A.R. Van Halleorg

Yesterday, my wonderful wife asked me if I wanted to go to the bookstore. Of course, being the ultra nerd that I am, I said yes within the heartbeat that followed and my eyes lit up at the thought that I was finally going to get The Gathering Storm (Book 12 of the Wheel of Time Series)!

Why was I so excited about this? I’ve been waiting for this to come out and those who have read the series before me were probably waiting on it a lot longer than I had.

Suffice it to say that majority of people were pretty iffy about the idea of getting it, because Brandon Sanderson was going to be finishing the book, which was started by Robert Jordan. I was a little concerned, but mainly I just wanted to be able to get to the end of the series so I could see who won in the end and if Rand dies or manages to evade death by almost dying or coming back or something!

Note : I do love this book so far, so don’t think I’m dissing it just yet!

So I began reading the book this morning and within the first 3 pages…I was mortified. I couldn’t believe just how much I didn’t like the way it was written! It was written in fragments and more than likely would rate low on the Flesch scale…But it seemed a lot like an author that couldn’t keep up with Robert Jordan, who put a great deal of detail in his work. Now maybe this wasn’t Brandon’s part, maybe it was Robert’s part and he just wasn’t feeling it that day (but since he’s dead, he obviously couldn’t go back and rewrite that bit, so I can’t really have a fit about that), but then it suddenly moved into regular Robert Jordan style and became that detailed story I became infatuated with, so it’s probably more like Brandon isn’t the greatest to have written that first bit.

I reserve my final decision of this book until I’m done, I’ll be updating what I think about it, as I go. So far, I’m actually enjoying the story, it feels like we’re finally starting to get to the nitty-gritty. We’re in the borderlands where even farmers and blacksmiths are joining the cause against the Dark Lord and the Forsaken are on the move and the Trollocs are ambushing people and Rand didn’t make them give back the Damane!…And I’m only about 20 pages in out of 770ish…

WOO

I’ll warn ahead, this totally spoils the story in a few ways. If you intend to read the book, don’t read this first.

I’d like to start by saying “I feel lied to”. There’s nothing more that I hate than picking up a book, reading the back, being interested, intrigued by the title, and then delving into the pages and realizing that it BARELY has to do with what’s on the book.

I’m going to assume that our main character, Fiona or “Finn”, was the reasoning behind the title of the book. She’s into archaeology and all that stuff and generally gets herself in trouble with each expedition. Lara Croft, anyone?

What I really liked about this book was the level of inter-connecting lines going through it. You’ve got a psychotic Mexican Drug Lord who wants money for warheads. A Russian-Cuban submarine captain smuggling drugs between countries. An archaeologist and her Lord friend who are looking for a Codex. A bunch of high-ranking Catholics in a secret society “Black Knights” who blatantly remove all obstacles. A son of a Nazi who likes to share information for large sums of money about anyone he can get information on. A pharmaceutical company who wants a mutated plant. And then randomly you have Cortez, the heretic, who the Codex belongs to.

What I don’t like about this, is that it feels rather scattered throughout the book. Now, I’m used to reading some heavy-duty bricks I like to call books. With 30+ main characters with inter-weaving stories and you know that it’ll eventually connect. And generally they are going to a location that may be random, but makes sense as you read it. I read this thinking ‘Okay, but what does this have to do with the Yucatan?’ the whole way through. Yeah, I get that it all leads there. But what was the point. The treasure wasn’t even there in the end. It just seemed like the entire story was to get her where the action was happening, vs the action happening cause of something she set off. So in that way I’m really disappointed in this story.

10 out of 10 for interest
8 out of 10 for execution

Jeff Somers is one of those quirky writers that you try to ignore as much as possible when you’re reading his books. Good writers are weird. It’s life. And Jeff Somers is a good writer.

I decided a while back to get one of the books he wrote called, Digital Plague. It’s basically a story of a criminal by the name of Avery Cates who hates people, is completely rude, is in for himself, and will despite all that stick to his word and keep his moral standards. He has respect, and deserves it. He’s not a goon.

I found the story to be absolutely riveting. I sat awake hours into the night to finish the book just because I couldn’t make myself put the book down. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. At some points I even found my heart rate had gone up. Not because it was scary or anything, but because I was totally immersed in the story, I had managed to fall into the world Somers described and found myself running along with the character trying to save the world and hope it all ended up fine. Fantastic story.

I liked the story so much that I went and got The Electric Church, which was the first book. And to my utter amazement it was just as great as the second book. Yay to that. I had thought the world was going to end, because our brains were going to be reduced to the size of a pinhead from lack of verbosity and imagination.

Jeff Somers has an excellent grasp of speed when telling his story. A grasp of time where you go day to day (each chapter is another day) through Avery’s ordeal. He has excellent vocabulary and uses it well rather than using it just to sound smart. And most of all his characters are real. They could be anyone you know. And the world, could be what happens in our very near future. It’s a very interesting concept. Wonderful to read.

I’d definitely recommend reading both books. Absolutely. 10 out of 10 on all levels of reading enjoyment for me.

I haven’t really tried to write a book review, but I was a little bored and had a little time on my hands and I read a lot of books, so I’ve decided to start writing book reviews. Hopefully it’s not too bad, and I’ll try to improve as I go along.

The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks had the misfortune of being read after I finished the most recent book of the Wheel of Time series that I own, which is book 9. For those of you who know, Wheel of Time is very verbose. It’s indulgent on the details and there is a LOT of storyline going on all the time. It’s the one thing I enjoy about reading. Then I’m faced with The Traveler. It is as different as you can get to Robert Jordan’s style of writing. It’s lacking detail left and right. There isn’t any depth to the characters, though the attempt was made, and the story moved along FAR too quickly for my taste. My wife made the point of saying that people just don’t have the attention span to deal with books like Wheel of Time any more. They like an easy read, something quick to read, etc. It’s true. She’s right. But do people need the attention span of a gnat?
I will however give The Traveler a 9 out of 10 for having an interesting storyline. I thought more could be done with it, but hey. It’s the writer’s first novel, so I can’t really say it’s entirely horrible.

What it’s about…SPOILER ALERT.

The Traveler is about a girl, Maya, who grows up being trained as a Harlequin (a secret group of people who protect Travelers from the Tabula, which is an organization bent on destroying Harlequins, Travelers and Pathfinders in order to gain control of the general population). The Tabula are basically a Big Brother. They are watching what everyone is doing, tracking everyone with Personal Link ID and creating patterns of day to day behaviour in order to spot when someone is doing something out of the ordinary. Anyways, so Maya’s father dies and asks her to go to America to protect these two sons of a Traveler. A Traveler is basically someone who can have their neurological presence leave their body and travel through the 4 planes of air, water, fire and earth in order to cross over into the other realms of existance. These Traveler’s are being hunted now by the Tabula in order to make contact with another Realm in order to build a super computer to have even more control over the population. One of the sons actually runs with Maya and both brothers learn to Travel. Then very very shortly later, we arrive near the end where all things collide and you find out what happens with the Travelers, Maya, and the Tabula.

If that’s your kind of story, by all means go read it. But if you like verbose, find another book.