Offical Review: Jamie Horwath's A. Breath Before Sunrise

[sandraev]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "A Breath Before Sunrise" by Jamie Horwath.]

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This story is a post-apocalyptic fantasy story by Jamie Horwath. Meant as a prequel to her short story, The Observer, this 73 page story introduces humanities hidden children, Bear, Bird and Fox. The amount of time from the apocalypse isn't set forth and that might be a little confusing to some. Bear is on a recon mission finding “observer’s” brain recordings. Whether these are memories of people who lived out the apocalyptic events or random people undergoing some sort of experiment isn't explained in a lot of detail within this volume. Bear refuses to return to the colony of survivors that he works for and they send Bird and then Fox after him.

I give this story a 2 out of 4 star rating; here is why: The basis of the story is a great idea; Post-apocalyptic fantasy. I didn't give it a 3 star rating because it left a lot of unanswered questions. If it was joined to The Observer then it might answer these questions in stride; then again I don’t know that for sure having only read this prequel. I felt that the story was just getting started when I reached the last page; which was frustrating not suspenseful. I found at least one F-word and sexual content in the 73 pages of story so I really don’t recommend this for children. It doesn't go into detail about the sexual encounters which I thought was tactful for a fantasy story.

The major questions I was left with, I’m afraid, would give away all the suspenseful parts of the story. Needless to say I don’t really recommend that the author leave this as a story of its own. I highly recommend she join it in some way to The Observer and refine it more. If it was left as a book unto itself I recommend a heavy revision explaining some of the anomalies and leading to more of a suspenseful conclusion. Overall I believe this is a fairly good first attempt at the story and I might feel differently if I read the next part of the story but as a book by itself I see a lot lacking.

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[Bear]

Thanks for the review. I'm a he by the way, just so you know. Yep that's me, Mr. Anyway, thanks for the input. I would be happy to send you a copy of "The Observer". That short story by the way is only about twenty pages. However, it does help the understanding of the novella. I'm curious though? You didn't comment on the gore... I thought that the scenes were very intense. I was hoping to hear some input on the gore but great review anyway:)