Official Review: Operation Hammer by Ezekiel Carsella

[Adonis Maratos]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Operation Hammer" by Ezekiel Carsella.]

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Operation Hammer is a short science fiction novel, filled to the brims with fast passed action, diverse characters, mythical creatures and present day technology.

Written by Ezekiel Carsella, a blogger from the United States who is passionate about technology, this being his first and only book so far. It appears to be the first in a series, which would make complete sense since the book leaves a lot to be desired and much room to continue the plot.

With only 70 pages the author managed to create a story in which a whole war is fought (and concluded), go on tangents and flashbacks, include epic battles with mythical beasts and develop the lives of the main characters. The problem is that in the first half of the book the plot moved so fast that it was very hard to follow with the author jumping from one character's narrative to another without clear distinction and often switching from first to third person, sometimes in the same sentence, "I found a fully loaded MK-47 automatic grenade launcher. She set down her gun and drew back on the bolt". This made the story rather difficult to read and along with numerous grammatical mistakes made a very grammar sensitive person, like myself, cringe.

The language used in the book can be described politely as silly and even superficial since the author used "BLAM, CRACK", "RATATATATATA" and suchlike in bold capital letters when he wanted to describe noises. Also something that stood out a lot to me was the use of "cuz" instead of 'because' or at least 'cause'. These mistakes and language are negligible and don't interfere with the plot but prevent the author from being taken seriously.

As far as plot progression is considered, too many things were started without proper introduction and dropped too abruptly and I often felt that many things were not properly explained leaving me baffled towards what was going on. The prime example has to be the war since no clue is given to who is fighting who, why has the war started nor where is it being fought. Lastly almost everything seems to happen all so very conveniently giving the story a touch of fakeness and for lack of a better term plastic texture.

On the bright side, The second half of the book begining in chapter 7 was much more enjoyable since the plot seemed to stabilize its pace and the background was more properly set up, I found myself enjoying fight scenes and getting to like the characters which previously I had no reaction too since most of the time I had no idea who was speaking. I enjoyed the whole idea of the mythical creatures but felt that their names and description could have been much more serious and some research put into them, especially when naming the Lizard of Wisdom and translating it into 'Latin' as "Lacerta of Sapienta".

Religion seems to be a minor theme in the book and is obviously a big part of the authors upbringing. It was interesting to see scenes of people dancing to "Jesus Muzik" and how sometimes the touch of kind Christianity was found in otherwise stone hard killers.

Overall I give the book a 3 out of 4 because despite its many flaws I enjoyed the plot and would be interested to see how the series is developed

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[MMissionary]

Wow that's an amazing review feedback wise. Thanks for letting me know about some things I reckon my editor missed. The first half of the book was written when I was a much younger and underdeveloped writer. I had hoped my serious edits had fixed it (by introducing more storytelling than flat out saying something) and i do use occasionally Onomatopoeia to make noises in books (I'm working on it!). The first person mixing with third person I aim to fix in a new edit and I'll take your suggestions to improve the plot. I did do some research (you see a lot of Microsoft technology, your right Lacerta of Sapienta is Latin, and Mk-47 and other weapons are used in modern times) and religion is a minor part of the book because I come from a Christian household. Thanks again for the excellent review!

[Adonis Maratos]

I am very very glad you like the review