M. R. Sellars

Okay, I'm conflicted about this book. I have no problem with short ebooks. I have no problem paying money for a short ebook as long as I know that is what I am doing. And I should point out this book was a freebie, so I didn't lose money.

However,

if the book is basically a teaser - could you please put that in the title or description so people know?? It was so disappointing to get to the end and then be told I have to buy something that will include part of this, to find out what happens. show more It's a shame because Sellars' work is really good. IT is a believable tale and the heroine is wonderful. I will most likely buy it, but I would've liked a warning. show less

How do you stop the dead? It seems that any time she wants Miranda can leave Annalise and possess Felicity, at least for a short period of time. Miranda won't be happy until Felicity is entirely hers and Rowan won't be happy until Felicity is safe.

This book, in particular, of the Miranda series was frightening to me. It was Felicity's fright that got to me, her own doubts about her sexual preferences, and her own reactions to some terrible family secrets.

This is the third Rowan Gant investigation book I've read (although chronologically, it's the second in the series), and while the author seems to have learned a little about the craft of writing since the first book, all the things that made me hiss and spit and chant 'no, no, no, no, no' plaintively as I read are still there. *sigh*

Basically, at the beginning of the book, Mr Sellars has a big note to the effect that the books are written in a first person narrative voice, which means he's show more writing the way his protagonist, Rowan Gant, thinks; and that this voice may therefore not necessarily be grammatically correct. OK, lack of grammatical correctness in a narrative voice, I can deal with. No - my issue is that firstly, Rowan apparently doesn't narrate the way he thinks – or if he does, he doesn't think the way he speaks.

In essence, we have someone whose dialogue is all in pretty standard conversational language – casual, reasonable mixture of long and short sentences, frequent contractions. Whenever we have anything outside of quotation marks, however – description, exposition or reasoning – the language suddenly becomes unbelievably verbose, with sentences that frequently run over three or more lines; word choices that read as though the author felt that failure to use a thesaurus at least twice per sentence would be letting the creative team down; and generally, an apparent belief that any use of a short, simple word where a more erudite polysyllabic circumlocution could say the same thing with added complexity was simply unacceptable.

That, plus some lousy editing (use of apostrophes in plurals, lack of apostrophes in possessives, and a lack of commas that led to some mindboggling ambiguities, none of which should count as 'bad grammar justified that's by a first person narrative voice') created constant frustration for me as I read through the book. I lost count of the number of times I was jarred out of the story by little typos – it wasn't a matter of being offended by improper punctuation, so much as annoyance at being forced to work out what the hell the author was trying to before I could get on with the story.

Now, the more pragmatic amongst you might ask why I bothered to keep reading (and, indeed, finish) the book if the writing style annoyed me so much. My answer is twofold. First, Mr Sellars is a Pagan author with a character who (stigmata, channelled visions and telepathic links with his wife aside) reasonably accurately portrays a Witch who's active in both the Pagan community and the mundane day-to-day world of earning a crust. This makes me want to like and support the author's books: I just keep hoping that as he gets more and more practiced at the craft of writing, the issues I'm seeing will get less and less obvious. Unfortunately, so far, I can't quite manage it (the liking, I mean – the supporting I'm still doing).

My second reason is that underneath the writing style with all its niggles, I actually think Mr Sellars has some great plot ideas and some solid characters with whom I can often identify (not that they couldn't do with a bit of development to flesh them out sometimes, but they definitely have the potential there). It just bugs me that the massively overwritten narrative style, gets in the way of that potential for me.

The plot, for those who are still with me after that lead-in, revolves around a set of brutal serial killings, all perpetrated by an individual who seems intent on resurrecting the Burning Times in St Louis. The killer appears to be using the Malleus Mallficiarum as a guide for both his methods and his victims; and he leaves bibles with highlighted verses at each crime scene. And once more, our friend Rowan and his faithful sidekick, Detective Benjamin Storm (along with a cast of a few others) have to find out who and why.

The 400-odd pages they spend doing this interested me enough that I had no problem finishing the book, even though I found myself constantly reading a passage, and then having to to go back and edit it in my mind before I could move on to the next one. I actually found some of the 'educational' crime scene exposition interesting too – especially since it often mirrored bits and pieces I've been picking up from my Criminal Minds watching (yes, I know that's fiction too... but it's reasonably well written fiction).

So all up, my gut feeling is that, while the ideas and the structures behind the book are actually not too bad, the execution, as with the previous Rowan Gant books I've read, lets it down horribly. I'm trying to think of who I'd recommend the books to, and to be honest, I'm coming up blank. Ratings-wise, I think I'd give it an 8/10 for potential, but unfortunately, the writing style gets in the way enough that the final figure drops to a 5.5/10 for the actual story. Which is a shame – because it would just take a good editor and a bit of work to see it reaching that potential. show less

In this book it's Felicity, Rowan's wife, who is communicating with the dead. Not only is she seeing what they see and hearing what they hear, she's experiencing what they experience. Right down to the burn marks appearing on her body. They fade quickly, but the memory doesn't. As the symptoms worsen, Rowan is desperate to find the latest victim, not only to save her but to save his wife.