A #review of Across the Ages, Book One, by Rashelle Workman
Pages - 300
Publisher - Polished Pen Press; 5 edition
Published - December 21, 2014
Sold by - Amazon Digital Services LLC
Genre - Time Travel Romance
Series - Across the Ages Book 1 of 2
Language - 1/5
Sexual Content - 2/5
Narrative - 1st P
Ghosts are real. So is time travel.
Eighteen-year-old Lucy Channing discovers this reality after her dead grandmother gives her a beautiful locket. As soon as her fingers brush the cold copper, Lucy is swept out of the nineteenth century and into the twenty-first.
The first person she encounters is twenty-year-old William Godwin. He’s arrogant, exciting, and oh so handsome.
After meeting, he agrees to help Lucy find her way home. Or into the nearest mental institution. She knows he must think her daft.
But what the two uncover reveals more than ghosts and time travel. There are gods fighting to keep them apart. Disaster is around every corner. But Will and Lucy have discovered a love worth fighting for. It's stronger than time.
A love so strong it reaches...
Across the Ages.
Let me start off by saying that the author tagged this under Children's Books, and had I seen that prior to purchase, I'd have skipped this one.
Also, I wouldn't permit a child of mine to read this as it revolves around a 'romance' set in the 19th century traveling to 2015 and back.
Do not let the 300 Pages bit fool you, either.
This is a novella with a teaser chapter that follows, not a full-length novel with a fully developed story that goes anywhere or says anything of significance.
Yet another Best-Selling author, and this being a 5th Edition print, with absolutely nothing inside to prove its merit.
There were more positive reviews left at Goodreads than there were at Amazon, but most of them said the same things: cliffhanger, juvenile, underdeveloped, and shallow.
I did know it was written in first-person, which I just don't like to read, but still decided to give this one a try despite that yucky fact.
This novel is not stand-alone but a cliffhanger, which means you must purchase book two if you want to know what happens NEXT.
It also means nothing much happens in this Book One.
The girl in 19th Century England is bored, family-arranged engaged to a seemingly delightful young man she's known most of her life, but because she is bored, she just isn't 'into' him and wants something more.
Her grandmother is special to her, and when the old lady dies, she bequeaths a lot of old journals to the girl that are supposed to detail the grandmother's awesome adventures.
Which we aren't privy to discover because the girl never reads them (to herself or us).
She instead wanders out to the graveyard to visit her gran, sees some Egyptian gods and goddesses rise up from the ground, and then her gran's spirit arrives with a locket that has magic powers.
The girl touches the locket and is transported to 2015.
Not England's 2015 but New York City 2015.
And, she's in central park in her old clothes, and she sees TWO hot men playing frisbee and then having a PICNIC.
I don't know about anyone else, but that sounded so weird to me.
Two guys picnicking in Central Park.
Really?
As the day wears on, the girl gets tired and hungry, and then one of the hot guys approaches her and asks if she's okay.
Lo, and behold, this guy carries her to his 'limousine' and drives her to a man's 'mansion' whom they BOTH just happen to know!
Very cliche and predictable, very 'how convenient' to me.
The old man is her biological grandfather, and she SAYS she's overly anxious to meet him, talk with him, get to know him better, and discover a whole world of inside information about her late grandmother.
And yet none of that occurs in this book.
Instead, she drives around the big city with Rich Boy, who is only 20, mind you, yet wealthy beyond anyone's wildest dreams -- and not because of his wealthy parents -- but because he left college to go on a few artifact excursions... all by his lonesome.
He's just a wiz at this sort of thing and laughs at all of the mumbo-jumbo about curses on said relics.
Another far-fetched and unrealistic aspect of an already far-fetched and unrealistic story.
The way I see it is, if you are going to write fantasy, let THAT be the springboard for the reader's imagination and leave the 'don't push it' to the author.
When it comes to such things as age, appearance, and WILL SOMEONE FROM THE 19th CENTURY ACTUALLY SURVIVE 21st CENTURY AIR QUALITY? I think it is important for an author to have a serious inner monologue.
Don't push it.
I didn't hate this story, and aside from a lot of issues with the author's writing/GPS knowledge, it wasn't as awful an attempt as I've read from others.
Her editor over at Polished Pen Press needs to be sacked, because you'll notice some of these needed their immediate attention but were somehow overlooked, and there is no excuse for it.
- A part of Lucy she did love Dashel.
- and together they made it Will’s waiting limo.
- The roof was had strange peaks
- accompanied by a railing was made of wood
- beyond which she guessed led other rooms.
- never responded to Dashel that way they had to Will.
- food was lout on a table
- and yelled. “Go Bison.”
- What was of the upmost importance,
- though he hadn’t wanted them too. (most of her to's were spelled too)
I was almost curious enough to want to read book two, but then I woke up the next morning and forgot all about it, so perhaps that isn't going to happen.
Then I began to recall all of the things the author did to upset me and really decided no, I don't think I'll support this endeavor.
Why bring up the journals, the grandmother's seemingly delightful 'other side', the locket's second half, and make Egyptian spirits appear without telling us why (other than the other half of the locket needs to be found in order for one of the SPIRITS to be happy), and thrust this girl directly into the arms of a way, too young Hero if you aren't going to bother developing them or their situations?
Do you really expect some of your readers to breeze through Book One with the misguided notion that Book Two will somehow read better?
Other than possibly revealing a few of the answers, it isn't likely I will believe that the author is going to go into better, more reasonable and understandable detail if she didn't bother to do so the first time.
It all just read too swift, too convenient, and too assured for my taste.
Here are a few of the things I highlighted on my Kindle
- “Music, please,” my father commanded.
- “Shut up, Mother. How dare you speak about Grandmother that way?”
- As the sun set a thick mist rolled through the gravestones.
- Her people called this method of travelling: Britorent—to bend time. (a colon?)
This nonsense occurred too many times as well
- She paused, glanced down at the beautiful dress.
- She brought it to her mouth. Took a bite.
- Will moved closer. Demonstrated.
- Will clicked the phone, pressed a button to roll down the glass.
- Took a drink. It was delicious.
- He placed a coin like Lucy’s on the nail of his thumb, put his first finger near the top.
And then there was just the weird
- Harriet was two years younger than herself,
- putting his phone in his pocket. Will took it and put it in his back pocket.
- he smelled like vanilla and breakfast spices.
- She felt rumpled and her teeth were grassy.
- married to amazing wives and perfect children.
- frustrated she hadn’t been stealthier.
- Hundreds of birds flew over in a large V formation. (hundreds? what an unbelievable sight that would be!)
- She smacked them both in the arms. (always used IN instead of ON) and swatted him in the stomach.
This is just another of the types of novels that had promise, a decent plot, and with a lot of good ideas that should have made this a delightful read had any of the above-mentioned been fully and intelligently developed to the point of its becoming a real story.
The author needs more time to develop her skills and the editor needs to look for another line of work.
And please, for the love of all things READING, can we stop with the 'let's ignore punctuation and go with fragments, because it's just easier to write that way' already?
So WHAT if people 'talk' this way?
How many of you read aloud in order for this argument to be a valid point?
If an author writes lazy in dialogue moments, not too many of us will fault her, but when she chooses to write lazy just because, that is another thing entirely.
If you don't mind cliffhanger novels or any of the things I mentioned above, then you might be interested in this time-travel romance.
Here are the rest of them
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