So the last time I found myself without any reading material I went to Twitter and asked their lovely writing community if there was anyone who had a book out with less than five reviews and a few brave souls stepped forward and offered me their stories. I have completed reading the first one, The Sun God’s Tomb by CJ Evans.
Now I didn’t have any idea what I walking into with this one. I have since learned it was a debut novel by a very young author so I will be treating it as such in this book review. The first clue I might not be dealing with someone used to the business was the back cover. There instead of a photo of the author’s face I saw a photo of his leg being climbed up by a vicious attack squirrel. I chuckled, I admit it, but this made me wonder if this was a comedy book? I was super confused to read on as the author bio switched to a blurb without any separation. After I figured it out I sat down to read the actual story.
The first thing I noticed was the title page was numbered. Oh boy, not off to a good start here. Formatting issues continued with a copyright page where his middle initial was not capitalized, and an index page which was…. a glorious mess. Normally, at this point, had I found this book in any other way, I probably would have not looked into any further. Clearly it’s the work of an amateur.
So I got to the actual story and tried to be my super patient self. I was surprised it wasn’t bad. Honestly a bit shocked. However the characters were fleshed out and the story plodded along at a steady pace with no missing plot lines, gaps, or major story arch errors. It was set in the 1920’s, a small group of middle aged men who’d fought in WWI and a couple of hilariously temperamental French girlfriends. What I found most difficult was the first chapter which bounced between three languages – the English of the narration and the Spanish and French the main characters were spouting to random cameo characters. I know enough French to follow along but I found the Spanish, which I don’t know, quite irritating. I had to read the whole sentence in complete Gibberish before it be would revealed in English what was probably said in the next sentence. A little bit of this is OK but not pages worth.
From here I started noticing errors in the text. The first glaring one was when one of the characters was memorized. I do believe the word should have been mesmerized. After that and two more typos I started taking notes. I’m NOT an editor and I probably missed quite a bit but over the course of the rest of the book I circled almost 20 typos, missing words, extra words, and confused words.
It wasn’t obvious that this story was written by what I am assuming is a young teenager. I mean shockingly he seems to write about middle aged white dudes really well. Disturbingly so, although I have to wonder where he’s getting his opinion of French women from! (That’s honestly just cheekily hilarious.) The whole book is extremely similar to Indiana Jones, and this is coming from someone who only watched that movie once when I was probably in kindergarten. There’s the group of dusty old men, there’s the damsel in distress, and a mission through a booby trapped temple that suspiciously has lots of snakes a rolling boulder.
Normally I would just keep my mouth shut, not bother
reviewing this, and get on with my life, but the acknowledgement in the back
tugged at my heart strings. It thanked mom for her encouragement and the
patience of friends. And sweetly, also the reader.
OK FINE. I did something I never do. I collected all the errors and wrote them
down and also gave some formatting advice in a direct message on Twitter. And then
I gently left a review that wasn’t tooooo harsh but did point out it’s a little
too similar to Indiana Jones. I do
not believe it is my job to crush the spirits of any new young writers but I
can at times offer guidance. And I hope he does fix these issues – because if he
figures that out I honestly do believe he’ll get better with time and be a very
decent young writer someday.
So, I guess that’s what this book review is about today – not so much a review as a reminder to be kind and help out those who are just starting on their journey. If you’d like to do the same you can find this book on Amazon (and I will also get a small commission for any clicks.)