First up, I have finally finished the Infinities collection of short stories and novel samples on my Kindle and found it, as a whole, largely unsatisfying. The rest of the collection included a story entitled The Wooden Horse by John Grant which tells the story of a vet who makes the decision to change his career to become a film critic after watching a series of unusual war movies at his local art house cinema. This was a not bad, little bit wishy-washy, alternative history tale that felt a tad bland.
Next up was Phoenix Man by Gary Kilworth about a man whose dangerous obsession with fire and the ability to continually set himself alight damages his relationship with his girlfriend and has disastrous results. This was slightly better and a neat little tale from an established author from whom I have only had minimal experience.
The next book sample comes from Kaitlin Queen and is called One More Unfortunate which reads like a pretty standard and unimpressive thriller which, in these opening chapters, really fails to ignite any interest!
One Step Closer by Iain Rowan is the next short story and isn't bad but falls a little short of being perfect. Still, it isn't bad and might inspire me to read more of his work....
Spotted Lilly from Anna Tambour comes next and is another book sample about a girl who signs a contract with the Devil and has a week to reconsider before the deal becomes final. Okay but not something I would want to continue with.....this is followed by Memory by Linda Nagata which looks like it might be a very impressive sci-fi novel with lots of potential; The Red Church by Scott Nicholson which also looks like it might be an engaging Supernatural thriller; The Disappeared by Kristine Kathryn Rusch ~ an author I have enjoyed before but whose book sample here fails to impress on so many levels and The Immortal, a sample from Steven Saville ~ a near future story that may just have potential but that I would have to see about...
Overall, to summarise, the Infinities collection was not a bad download but only contained a few stories and samples that I might be interested in. Still, it will be intresting to see if I disccover any new authors because of it...
The other stuff I have been reading on my Kindle include Surviving The Fog which I have reviewed on Dooyoo as follows: "This is the second free book that I have downloaded onto my Kindle and, unfortunately, is the first to be sent to the Archives; the virtual bin held in storage at Amazon where books can be dumped from your Kindle to be restored at a later date if you so wish. The idea of this is that the Kindle only holds 3500 books approximately so you can store those you don't want at Amazon until such time as you want to read them again meaning you only have to download titles once!
Fog reads like a cross between Stephen King's The Mist mixed with Under The Dome with elements of Kit Craig's Gone thrown into the mix for good measure! A group of High-School children on a camping exercise are at a group of Lodges up in the Appalachian mountains when a heavy, dense fog descends ~ cutting them off from the rest of civilisation. Entering the fog has disastrous results: the group's adult supervisors set off to get help and never return and there are later reports of screams being heard in the fog as others are taken as they try to escape!
The group of young children face a struggle to survive as they brace themselves to hold out against an indeterminable future. And when they find out they are not alone in the mountains, things do not get much better.....
This had the potential to be a really good story but unfortunately falls flat from the flaw of not being paticulary interesting throughout! No real explanation is ever really made of the fog, until the author lazily chucks in one possibility right at the end almost as an after-thought, and, aside from at the start, the fog is pretty much ignored ~ it could just as much be a wall of pineapple jelly that stops them from rejoining the rest of the world!
It also quickly becomes confusing just who this book is aimed at! My first impressions were that it was a young adult book but casual use of the C-Bomb and some sexual scenes pretty much rule that out in theory! Certainly though, there is little enough here to keep grown adults interested for long!
The characters are bland, the situation ~ not much better!
Overall then, this is one to avoid if you are a Kindle user!
Fog reads like a cross between Stephen King's The Mist mixed with Under The Dome with elements of Kit Craig's Gone thrown into the mix for good measure! A group of High-School children on a camping exercise are at a group of Lodges up in the Appalachian mountains when a heavy, dense fog descends ~ cutting them off from the rest of civilisation. Entering the fog has disastrous results: the group's adult supervisors set off to get help and never return and there are later reports of screams being heard in the fog as others are taken as they try to escape!
The group of young children face a struggle to survive as they brace themselves to hold out against an indeterminable future. And when they find out they are not alone in the mountains, things do not get much better.....
This had the potential to be a really good story but unfortunately falls flat from the flaw of not being paticulary interesting throughout! No real explanation is ever really made of the fog, until the author lazily chucks in one possibility right at the end almost as an after-thought, and, aside from at the start, the fog is pretty much ignored ~ it could just as much be a wall of pineapple jelly that stops them from rejoining the rest of the world!
It also quickly becomes confusing just who this book is aimed at! My first impressions were that it was a young adult book but casual use of the C-Bomb and some sexual scenes pretty much rule that out in theory! Certainly though, there is little enough here to keep grown adults interested for long!
The characters are bland, the situation ~ not much better!
Overall then, this is one to avoid if you are a Kindle user!
Summary: Not a very satisfying read...." Definitely Kindling then and one to avoid!
I have also read Fairytale by Maggie Shayne which is a novel published by Harlequin which is the Canadian Company associated with the Mills And Boon brand over here in England! This is not exactly your traditional romance story though with a tale that sees the main protagonist, a troubled young man called Adam, falling in love with one of two twin sisters who share Royal Fae blood and whose destiny is all tied up in rescuing the Fairy kingdom of Rush from Dark forces that seek only to control and destroy! This was actually a lot better than it sounds and not at all the slushy romantic nonsense you might otherwise have expected from the Harlequin brand! I kind of got the impression that the Company is branching out and though this was only an okay read, it did make me want to read the follow-up novel at some stage which follows Bridin's battles to regain her Royal Crown over in the Kingdom of The Fae! Not at all bad for a freebie!
Next up, I have just started The End Of The World by Andrew Biss; a bizarre comedy fantasy that sees a young man forced out of his parents house after years spent in seclusion who finds himself almost mugged before he ends up at a B And B with an eccentric selection of fellow guests. I am not saying this book is at all weird or surreal or anything but lets put it this way: so far the main character has been introduced to a Serbian woman who has no stomach, an American con-man/ business man who lives in the refridgerator and a Preacher who emerges from the kitchen sink! So far though, it is quite entertaining...just very, very odd!
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