Tag: YA

REVIEW: ALL THE KING’S-MEN, by Adam Dreece

On By Luther M. SilerIn ReviewsLeave a comment

71iL99WEEvLThis one’s gonna be a bit tricky, so bear with me.  The tl;dr version is this: if you’ve enjoyed the previous Yellow Hoods books (and you should have!) you’ll enjoy Adam Dreece’s ALL THE KING’S-MEN.  I have a couple of gripes about this particular volume, and I’ll fill you in on them, but I think they’re less problems with the book itself and more an issue of the author zigging when I wanted him to zag.  In general, you should be reading this.

Let’s address an elephant in the room, too: see that hyphen in King’s-Men?  Did your eye twitch just a little bit when you saw that hyphen?  Did you, perhaps, think oh, God, he didn’t put a typo right into the title of the book, did he?

Worry not.  They actually address it in the story, and it ends up being relevant, believe it or not.  Pay more attention to the awesome King’s-Horse (yep, another hyphen) and the Yellow Hood with the mechanical horse riding it.(*)  Dreece has always called his series emergent steampunk, meaning a world that is not quite a steampunk world but is on its way, and Book 3 takes some large strides in that direction.  The biggest difference between ATK-M and the previous volumes in the series is Dreece’s willingness to broaden his story.  This book begins with a map, and while I think the map has appeared in at least one of the previous volumes this has been the first one where I thought it was necessary.  What started as a story about a young girl named Tee and the cool club she and a few of her friends were in has gotten much larger and much, much more complicated.

Which is either a weakness or a strength, depending on how you look at it.  If you enjoy Dreece’s worldbuilding, you’ll see much more of that here.  I found, unfortunately, that I missed the titular Hoods, who are in the story, but aren’t really the focus of the story as much as they have been in previous books.  Tee herself isn’t remotely as present as she has been, and spends most of her time on-page being pissed off.  Is this automatically a weakness?  Not necessarily; again, Dreece is going a different direction from maybe where I wanted him to, but that’s his prerogative as an author.  The worldbuilding is unique and cohesive, the villains dastardly, and the backstory is interesting and well-integrated into the rest of the story.  It’s just not quite what I wanted.  And while the book is still YA, it’s an order more complicated than the previous books, and at least one character’s arc ends up dark by the end of the book.  So maybe be prepared for that.

All in all, though?  I’ll be back for Book Four, which I believe has just finished first-draft status and is moving into editing now.  I’m going to make sure to reread the previous volumes before it comes out, too.  Go check it out.

(*) I said this in my review of Book One (I appear to not have reviewed Book Two, which surprises me,) but Dreece’s cover artist is spectacular, and I want to steal her for a project in the future.  Just not sure which one.

In which I am disappoint

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading7 Comments

worst-book-covers-titles-48Had an annoying experience last night where I had to stop reading a book by an author who I really like because I realized that the book just really wasn’t ever going to start working for me.  I’ve read a handful of other books by this guy and enjoyed them tremendously; this particular book was his first voyage into YA, but he kept the darker, grittier, more violent themes from his adult-oriented work precisely intact.  I discovered very quickly that I’m not interested in YA where absolutely everything about the world sucks and everyone and everything is terrible.

(I’m not going to name the book.  I’m not actually sure why; I just don’t want to.  Be aware that it’s not terribly difficult to figure out what I’ve been reading if you visit certain readin’ themed websites, though.)

At any rate, I didn’t like the main character very much, the plot, which centered on bullying, was alternately enraging and weirdly triggering, and and in general everything was just kind of overwritten.  It wasn’t enough for the bad guy to be a vicious bully, he had to be a literal skinhead neo-Nazi.  We can’t just have a character beaten up, somebody’s gotta put out cigarette butts all over them or try to make them eat dogshit.  And then the only-barely-veiled rape threats started, and peace out, thanks, I’ll be back for your next book for grown-ups but I gotta bounce on this one.

I changed the Goodreads rating three times before deciding that even though I hadn’t finished it I was content with a one-star.  Ordinarily I won’t review a book I didn’t finish but in this case, especially knowing more bad shit was coming from the synopsis, I don’t feel as bad about it.

As bad.  Still a bad taste in my mouth, though.  This “not liking work from authors I enjoy” thing can stop now.

Review: ALONG CAME A WOLF, by Adam Dreece

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading3 Comments

Book-1-COVER-Sept2014-Along-Came-a-Wolf-by-Adam-Dreece-196x300I promised at least three reviews of books by fellow independent authors, and this would be the third.  I’ve owned a copy of Adam Dreece’s Along Came A Wolf for nearly as long as I’ve owned my Kindle, and based on (finally!) finishing the first book recently, I’ve ordered both it and its sequel in print form.  As I’ve said repeatedly, print books sit on my unread shelf and stare at me until I get them read.  My Kindle can’t do that, so print books always get read faster.

Dreece calls Along Came A Wolf and its sequels “Emergent Steampunk” (Breadcrumb Trail is available now at the same link above, and the third volume, All the King’s Men, is forthcoming,) which is an interesting choice, because I suspect most people aren’t going to know what the hell an emergent steampunk is until after they’ve read the book.  The idea is this: technology is pretty highly variable depending on where you are and what you’re trying to do in Dreece’s world, but the world is almost at a point where steampunk-style technology is becoming available.  One of the main characters in the book is an inventor, and there are hints everywhere that the things he’s working on are going to change the world.

Wolf is also YA, but it’s the kind of YA that adults won’t have any problems with, other than a few little references here and there that kids might not pick up on and grown-ups at least ought to, like the fact that the book is called Along Came a Wolf and the villain is named LeLoup.  Or the Cochon brothers.  (I’m not sure what part of Canada Dreece resides in, but I’m guessing it’s one of the Frenchier sections.  EDIT: Calgary.  Is that Frenchy?  I don’t know Canada.)  The inventor character I alluded to earlier is, in Dreece’s own words, a combination of Santa Claus and Nikola Tesla, which somehow works out super awesome.

I haven’t actually mentioned the titular Yellow Hoods.  The three characters that make up this… group?  Club?  Organization? are Tee, a twelve-year-old girl who is the book’s main character, and her friends Elly and Richy.  Elly and Richy aren’t nearly as well-drawn as Tee is, but watching the trio work together to solve their problems is fun.  I won’t spoil the plot (Bad happens!  They try and fix it!) but it’s a genuinely fun adventure and, well, like I said, I paid for it twice and have already bought the sequel.

One unfortunate criticism: the book does have some minor editing issues here and there, mostly coming in the form of slightly misused serial commas.  (EDIT: See here.) If you’re not a grammar purist it’s not something that’s going to bother you, and Dreece’s writing itself is of high quality, but… former Language Arts teacher.  I’m a grammar purist.  🙂

A final note: I want to steal Dreece’s cover artist from him.  I know the books have been through at least a couple of cover changes (the cover image on my version of the book is not the same as the one above) and the character work on his current set of covers is fantastic.  Chain this person to a table so that he or she can’t get away.  This is great work.

A brief note for the writerpeople

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing7 Comments

If you write YA or adult genre novels, particularly if you have a manuscript lying around that you haven’t done anything with yet, you probably ought to be checking Pitch Wars out.  I have at least four other things I ought to be doing right now but I’m going through their mentor list right now, and I’m not sure I’m making a bad decision in it either.

In which I turn into a pumpkin

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching, Writing1 Comment

ku-mediumOkay, so… the Van Damme .gif has some competition now.

I spent a few minutes yesterday talking with my artist friend about the cover for the book, which was sorta fascinating.  It entertains me that he has to read the thing now.  I have someone who has to read my book for his job.  I find that funny.  Anyway, there was talk of photo reference for certain things and he asked me if I had any strong ideas about what the characters looked like beyond what was on the page (mostly no, but I was picturing DJ Qualls every time I wrote about one of the characters).  He’s gonna read the book and then work up some sketches and we’ll go from there.

Let’s see… what happened today?  Not much out of the ordinary, actually, other than keeping a few of my Algebra kids through their seventh hour class (normally my prep) to coach them through a missed/failed test and then discovering the hard way that my brain goes directly to shit last hour on Friday.  Directly, horribly, painfully.  I am not sure I actually managed to teach anyone anything useful.  Lucky for them, I was on my game during their actual class, but the tutoring session… coulda been more tutory, I think.

I am seriously thinking about polling that class about the next book.  I’ve considered doing something with a YA tilt to it; it’s not like I don’t have access to lots of middle school students to bounce ideas off of, but on the other hand I’m self-publishing and I suspect many of them don’t do ebooks.  Which, actually, is probably something I should ask them. Hmm.  There’s also the minor detail where telling them that I’m writing a book using some of their input will probably lead to them wanting to read said book, which kinda runs counter to deliberately creating a pen name so that they can’t find me.  Probably ought not to spoil the whole point of the thing before I even do anything with it.

…yeah, that’s what I’ve got right now.  It was a long week.  I’ll try to be inspiring or at least interesting in the next post.  🙂