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Todd Wittenmyer – The Vulnerable Gods | Review

Title: The Vulnerable Gods

Author: Todd Wittenmyer

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 349

Rating: 3.5*/5

Todd Wittenmyer – The Vulnerable Gods

I have kind of mixed feelings about this book because while the story line itself is pretty gripping and keeps you turning the pages, there are so many spelling and grammar mistakes that it’s difficult to overlook them. We’re talking the wrong versions of to/too, your/you’re and its/it’s all throughout the book. And the layout is messed up as well, with double spacing, random blank pages and weird page numbers that seem to appear and disappear.

Of course, this is par for the course with an indie novel to a certain extent, and I was prepared to overlook them because Todd is a BookTube friend of mine. But at the same time, I do think that the book would be much, much better if it was copy edited and proofread and then properly typeset.

But now that we’ve got the negatives out of the way, let’s move on to the positives. One of the things that I enjoyed the most was the fact that you can see the author’s personality coming across in the book, and you can also see how he’s inspired by Stephen King. But it doesn’t feel derivative, and in fact it’s kind of difficult to actually classify the genre of this book because it takes inspiration from a bunch of different genres and brings them together into something new.

All in all then, I am glad that I read this, but it also felt incomplete. I feel as though Todd is selling himself short here, and it’s just a shame that it hasn’t been better proofed before he hit the publish button. I can’t really recommend it in its current state because of the mistakes, but I do think there’s a lot of potential there. I’d say it’s a good 80-90% of the way towards being a pretty good indie release, but without the corrections it’s a bit like going to see a decent band who are being held back by a bad sound guy.

Todd Wittenmyer

Click here to buy The Vulnerable Gods.

Pam Elise Harris – Oblivion | Review

Title: Oblivion

Author: Pam Elise Harris

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 478

Rating: 7/10

Pam Elise Harris – Oblivion

Disclaimer: While I am to be unbiased and purchased this book with my own money, Pam is also my editor. Full disclosure!

This review is going to be a tough one, because I have a lot of respect for Pam because I’ve worked with her on my own books and her input is invaluable. In fact, that brings us onto the first positive – the book is impeccably copy edited, as you might expect from her, and much more professionally so than most of the indie books you’ll find on the market.

At first, I found it difficult to get into it, but once I stuck with it and started to get an idea of who was who, I got into the swing of things. We follow the stories of six students at Highgarden Academy, a leading New York theatre school, as they try to get their careers on track. And it’s clear that the world of theatre (as well as Doctor Who, which gets referenced throughout) is important to the author, with the level of description clearly coming from someone who’s writing from the heart and drawing on a wealth of knowledge of how things are done in the theatre biz.

I found it hard to relate to some of the characters, but perhaps that’s because it’s such a different world to the one I live in, and it’s not that they weren’t believable – if anything, they were too believable, but they just weren’t my kind of people. That’s with the exception of Chris and Leanna, of course – but I won’t say any more than that because I don’t want to spoil the story line.

Pam Elise Harris

There’s a fair amount of romance here – more so than is typical for the books I usually read – but it all works and is believable, and it’s a nice little compliment to the overarching story line which follows each of the actors as they they spend their careers in oblivion, which you’ll learn more about when you read it. The formatting was strange, though – there were spaces between each of the paragraphs which seemed unusual and threw me off a little, but that’s more of an aesthetic preference than any problem with the book as a whole.

Overall then, this maybe isn’t the right book for everyone, but it doesn’t have to be. If you fancy a cheap trip to New York or have an interest in theatre, or even if you just like a contemporary read with a smattering of romance and a heap of interplay between the different characters, then maybe this is your book. Plus Pam is an indie author and sales are always appreciated, so check it out or tell a friend. Oh, and say hi to Hope for me.