Book Reviews by Ehlen Administration

The Genesis Portal by Matthew Carter My rating: 2 of 5 stars Jasper is determined to find his dream girl, and he will travel halfway across the galaxy to do it, no matter the cost. But when he finds her, he discovers she is way more than a dream girl, and he’s not the only one looking for her. The Genesis Portal is a classic case of a great story rolling around but poor writing execution. The text was full of fragments, wrong words, and several instances of transposing main character names (most frequently Sanya and Sola.) I was also somewhat frustrated by the character degeneration of Sanya, as she started out reading classic literature provided by her dream boy and once she is able to choose her own instead picks up a Vogue. Yes, I get that she is a 17 year old girl, but she could have been slightly deeper than average given her actual age. However, the science fiction aspect is intriguing, and I actually would have liked a little more back story between Sanya and Adam, rat...

The Dreadmore Saga: Dawn of Sathram by A.A. Walker My rating: 2 of 5 stars Three teenagers who only wanted to compete at their regional swordplay competition find themselves thrust into a quest that they must complete to save their realm. Yarrin, Rygar and Novvus are sent to find the translator stone which is protected by deep magic, but must survive the perils along the way. Their mage council is counting on them to help prevent the return of the great evil Mallus, who wreaked havoc on their realm before, and all signs point to him gearing up to do it again. Can they find the stone or will they perish on the dangerous journey? On the surface this has the makings of a great fantasy story, but honestly the writing was just awful. To make it slightly readable there needs to be some serious editing. There were redundant descriptions, superfluous prepositions, tense hopping, fragments, and flat out wrong words used. Some of the words were just in wrong form, such as “constance” in...

Phantom by Mary B. Sinclair My rating: 1 of 5 stars Phantom follows the musings of Jill, as she reflects on some terrible counseling sessions she had with a social worker after the death of her mother. Clearly the social worker didn’t do her job, because Jill was all over the place, spiraling downward into madness as she tried to reconcile Occupy movements with the tyranny of the gay agenda using the imagery in the Phantom of the Opera. Seriously. This is a relatively short story, particularly since the last third of the book was a pretentious “Q&A” or study where the author, Mary Sinclair, goes point by point to explain every single reference Jill made in the internal monologue. While I disagree with a lot of the explanations and the fatuous comparisons between Jill’s journey and other famous literary characters, the explanation actually made sense as an argument from the author’s POV, unlike the weird text and ramblings of the actual story, which was filled with grammati...