinctly decline to do. Why, my whole object in writing at all was to get the chance of preaching! When a man comes to my time of life and has his bread to make, and very little time to spare, is it likely that he will spend almost the whole of his yearly vacation in writing a story just to amuse people? I think not. At any rate, I wouldn’t do so myself.

I think Hughes missed an opportunity here. If he’d made his book more enjoyable to read, then he could have got his message across to many more people without the necessity of preaching. As it is, I certainly can’t recommend Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

David Copperfield, on the other hand, is gripping, entertaining and often funny. At over 700 pages, it is a long read, but a satisfying one. My suspicion (as always) is that I’m the only person in the world who hasn’t read this particular classic, but just in case that’s not true, this one is a worthy addition to anyone’s free ereading library.

The covers on this page were taken from Open Library. The images are links to the Project Gutenberg versions of the book.

Book review: Smallworld by Dominic Green

04 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by in 'Show me the free' challenge, ereading, Free reads, Reviews

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My first free read of 2011 was Smallworld by Dominic Green, available free from Smashwords. Sci-fi is a little outside my comfort zone, and there were so many strange words in the first few pages that I began to wonder if I’d be able to continue reading. But I persevered, and I’m glad I did. The story concerns a tiny moonlet which is home to the Reborn-in-Jesus family, their various adopted children, a mysterious hermit and a Devil. The Devil has a habit of killing anyone who threatens the peace of the colony. The reason the Reborn-in-Jesuses have so many adopted children is because their parents were all killed by the Devil.

The novel has some great side-swipes at issues of genetic engineering (the McChickens), religious indoctrination, slavish exploitation of technology and the abuse of power in general. There are some laugh-out-loud moments: I liked this description of the state schools on other worlds, for example:

“Those schools incorporate electric shock discipline, chemical aversion therapy, and subliminal messaging.”
“Granted,” nodded the Pastor, “but it is not all good.”

There were a few minor typos and, in some places, I felt there was a paucity of commas. But nothing major. I will admit that the ending left me feeling slightly puzzled, but maybe I hadn’t been paying close enough attention.

I’ve come to the conclusion (after a whole week and a half of ereading) that there are two types of ebooks: those where you keep checking the page number you’re up to (and how much further there is to go), and those where you don’t care what page number you’re on, because you’re enjoying the book. Rather like being on a long car journey – if it’s a tedious one, you keep looking at the road signs to see how many miles/kilometres you’ve got until your destination. If the scenery is beautiful, you’re not so worried. At the beginning of this book, I was checking the page numbers, but by half-way through, I was enjoying the ride. Thanks, Dominic!

Book review: Snow Burn by Joel Arnold

28 Tuesday Dec 2010

Posted by in Indie writing, Reviews, YA fiction

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Snow Burn by Joel Arnold

I came across this book via a review from Red Adept. I think I must have got it through a coupon (as I’m still leery of paying to read ebooks), and I see that on his blog Joel is offering to send a coupon for it to anyone who emails him.

It’s an enjoyable story – quite short, at under 30,000 words – but a pleasant way of spending a couple of hours. Particularly if you’re curled up in front of a warm fire, as I was, while reading about the two boys who are out camping in a blizzard when they rescue a dangerous escaped convict.

The characters are believable, the dialogue convincing and the story flows smoothly and well. I enjoyed the small digressions into ethical problems along the way. Things like: would you kill Hitler when he was a child, if you had the opportunity? One of the characters, Vince, firmly states that the answer to this should be ‘no’. His ethical views are tested by the murderous intent of the escaped prisoner.

Book review: Misery’s Fire by Kim Jewell

28 Tuesday Sep 2010

Posted by in Indie writing, Reviews, Websites, YA fiction

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The books I’ve reviewed here so far have all been available from Smashwords. This is the first Authonomy book I’ve reviewed. As the books on Authonomy are not really published, but are on the way to publication, I’m not sure of the etiquette around this. But in the hope that I’m not breaking some unwritten rule, I’ll go ahead and review it anyway. One of the main disadvantages is that you can’t download it onto an ereader, but if that doesn’t bother you, read on.

Misery's Fire

Misery’s Fire is about 19 year-old Grant Williams, who wakes up in Hell after avenging the death of his sister in a fatal fire. Nothing that the demons of Hell throw at him is capable of causing him greater suffering than the loss of his sister, Misery, so they decide to send him back to earth to endure an alternative Hell: High School.

The descriptions of Hell and its activities drew me into the book straight away – I love the idea of the denizens of Hell being responsible for earthquakes, volcanoes and, er, potholes. Once back on Earth, Grant has to cope with a new body, four years younger than his old one, and find a way of surviving with no home, no money and no family.

I read the book at one sitting – I really wanted to know how Grant would manage to escape the clutches of Hell. The book is an enjoyable read and I’m sure there will be plenty of other fans of YA books out there who would also find it engaging.

Book review: Tamar Black – Djinnx’d by Nicola Rhodes

25 Wednesday Aug 2010

Posted by in Editing, Indie writing, Reviews

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The useful list of free Smashwords books that I linked to in my last book review has now gone, so I found my next free read by going to Smashwords itself and searching for free books from their home page. I went into the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section, which wouldn’t be my normal first choice, but thought I should mix up the genres I’m reviewing a bit. From the ‘most downloaded’ list I picked the first book that appealed, which was this one. Having just blogged about book covers, I should mention that I really try not to let them influence me. It’s the words that matter, as far as I’m concerned. The blurb for Tamar Black – Djinnx’d showed an author with a sense of humour, so I bit and downloaded the book.

And I’m really glad I did. It’s a twist on the classic genie-in-a-bottle story and is very Terry Pratchett-esque in its humour. From the cheeky foreword and the very first chapter, with its sly rewriting of the Book of Genesis as a computer programming job, I was sucked in. Funny and smart. What’s not to like?

Well, actually, there is something that not everyone will like, and that’s the standard of editing. Font size changes randomly in the .epub version of the file and the punctuation is decidedly hit-and-miss at times. But (and this follows on from observations I’ve made before) it really doesn’t matter that much. It’s slightly irritating and my inner copy editor was itching to take out a red pen, but after a while I gave up noting down the errors (yes, I really did start to write them all down – thinking that the author might like to know about them) and just sat down to enjoy the ride.

There are four other books in the series, which sell for between $2.50 and $2.99. Now, the question is, would I pay for them, knowing that they are probably as badly edited as this one? And you know what, I think I probably would. But not right now – I’d want to get an ereading device first and then curl up in front of the fire with them in the winter. Paying to read things on my computer screen still seems wrong.

So there’s the proof of what I’ve been arguing in this blog for a while. Quality matters, yes, but if there’s a good read in amongst the errors then this reader is willing to overlook them and potentially pay for the next book, regardless. It’s time to stop wringing our hands about the quality of editing in ebooks – let’s just enjoy a damn good story when it presents itself instead.

Book review: The Demon Queen and the Locksmith by Spencer Baum

17 Tuesday Aug 2010

Posted by in Indie writing, Reviews

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A Young Adult book this time, discovered through the ‘Free Smashwords books‘ list on the Kindle Boards site.

Here’s the blurb from Smashwords:

In Turquoise, New Mexico, a small group of hippies believe that the mountain north of town emits a constant, resonant hum that is only audible to a chosen few. They call themselves the Hearers, and the fact that fourteen-year-old Kevin Browne has never trusted them makes it all the worse when his own ears begin to ring, and he comes to realize “The Turquoise Hum” may be much more than a sound.

It’s a fun read, involving mysterious powers delivered by magical sap, an army of evil fire ants, conspiracy theorists and coffee-machines with unexpected qualities. An added bonus for me was the role played in the story by Monarch butterflies, whose life-cycle I find fascinating. The writing is fluid and clear, with no typos that I could see. I enjoyed it as a book from my “i don’t eat sugar so i can read teenage books if i want to” list (as jenn from Toronto so aptly puts it) and it is ideal for its young adult target market.

Book review: No Irish Need Apply by Edward C. Patterson

30 Friday Jul 2010

Posted by in Indie writing, Reviews

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Sometimes I don’t get any time to read, other times I get carried away and don’t stop. This novel is by another author I came across through the Kindle Boards and is also available for free until tomorrow on Smashwords. And it’s another romance (I must be in that sort of mood at the moment).

I enjoyed it very much. It follows the growing relationship between two young men in the build-up to their High School Prom. After the story of the Mississippi prom which was cancelled earlier this year, the novel (which was published on Smashwords in 2008)  seems remarkably prescient and topical. I thought the love story was delicately handled and the responses of the boys’ mothers to the relationship were sensitively drawn.

The writing is clear and at times poetic, with excellent dialogue. The whole book is suffused with a quiet sense of humour which made for a pleasant reading experience. Even if you don’t think this is your cup of tea, I’d urge you to give it a try. I think it would appeal to a wide range of readers. Although probably not to those who really should read it!

Book review: Little Miss Straight Lace by Maria Romana

24 Saturday Jul 2010

Posted by in Indie writing, Reviews, Writers

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In the spirit of supporting other indie authors, I thought I would follow the lead of Maria Romana, who has been putting book reviews on her blog, Contemporary Romance Books. My own reading tastes are fairly varied (although one of my big problems right now is finding time to read!), so there won’t be much of a theme to any reviews I post. The only thing I’m not wildly keen on are ‘chick-lit’ type books. You know, the type that mention about five brand-names in the first two pages and judge people by their clothes and possessions all the time. But I’m not averse to a love story if I’m in the right mood.

Maria’s own book is a mixture of romance and pharmaceutical statistics. Which may not sound like a divinely-arranged combination, but it works really well. The main thread of the plot concerns statistician Josie Natale and her relationship with Nic Remedian. Who is a gorgeous Latino man who drives an Aston Martin and wants to settle down and have babies. If you can get over the suspension of disbelief required to accept that combination of qualities in one human being, then you can settle down and enjoy the book. The romance gets caught up in mystery/thriller territory when a pharmaceutical agency starts interfering with drug trials to discredit their competitors and promote the development of their own products. Throw in a religious cult and the trauma of teenage rape and you’ve got all the ingredients for a story that’s hard to put down.

The book is well-written and rattles along at a good pace. It would make a great beach read (if you weren’t worried about getting sand in your ereader, that is). In some ways I’d class it as escapism (all the main characters are good-looking and rich, for example), but there is more to it than that: certainly enough of a mystery to keep me reading for the last two days.

Until the 31st July it is available for free on Smashwords. After that it will revert to its usual price of $4.77.