Jaq D. HawkinsRezensionen

This is my review of an Early Reviewer eBook copy of The Chase for Choronzon by Jaq D. Hawkins. I did not dislike it. However, to me it feels like a later part of a series of novels of which I haven't read the first several parts, but unfortunately, I don't believe this one is actually part of a series. It just seems to be missing important characterization, character motivation and world building. I don't understand who these characters are, why they are chasing Choronzon through space and time, or why one of them is a talking cat that doesn't believe he's a cat. The novel's Afterword indicates that the two main characters are intended to be reincarnations of Aleister Crowley (the cat called Alei-cat in the novel) and Austin Osman Spare (a magician called Karl Spare in the novel) who I guess was a relatively unknown magician and contemporary of Crowley's. But none of this is actually covered in the text of the novel. Sorry. It just feels far too short and underdone, and I thought even the ending was fairly abrupt.

This book is a compilation and update of a number of previously released texts that explore nature/elemental spirits. This book will be of interest to those who are interested in nature magic and divination.

Comprehensively researched guide to spirits of earth, air, fire, water and aether, exploring everything from folklore and folk magic to divination and sample spells.

This book is aimed at 'both beginners and more experienced magic users', but is better suited to readers with little or no experience. Beginners will benefit from the cautionary warnings, as well as learning of the full range of possibilities for working with elemental spirits. More experienced magic users will want more specific and detailed methods.

The format is a little repetitive in places, perhaps the price of dealing with all aspects exhaustively, or perhaps a result of combining earlier books into one. Not for readers looking for practical ‘how to’ details, but a good general overview for anyone interested in this subject.

Everything you ever needed to know about chaos magic including information from the author's past books on the subject and some new material. Highly recommended!

Review of Elemental Spirits
By: Jac D. Hawkins

Have you ever been in a forest and caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye? Perhaps it was a fairy or a spirit of the earth. If you believe in the vague possibility that such things could exist then you must read Elemental Spirits. This author is an expert on the existence of your wildest imagination of all types of spirits that plague our existence. The main spirits are earth spirits, air spirits, fire spirits and water spirits. Of course, there is a realm of other types of spirits including ghosts, banshees, and an assortment of malevolent and benevolent types of spirits all with a history behind each type. The spells included in this book, to attract these spirits, are amazing.

Extremely comprehensive and well researched. Whether you share the author’s belief system or practice elemental magic or not, you will learn and gain insight about global foundational beliefs from this book. At a time when we are so far out of balance with nature, it serves us to undertand and honour an ancient belief system that recognizes the need for a respectful relationship with the planet and elements that sustain our existence.

Every 200,000 years the earth shifts on its axis destroying most life on the planet, but there are always survivors and those survivors go on to start a new society with new religions and some life forms evolve into something else. In the caverns away from the unpredictable and dangerous humans are the goblins who live a simple spiritual life keeping in harmony with the earth.

We also have small communities of humans who have started a different way of life. One group lives life following a strict religion while another group isn’t as strict but still holds on to some superstitious beliefs. One thing they both have in common is a fear of what they don’t understand and when a human wanders into one of the caverns where the goblins dwell, a series of events begins that could lead to war between goblins and humans.

Dance Of The Goblins by Jaq D Hawkins is a fascinating novel which builds a fantasy world where a lot of the beliefs mirror our own. What I like most about this book was how even after society collapses new societies will begin with the same prejudice and fear of what they don’t understand as we have. Three different societies are presented in this book, and they all look at the other groups as being beneath them. The interesting part is hearing what each group thinks of the other and then seeing how that group really is. Even the goblins who are presented as being in tune with the earth have prejudices against the humans that are incorrect and we see in the book how each society has their flaws. Dance Of The Goblins is like a sociology text-book disguised as a fantasy novel.

My favorite character in this book was a female goblin named Talla. Talla uses magic to disguise herself as a beautiful human woman in distress to distract some humans who are getting to close to the goblin’s layer. Thinking she is in danger the humans take Talla to their community and we hear Talla’s thoughts on human society as well as what the humans think of her. In one moment that I found hilarious, one of the humans takes Talla into a bedroom wanting to force himself on her. At this point Talla is curious what sex with a human would be like and is unafraid. Her reaction scares the human who runs out of the room thinking she is a succubus. I loved how when the human doesn’t get the fearful reaction that he wants from the woman, he labels her as evil rather than seeing the act that he was about to perform as evil.

My only problem with Dance Of The Goblins was that it spent so much time describing the world in which the story takes place that the story itself seems unimportant. I found myself being bored with the story but I loved how the goblin and human societies were described. This book may be light on action but it makes up for it in its attention to detail on how each society works. Jaq D. Hawkins has created a realistic fantasy world and an excellent dark fantasy novel. This is the first book in a trilogy and it will be interesting to see how the goblin’s world changes in future installments.

ABR's original Wake of the Dragon audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

I have very limited experience with Steampunk books. I’ve only read 2 or 3, one of which I loved, while the others I barely finished. That being said, I really love the concept of steampunk in novels and enjoy it in other mediums, so I keep trying. This book seemed more in the fantasy Genre than the others I had read, which is why I decided to give it a try.

The story opens on an airship with Captain Horatio Bonny behind the wheel. The Pirates had just stolen crate upon crate of opium. Having taken on too much weight, the airship loses altitude and is forced to land on a farm. Promising coin and to take the farmer’s daughter, Anne Bardwell, away from the family, the Pirates leave half their cargo stored in the Mr. Bardwell’s barn.

Meanwhile, Zachary Wyatt arrives at his warehouse to find all of his Opium missing and his night guard unaccounted for. Furious, he sends his Clerk, James Dudley, to investigate the crime in hopes of finding some clues. Along the way he comes across and vagabond named Thomas, with whom he ends up jumping onto an airship and volunteering.

This is pretty fun book with multiple points of view. It starts off a little slow but it picks up pretty quick. The story is a little hard to follow, via audio at least, as there are times when it jumps from one character to another, without pause or warning, and it takes a minute to get acclimated. That being said, Ms. Hawkins puts together a entertaining tale of piracy, deceit, greed, and even a little self discovery.

The audio in this book had a little echo too it however, it wasn’t bad enough to take away from the performance of Kevin Marchant. Mr. Marchant has quite the talent for voices and did a great job narrating this novel. I look forward to hearing more from him.

Though it wasn’t my favorite audiobook, it was a fun listen. I would suggest it to anyone interested I steampunk or sailing/pirate novels. I plan to keep my eyes on more of Hawkins’ work in the future.

Audiobook provided for review by the author.

Dance of the Goblins is the first in a series of books by Hawkins that follow a storyline predominantly told from the point of view of humanoid creatures self-identifying as goblins. There are some interesting concepts in this book, most of which I feel should have been better executed.

I enjoy reading books or passages written from the point of view of a beastie with fangs, but that wasn't enough to salvage this novel. It failed, at least for me, because of the fundamentals. The frequent pov shifts, grammar issues, and repetitive, unnatural exposition really prevented me from forming a strong bond with any one character or the story in general.

The style of the narrative also frequently knitted my eyebrows together; there is a tendency to exaggerate, either through the careless choice of overpowered nouns and verbs unwarranted by the actions they are describing or a general tendency of the omniscient narrator to pontificate. As a case in point, the events within are described as world changing and presented as an escalation towards war between man and goblin. In truth, we are observing a local scuffle centered around a seemingly isolated human settlement. I'm not suggesting I wanted to read something epic. What I wanted was to see the author trust in the power of character revealed through action. Trust yourself and trust your reader.

It took me longer to understand why I did not connect with the characters. Anton is likeable enough, Talla's a free-spirit, and Haghuf deserves my admiration. Here's what I came up with: the characters do not progress. There's no observable arc. By the end of the book they remain as cast when we were first introduced to them. I suspect the issue might be mitigated by abandoning all the unnatural exposition. Let the characters reveal themselves to us naturally. Allow the reader to be surprised. Once again, trust the reader.

The real shame of all this is that so much of this can be fixed. It really can be fixed. I've seen far less well-written pieces shine after careful editing and revision. The grammar is unacceptable. There is no real rhyme or reason behind the author's use of the comma -- it is used more as a caesura than anything else. The author could also go through the text and switch the narrative to limited 3rd person, which would probably clean up most of the show vs. tell issues.

Note that I really feel this deserves a 2.5 on the Goodreads scale, but I am rounding up in hopes that the author will revisit the text or pass it along to a good editor.

This is my first steampunk read, and it's just possible steampunk is not for me. The setup sounded really exciting, but it's not particularly action oriented. I would say it's more character based, as you follow different players and see their interaction as well as get inside their heads. My problem is I never found any of them particularly likable; some are nicer than others but that's about it. No heroes, no villains. It's well presented and edited so if it's "your thing" you might very well enjoy it. I thought of giving it 3 stars, but looking back at my other 3-star books, it just didn't seem fair.

A gripping tale of a post-apocalyptic world where humans have regressed to feudal living but are led by magicians. Meanwhile, the goblins have come up from the deep places during the cataclysm only to find that humans hunt and kill them for their demon-ike appearance, except those who look closer to their human ancestors.

Count Anton, leader of the humans, has befriended a goblin magician but must keep this secret from the humans that he rules. When he falls in love with an elf-like goblin woman just after a goblin is seen by a party of humans, the inevitable conflict places Count Anton between his duty to his own species and his love of the anarchic world of the goblins.

Five stars all the way, this is the best series I have yet read and will be sitting on the edge of my seat awaiting the release of the first sequel.

It was a tossup between this shelf and my nope shelf. Reportedly there is goblin sex and feeding babies to mermaids, and I can't even begin to tell you how much that is not my thing.

As always, YMMV.