The Stone of Alexandria by Lleu ChristopherSummary (from amazon): Michael Valens is a graduate student whose life is rather ordinary until a curiosity about the occult leads him to a secret magical society. He then begins to remember a past life in ancient times, where he formed a connection with an otherworldly Stone of incomparable power. As Michael tries to unravel these mysteries, dark forces attempt to use him and the Stone to gain supreme power over the world.
Review: Blegh. I really don't even want to write this. Warning everybody, this is not going to be a good review. When I first started the book, I thought it'd be like Diane Duane's books. Slow to start, but worth the read. Yeah... no.
Plot: Honestly, the plot is confusing. There are four or five subplots going on at once, it switches from place to place, time to time, without any warning, and there's very little real action. There was one subplot, started in the prologue, that didn't come into play until the very end of the book. It was way too easy to get lost.
Characters: I thought the main character Michael might be an interesting character, but I never really found out. There was very little told about him. I have NO idea what he even looked like! I counted three or four characters with M names, and there were just too many names that were too similar. It once switched from a scene with two characters named Michael and Sara to two characters named Matthews and Sandy without even a space as a warning. It was just confusing.
PG-13 stuff: I honestly didn't know if this was a YA book or an adult book. It seemed like a YA book at first, but then halfway through there was some swearing and.... stuff and the voice stopped sounding YA, so I'm not sure.
Cons, complaints, bad stuff, etc.: First of all, a bunch of times there were I'd be reading along, and in the middle of the sentence there'd be an indent and a new paragraph. Then there were times when it would switch from being about one set of people to another set of people with just an indent, no space, no stars. It was so confusing.
Halfway through, I was so lost, and it felt like I'd been reading for so long (it's 430 pages and feels like a thousand), that I almost gave up.
Cover comments: It's boring, honestly. I don't like it at all.
Conclusion: Time for me to write a new review policy. No more self-published books. So I don't really recommend this. It was too hard to read. Two roses.
Peace and cookies,
Laina
Aww... Too bad you didn't like this one. It sounds like the kind of book I actively seek out, a mystical mixture of science fiction and fantasy, and I'm willing to read self published books and have read some good ones. And I read on Amazon that this book involves Atlantis, which I am obsessed with!
ReplyDeleteDid the author contact you, or did you contact them to get this book? Do they have a website? I'm interested in reading this one despite its self-published flaws.
paradoxrevealed (at) aim (dot) com
I also heard it has metaphysical elements and parallel universes, my other obsessions! The plot and sf/fantasy themes sound like something out of the stuff I write!
ReplyDeleteI don't think it involves Atlantis, actually. Or if it did, it was for like ten seconds in the prologue, which was really hard to read.
ReplyDeleteThe author contacted me, actually, and I thought it sounded good from the amazon thing, too, but not so much, honestly. If you wanna give it a try, go for it, lol. Hey, where do you live? If you're not too far away, maybe I could lend it to you.
Hey Paradox, I'm the author of this book..my main website is www.liminalworlds.com. I can tell you that some people did like this book. I don't think anyone disliked it as much as Laina, lol...but I have found that it's definitely not for everyone. If you have an interest in things like parallel realities, metaphysics and the Western esoteric tradition, you might be interested. If not, I can see where it may be a little confusing. And it does involve Atlantis :)
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