Quote:
Originally Posted by caleb72
Next up is another indie work. This time it's Noah's Ark by Andrew J Morgan. I believe it's in the Dystopian/Post-Apocalyptic zone. I'm taking a bit of a risk with this one because I didn't read the sample before agreeing to review it. It could either be a pleasant surprise - or an unpleasant surprise. Wish me luck!
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I finished this one today. I quite liked the story. I liked how the story slowly revealed itself and you were never quite at the resolution - each goal only revealing further complications and more tasks. It wasn't wildly unpredictable, but it was a plot worth having I think. I could imagine film makers being interested in this one.
My criticisms are more related to chapter structure and the writing itself. Firstly, the story is told from two separate POVs and I accept that you need to jump from one to another as the story progresses, but the author did this religiously on each chapter. The chapters were not long enough for you to really feel like you got a good go with either making progress a bit jumpy and annoying. With the writing, the author had obviously really tried to be descriptive, but it didn't feel natural; I sensed the effort. Descriptive writing only really works when you can't see the author in your head agonising over every word.
In my mind if a character needs to climb the stairs, just write that and move on. The pressure of each stair against the character's foot and the feeling of the handrail on the character's skin isn't usually interesting enough to bother with.
Anyway, I'm still giving this one 4 stars because I thought the story deserves a reward and the writing was not filled with errors, even if I felt that it needed the right type of editor to smooth out the more forced aspects of the prose.
I'm going to start on
Black Swan Green now by David Mitchell. I bought this book on sale a while ago and was encouraged by the responses from the literary book club when it was selected back in September 2012. So I'm only a year late.
