2015 book: The IX || House of Cards
Apr. 9th, 2015 07:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserThe 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!)
---
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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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:Not sure what I'm going to watch next. I might return to Farscape or The 100, or start something new.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-04-09 03:36 pm (UTC)First two seasons are on Netflix streaming, third season is just starting to air (it's Australian). It stars a kick ass lady detective, features a lot of 'competence porn', and tends to toss gender norms on their head, especially for being set in 1927.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-09 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-04-09 06:20 pm (UTC)I don't think that's incorrect. Glancing around Google, I can't find any hard and fast rules about whether or not to put a comma after a frequency adverb. It's mostly a matter of preference, I think. It would sound snappier without the comma, but the person who wrote the blurb probably felt a pause would give more dramatic emphasis.
I kinda wonder about all the errors you find in your ebooks! Most of them--especially words running together and badly formatted pages--sound like they're caused by OCR software, which would mean it's the fault of whoever is editing (or failing to edit) the output after conversion. The author might not be involved in the process.
(Who the heck knows what was going through anyone's head if the book was never a PDF or physically published to start with.)
no subject
Date: 2015-04-09 10:19 pm (UTC)This comma usage is context dependent, not word dependent. It has nothing to do with what word it follow, but depends on the general structure, meaning and emphasis of each sentence.
Sometimes I drive to work.
The main point here is that you drive to work on occasions. 'Sometimes' is an important part of the statement.
Using that same idea, 'sometimes' is an important part of the blurb's statement -- very important! "Sometimes, death is only the beginning of the adventure". Without that sometimes, it would mean we all get adventures after death.
Agreed though that maybe they did it for style reasons, because a pause would be dramatic. I disagree with that logic, but maybe it's why they did it.
(I sure do enjoy talking about this stuff! :D )
The odd thing about this one is it's really, really expensive for an ebook. $8-$10 is the price of an ebook from a major, well known author. I never heard of this guy before.
Agreed that it could very well not be the author's fault... except he really should do a final check of the books once they're out there. His name is on it, how could he not!
no subject
Date: 2015-04-10 02:59 am (UTC)"Sometimes death is only the beginning of the adventure" makes me feel like the sentence is incomplete and that something should follow it.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-10 03:29 am (UTC)And you know, you're right. I think I'd like "Sometimes death is only the beginning of the adventure..." better.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-10 05:23 am (UTC)And yeah, the ellipses definitely make the lack of a comma work in your example :P