Official Review: The Vampire Council: Case File 1

jcheiser · Post by **jcheiser** » 21 Oct 2014, 22:41

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Vampire Council: Case File 1" by Steve Cunningham.]

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The Vampire Council: Case File 1, by Steve Cunningham, is a novel that looks at the darker side of the “modern” vampire. This book follows a small group of new vampire recruits (who were unwillingly recruited) as they adjust to having a new “vampire side” and find their way within the vampire council.

I think that this book showed a lot of promise because the ideas behind the characters and the plot points were good. However, I do not think that there was enough originality behind it all, though, I will say, I think that had the story been written better it could have come off as more original. As it is, the whole thing carries a vibe of the Volturi from The Twilight Saga – they’re not the same, but the basic concept is very similar.

I hate to say it, but this book was very poorly written (or quickly written and very poorly edited). For starters, the paragraph structure was a mess. Paragraphs never changed when they were supposed to, making it especially difficult to understand who was speaking. The dialogue formatting was incorrect and confusing, and often resulted in strange phrases that were not truly sentences, though they were presented as such. In fact, incomplete sentences (or rather ‘sentences’ with missing structure parts, such as missing subjects) were scattered throughout the entire novel. This book was also filled with misused commas (missing commas, extra commas, misplaced commas), making it even more difficult to read. And, on top of all of that, there were misused words here and there, adding to the confusion.

Another very difficult aspect for me was that Cunningham randomly changed tenses throughout the novel. There is a very big difference between changing the tense of a section of the novel to indicate a flashback or something of that nature. This, based on the way it happened, was completely unintentional. One part of a paragraph would be in present tense and then the next part of the same paragraph would be in past tense, even though both parts of the paragraph were supposed to be a part of the same scene (occurring at the same moment in time, viewed from the same moment in time).

I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone because all of the technical errors make it very difficult to read (not to mention make it very difficult for the reader to really get drawn into the storyline). I think that Cunningham does have potential because the story could have been good if the technical issues hadn't detracted from the novel so much, so I hope that he continues to write and work on improving the technical parts of his writing.

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Amheiser · Post by **Amheiser** » 09 Jan 2015, 23:32

I am very glad that the reviewer was so honest about how the technical errors detract a lot from this story. It does sound like it was a good story based on the reviewers comments and I hope the author finds someone to help him edit and correct the mistakes.