Review: Songs of the Deliverer III: Glory Born

Songs of the Deliverer III: Glory Born by Elvo Bucci
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Glory Born tells the story of a grieving old man and an orphan girl who are called to witness the birth of a miracle child. As they strive to fulfill their mission they are confronted by evil and tyranny. Success means salvation but if they fail, the world may be lost forever." -Elvo Bucci

Elvo Bucci's Songs of the Deliverer III: Glory Born is labelled children's and religious. The author states that this book is "written to help our children and teens experience faith and understand what love is". Based on my experience as an elementary school librarian, most kids below the fourth grade aren't going to grasp the meaning of this book. Bucci goes about his quest to show the true meaning of love through a work of fiction in Glory Born, the third in the Songs of the Deliverer series.

As an agnostic reader I tried to focus on the moral lessons rather than religious ones here. Christmas is upon us and whatever you believe in terms of the origins of the holiday, I think most of us can agree that this world could use more love and compassion. If we as a society could find it within ourselves to put more emphasis on people and not things, December 25 would become a celebration of love and life rather than gift count and excess.

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Review: The Golden Scepter

The Golden Scepter by Alex Zabala
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Golden Scepter is the second in the Chauncy Rollock series by Alex Zabala and Deyego Alehandro. Treasure of the Mayan King came before this and I have not read that. I tried to get the jist via summaries and reviews and I'll admit that Mayan King sounded as if it was better but overall the reviews were worse. For me, The Golden Scepter was okay, bordering on good. Perhaps I wasn't invested enough in Chauncy having not read the first book, but he felt like a cliche to me. Keep in mind I rolled my eyes through every Indiana Jones movie I ever watched, which wasn't even all of them, so it could be simply that this action/adventure/mythology genre is never going to land on my Best Reads list.

My lack of interest in no way is the fault of these authors. In fact the writing was very good. The proofreader in me appreciated the lack of grammatical and typographical errors. I enjoyed the flow of dialogue between characters, that can be harder to accomplish than you might think. I wouldn't deliberately steer anyone away from this book. I know many people who would love it so I think that speaks positively about The Golden Scepter.

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Review: Escape From Injustice: Wrongly accused of murder in 1850s England, a young man escapes and meets his love on a ship under sail for Australia at the time of the great gold rush.

Escape From Injustice: Wrongly accused of murder in 1850s England, a young man escapes and meets his love on a ship under sail for Australia at the time of the great gold rush. by Warne Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Warne Wilson's Escape From Injustice weighs in at a hefty 455 pages and it's not only the page count that packs the punch. This tale of woe and wonder isn't a lighthearted summer read.

"Wrongly accused of murder in 1850s England, a young man escapes and meets his love on a ship under sail for Australia at the time of the great gold rush."

John Lille is a character who becomes essentially a whipping boy of life. From a privileged upbringing comes a boy approaching manhood with next to no idea what that actually entails. Well, life said, "Let me show you, John", and proceeds to deal him blow after blow after devastating blow until his life scarcely resembles what he once knew. As the blurb indicates, John Lille is wrongly accused and convicted of murder and faces the death penalty. He wisely decides to abscond and sets forth on a journey filled with unimaginable heartache, bouts of sickness and health, and financial affluence and pauperism. Will John experience a finale celebrated by tears of joy or pain?

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Review: SORCERERS' DYNASTY

SORCERERS' DYNASTY by Stephen Perkins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Intro to Sorcerers' Dynasty: "The new age of darkness was about to fall. It was the epoch of nightmares, demons, and hateful spirits, hatched out from the foul womb of mankind's subconscious."

Dark, right? Alternate histories tend to go that route and author Stephen Perkins provides no break from the norm. I want to say very little about the plot because discovering every little thing in this flipped inside out fantasy gave me the optimum reading experience.

To every positive there is a negative, or so they say. The negatives in Sorcerers' Dynasty, for me, came with wildly changing personality traits and actions of numerous characters. Some of the inconsistencies came within one scene and my beta reading spidey senses were trembling. I said earlier that learning everything about this world and the story was enjoyable, and it was. However, it was a LOT. By a lot, I mean perhaps too much for one book. There is so much more that could be expounded upon to the extend of enough content for several books.

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Review: Invasion

Invasion by Roxanne Bland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you find a book that can combine the vampire, werewolf, and alien genres in a way in which the reader's eyes don't become exhausted from near constant rolling towards the back of the head, bravo! Roxanne Bland seems to have cracked that elusive code with Invasion. If you - like me - read the summary and thought, "oh good lord, this can't go right", think again.

Suspend your sense of reality and feasibility for 300+ pages and fall into the world of the angst ridden Kurt (Vampire Master of Seattle), the tortured love story of Parker (Alpha werewolf) and Melera (intergalactic assassin), and the resourceful Garrett Larkin (super witch of the Balthus Coven) as they band together against the evil scheming of Mag Beloc and impending alien invasion of Earth. The story is dark and gritty, full of astonishingly well developed characters on a quest you probably never imagine. A for originality in Invasion, Bland!

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