Discussion: One Star Reviews

Although I honestly had no idea this whole controversy existed until a year or so ago, apparently posting one star reviews is a little controversial in the book blogging community.  Some bloggers believe that posting one star reviews is part of an honest and open reviewing process.  Others believe one star reviews are a waste of their time or invite unwanted negativity and possibly author attacks.  It really varies blogger-to-blogger.

As my regular readers know, I do post one star reviews.  Sometimes I’ve posted 0.5 star reviews.  Why do I read books I clearly don’t like?  Well, like any sane human being I pick up a book because it’s interesting and I think I’ll like it.  Sometimes the promise of the blurb and the other reviews encourage me to do so only to disappoint me.  When I start a book I don’t like to not finish it.  This is in part because of my natural stubbornness but also my determination to give books a fair review.  If I hate the character in the beginning, maybe they’ll get better.  If the editing is bad in the beginning, maybe it gets better as the novel goes on.  But if I’m honest, it’s mostly stubbornness so I can say that I gave the book an honest try and really didn’t like it.

While it does invite author ire (mostly) in the case of self-published authors, I will continue posting one and 0.5 star reviews if I think it’s a fair rating.  For me it’s part of my honesty-is-best policy.  However, I differ from the book bloggers that give the rest of us a bad name in that I never author-bash or really go crazy on the book bashing.  Still, some people feel that for themselves it is wrong to post one star reviews for a number of reasons.  And that’s absolutely fine by me; it’s their blog after all and it’s totally up to them.

What I want to know now is this: If you’re a blogger, do you post reviews of books you didn’t like?  Do you think it tends to invite author attacks in some cases and thus avoid it or do you have other reasons for not posting negative reviews?  If you’re an author who does reviews, do you post one star reviews or do you just give constructive criticism to your fellow authors in private (if you were requested to read the book)?

Book Blast: The Bird of Prey by Danielle-Claude Ngontang Mba

It all started with a simple case… or was it?

Publication Date: September 25, 2015

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

A dead world famous supermodel.
A contract killer in love with her best friend.
An organised crime family looking for revenge.
A boyfriend with a mysterious legacy.
French sleuth Sémya Slotin is officially back on the case. The break is over.
“I’m Semya Slotin, yes this Slotin. I love wine, vodka, absinthe, my younger brother Aaron and my best friend Polliannah, in no particular order. When Josh Heinz and I are not too busy fighting or tearing each other clothes off, I solve mysteries. And I’m really good. I’m really good at a lot of things and people usually don’t see me coming… but here I am and I’m not going anywhere.”
It all started with a simple case… or was it?

Suckers by Z. Rider

Suckers by Z. Rider(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

“What we have here is a very high-quality junkie novel that happens to be about a unique case of vampirism.” —Evan Clark, author of Movers

WHEN WORN-OUT MUSICIAN DAN FERRY decides to take a shortcut back to the band’s hotel, he picks the wrong dark alley to go down. Within days of being attacked by a bat-like creature, he becomes consumed with the need to drink human blood. Terrified of what will happen if he doesn’t get his fix–and terrified of what he’ll do to get it–he turns to his best friend and bandmate, Ray Ford, for help. But what the two don’t know as they try to keep Dan’s situation quiet is that the parasite driving Dan’s addiction has the potential to wipe out humankind.

Poignant and terrifying, heartfelt and ingenious, Suckers is a story of sacrifice and friendship in the face of an alien contagion that threatens to destroy humanity.

[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

When I picked up this book I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the blurb.  Would it be a bunch of musicians caught in the middle of a vampire outbreak while on tour?  That’s what it seemed like until things got going.  I was really glad about that because it was a sign of the unpredictable plot that would be the hallmark of this book for me.

I’ve read a lot of vampire books and a lot of general outbreak books but I’ve never read anything like Suckers.  The bat-like creatures that are Z. Rider’s vampires are so unique, so interesting that in a way I wish we could have learned more about them.  However, going into the science of the vampires would have been very unrealistic considering that the main character Dan is just a musician, not a scientist.  He doesn’t know any scientists, he doesn’t have a desire to learn more about his vampire situation other than how to survive it so if Rider had gone in depth into the science it would have ruined the mysterious atmosphere surrounding the creatures.  In that way, the world-building is fantastic.  We’re given enough information to understand things and enough information about the world outside Dan’s little bubble that we know things are bad but it never devolves into an info-dump scenario.  Again, considering the main character’s background, this is far more realistic.

The plot as a result of the aforementioned unique world-building was quite unpredictable.  The world doesn’t immediately go all doomsday, post-apocalyptic everyone out for themselves sort of way.  No, it’s more of a slow decay as the suckers start to infect more and more people before they reach a point where hospitals and emergency services can’t handle the influx of new patients.  It’s not your typical doomsday scenario and as such is actually pretty unpredictable in terms of plot.  In retrospect many of the plot twists make sense because of how the characters were slowly changing throughout the story.  I can honestly say that I didn’t see the end coming but it makes sense when you consider the characters Dan and Ray.

Speaking of characters, I was really impressed with them.  Dan is the main character and is sort of the leader of the band but Ray is sort of the person who keeps it all together.  He takes care of Jamie when Jamie goes back on his drugs, takes care of Dan when his cravings for human blood become insatiable and stays true to himself throughout the novel.  Ray could have become cynical and bitter about having to take care of a lot of people but he never did and even in the face of death he stayed true to his principles.  Dan himself was of course a fascinating narrator as he slowly discovered (to his horror) that he craved blood but I have to say that Ray was definitely my favourite.  All of the characters, both major and minor were well developed so I really can’t complain there.

So here we have a very suspenseful horror story with an interesting new type of vampire, lots of plot twists and really believable characters that you’ll love by the end.  You really can’t ask for anything more and I’m definitely excited to see what Rider decides to do with her talent in the future.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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The Apollo Academy by Kimberly P. Chase

The Apollo Academy by Kimberly P. Chase(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Take off with this dynamic, thrill-seeking, sexy New Adult Science Fiction series debut. Welcome to the exclusive Apollo Academy, where Aurora is about to discover that achieving her dream is only the first step towards her future.

As the heiress to Titon Technologies, eighteen-year-old Aurora Titon can have whatever she wants—clothes, expensive gadgets, anything money can buy. But all she really wants is to escape her pampered, paparazzi-infested life for the stars. Becoming the first female pilot to train as an astronaut for the exclusive Apollo Academy is exactly the chance for which she has been waiting.
Flying is everything she ever dreamed, her best friend also got into the Academy, and the paparazzi is banned from campus. Everything would be perfect, but for her unreciprocated crush on a fellow student, the sexy astronaut bent on making her life hell, and the fact that someone keeps trying to kill her.

The most important education doesn’t happen in the classroom…

[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

I’ll admit that I was a little wary about requesting anything described as a “sexy New Adult Science Fiction series debut”.  I haven’t read much New Adult fiction but my experiences have been mixed with it to say the least.  However, I’ve requested a lot of books from this publisher Escape Publishing and I’ve liked every single one so I decided to give it a chance because of the rest of the blurb.  In the end I’m so glad I did.

Aurora Titon is an heiress to a technology empire built on the backs of the poor, who indulge in virtual reality classes in order to escape the reality of their dying world.  She knows that her father’s business practices have been unethical to say the least and so she’s determined to make a difference, to do something worthwhile with her life.  As a child she discovered that this was flying but the problem is that the very exclusive Apollo Academy has never had a female pilot before.  Aurora could obviously bribe her way in with her dad’s help but she wants to earn her spot as a pilot.  Once she’s there, things really got interesting as she tried to gain acceptance and respect.  Of course the instructor, Sky, seems determined to make her life a nightmare while someone seems to be trying to kill her.  This sounds like a pretty typical futuristic mystery story but it’s Aurora’s character that makes her really stand out.  She’s determined to earn her place at the Apollo Academy but in the beginning she also shows a bit of her spoiled background.  As her skills build and she learns more about the Academy’s mission, she becomes just a little bit more humble and more likely to reach out to people to try to understand them.  Aurora wasn’t a horrible person at the beginning of the book but she did change for the better by the end.

One of the things I enjoyed other than Aurora’s character was the realistic love triangle.  My regular readers know that I hate love triangles with a passion but this one between Aurora, Zane and Sky was actually realistic and relatively believable.  Zane tries to keep things between himself and Aurora platonic because he has a bad background that he’s trying to overcome but the attraction between them is undeniable.  At the same time, the Academy’s golden son Sky is also hiding his own secrets, including his attraction to Aurora.  When someone keeps trying to kill Aurora, it was really gratifying to see the two men actually work together with minimal masculine posturing; they put aside their differences.  What a novel idea!  I don’t want to give too much of the plot away but let’s just say that every character is hiding something and it gets pretty interesting when the cards they’re playing close to the chest are revealed.

Other than the realistic love triangle (those words are almost an oxymoron, I know) what really surprised me was the world-building.  When you picture a ‘dying world’ you’re probably picturing a Hunger Games-esque starving world where everything is filthy and falling down.  That’s not necessarily untrue in Chase’s world but she also makes a point of contrasting that with the better sections of the city, which are experiencing shortages but aren’t yet in critical mode.  The earth is running out of resources and it’s the Apollo Academy’s mission to train astronauts in order to set up colonies on other planets as well as mine those planets for critical resources.  Again, I don’t want to give too much away but let’s just say not everyone is super excited about humanity expanding its horizons to the rest of the solar system.

My only real quibble with The Apollo Academy is not the plot in general, but rather the ending.  When you’re about halfway through and learn that someone is out to kill Aurora, it’s not hard to guess which student or students it is/are.  Kimberly Chase makes it pretty clear who is the likely villain and unfortunately she goes with that likely villain as the actual villain.  Most of the book has interesting plot twists and turns but I found that the ending was very predictable.  Of course in real life you get scenarios like the one in the book where it’s the obvious suspect but I would have liked to see a better developed villain.  Other than that, this is a fantastic debut for the author.  The characters are three dimensional and believable, the love triangle is actually realistic and the world-building was pretty darn good.  I’d definitely recommend it if you think the blurb sounds interesting.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

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Rising Dark by A. D. Koboah

Rising Dark by A. D. Koboah(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

When the newly married Reverend Avery Wentworth embarks on a journey to the Americas to begin a new life, he foresees only joy ahead of him. But along with the shocking evils prevalent in a world of slavery, he comes against a much older, darker evil that steals his soul and turns him into a creature of the night. Cut off from humanity, he wanders through a wilderness of despair. A nameless, faceless creature forced to exist in the shadows, his only hope for salvation is the vision of a beautiful Negro and three words: Wait for me.

Rising Dark is the long awaited sequel to Dark Genesis and takes us from London 1757 to present day America in a love story that defies, time, death and the all-too-human flaws inherent in mortals and immortals alike.

[Full disclosure: I was contacted by the author and received a free ebook in exchange for an honest review.]

One of the things that struck me about Dark Genesis was the strength of Luna’s character.  In her life as a slave she goes through absolutely horrific things and that really affects her later on, even when Avery proves over and over that he would never ever hurt her.  As she learned to trust him, their love developed naturally but at the same time she still had trouble trusting.  They go through so many trials together that you can’t help but love them as a couple.  But at the end of the novel when Avery (through the eyes of one of Luna’s descendants) reveals that Luna is gone, you wonder what went wrong with the two of them.  In Rising Dark, we definitely start to get an answer.

Here in Rising Dark we see both what happened to Avery before and after the events of the first novel.  It was very interesting to see his early life in London, his move to America, his marriage and then his horrific transformation into a vampire.  What I liked best about his character was that although he goes through some very awful things he still manages to be kind to everyone, especially Luna.  When she learns to trust him and love him he is very understanding and caring but as she grew drunk on her power, things began to change between them.  Seeing Avery’s heartbreak over the whirlwind borderline abusive relationship between the two of them that develops is just heart-rending.  As their mutual happiness turns to ash, it’s very interesting to see how they both deal with it.  It really says a lot about both of their backgrounds and their personalities.  I can’t tell you much more without giving away spoilers, but Avery (obviously) does not cope very well with his beloved turning into a monster.

The plot was a lot more fast-paced than the plot of the first book.  Avery’s life story goes rather quickly so that we catch up to the point where we meet Luna fairly soon.  After that, it’s a whirlwind of plot twists and turns as the two of them play out their growing push-and-pull dynamic.  Just when you think you know what’s going to happen between the two, A. D. Koboah throws in a huge twist in the plot and forces you to re-evaluate your predictions.  This is especially true toward the end of the novel when Avery meets the descendants of Luna’s human children and discovers that a mysterious evil is stalking them as well.  Rising Dark ends on a cliffhanger and although in some cases this second book raises more questions than it answers I felt that it wasn’t an unsatisfying ending.  It just made me want to get my hands on the third book even sooner.

One of the things that makes the Darkling trilogy stand out to me is the fact that A. D. Koboah has just a beautiful writing style.  I have never been to the United States or England but she creates a very believable picture of life everywhere from a Southern plantation to the dark streets of London.  Through her descriptions, she not only paints a picture of daily life throughout the past three centuries but she also creates a sort of air of foreboding tied into the dark evil mentioned in the blurb.  It makes you want to read on even when you feel like you should probably put the book down and do something productive like sleep or eat.  Even if the pacing was slow, Koboah’s writing style would most definitely keep you hooked.  I know it did for me and now I can’t wait to learn the conclusion of Avery and Luna’s story in the third book.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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