John B. OlsonRezensionen

Another delightful Austen-era zombie book. I think it is the incongruity of the series that make this one and [b:Pride and Prejudice and Zombies|5899779|Pride and Prejudice and Zombies|Seth Grahame-Smith|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320449653s/5899779.jpg|6072122] such interesting and light reading.

This book was downright awful. The story was all over the place and nothing was ever explained. What was "The Badness"? Who were " The Standing?"

The characters themselves left a ton to be desired. They were always having "aha!" moments that left the reader in the dark and very few of their decisions made any sort of sense. Mari caused things to get worse in some situations with her failure to listen to Jazz (oh no! the buildings are baaaad!") and Jazz did the same in others.

The prayer thing was also annoying as well. At first I thought it was supposed to be a fictional semi-magical story but then the characters started bringing up prayer and Badness with no explanations.

This book was downright awful. The story was all over the place and nothing was ever explained. What was "The Badness"? Who were " The Standing?"

The characters themselves left a ton to be desired. They were always having "aha!" moments that left the reader in the dark and very few of their decisions made any sort of sense. Mari caused things to get worse in some situations with her failure to listen to Jazz (oh no! the buildings are baaaad!") and Jazz did the same in others.

The prayer thing was also annoying as well. At first I thought it was supposed to be a fictional semi-magical story but then the characters started bringing up prayer and Badness with no explanations.

First off, this book is supposedly classified as mystery fiction and Christian fiction...which makes no sense because there are Christian themes as well as Bible passages found through out the book and gypsy magic. The last time I looked Christianity doesn't play well with the supernatural, but what do I know. *rolls eyes* The plot was pretty good in its self but I often found I didn't know what was going on so I would have to go back a few pages and re-read, that got frustrating after a little bit. I also had no idea what was with some of the characters, they were just ok, the author doesn't really provide support and development to form them to the good and evil we are supposed to see. Eh...just didn't care for it this one much.

I received this through the Early Reviewers Program. I tried to read it, and ended up putting it down for a long time. It took me a long time to get back to it. I think it is an interesting idea, not very captivating writing, however. The cover art is gorgeous, which unfortunately led to a disappointment over the contents.

I received this through Early Reviewers giveaway, and unfortunately, I never was able to finish it. I tried, put it down for a few weeks, tried again. I actually enjoy Christian fiction/fantasy so I wasn't put off by the religious aspect like so many reviews seem to be. It just seemed to be poorly done and couldn't keep my interest.

A terrific thrill to read, even better than the first, Oxygen. The tension remained high through most of the story, with few points for a breather. Best of all, I really didn't know who the culprit was until the reveal, a true surprise. This story has the added bonus of being set on Mars, an ongoing fascination of mine.

And the appendices hold a bonus for new writers, with excellent advice I've already applied to my writing.

I rarely read science fiction, and now I'm wondering why, I enjoyed Oxygen so much. This story of humans' first attempt at reaching Mars grabbed me right away. Once the suspense started, it rarely let me go. In fact, this story kept me up one (week) night until 2:00 a.m.! I think I can safely say I couldn't put it down. There were a couple of short lulls, when a character would go into some introspection about what finding life on Mars might mean for humanity and for their personal religious beliefs, and these felt out of step with the story -- I felt I had stepped back from the story at these points. But fortunately, they weren't frequent, and the suspense of the story kept me going despite a character's worry that discovering life on Mars put his or her religious beliefs in jeopardy. I am looking forward to the next one!
I must add that my e-book version of Oxygen came with a bonus: a few appendices for writers, including a breakdown, paragraph by paragraph, of the first two scenes of the book and how they accomplished the authors' goals for the chapter. Excellent resource for writers, worth the price of the e-book alone.

The book was...strange. I don't think there's another way to put it. It's also steeped in religion. It's not overt at first, other than the need to pray to God to hide from the boogeymen, but by the end of the book, I began to think it's just a gimmick to get impressionable kids to be open to the idea of Christianity, because maybe they can do miracles too if they just pray. There's magic aplenty in the book, but it all comes from praying to God. I can't say I liked it. I did finish it, though.

I have to preface this by saying I am not a fan of Christian fiction, fantasy or otherwise. And I did not read Shade, the prequel to Powers, but I don’t feel like I missed anything at all.

It took me a bit to get into this but that may have just been where I was mentally at the time, because once I got into it, it was a quick light read loaded with action. Mari and Jazz fight for their lives against supernatural forces with a gypsy twist, which I wasn’t even aware existed, while each on a quest to discovery their destinies. Mari is great, fresh from the swamps and learning to deal with city life. They are being followed by Special Agent Groves who is on a spiritual journey of his own.

The ending was fairly predictable … except it seemed to be missing pages of explanation. I actually went back a couple of times thinking I must have missed something. It pretty much ends in a miracle, except one that leaves huge holes, like with crime scene investigations and letting the only suspects go basically just requiring them to leave a telephone number. SA Groves picked an odd time to have a total conversion and Jazz is truly blessed (no pun intended) given the number of federal agents dead and mass destruction that was left behind.

This book is a take-or-leave read. I enjoyed it overall, even with my disappointment with the ending. Definitely not one for the permanent collection, but I suppose if you were a part of a book club or picking up something from the library, this would work well.

I won this, started reading it, quit after 25 pages. Returned after a month, since I have a loose 'give it 50 pages before giving up' rule. But I only made it to about 40 before I quit again. Sorry, though I normally like fantasy and science fiction, as well as a wide variety of novels, just couldn't get going on this.

I generally enjoy books of fantasy and those written about unusual powers so I thought this would be an excellent introduction to a new author. I tried to get engaged with the characters and storyline but found it difficult to follow. The storyline switches from character and time and takes too much concentration for an light read (which is why I read books in this genre.) Sorry, I can't really recommend this title very highly.

This was a rather strange book to read after many years of not reading any fiction. The story switches constantly between Mari, the swamp girl, and Jazz, the musician. I found myself compelled to continue reading to try to figure out what was going on. I did enjoy it and it had a good ending. There was one typo that I noticed: grisly instead of grizzly bear.

I had a very hard time getting into this one, and the the nightmare/hallucination scenes were very hard to follow. I got it as an Early Reviewer and thought it sounded interesting, but I just couldn't get past not knowing what was going on. The author needed to give you a little more input, or clues so that you didn't just feel lost all the time, what with jumping from one brain to another all the time.

I'm surprised it got past an editor without some clarification of some kind - and if I needed to read the first book to "get it" then I needed to know that.

I'm sorry - I REALLY wanted to like this book but it just wasn't worth the time I spent finishing it.

This is a terrible book!! I recieved this book as an Early Reviewer and after reading I didn't even want to list it in my library - it's that bad. I don't want to think about this book anymore but I guess I had better do some kind of review or else I won't get anymore Early Review books. As I slogged through this book I kept asking myself - "How could this book have made it this far - published with a nice cover, and all? The author got paid for this? The editor got paid for this? It's a blight on the whole publishing industry!!" I wish I was an editor - this wouldn't have gotten through my 1st read. The book has a great premise but it is totally confusing and it takes the reader forever to even an inkling of what is going on. At the end of the book you're still not sure what happened. I can't believe any one rated this tripe as more than a One. I didn't even want to give this book to my local charity used book store - I didn't want to inflict it on anybody else.
In one word - Atrocious½

Hated it! I tried but couldn't make it through this book. I started out by reading the first book in the series because I find it awkward to start in the middle of a series. This one did not flow as well, or at all, to me. The characters where impossible and story line confusing. I wouldn't pick this up on my own and will not recommend it to others.

Very strong elements of Christian fiction that turned me off of this one. It was enjoying to read however as the gypsy culture was fascinating.

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. I felt a little lost in the beginning and the christian fiction aspects weren't as subtle as a nonreligious reader may like.

After receiving the book Powers and doing some basic research, I found this was the second in a series. I took the time to read the first one, which made the second much less confusing and it did for some of the other reviewers.

Overall I like the prose of the author, and the character development, unfortunately though I did not appreciate the description of the book(s) being listed as vampire or fiction, as they are more along the lines of the primary christian undertones (which is not a bad thing; just biting into an apple and tasting an orange) was unexpected and was looking for a different kind of story.

The book was great, I had no idea that it was the second book to a series till I got on this page. This would explain some of the slight confusion toward the beginning of the book, but before too long I did not want to set it down. At some points you don't know what is going to happen next, but overall you are hoping that the ending will be happy and that everything will work out like it should.

A series book...book two of a series. Thus, I didn't read the first book in the series. So, Powers was extremely confusing at the start because I didn't know the characters. Too little fantasy and too much Christian undertone. This book should not be catergorized as a fantasy, vampire, phantom book at all. Give up the series.

While not bad, this one was just slow to get started. Also didn't realize that this was the second book in a series, though I'm not really sure that would affect my opinion of the novel. Not sure I'll go back and read book 1, just too many other good books to spend my time on. I think if the pace had picked up earlier on, it may have kept my interest longer.

When I first started reading POWERS, I felt as if I was reading two books at once. Nothing seemed to connect, but I couldn't stop reading it. Before long I was caught up in the story.
After her gypsy grandfather dies, demanding he be buried standing up, Mariutza (Mari) must find Jaazaniah the Prophet . Jazz Rechabson is in New Orleans and he is the Prophet, but he doesn't know it. Mari has to convince Jazz of who he is and together they have to stop the Badness.

John B. Olson’s "Powers" is a fantasy novel mainly set around New Orleans. A musician and a girl from the swamps must embrace a monster-fighting heritage to battle dark forces, both physical and spiritual.

Overall, this is a quick, usually exciting read. Only two things held me up: the writing style and the terminology. The style was choppy at times, especially at the beginning, which meant I had to go back and reread portions frequently. Also, the amount of gypsy terminology, made-up fantasy terms, and swamp metaphors (to reinforce a certain character’s foreign perspective) bordered on the gratuitous. Some of the metaphors and other unique figures of speech I appreciated for their originality, which shows that Olson has promise as a writer. He just needs to find his groove, and I think he’s well on his way there.

I was really interested in this book. From the very beginning it really grabbed my attention. I liked the characters right from the start. I didn't read the book for the christian aspect and I found myself trying to tune that part out a bit. While I enjoyed the book anyway, I probably won't read the others just because I try to stay away from types of books.