The book I've chosen for October is by a local author that published his first book (this one) less than two years ago, and already has over 80,000 readers. This book is Harry Potteresque, with teenagers as the main characters. Very clean, and a lot of fun, albeit a little long. It's available for free from this web site: http://adventuresofdod.com/ebook
I can't add cover art from my iPad, but it has a kid with a sword on the cover. This may be a little juvenile, but it's a fun read anyway.
Enjoy!
The Adventures of Dod: Confronting the Dread by Thomas R. Williams
Note from Greg:
Click here to download the epub file (non-kindle ebooks or tablets or computers).
Click here to download the mobi file (kindle).
I can't add cover art from my iPad, but it has a kid with a sword on the cover. This may be a little juvenile, but it's a fun read anyway.
Enjoy!
The Adventures of Dod: Confronting the Dread by Thomas R. Williams
Note from Greg:
Click here to download the epub file (non-kindle ebooks or tablets or computers).
Click here to download the mobi file (kindle).
Um . . . do you suppose we'll have to read much more about people getting farted on?
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize early on that the audio was also available. It's in the dropbox now if you prefer audio books.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't my favorite. The idea is interesting, but the execution is a little rough.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tanya. The idea was interesting, but the execution was lacking. For me, the roughness came in four forms. First, I felt like this author borrowed a lot of ideas, big and small, from other authors. I saw a lot of parallels to Harry Potter, for instance. Second, I also felt that there was a lot of philosophizing and preaching, in this case mostly about the author's opinion regarding democracy, that detracted from the story. Third, a lot of the story seemed really obvious, particularly the identity of The Dread; but then it's a children's book, so maybe that should have been expected. And fourth, a large portion of the sentence structure of the book was either trite or awkward, making the book a little grating. I felt like it was kind of slapped together rather than crafted.
ReplyDeleteIt felt like a rough draft, and I'm guessing this was probably the author's first attempt. I'm a bit surprised that this book got published. Maybe it's more self-published? I noticed that the publisher, Zettai Makeru, is pretty obscure, and in fact seems to exist just to publish the Dod books. Sometimes small publishers can be used for niche markets, and other times they're willing to publish lower quality just to get some cash flow. In this case, I wonder if it's not just the author who built a little printing business to get his own stuff published. That seems kind of like a red flag, but at the same time in today's desktop publishing world, it seems more and more common.
With time, he may get better. Some of the early works of my favorite authors are equally awkward; Orson Scott Card and Jim Butcher come to mind, particularly their first short stories. I think it would help this author a lot if he had an editor with the skills and influence that Card's or Butcher's editors have. Larger publishers like Tor, Random House, or Simon and Schuster have staff with that kind of expertise. If this book had been published through a more conventional means I'm betting the editors would have been able to help Williams trim some of the excess and improve the delivery. Unfortunately, those printing houses can be hard to convince to publish without a really strong first draft; even J.K. Rowling had a hard time getting Harry published. I'm guessing that's more or less what happened in this case.
Wow! I didn't care for the book, but only because I'm not a fan of this kind of book. I don't read enough to notice that the writing was poor or that ideas were taken from other books. I had kind of a difficult time getting through it, but there were times when I found myself enjoying it! It's not my favorite thing to read about, but I really didn't think it was as bad as others seem to think. Now it's off to the next one!
ReplyDelete