2015 book: The IX || House of Cards
The IX by Andrew P. Weston
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
Book received free for review from Perseid Press.
If I wrote a book, I'd be worried sick about errors in it. Typos, random blank pages, chunks of missing text, that sort of thing. After it was published, I'd do a whole lot of checking of it. I'd like to think I'd read the whole thing once it was available to the public, but perhaps that's unrealistic. I'd sure as hell spot-check chapters, including important ones like the first and last ones.
The IX was swimming in issues and errors. The intro had odd line breaks and numbers showing up mid-text (as if someone had taken a layout meant for a physical version of the book and used it as-is for the ebook version). All the chapters I read (intro, first, and second) had serious, serious problems. Things like multiple paragraphs having multiple sentences where the text all ran together (sentence after sentence of no space between words). Imaginereadingabookandthensuddenlycomingacrossthissortofthing.Itwasbothsurprisingandveryannoying. Then the text would go back to normal for another paragraph or so. Simple skimming, let alone spell checking, would have found this sort of thing.
Based on those issues, I figured this was a self-published book. However, when I checked into it, I found it was published by Perseid Press. Wondering if that was just a front for some self-publishing group, I checked their About Us section of their site:
Perseid Press is a small independent publisher dedicated to marketing exemplary works of fiction. More, at Perseid Press we are striving to perfect the reading experience by offering the highest quality literature in pleasing packages meticulously produced to result in our readers’ lasting enjoyment.
Yeah no.
On the writing/story? The writing was okay at best (dialogue more of an info dump than realistic). The plot seemed like an interesting idea (some distant future alien race was getting their asses kicked by some other alien race, so they made some kind of wormhole technology to bring warriors from the past (Earth) into their time/planet to all fight together against the aliens), but I hadn't read enough to be able to comment if it worked or not. There were just way, way too many quality issues for me to continue with this book.
Since I fell well short of reaching the 50% mark, The IX does not count towards my 50 book per year goal.
(Edit: *peers at cover* While that's bigger than I had intended, I wish I had seen it that size before accepting it for review. It would have saved me from the trouble of starting it. Is that a comma in that blurb? "Sometimes, death is only the beginning of the adventure"? Why in the world would you put a comma there? It'd be so much more snappy (and correct) without it!)
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I finished House of Cards last night. While I loved the first season, I didn't enjoy the second or third ones at all. By the time I finished the third, I was just happy to be over and done with it. Perhaps I should have spread out the episodes more, but two seasons of bad people doing bad things became a bit much. By the time I reached the cliffhanger at the end of season three, I couldn't care less what happened to them.
I got more enjoyment from the Sesame Street parody of the show than I had from the whole first two seasons of it. Linked by gmth in the comments on a post yesterday. Here in case you missed it:
Not sure what I'm going to watch next. I might return to Farscape or The 100, or start something new.
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
Book received free for review from Perseid Press.
If I wrote a book, I'd be worried sick about errors in it. Typos, random blank pages, chunks of missing text, that sort of thing. After it was published, I'd do a whole lot of checking of it. I'd like to think I'd read the whole thing once it was available to the public, but perhaps that's unrealistic. I'd sure as hell spot-check chapters, including important ones like the first and last ones.
The IX was swimming in issues and errors. The intro had odd line breaks and numbers showing up mid-text (as if someone had taken a layout meant for a physical version of the book and used it as-is for the ebook version). All the chapters I read (intro, first, and second) had serious, serious problems. Things like multiple paragraphs having multiple sentences where the text all ran together (sentence after sentence of no space between words). Imaginereadingabookandthensuddenlycomingacrossthissortofthing.Itwasbothsurprisingandveryannoying. Then the text would go back to normal for another paragraph or so. Simple skimming, let alone spell checking, would have found this sort of thing.
Based on those issues, I figured this was a self-published book. However, when I checked into it, I found it was published by Perseid Press. Wondering if that was just a front for some self-publishing group, I checked their About Us section of their site:
Perseid Press is a small independent publisher dedicated to marketing exemplary works of fiction. More, at Perseid Press we are striving to perfect the reading experience by offering the highest quality literature in pleasing packages meticulously produced to result in our readers’ lasting enjoyment.
Yeah no.
On the writing/story? The writing was okay at best (dialogue more of an info dump than realistic). The plot seemed like an interesting idea (some distant future alien race was getting their asses kicked by some other alien race, so they made some kind of wormhole technology to bring warriors from the past (Earth) into their time/planet to all fight together against the aliens), but I hadn't read enough to be able to comment if it worked or not. There were just way, way too many quality issues for me to continue with this book.
Since I fell well short of reaching the 50% mark, The IX does not count towards my 50 book per year goal.
(Edit: *peers at cover* While that's bigger than I had intended, I wish I had seen it that size before accepting it for review. It would have saved me from the trouble of starting it. Is that a comma in that blurb? "Sometimes, death is only the beginning of the adventure"? Why in the world would you put a comma there? It'd be so much more snappy (and correct) without it!)
---
I finished House of Cards last night. While I loved the first season, I didn't enjoy the second or third ones at all. By the time I finished the third, I was just happy to be over and done with it. Perhaps I should have spread out the episodes more, but two seasons of bad people doing bad things became a bit much. By the time I reached the cliffhanger at the end of season three, I couldn't care less what happened to them.
I got more enjoyment from the Sesame Street parody of the show than I had from the whole first two seasons of it. Linked by gmth in the comments on a post yesterday. Here in case you missed it:
Click to viewNot sure what I'm going to watch next. I might return to Farscape or The 100, or start something new.