We’ve decided to throw in a book review once in awhile 🙂

And interviews with authors, artists, and editors that we work with and love.

This review will be one of the first and we hope that we can interview talented author, Tami Jackson soon!

We’re done with the first draft of our short stories and we can’t wait to share them with you when they’re completed!

Anyways, on with the review…

*****

There is much to love about Ravena & the Resurrected.

However a few notes should be made about the formatting of the books. It can take awhile to get used to the paragraph numbering. However, it’s a useful tool to find your bookmark when you’re reading it. It distracted my ‘flow of reading’ for the first chapter or two though. Then, I became used to it and didn’t seem to notice it. It’s probably very helpful for ebook readers.

I loved the hyperlinks. One of the newest trends in books for the juvenile and teen market is to utilize hyperlinks to help them learn more about the material. It’s a way to learn, while reading something for entertainment. This is the first time I’ve seen them in adult fiction, but I love it. These links don’t work on e-readers that don’t have internet access. It worked very well as a pdf.

Anyways, hyperlinks! I love pointing and clicking to learn more and get a feel for Ravena’s world, and what a fun world it is. Some may feel it’s a distraction, yet I could go on for pages about how this is going to become more popular and it’s worth embracing new ideas. Yet I digress and I’m pretty sure nobody wants to read 15 page papers about library technology and trends.

Ravena works as an IT guru at the Seattle Central Library (click on the links, it’s such a cool library). I worked in a central library (as a librarian) and at a helpdesk as a techie. I can tell you that author Tami Jackson’s descriptions of the workday are quite accurate. Though, if she hung out more with the librarians, she’d probably find a few kindred spirits as librarians are typically weird oddballs who like vampires and other supernatural beings. We may be gossipy, but we’re not nearly as nasty in reality as the staff at the Central Branch in Seattle *wink*.

I loved learning the history of Seattle and witnessing Ravena’s interactions with others of her kind and the rest of the hidden supernatural community of the city. I laughed and emphasized with her during her journey. I enjoyed reading how the reality of vampire life differed so much from her fantasy because that shows a wonderful development of character and growth.

Once in awhile a grammar or punctuation issue would throw me off and I would exit the ride, but I managed to jump back on and continue. For example, semicolons are something my editors said readers of non-college material didn’t get. So, I always was told to use periods or commas as appropriate. Also there was a bit of head-hopping in chapter 41 that kinda threw me off, but maybe that was the effect of cold meds.

There were instances when the author spoke of things and instances that had occurred instead of showing them ‘as they happened’ yet, they were explained in the past. It seemed a bit odd, but to each their own. It’s easy for one author to find favor with one method of storytelling over others. Yet all that really matters is that the reader can jump back into the book, and I could easily do that.

The end to the tale was satisfying and definitely has me wanting to read more of this world. I am happy to see that it is the first in a series of tales and I’m anxiously awaiting another story.