Official Review: Tears of the fallen by K.M.hager
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Ravenmount
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Official Review: Tears of the fallen by K.M.hager
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Tears of the fallen" by K.M.hager.]
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Tears of the fallen, by K.M. Hager, is the first part of a dramatic fantasy adventure, a novel of epic proportions in which a young woman finds herself in the middle of a confusing and yet empowering clash between forces she only begins to understand by the end of this work. It introduces a world of good and evil, light and dark, where innocent people are caught in the middle, seemingly powerless to prevent themselves from being used to further the ends of terrible, powerful fallen angels seeking release from a prison that so far holds them away from the rest of the world.
Young Amy Coleman, a seemingly ordinary girl of 16, was brutally raped by a strange and seemingly otherworldly assailant, an event which derailed her life and left her suicidally listless and hopeless. Seven years later she meets a handsome man who brings her painful past back into sharp focus, in a way she could never have anticipated, and she realizes that being raped was the least of her worries as she begins to discover her true nature and her place in a world suddenly far more strange and dangerous than she had known before, a world of fallen angels, witches and dark plans to make use of an innocent child to release dark and dangerous beings into the world.
As a story, I found Tears of the fallen quite entertaining. The story itself is pretty well paced, and draws on a common fantasy image, the fallen angel, in an unexpected and engaging way. After some careful editing, this book could be a really great addition to any fantasy reader's collection. However, as is, this book reads as a draft, not a finished novel. The scenes are only loosely sketched in, without enough detail to really make the people, places and events feel real. I have read a lot of fantasy novels, and I know I created some vivid imagery in my mind while reading this story, but reading just the words on the page, I had to admit that much of the images I was so captivated by were my own and not found in the author's text at all. Many of Hager's scenes in this book consist mostly of dialogue, with so little additional information that it is sometimes nearly impossible to follow the logic of the story, and some of the scenes that I think could have been particularly magical fell flat from too little descriptive and explanitory information.
The characters seem inconsistent, with Amy coming across, for most of the book, as a bit slow and dense, or at least not anybody special, and all of a sudden out of nowhere near the end she is taking on the bad guy almost single-handedly, and I am still confused as to how all that happened, let alone why. The character Michael, who starts out cool and responsible, inexplicably and not believably 'falls in love' with Amy, but somehow sides with the bad guys, and again somehow saves the day and saves Amy from herself. Amy's dad and the rest of her family are so minimally described that they may as well be cardboard placeholders for real characters, and none of the characters except Amy is well enough fleshed out to seem even half real.
In addition to flat scenes and poorly developed characters, this book has other issues. After the first few chapters, the editing throughout the rest of the book seems sloppy, with names left un-capitalized and a lot of spelling mistakes, and a general sparseness that suggests to me that the majority of this book is really just a second draft and needs more work. If that is the case, this was a good draft, and I look forward to reading the finished book. If this were the finished book, it would come across as a book with amazing, but disappointingly unfulfilled promise. I do want to know what happens next, but with a plot as enticing as this, I would have wanted to have read 350 pages of great writing telling me the same story that in this version I read in about 80 pages-worth of mostly readable, but generally uninspired text. As I said earlier, the plot is great and the book is very promising, but this reads as a draft of what should be a much longer, better book.
Overall, Tears of the fallen was ok. If considered as a draft, I suspect this could be a book earning a 4 out of 4 rating easily, and it could be a great read at 400 or even 600 pages. The plot is complex and has enough potential to carry a truly epic novel. The characters are poorly developed now, but they show promise as well. Their actions are not always believable now, but within a longer, well-crafted novel their unexpected changes would come across as character development, not inconsistencies. The poor editing in the majority of this book does get in the way of enjoying it now, but replaced by well-crafted writing rich with descriptions that take all the senses into account this would be a great book. However, if taken not as a draft, but as the finished book, the problems I've noted drop this book to a 2 out of 4 rating. The plot is still great, and I enjoyed reading it, so it is better than a 1, but I would not recommend this book to others as it is now.
***
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Young Amy Coleman, a seemingly ordinary girl of 16, was brutally raped by a strange and seemingly otherworldly assailant, an event which derailed her life and left her suicidally listless and hopeless. Seven years later she meets a handsome man who brings her painful past back into sharp focus, in a way she could never have anticipated, and she realizes that being raped was the least of her worries as she begins to discover her true nature and her place in a world suddenly far more strange and dangerous than she had known before, a world of fallen angels, witches and dark plans to make use of an innocent child to release dark and dangerous beings into the world.
As a story, I found Tears of the fallen quite entertaining. The story itself is pretty well paced, and draws on a common fantasy image, the fallen angel, in an unexpected and engaging way. After some careful editing, this book could be a really great addition to any fantasy reader's collection. However, as is, this book reads as a draft, not a finished novel. The scenes are only loosely sketched in, without enough detail to really make the people, places and events feel real. I have read a lot of fantasy novels, and I know I created some vivid imagery in my mind while reading this story, but reading just the words on the page, I had to admit that much of the images I was so captivated by were my own and not found in the author's text at all. Many of Hager's scenes in this book consist mostly of dialogue, with so little additional information that it is sometimes nearly impossible to follow the logic of the story, and some of the scenes that I think could have been particularly magical fell flat from too little descriptive and explanitory information.
The characters seem inconsistent, with Amy coming across, for most of the book, as a bit slow and dense, or at least not anybody special, and all of a sudden out of nowhere near the end she is taking on the bad guy almost single-handedly, and I am still confused as to how all that happened, let alone why. The character Michael, who starts out cool and responsible, inexplicably and not believably 'falls in love' with Amy, but somehow sides with the bad guys, and again somehow saves the day and saves Amy from herself. Amy's dad and the rest of her family are so minimally described that they may as well be cardboard placeholders for real characters, and none of the characters except Amy is well enough fleshed out to seem even half real.
In addition to flat scenes and poorly developed characters, this book has other issues. After the first few chapters, the editing throughout the rest of the book seems sloppy, with names left un-capitalized and a lot of spelling mistakes, and a general sparseness that suggests to me that the majority of this book is really just a second draft and needs more work. If that is the case, this was a good draft, and I look forward to reading the finished book. If this were the finished book, it would come across as a book with amazing, but disappointingly unfulfilled promise. I do want to know what happens next, but with a plot as enticing as this, I would have wanted to have read 350 pages of great writing telling me the same story that in this version I read in about 80 pages-worth of mostly readable, but generally uninspired text. As I said earlier, the plot is great and the book is very promising, but this reads as a draft of what should be a much longer, better book.
Overall, Tears of the fallen was ok. If considered as a draft, I suspect this could be a book earning a 4 out of 4 rating easily, and it could be a great read at 400 or even 600 pages. The plot is complex and has enough potential to carry a truly epic novel. The characters are poorly developed now, but they show promise as well. Their actions are not always believable now, but within a longer, well-crafted novel their unexpected changes would come across as character development, not inconsistencies. The poor editing in the majority of this book does get in the way of enjoying it now, but replaced by well-crafted writing rich with descriptions that take all the senses into account this would be a great book. However, if taken not as a draft, but as the finished book, the problems I've noted drop this book to a 2 out of 4 rating. The plot is still great, and I enjoyed reading it, so it is better than a 1, but I would not recommend this book to others as it is now.
***
Buy "Tears of the fallen" on Amazon
View hassle-free sample of "Tears of the fallen"
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ANNEBELL
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this sounds like its going to be a great book lots of emotions and love,and spooky fiction,i liked the way she was dreaming and it seemed real,great sample book, 
