Sarah's Library

The author sent me a Smashwords discount coupon for a copy of this book.  This has not impacted on my ability to write an honest and critical review.

29/11 - Ok, so great opening premise - Greek Gods, turns out some of the lesser known ones were evil and a pair of them decided that the human race had to go.  On the other side we have the Celestrials, Angels, two of whom are Michael and Gea, and they have a recently born baby girl.  The God of Doom, Moros, decides that the Angels will be no match for them due to the fact that they've been living pn the comparative luxury of Earth for so many years, especially if they give them another 18 years to gain a stronger false sense of security, and so on December 21st (coincidentally the same date the Mayan calendar ends, although not necessarily the same year as the year hasn't been given yet) Armegeddon will come about.  But, there may still be hope...Michael and Gea's child will turn 18 just in time to be there to save the human race.  I've only read the prologue so far, so that's all I know.
I have just finished the prologue and unfortunately I am already having some issues with the punctuation, awkwardness with the flow/rhythm of the sentences, the use of incorrect tense and words that are used in the wrong context.  An example of tense problems - "Shaking the rain from his now sodden cloak he rubbed a callous hand around his face and pushed open the door."  I believe that callous should be calloused in this sentence as the callous happened in the past.  The last half of this sentence makes little sense - "They didn't notice that their playful antics had caused a rumbling on the ground, should they have been meeting a less rural spot would've caused people to think a small earthquake was happening."  I think what Darley is trying to convey is something along the lines of "...if they had been meeting in a less rural spot their antics would've caused people to think a small earthquake was happening."  My final example is the following sentence - "He then recanted what he had heard and seen."  I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be recounted, as recanted actually means to retract something that has been said and is often used in situations where a witness to a crime 'recants' their statement (see Law and Order for about a million examples).  I hope people don't think I'm knitpicking with these issues, but I do find it impacts on the enjoyability of the story when I have to go back over a sentence after realising it doesn't actually make any sense or the flow of the sentence is strange because of oddly placed commas.  Will definetly continue reading with the hope that the first chapter is better edited than the prologue.  To be continued...

30/11 - Had to read the first chapter at least, before going to sleep and after reading it I had to leave another comment here.  This e-book has some of the worst editing I've ever seen; there are missing words, misspelled words, words used in the incorrect context, words in the wrong tense for the sentence, words that should be plural aren't and vice versa and baffling punctuation - it's driving me insane.  I don't know if I would, if I could, continue if I hadn't promised a review because, as I said above, the story is promising, but I don't know if that can make up for the building irritation reading through the typos is creating within me.  But I will plough on, searching for the greener pastures of no-typo land that is like a carrot on a stick, just out of reach in the next chapter, or maybe the next.  To be continued...

5/12 - Ugh, still slogging my way through this dreadfully edited story, all I can say is I'm glad I didn't buy the book.  But, I will not continue to complain about the editing as I believe I made my opinion clear in what I've already written.  Plus I have found something else that is bugging me regarding Esta's personality.  I have noticed a couple of times now that she is very inconsistent with her feelings.  One minute she'll be raring to go with absolute certainty that she will work out what her friends and family are hiding from her or die trying, the next she decides (for illogical or unconvincing reasons) that her search for the truth can wait a few more hours after all.  If the information she is searching for is about her and "what" she is, I don't believe she (or any other, up until now, normal teenager) would give up on finding the answers because of the expression on her dad's face, the fact that he's upset by any mention of it would just give her more incentive to find the truth.  There have also been a few impossibilities in the narrative; for e.g. Michael is being choked to death - cannot breathe at all, but is still able to smell the stench of death emanating from his attacker.  Not sure how this is possible as the whole idea of being choked to death is that you can't breathe.  So how could you get the smell that's in the air into your nasal passages?  Plus in a life or death situation like this your brain would be shutting down non-essential functions in order to put all its' energies towards saving/prolonging your life, so even if you managed to get a whiff in before your airways were completely blocked off your brain would be unlikely to register what you smelt as the message wouldn't get sent.  To be continued...

10/12 - I am liking the new character Sam and Esta's reaction to him (at least she's not into Luc) and I am interested to find out exactly who he is and what happened between him and Trey to cause such animosity on Trey's part.  Judging from Dora's response to what Esta told her about her suspicions regarding everyone else's behaviour, Dora is obviously in on the whole 'Greek Gods destroying the Earth and Esta is the only one who can save it' situation, but I am looking forward to finding out whether she's just a normal teen who, for currently unknown reasons, is in on the secret or if she's some kind of supernatural being, like Sunnie.  Also can't wait to see Esta kick 'obviously evil' Lucs' butt and finally have some ammunition against Portia and her posse, even if she can never actually admit that she saved the world (kind of like Buffy - saves the world numerous times but can't tell anyone about it).  To be continued...

15/11 - I'm not sure I like some of the mixing of mythologies and religions that Darley has used.  If we go by her newly created  mythology (never heard of these characters interacting with one another before reading Celestria) Michael and Samael (archangels from both Judaism and Christianity) know and have done battle with some of the Greek Gods (including Hades and Charybdis) and are on the same side as more spiritual figures like Gea (also known as Gaia or Mother Earth).  It seems that most of the more popular religious and mythological figures were in contact with each other, all living (well, sort of) together at the same time.  The heavens must have been pretty crowded with that many gods, angels, etc up there all trying to exist together.  I have read the other reviews for Celestria that have been posted on GR and I have to wonder whether the Smashwords edition of the book differs completely from the paperback edition.  No one has mentioned the editing problems I have brought up and so I wonder whether getting the opportunity to read the paperback has meant that they haven't had the problems I have experienced.  Whether the physical copy was edited more carefully than the online version and that is why I'm tossing up between leaving the rating at 3 stars or if the editing is annoying enough to take another star off (it's already lost 1 star, not sure if I'm annoyed enough or not).  To be continued...

30/12 - Still finding Celestria difficult to read and I've been putting it off in favour of more polished books, but I decided that I really want to see what happens at the end, despite all the problems I've had with its readability.  When I clicked on the book link to come and write this next installment of my review I saw that what I had already written had been commented on...by the author.  I was surprised and pleased to see that, while I had been pretty hard on Celestria, she was able to see the constructive part in my criticisms and has been taking what I said on board.  Her comment has given me hope, because, as I said early on in my review, this book has a lot of potential and I would hate to see it permanently buried under the weight of some bad editing and sentence structure.  I've gotten to the part in the story where Esta is finally learning who and what she really is and who Luc, Trey and the rest of the cast of characters are and it's become quite exciting.  Exciting enough to have kept me up past 1 am reading Celestria and then writing this installment of the review before I fall asleep at the laptop and forget what I wanted to say.  Anyway, my eyes are so sore from reading from the laptop that I can hardly see what I'm writing, I guess that means it's bedtime.  To be continued...

13/10 - It's been a long time since I read any further in this book and I don't want to read any further, and while I fully believe in making an extra big effort to finish and review a book gifted to me from the author, I also believe that with some books you just get to a point where you can't continue to push yourself to read it, no matter the moral motivation.  I'm at that point with Celestria now, and have been for some months (I haven't touched my Kindle copy since before my last review...LAST DECEMBER).  I'm very sorry Julie, but Celestria's editing errors along with some of the confused plot lines is just too much for me and I cannot finish it.  I'm of the opinion that this book has a lot of potential and I hope that Julie, you can/will go back and edit out the grammar problems.  Just fixing those errors would go a long way to making this a great story.  Good luck.