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A review by ohtislove
Dead Moons Rising by Jack Whitney
3.0
Real score: probably 3.5 stars
TL;DR Review: This is clearly an early book by a new author. The editing is rough, it's LONG, and there are definitely large opportunities for improvement. But the FMC is strong, and the actual story itself is interesting.
Review
I will say that I understand all the DNF reviews. The first ~25% of this book is really rough both in terms of basic editing/proofreading, and understanding the story (more so than the average high fantasy book). There were a few occasions when I wanted to swap to something else for a breather, but I knew that if I didn't read this straight through, I'd never come back to it. It took me four days to get through it, which is about twice as long as I usually would take. In an attempt to keep this review short but fair, I'm just going to swap to some bullets behind the spoiler warning:
The Good:
- The FMC is 28. As an older reader myself, I am so thrilled to not be reading about an 18 year old saving the world.
- She's also a bad ass!
- The world is unique (enough) and the creatures within it are creative.
- The story itself, once I got into it, pulls you in. There is not much that you could skim, and the book wraps up one story line while leaving the way forward for the second clear.
- The editing DOES get better in the latter 50% of the book (although it's still not anything you'd see coming from a major publishing house).
- Despite my initial hesitations about this one, I'm excited to give the next book a chance and hope the author got a better editing team.
The Bad:
- Believe every review that says the editing is absolutely unbearable, in terms of basic grammar and word usage. There's a whole section that talks about the "purple whelps" the heroine got (welts), and the centuries (sentries) that they killed on the beach. The word "smarted" is used ALL THE TIME, as in: "He's fine," she smarted. The author's advanced readers/editors did her dirty with all these obvious mistakes and improper word usage.
- Secondly, the editing around sentence structure is atrocious. I'd post example sentences but other reviewers already have. Some are certainly "word soup".
- We get an in-depth review of almost every character's hair color, but almost nothing else. I actually do not know what most of the characters/races in the story look like, which is a pretty glaring issue in a 500 page book! Plenty of room to describe some characters/races.
- A pet peeve of mine, but the main character's nickname is Drae and her love interest is Draven.
- A truly ridiculous second pet peeve: the main character, several times, puts on a weird tulle cape skirt thing that covers her butt? I just hate the imagery. :D
- Rape is a heavy plot driver for the FMC's character development, between "brothers" and "sisters". It's mentioned only ONCE that they're not ~actually~ siblings (not that this makes it ANY better).
Final thoughts:
If you can get through the poor editing (and I do mean poor), I think this book is worth a read, if only so that you can read the next books. (I haven't read those yet so I may revise.) I can understand now why the author said there will be eight, because we're not following the story of the main characters in this book, but the land itself.
TL;DR Review: This is clearly an early book by a new author. The editing is rough, it's LONG, and there are definitely large opportunities for improvement. But the FMC is strong, and the actual story itself is interesting.
Review
I will say that I understand all the DNF reviews. The first ~25% of this book is really rough both in terms of basic editing/proofreading, and understanding the story (more so than the average high fantasy book). There were a few occasions when I wanted to swap to something else for a breather, but I knew that if I didn't read this straight through, I'd never come back to it. It took me four days to get through it, which is about twice as long as I usually would take. In an attempt to keep this review short but fair, I'm just going to swap to some bullets behind the spoiler warning:
The Good:
Spoiler
- The FMC is 28. As an older reader myself, I am so thrilled to not be reading about an 18 year old saving the world.
- She's also a bad ass!
- The world is unique (enough) and the creatures within it are creative.
- The story itself, once I got into it, pulls you in. There is not much that you could skim, and the book wraps up one story line while leaving the way forward for the second clear.
- The editing DOES get better in the latter 50% of the book (although it's still not anything you'd see coming from a major publishing house).
- Despite my initial hesitations about this one, I'm excited to give the next book a chance and hope the author got a better editing team.
The Bad:
- Believe every review that says the editing is absolutely unbearable, in terms of basic grammar and word usage. There's a whole section that talks about the "purple whelps" the heroine got (welts), and the centuries (sentries) that they killed on the beach. The word "smarted" is used ALL THE TIME, as in: "He's fine," she smarted. The author's advanced readers/editors did her dirty with all these obvious mistakes and improper word usage.
- Secondly, the editing around sentence structure is atrocious. I'd post example sentences but other reviewers already have. Some are certainly "word soup".
- We get an in-depth review of almost every character's hair color, but almost nothing else. I actually do not know what most of the characters/races in the story look like, which is a pretty glaring issue in a 500 page book! Plenty of room to describe some characters/races.
- A pet peeve of mine, but the main character's nickname is Drae and her love interest is Draven.
- A truly ridiculous second pet peeve: the main character, several times, puts on a weird tulle cape skirt thing that covers her butt? I just hate the imagery. :D
- Rape is a heavy plot driver for the FMC's character development, between "brothers" and "sisters". It's mentioned only ONCE that they're not ~actually~ siblings (not that this makes it ANY better).
Final thoughts:
If you can get through the poor editing (and I do mean poor), I think this book is worth a read, if only so that you can read the next books. (I haven't read those yet so I may revise.) I can understand now why the author said there will be eight, because we're not following the story of the main characters in this book, but the land itself.