Friday, September 14, 2012

WOLF HUNT's 27th Review - a Clunker

Well, Wolf Hunt recently got its 27th customer review over at Amazon.com. A whopping two stars.
This book is another interesting trip down alternate history row. Using "Back to the Future" rules without the ability to return to previous timelines. 
Just let me wallow in the short praise for a moment... yes, just like this. Ahhhh.
Logistics are always the great downfall in these stories. 
They sure can be.
The Master is Taylor Anderson in his "Destroyermen" series. 
Which reminds me that I've still got to start reading these.
The author does not do this well. Aircraft fuel should have been a huge problem. 
Uh, no, it should not? Emden went into the mission fully stocked and supplied. From the top of my head they used one helicopter five times (Scout One's flight to Ponta Delgada, Scout One's flight to SS Shelbyville, Scout One's attack on HMS Javelin, its transport of Captain Hallwinter and Sergeant Baumer and its role in capturing the two joyriding German soldiers) and the rest of its air group once, in the final fight. That doesn't sound like an excessive use of fuel to me. If anything they were rather stingy with the fuel they had.
The fight between the "Up time" Anglo-Americans and the Germans in the beginning was most unlikely. It would be insane to just start shooting at each other. 
That's the whole bloody point! It wasn't a rational decision but an emotionally driven one. Both sides had good arguments as to why they wanted to do what they did. The whole point of the matter is that the difference in perspective of both made a clash inevitable. Of course it would have been the ultimately rational thing to do to sail for the USA and work together there. And at the end of Wolf Hunt we'd have gotten their "they lived happily ever after". But that was exactly not the point of the book. Sometimes good people are forced to make suboptimal decisions in their desire to further a greater good. That's really not a hard thing to grasp and I couldn't it have made more blatant in the narrative without phoning it in letter for letter.
The book has many grammatical errors and 1940's slang errors. 
Well, I cannot comment on the grammar though editing has been a festering wound in the novel ever since I published it. You can be assured that I'm as pissed off as you are, but I did spend almost a thousand bucks on two rounds of editing by a freelance editor. I won't spend any more on it. It's just not economical. The only lesson I can take home from it is to use a different editor next time around.

As for the 1940s slang, my digest of Raymond Chandler novels suggest to me that I can't have been too far off the mark. By the way, I wholly recommend Chandler's novels; even today they're still a smashing read.
But the worst is the cover-art. WAY too cryptic. 
I've literally got nothing on this one. Quite frankly, I think the cover art is awesome, and no more or less cryptic than that of 95% of books out there. I mean, I also could have used a simple black and white photograph of some warship or tank like so many others seem to prefer, but I kinda preferred that professional and artistic quality of Jorge's work.
Please have a native speaker edit your future books.
No, I'll preferably employ someone who only speaks Hungarian... *rolleyes* 

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