≡ PDF Free Slow Boat To Purgatory Vernon Baker Books

Slow Boat To Purgatory Vernon Baker Books

Download As PDF : Slow Boat To Purgatory Vernon Baker Books

Slow Boat To Purgatory Vernon Baker Books

Why is it that today's authors are incapable of writing a novel with a plot, a beginning, and an end? They all appear to have this delusion that it is acceptable to ramble on as long as they please, with little to no character development - or much of any other kind of development - and stop whenever they please and call it "End of Book One" or two, or three etc.

This book is presented as a novel, an artistic creation complete in and of itself. It is not supposed to be an episode in a television series. Perhaps that is the problem, no? These individuals, who are calling themselves authors, have grown up watching television and never had time to read.

Spare us - and our children - from their tedious efforts.


Tags : Amazon.com: Slow Boat To Purgatory (9781463649319): Vernon Baker: Books,Vernon Baker,Slow Boat To Purgatory,CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,1463649312,Fiction,Fiction - Espionage Thriller,Fiction Thrillers General,Thriller suspense,Thrillers - General

Slow Boat To Purgatory Vernon Baker Books Reviews

Wow, this is an incredibly well-written fantasy. There is a story within a story within a story, which was quite well crafted. I read the back page, about the author, and it's his first book. The fact that this is his first book is just plain wow-some.

The characters are so real, and well-developed, you spend every moment along for the ride, feeling what they feel, experiencing what they experience, total immersion into the 3 or 4 separate worlds (lives) of the characters that we follow. I have to admit, I liked some of the stories more than others. The story of Gaspar himself took up the bulk of the book, and for that I'm glad. The story of how he came to be was fascinating. I also liked where we went with Alex. He seems a stand-up guy who loved his grandfather and finds himself caught up in a world he never knew existed. He has mad fighting skills, and is a strong, believable, likable kind of guy. I'd definitely want him to have my back in a fight.

The book does start off a little slow, but that is more for the sake of set-up for the reader. Once the story hits the action-packed finale, it's, well, action-packed. Other than the little bit of a slow turn in the beginning, the pacing was pretty good.

The only thing that troubled me was the flipping back and forth between stories. Occasionally I found myself confused, but once I realized that I had to read the chapter heading for my place of reference, the book moved much smoother for me. Also, sometimes we spend so long in one person's story, that when we switched to another's, I almost forgot who some of the players were. Again, I'd catch up to my place in the story relatively quickly.

Amazing read, and if you like fantasy, I strongly suggest reading this one.
I am giving this five stars, although if it was a stand alone book, not the first part of a larger literary effort, I would give it four. My hesitancy for an unreserved five stars has to do with the amount of epistolary voice that, while interesting, tends to bog the book down a bit, and the fact that the volume in and of itself doesn't have a clear ending. However, as volume one, the background information given works to build a good foundation for further volumes.

What i like most about the book is the author's wordsmithing. He is an excellent writer, able to convey clear ideas with all the nuances associated with real life. Several times, I had to stop and just admire the words themselves.

Characterization was excellent throughout the book. Each character had a unique voice, and I was drawn to all the main ones.

Editing was basically good. There were a few cases of incorrect word usage, and one chapter location was listed as different than what it actually was in the text of the chapter. Overall, though, editing wasn't much of an issue.

I enjoyed the overall flow of the story, and the plot caught my attention. I think the author's imagination has done him well in this effort.

One small point, and this may just be a pet peeve of mine, is that many authors seem to feel that to give a character a tough-guy image, he has to be an ex-Navy SEAL. I think I've read four books this year alone where this was the case. I think this is overdone. If it really is necessary, though, I would hope the author would actually research the SEALs. There is no such thing as a Navy "Seal," as the service is referred to in this book, unless one counts the couple that are trained in San Diego along with sea lions and dolphins to detect mines and retrieve things. The word SEAL is an acronym for Sea, Air, and Land Teams. It may seem like a small thing, but it jars me when reading and leaves me to wonder if any research was done at all.

Despite this small point, this really is an excellent effort. I look forward to reading the next volume.
The book is a clone of many similar ones with two well-known prototypes - Eco's The Foucault Pendulum and Brown's The DaVinci Code with various additions from Dracula, Dante, etc. The highly overused Templars are invoked again, alas. The mystery is unfolding throughout centuries, starting with the siege of Acre in late 13th century and proceeding to the present, transmitted through generations. Although not comparable in quality with the masterpiece Eco wrote (in my opinion his best book, better even than The Name Of The Rose) and structurally and conceptually weaker than The DaVinci Code, the book moves along briskly in a pingpong style between the past and the present. It reads very well, particularly the descriptions of the gates to Hell, Heaven, and the Purgatory. Those alone will merit it the four stars. However (and it is a big however), the slow road appears to lead nowhere and ends abruptly and inconsequentially. The Book One in the title implies it might be a first of an n-dimensional cycle, but even taking this despicable trick into account, the finale is very poor. A small correction - Acre's shores are not bathed by the ocean but by the Mediterranean, and in the times described it is doubtful whether the southern desert would have been called The Negev. My final grade, 3.5.
Why is it that today's authors are incapable of writing a novel with a plot, a beginning, and an end? They all appear to have this delusion that it is acceptable to ramble on as long as they please, with little to no character development - or much of any other kind of development - and stop whenever they please and call it "End of Book One" or two, or three etc.

This book is presented as a novel, an artistic creation complete in and of itself. It is not supposed to be an episode in a television series. Perhaps that is the problem, no? These individuals, who are calling themselves authors, have grown up watching television and never had time to read.

Spare us - and our children - from their tedious efforts.