The Glittering World: Robert Levy - Review

The Glittering World

I just wanted to share my review of this novel by Robert Levy. I'd really recommend it if you like fantasy authors such as Neil Gaiman or Terry Brooks.

The Glittering World novel starts with a group of friends Michael Whitley (Blue), Elisa, Jason and Gabe visiting the Starling Cove Friendship Colony in Canada to visit a house that Blue's recently deceased Grandmother bequeathed him.

 As we get to know each of the characters we find out that Blue's upbringing in the Starling Cove Friendship Colony has some startling secrets to reveal. As we learn more about the character's history, and the history of the cove, Robert Levy introduces us to a richly described fantasy world that promises to answer some of the questions regarding Blue's past. Some reviewers mentioned that they disliked the structure of this novel - (each main section is told from a specific character's viewpoint) but I thought it worked really well.

If you have a favourite character though it does mean that you have to wait a bit to hear from them. I really enjoyed The Glittering World by Robert Levy and look forward to future works from him.

I rated this novel 4 out of 5. Many thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. As always, my opinions are my own.

Glittering World on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Glittering-World-Robert-Levy/dp/1476774528

Glittering World on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609606-the-glittering-world

Great Zoo of China: Matthew Reilly - Review

Great Zoo of China

Public review posted for Great Zoo of China on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Great-China-Matthew-Reilly/dp/1476749558/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

I rated this book as 4 Stars

After years of secret research, top reptile expert Dr Cassandra Jane Cameron "CJ" and her brother Hamish, along with selected other VIP guests, are invited by the Chinese Government to witness the grand unveiling of "The Great Zoo of China" - which turns out to actually be the "The Great Dragon Zoo of China".

Things all start well during the tour. The Chinese have constructed an amazing purpose built home to show the dragons off to the world, but things soon go awry (as you may likely have anticipated), and it's down to CJ and company, (but mainly CJ) to save the day.

This novel is action-packed throughout. I finished it in a couple of days.

I was really impressed by the level of detail and planning that Matthew Reilly puts into the story. The book is complete with detailed schematics and layouts that are relevant for each chapter and the description of the various Dragon clans/species is vivid and detailed.

This is firmly an action-genre novel so don't expect huge amounts of characterisation or plot-twisting surprises.

I'd also recommend putting your "suspension of disbelief" setting up to the maximum, otherwise it might interrupt your enjoyment of the story. For me, one description of a 747-sized Dragon throwing a building at its captor stretched my imagination right to the limit. However, I moved on through that and still really enjoyed the story.

An enjoyable, fast paced action novel.

I received a free advanced reader copy of this book from the Publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Initial plot outline - System Error: In Your Favour

Original plot ideas

What is the best way to capture the plot outline for a new novel? Do you mind map, use chart outlines, make copious notes about your characters and story, or just wing it?

On this blog posting I just wanted to share with you my initial plot outline for System Error: In Your Favour that I created a few months before starting work on my novel and explore a couple of other ways that it could have been done.

Dotting the Ts and crossing the Is - the importance of good grammar

After trying out a service called Grammarly for the first time on my last blog posting this week I thought I would apply it to the whole text of "Tweet of Faith", a self published fiction novel that I recently published on Smashwords and Amazon.

I wanted to find out just how many errors my own proofreading efforts had missed.

Sales updates: System Error: In Your Favour

A return to the EBookTracker tool from Kindle Nation

Just a really quick blog post on my current sales activity.

Some random mulling on the question: "How did you get into writing?"

Author's disclaimer: This blog post is kindly sponsored by the lovely people at Grammarly :) 

I use Grammarly for proofreading because lectures in high school on correct punctuation and grammar still give me nightmares! After reviewing this blog the Grammarly online tool told me to "try harder", just like my old English teacher did...

Do we all have a story to tell?

I've recently been mulling why it is that so many people feel compelled to write stories. It's a very old proverb but "everyone has a story to tell" was just ingrained into me when I was growing up, and I never thought why that was until now.

Image courtesy of Jppi - MorgueFile: http://www.morguefile.com/creative/jppi

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

Marketing your book

Ever since I wrote my first book I've been doing a lot of reading about various marketing approaches you can take to develop sales.

Here are few ideas I've tried out and a few future ones I aim to try.