Random Book Haul & Review June 2021: The Lost War
1. The Journey
2. The Review
The Journey
There were 184 pages worth of books that were published in May 2021. As usual, I went to Random.org and generated this sequence:
First up is page 165.
Page 165
I found a couple of books that were not public domain, short stories, collection of short stories or sequels.
Genome by Amy Hansen
There were some awkward turns of phrase in the description.
The End Of Holocene by Myrat Bayram
Doesn’t really bode well for the rest of the book when the title has a grammatical mistake. It should be The End Of The Holocene.
The Owners Volume 1: Alone by Carmen Capuano
Usually, when words are meant to be read as the sound they make rather than any other meaning, they are italicised. Because they weren’t here, I was confused for a while, wondering if EE was a person or some kind of thing. Then I realised that the author had meant EE.
The two eyelids glued together really got me though. What does that even mean? For a moment I imagined the left eyelid glued to the right eyelid.
Page 53
Silent Consent by circa24
The description had no mistakes I could find but didn’t sell me on the book. It was just the premise of the book, some of which I didn’t even understand, and it didn’t introduce any characters nor hint at what is at stake for them. But okay, as long as I don’t find any mistakes in the description, I go look at the preview.
I stopped when I saw the big infodump three paragraphs in. Infodumps are okay when they are done well, which to me means that it reveals character. The one here is just an infodump that doesn’t even seem like it is needed.
Page 39
Blood Animus by Kyle McKeon
The description was interesting enough. At least it focused on a character instead of just stating the premise like the previous book.
The writing style seems to be describing a physical action like “nose flaring” then describing the emotions. It’s okay I guess but I don’t really like it.
I read a bit further until I hit the tense error. The sentence should have been in past perfect, i.e “Alex thought she had buried”.
One Aon Fatality by Vanessa Krauss
Their want? Want doesn’t seem like the correct word to use. Maybe plan instead?
That comma at the end should be a colon. “Literal forces of nature: gods” is much more clear compared to “literal forces of nature, gods”. I would have just went with “literal gods” though.
Legacy of Seconds by Edge O. Erin
The description was delightfully weird. So I went and took a look at the preview.
I stopped around the 23% mark because I still haven’t found out what any of the characters wanted to do. It was just pages and pages of some guy being a dick.
Page 81
An Ancient Past by David Allsop
There was a grammatical mistake in the description.
Page 21
Pilorum: A Warning to Humanity by C.S. Ramahon
The bolding and underlining of various words in the description was really irritating, especially since they seemed to be emphasised for no apparent reason.
HUMAN VIOLENCE ON MARS by M DOMINGUEZ, TIMOTHY
The first sentence in the description didn’t make sense. How can “the first 100 colonists on Mars collapse under its own weight”?
Eyes of Courage: An Alternate History by James A Fisher
I didn’t understand the second sentence in the description. I think it was trying to say that it’s 1976 in a different timeline where everything looks like its from 1901?
Page 179
The Timekeeper Trials by Rachel Anne Little
Description was okay but there was mistake in the first page or so.
Tannhauser Gate: Glittering in the Dark by Willum Morsie
As a programmer, version 0.2 means that it isn’t even feature complete. Why would I want to buy an incomplete book?
TO RULE THE WORLD by JAMES BOUTCHER
It took her a second to recognize me when I realized she may have a concussion.
The first part of that sentence, “it took her a second to recognize me”, makes no sense when read with the second part: “when I realized she may have a concussion.”
It makes much more sense if they are switched around: “I realized she may have a concussion when she took a second to recognize me”.
Page 70
Nothing to see here.
Page 82
STARDUST STORY by Marek Żbik
The only remedy sent in the five beryllium pills is the gray dust carrying information to correct the error that occurred inside the black hole singularity that is the heart of the Galaxy.
I didn’t understand the third line in the description.
Page 91
The Valiant Effort by Jim Stolpa
The description was okay, so I went and took a look at the preview. It starts off with a prologue, which can be okay if done well. This one just pissed me off, especially when the narrator says he wants to segue into some other stuff before starting the story at the end of the first paragraph.
Star Map by Fabienne Gschwind
I got through the description unscathed, but was worried when I saw the title of the first chapter. I read a couple of lines and yup, it was another infodump prologue.
Page 162
Nothing to see here.
Well that’s the end of the random sequence. Since I didn’t manage to find anything, I’m just gonna go with the winner of the last Self-Published Fantasy Blog-off.
The Review
The Lost War by Justin Lee Anderson
I almost put this book away. The beginning was very slow-paced, with the main character only having an overarching goal about one-third into the book. Before that, the main character is assigned a mission and it seemed like he didn’t really want to do it, so he meandered about doing other stuff until he stumbled onto the main quest as it were.
While the reason for this is kind of explained at the end, it still made for a boring read. I can’t help but think that maybe the book should have started at a later point in the story.
There were also some infodumps that didn’t tie into the characters in any way, being just descriptions of things that happened in the past to a certain place. I personally can’t recall any of the details of such infodumps. If the characters don’t care about that information, I don’t either.
The beginning of the book also employed this third-person omniscient style that made it hard for me to follow the story. I had to reread whole paragraphs at certain points because there were too many perspective shifts and I kind of lost track. For example, a paragraph would start off with character A doing something. Then later on in the same paragraph, character A would be referred to as “the archer”. For a moment there I thought there were two archers, because who refers to themselves as “the archer”? But actually, the perspective had shifted to character B and it was B referring to A as “the archer”.
But the fight scenes seemed to be written in third-person limited, which made them really easy to follow and totally engrossing for me. The latter half of the book also seemed to forgo perspective shifts in the same paragraph, so either I got used to it or the writing became more focused.
Overall, there were some grim and macabre moments that I totally enjoyed. The writing is solid; I only found one typo near the 36% mark (“Nowt”) and a mistake near the end where the author used “his eyes turned black” when I think it was supposed to be “his vision turned black”.
And while the premise revealed by the ending is quite interesting, I don’t think this story is the best way to deal with the premise. Also, most of the revelation was told rather than shown. The weak ending, along with the weak beginning, make it hard for me to recommend this book.
★★★✰✰