David V. Mammina

I got this book because I admired the author's entrepreneurship. He left a comment on a review I had made that indicated he'd spent the time to see what else I had reviewed and suggested I try his book. I decided to reward his marketing efforts, especially after reading two glowing reviews.

I gave up reading it a third of the way in. (sigh) I am sure there is a good story being told, but I couldn't get past the lack of competent editing of style, punctuation, and language choice. The possessive of a character's name was either "Ores's" or "Ores'" depending on where it was in the book. A helmet, unless it is sentient, cannot be sadistic. The Oxford comma was used, except when it wasn't. Dialogue, especially, was punctuated oddly. An example of the kind of problem would be something like this: "Don't go there." He said violently, "It's a trap." It just feels wrong and probably should be "Don't go there," he said violently. "It's a trap."

To give an example from the opening of the book, there is this description: "a well-donned handsome farmer and a pretty longhaired maiden." "Don" means to put on clothing; I suspect the author meant "well-dressed." A spelling check would let him know that he should have used "long-haired." Both pairs of adjectives would have been better if they were separated by commas. Sadly, the writing style didn't improve in the third of the book I read.

If you can get past the writing style and such illogical images as a warrior princess going into mortal combat with no armor covering her legs, you might enjoy the book. I urge you to take advantage of the preview to decide if the things that bothered me bother you to the same extent. I think there's a good story in there; I just couldn't get past the writing issues.… (lisätietoja)