E. Jensen

I was sent a copy of Shadows of the Past by author, E. A. Jenson and I almost wish I hadn't read it so that I didn't have to review it. Not because I didn't enjoy it in any fashion, but because I hate being the bearer of bad news. Honestly, the story is alright. It's a decent who-done-it that keeps you wondering if your guess is correct right up until the end. The world Jenson creates, where all the paranormal creatures live out in the open together with humans, is interesting and some of the characters are truly likable.

But the book has a few characteristics of the paranormal genre that generally annoy me. The main character, Kirsa, seems like the center of the world, though there isn't really any apparent reason for it until the end. She is super smart, rich, loved by her family, the god-daughter of the local police chief, surrogate daughter of the head of the Vampire council, lover of the strongest Shadow, friend & employee of the head of the OPIA (think FBI for the paranormal) and even the President knows and worries for her. I got seriously sick of all these powerful men kissing her forehead. The problem is that until the end of the book she is just another citizen. She doesn't seem to have the social clout to explain her importance. Similarly, in order for her to survive and triumph as the main character usually does, other characters had to act in uncharacteristic ways. An assassin suddenly decides to repent rather than kill her, an adamant enemy suddenly and unexplainably decides to help her and the main baddie, who has kept his/her calm for hundreds of years, suddenly gets sloppy about his/her plans. Kirsa didn't solve the crime and save the day, they did it all by themselves simply by being in her presence. Despite these complaints, which are fairly common to the genre and not really a deal breaker for me, I probably would have given the book a 3-3.5 stars if it wasn't an editorial train wreck.

There are numerous homophones and the like (threw vs through, pass instead of past, then and than are frequently confused,etc), there are far too few commas, words and letters get left out (father instead of farther), and there are a number of inconsistencies. The baddie, for example asks at one point "why weren't you surprised to see me out by the car?" The scene he refers to is only a dozen or so pages earlier, but it isn't by the car. It's in the root cellar. One character states that he is roughly 150 years old and then later says he is over 200. (They are vampires after all). At one point I even rechecked the cover to see if I was actually reading an ARC that might not have had a final edit.

A previous reviewer mentioned that the author was going to have it reedited. If this happens I would be happy to recommend the book, maybe even change my review accordingly. But the book I've just read needs some work I'm afraid.… (altro)

Disclosure: I received this book as a Review Copy. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Shadows of the Past is a book that should have been much better than it actually is. The basic story - a paranormal mystery-romance with a modest amount of originality - is not too bad. But the simple truth is that this book needed serious rewriting and editing. Because of this, reading Shadows of the Past is a depressingly frustrating experience, not because of all the weak elements, but because those weak elements hinder and obscure what could have been an enjoyable book.

The fact that a book is self-published, as Shadows of the Past is, is not in itself a mark of quality or lack thereof. There is no particular reason for a self-published book to be good, or bad, or have any other particular characteristic. But the one thread that seems to tie most self-published books together is a lack of editing. And Shadows of the Past suffers terribly from this affliction. One thing that self-published authors need to realize is that a computer spell checker is no substitute for a good copy editor, or any copy editor at all. Shadows of the Past is riddled with the kinds of errors that show up when an author tries to use a spell checking program to catch the sorts of problems that a copy editor would find: homonyms used instead of the correct word, verbs conjugated incorrectly, words missing from sentences, and so on. These types of mistakes in the text won't be caught by a spell-checker, because the individual words in the book are spelled correctly. But when they are strung together, they add up to a mess.

But the problems with Shadows of the Past run deeper than simple grammatical mistakes and spelling miscues. The book itself needed an editor to go through it and suggest serious revisions to many parts of the story. The most consistent problem with the book is overly abrupt transitions as the story switches from scene to scene. For example, the action might switch from a couple of characters having a conversation in New Jersey to a a completely different character doing something completely unrelated in Germany with nothing more than a paragraph break separating the two scenes. These sorts of jolting transitions pull the reader out of the story as he has to stop and figure out what is going on, and whether what they are now reading has anything to do with what they read just a few sentences before. In many ways, the published version of Shadows of the Past reads like the first draft of a book that needed a couple of redrafts and at least one or two readings by a good editor. As it is, the book feels like a criminal waste of good potential.

I remember going to see A.S. King speak when she was in Alexandria. She said that she had written seven complete novels before Dust of 100 Dogs was published. She also said that despite the disappointment she felt at the time when those novels were not selected for publication, the time and effort spent writing those novels was a necessary learning experience for her on her journey to becoming someone who could turn out polished publishable material. In a way, the danger of self-publishing is that authors whose material is not yet ready for the public eye will bypass this sort of learning process and have works in print that will mark their career permanently, or even derail their career. To a certain extent, I think that Shadows of the Past may be a that E.A. Jensen will come to regret publishing in its current form. Not because the book is bad - even though it is - but because with more work, the book clearly could have been so much better.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds.… (altro)