Book Review: Grave Decisions

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Rating: ★☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

Synopsis:

In the urban fantasy short story, Grave Decisions, a young inexperienced witch has car troubles outside of town and is pursued by a powerful supernatural assailant. A bonus short story, Deadly Familiar, features three witches who perform an enchantment to summon a new familiar for their friend but the spell goes awry and results in unforeseen consequences they aren’t prepared to deal with.

Review: 

Grave Decisions is a small collection of short stories. The writing is simplistic and easy to read. However, the writing level seems a bit low and the sentences can be a bit bland. The book is probably good for elementary and middle schoolers, most likely boys.

Grave Decisions: Told from the first person perspective, we're thrown into a chase between the narrator and his pursuer. The short story is riddled with due ex machinas to the point it's cliche and a bit of a let down. The ending sentence is supposed to be witty but comes off as something one might find in a beginning fanfiction author's work.

Deadly Familiar: Three teens decide to use magic to summon a familiar. As you can guess, the spell goes horribly wrong. The story isn't a bad idea in and of itself, however the author uses too many descriptor words. What ever happened to said? Not every sentence needs and exclaimed or uttered joyfully. It takes away the flavor, excitement, and importance of those words if you use them every sentence. A few missing commas could have been used to help the story flow better and the dialog could use a bit of sprucing up. No real plot to this story. No real conflict or solution. Just three kids and an invisible bird.

Vorgan: Another trio of friends. This time the trio are out to hunt down witches that summon demons. (And apparently it's ironic that witches perform spells in their own home??)

"A lot of criminals were slobs although they were just people, so many were average and some were obsessively neat." (Kindle Locations 318-319).

The above sentence doesn't make a whole lot of sense and is really unnecessary for the story. A lot of the descriptions tend to take away rather than add to the story. The ending was once again a due ex machina with large leaps made by the characters that is not all that easy to follow as a reader. It was almost as if the writer was rushing to finish the story.

Over all the writing needs work and the stories need to be fleshed out more. Gone with the lackluster descriptors and supposedly witty dialog and hello to fresh endings that aren't pulled out of thin air. Interesting concepts but not all that well executed. Besides that, there's 67% of the book left and that's just a preview for another book. Not worth the money in my opinion.

(*Note I was given this book free through Member Giveaways on LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review. I was also offered another book of his in exchange for the review. Neither have swayed my opinion in the slightest.)