Novelnaut

Exploring the Depths of Novels and Writing

I’m With Fatty

By: Edward Ugel

I’m With Fatty is the story of Edward Ugel coming to the realization that he’s let himself get out of control.  His relationship with food, and, with life in general, has gotten out of control.  A trip to the doctor and a resulting trip to a sleep clinic results in a CPAP machine, and an epiphany of sorts.  He then decides that he’s going to lose 50 pounds in 50 weeks.  It’s unclear whether he decides to write the book before, or after, he decides that he needs to lose the weight.

Parts of the book read a lot like they are excerpts from a personal diary, while other parts are clearly him recollecting the events.  Which is part of the problem I had with the book.  The personal diary parts are written in first person while the other parts are written in a past tense first person.  There’s no clear delineation between one and the other, and I found myself having to shift mental gears often as the tense changed.  The other thing that I found a bit disappointing in the book is that there isn’t really a clear ending to it.  I’m sure that Ugel underwent some pretty extensive changes, personally, during the 50 weeks, but he doesn’t cover them much.  He tells us all about his failings.  But, at the end of the book, he goes straight from a failing to the end.  Maybe that makes it more real for some, but, for me, it just made it a book about 50 weeks in his life.

If the book was meant to be inspirational, I think it failed.   It is a good book in that Ugel does a great job of covering the reasons behind how he got to where he was, and the struggles that he went through as he “recovered” from his condition.  The tense changes, and the lack of any clear resolution (still a requirement in non-fiction, I think.) make the book an average book, at best.

Afterthoughts
By: Lawrence Block

Afterthoughts is an interesting compilation. It is, essentially, a collection of many of the afterwards’ that Block wrote for many of his novels and stories. But, what it accomplishes is a bit more. It serves as a sort of memoir of Block’s writing career, with notes about where he lived while writing the story, what his thoughts were on the story, and even the original editors and publishers. The informal, correspondence style that the afterwards are written in makes it an easy read and I quickly read through most of it.

I haven’t read any of Block’s actual stories, so some of the references were completely lost on me. There were few of those, however, so I was able to read through it and get the information that I think Block intended for us to get. And, that, is that his career was far from simple, and it certainly wasn’t the career of an instant bestselling author. Few of us aspiring authors will be that instant bestselling author, so it’s heartening to read the history of someone like Block who wrote his way up the authorial ladder to be the recognized crime fiction author that he is today.

Don’t expect to get any great tips on becoming a successful writer, except that you just have to keep writing and selling. Do expect a great story, through a collection of afterwards that weren’t really intended as a coherent story, but did just fine as one.

The Black God’s War

By: Moses Siregar III

I first mentioned this book a while ago, when I reviewed the excerpt novella that Siregar released prior to to the release of the full novel.  In that review, I mentioned that I would be anxiously awaiting the release of the full novel.  It was finally released at the beginning of August of 2011, and I immediately bought it for my kindle app.  Unfortunately, for me, my backlog on reading was such that I was just able to get through the novel.  It was worth the wait.

For a debut novel, I found the writing to be very well polished. There are a few places where the roughness shows through, but they don’t detract from the novel or story in any way.  In the novella, Siregar only shows us the POV of the Rezzian main characters, but in the novel, he opens up the world even further and gives us the POV of the Pawelon characters as well.  In a few places, especially at first, I felt that the Pawelon characters were a little bit thin, but I think that was because we get a much deeper history of the Rezzians that we don’t get until later with the Pawelons.

What I found really interesting, was that there really isn’t a clearly defined antagonist in the novel.  There isn’t one character that you despise throughout the story.  And, I don’t think there is supposed to be.  It’s actually a very clever device, that I think makes the book that much better.  Instead of pointing all of our angst as readers at one character, or a group of characters, Siregar points that angst at the human condition.  Or, more specifically, at the struggle to come to terms with our differences and see past transgressions.  Throughout, we see the characters struggle with their aim in life, and with the interferences of the Gods.

As you can imagine, a book with interfering Gods has some elements of magic and mysticism, but, I didn’t feel that it overpowered the story.  It would have been easy to overdo the magical elements of the book, but I think Siregar did a wonderful job of keeping them in check.  The story moves along at a nice clip, without hanging or slowing down to a painful pace like some fantasies tend to do.

If you’re looking for a great fantasy novel to read this winter, go and pick up The Black God’s War.  It’s on sale at Amazon’s Kindle store for $0.99.  Even at the full price of $4.99, it’s a bargain compared to some of the prices of it’s competitors.

Pharmacology
By: Christopher Herz

Somewhere around 1993, the digital revolution was happening. The internet was starting it’s meteoric rise to the top, and headed for everyone’s homes. Pharmacology is set in the San Francisco of 1993, where the world is about to change. Herz writes a powerful character who’s trying to find her way, away from home, in a world that’s changing about as fast as she is. The book is written in a diary-like first person, that actually was a bit off-putting to me at first. As I got into it a bit more, it felt much more natural for the story. We follow Sarah, the POV character, through her life in the city as she finds herself, and finds out how much she can go through.

The writing is well done, with only a few minor things that made me pause. The language that Sarah uses is very difficult to get the hang of, but with the diary style, I think it was pretty necessary. Not many of us would write with perfect English in a diary. We’d do just as Sarah does and stick to the hipsterish jargon that’s peppered throughout. It’s an interesting story, delving into the pharmaceutical industry, and life as a young adult. On thing’s for sure, it’ll make you think a bit about some of the things that you do.

Herz, himself, is a bit of a indie-author success story. He self-published his first book, and hand-sells the copies of it as he walks about New York City. At some point, he caught the eye of an editor ad Amazon Encore and they picked him up for Pharmacology. He’s a big advocate of storytelling as well, holding a weekly skype meeting with a class of school children where they create ideas and tell stories based on the ideas of their classmates.

Pharmacology reminds me a bit of a Max Barry book, full of discontent and, in the end, a bit of eye-opening. I wasn’t sure what to think of the book when I started, but found that I couldn’t put it down after a while. A good read, especially if you like your stories with a side of distopian paranoia.

disclaimer: I was sent an ARC copy of this from the PR agency. As is my policy, review copies only get reviews if I liked the book enough to find something good to say about it. If I don’t like review copies, I don’t review them. Simple as that.

Goodness!  Did you look at the date today?  November is RIGHT THERE!  And, with November, another NaNoWriMo!

Are you participating this year?  After barely making it a week in 2008, winning in 2009, and then failing in 2010, I’m looking to continue the pattern with a win in 2011.  I’m changing it up a little bit this year, however.  Instead of one long work, I’m setting the goal of 10 shorts with a combined total of 50,000 words or more.  With an average of 5,000 words each, I’m hoping it might make it a bit easier to accomplish the 50,000 word goal.  It sure makes it sound easier.  I only have to do 10, 5,000 word short stories!

I think, technically, the purists will hang me for not sticking to the letter of the law and doing one long work, but if you think about it, 10 shorts is more than enough for a collection, and a collection is one long work.  Sorta.  I see it as bending the rules rather than breaking them.  Besides, the goal is to write.  And, if that’s how I get it done, then so be it.

So?  Spill it!  What are you planning to write for NaNoWriMo?

Nascence: 17 Stories that failed and what they taught me

By: Tobias Buckell

When most authors have a story that failed, they bury it somewhere deep in a drawer or closet somewhere.  What they most assuredly don’t do, is bring it out into the daylight and publish it for everybody to read.  Thank goodness Buckell isn’t one of those authors.  Nascence is an incredible journey through 17 of Buckell’s short stories that failed.  For each story in the collection he gives a short foreward explaining what it is that he was trying to do, and how the story failed.

What I found most interesting, is that for several of the stories, he has a second and third attempt at the same story and we can easily see how Buckell’s writing improved from one to the next as well as how the story evolved along with it.  It’s not often that we, as readers and authors, get that kind of view into the progress of an idea.  I won’t comment on the writing itself here, as Buckell does plenty of that (sometimes a bit too critically, in my opinion) in the collection, itself.

If you’re a fan of Buckell, you won’t be disappointed by this venture into his older works and the evolution of some of the elements that appear in the Xenowealth series.  If you’re an author, I think this belongs on the digital bookshelf right along-side the “how-to-write” books you’ve already got.  It’s a rare peek behind the curtains of short story creation and author evolution.

Pick it up from Buckell’s online store, or at Amazon.

Transfection

By: David Gaughran

Tranfection is a short story with lots of plot packed into it.  In fact, I think it could have easily been novella length or longer, and maybe one day Gaughran will do that for us.  It’s a story about a scientist that works with Genetically Modified foods, and a discovery he makes during his research.  I can’t say much more about the plot without giving half the story away, so I’ll stop there.  Gaughran has a talent for creating that feeling of suspense that is so very necessary in the short story format.  He also has a talent for the unwritten plot.  Several times in the story, there are parts of the plot that weren’t expressed, but that came through just as clear as if they had been through the way that Gaughran delivered the response to those plot points.  It’s an old-school science fiction story that reminds me of the stories we used to get through Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

It’s a great read, and well worth the affordable price on Amazon.

Mercury Rises

By: Robert Kroese

Disclaimer: I was sent this book as a review copy.  As is my policy with all review copies, I don’t review them unless I liked them in some way.  If I don’t like them, I don’t review them.  Simple as that.

Mercury Rises is the second book in a series of books about an angel named Mercury.  He’s a bit of a wayward angel.  Down on his luck, you might say, eternally.  I haven’t read the first book in the series, Mercury Falls, but I don’t think that’s actually necessary in order to understand what’s going on in Mercury Rises, as Kroese does a good job of filling in the backstory without it becoming intrusive to the story.  This was one of those books that I had a hard time getting into.  Part of that, I think, was the ensemble cast that took some introducing.  Maybe that would have been lessened by having read the first book.  Maybe not.  Quickly, though, as the plot lines began to form, and the action picked up, I was drawn into the story and it read fairly quickly.  The writing isn’t the best I’ve ever read, but it is far from the worst.  And, don’t let that keep you from reading the book.  Especially if you’re a fan of authors like Terry Pratchett.  I found the story and humor in the book to be very similar to Pratchett’s.  Of course, I’m not a big fan of Pratchett, so that means that I am not really a big fan of this book either.  More a problem with taste than with anything else, and entirely my fault rather than the book or author.

One other small reader beware here.  The book is about an angel.  As you can probably imagine, there are other angels in the book, and some biblical themes.  And, it’s a satirical humor that Kroese uses.  There were at least two places in the book where my more Christian leanings were a bit off-put by the way the story went.  But, like I said, it’s a satirical piece, so remember that and it isn’t as bad as all that.  Fair warning though.

Overall, the book was decent.  Like I said, I’m not a big fan of similar books, so this one didn’t do all that much for me, but I can see fans of this type of fiction really loving this book.  You can pick it up at Amazon.

Hal Junior: The Secret Signal

By: Simon Haynes

Hal Junior: The Secret Signal is the newest book by the author of the Hal Spacejock series of comedic science fiction novels.  It’s aimed at school age children as an introduction to the Spacejock world and is the first of many in a planned series.  Disclaimer: I was given a pre-release copy of the kindle book for reviewing purposes.

I’ve been following along as Simon Haynes wrote the book, and jumped at the opportunity to give it a read and review.  It’s a pleasant book, that reminds me a bit of some of the early books that I read in grade school.  The main character, Hal Junior, really, really wants to be a space hero like his hero Hal Spacejock.  The problem is that he’s always getting himself into a bit of trouble.  When the space station that he lives on with his parents is subject to a hijacking of sorts, and he’s challenged to be the one to save the station.

The book is a pleasant book, that will appeal to many younger school age kids.  Despite the differences in surroundings, I think they will be able to associate with Hal Junior and will be itching to have their own space suit.  I think that often times, this particular age group gets a bit ignored in favor of the middle school and high school YA group that has a bit more disposable income at the ready for movies and such, but the younger kids need heroes too!

The Secret Signal is a very promising start to a series that will give them the heroes they need, and a tickle to their imaginations as well.

Spell Bound

By: Kelley Armstrong

I first read a Kelly Armstrong book last summer when I was sent a copy of Waking the Witch by the PR agency.  (Disclaimer: I was sent Spell Bound to review as well.)  I started Waking the Witch and finished it in the same day.  So, I wasn’t all that hesitant to take a stab at Spell Bound as I was pretty sure I would like it.

Spell Bound picks up almost immediately after the end of Waking the Witch with Savannah Levine recovering from the events at the end of Waking the Witch.  I again found myself immediately pulled into the story and the world that Armstrong creates in her Otherworld series.  The paranormal world never seems like something that was roughly overlain on our world, but merely something that existed all along and is merely being revealed.  The characters aren’t as fully fleshed out as I would like, but I think that’s a risk that you take when you jump into a series of books.  You miss out on a lot of backstory on the characters, so they feel a little bit less “full” than they would had you read the entire series first.  It’s not necessarily a fault of the author, but more of the medium.  Long series’ (this is book 12 in the Otherworld series) tend to have some very long drawn out plot lines that can be somewhat confusing when you haven’t read the whole thing.

The writing, throughout, is good.  It’s easy to read and flows nicely.  I can’t imagine there are too many of you who are really into paranormal fantasy that haven’t read at least a little of Armstrong’s work, but if you haven’t, you really should pick up a few of her novels.  You won’t find much better done paranormal, with more readable stories.