A.W. HillRezensionen

This book is wack. Thats not how the story ends or even suppose to end. I think he reunites with the daughter whether in this world or the spirite world. Readers pick because hes already dead without her :/

Disclaimer: I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This has not affected my opinion in any way. Thank you to NetGalley and Curiosity Quill Press for this opportunity.

I had 42 comments on this as I read it because I could not stop pointing out all its failings. The writing looked like an editor hadn't even touched it with a 20-foot pole. The character were flat as pancakes, the world-building was mostly a scientific, condescending talk-down... just... no?

Lets get technical here.

The writing.

The writing style fluctuates between fragments and run-on sentences. The author delights in phrases like "But there’s stuff we don’t have an explanation for that will be science someday." and "It was a perfectly reasonable question, to which I had no answer." to get away with not explaining his own universal concepts.

There were places where there were both periods and commas. Sometimes the two were interchanged. This book definitely suffers from a lack of proper editing... to the point where I actually looked into the publisher and discovered this wasn't self-published, it was small-published... and there was an editor because she is thanked in the acknowledgments. If she improved this book, I'd hate to see what it looked like before.

The world building.

Less went into building the individual world and more into explaining what a multiverse is. By 31% the concept of a multiverse had been explained 5 times, and after that I stopped counting. The multiverse was the only part of this book I was really interesting in! ... Or would have been... I watch Rick & Morty y'all - I know what a multiverse is. AND SOMEHOW this manages to get explained to me in a more condescending way than by Rick Sanchez? Someone give this guy a medal.

The only world with a bit of interest is Jemma's beehive world, which seemed like a rip-off apocalyptic future with a German takeover (the "Vaterland" as opposed to "Vaderland"). I thought maybe we were going to get better at that point.

NOPE.

The characters.

Oh boy.

So we've got a character named Hartun who is clearly of middle eastern decent (exactitudes elude me) and who is the biggest bully. We're got Moses from the 'hood who drops letters in his word so'times just cuz that's his way. We've got lovely Jemma who is in the story simply for Jacobus to fawn over, and Jacobus himself, whose worst, weirdest reality was when he was a redhead.

We also get to look forward to lovely phrases like "A reggae guy. Like Bob Marley. With dreadlocks and a beeg spleef, mon." (spoken by Moses) and "He smiled, but his jaw trembled, and I knew that if Mose had been born with different pigmentation, he’d have been white as a ghost." (describing Moses). DEAR LORD MAKE IT STOP. There's literally nothing to be gained by this type of racial fingerprinting and it's just plain offensive? Like... ignorantly offensive. Something your well-meaning but SUPER racist grandfather would say with a good heart and a foul mouth. STILL INEXCUSABLE.

Editor, WHERE WERE YOU.

For the cherry on the top, we've got Hartun in the last couple pages calling Jacobus a 'faggot'.

NOT OKAY.

I cannot in any way endorse this book.

It's just plain embarrassing that so many red flags didn't get taken care of in revisions. The multiverse concept isn't very interestingly done (they run through each world, barely acknowledging it, trying to get home). I wanted to stop reading this so many times because it was actually painful, but I felt obliged to finish it since I received it free in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You wanted honest? Here's honest.

This book needs to go back to the drawing board. It needs several more revisions to remove offensive choices and build action and interest. I'm happy for all those on Goodreads who've been really pleased with this book, but as someone who reads a lot and it actually quite interested in the science used here (that's why I requested it to begin with) I am shocked at how raw and unfinished this book felt.

Plus the derogatory comments. COMPLETELY unnecessary.

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The Switch by A.W. Hill, Nathanael Hill is a book I requested from NetGalley and the book publishers and the review is voluntary. This book is a terrific sci-fi teen book that had me reading and loving every page! The characters were well developed and seemed like people you knew yourself. The science was introduced in a way that didn't overwhelm and was fun and interesting. The 'switch' came when one of the boys flipped a switch and the next day they noticed things were a lot different in their world. It reminded me of Quantum Leap, an old show on TV I loved with a touch of the movie The One because it was alternate realities of the same persons. Pretty heady stuff but a lot of fun. A great read all the way around. Lots of action, adventure, suspense, wild but wonderful plot, and great characters. Not much for time travel books but this was absolutely awesome!

The Last Days of Madame Rey is the second novel in the Stephen Raszer Investigations. Raszer is a private investigator. His specialty is finding missing people who have been abducted or tricked into joining religious sects or secret societies.

This time Raszer must infiltrate the Military Order of Thule, a private army in a legal dispute with the tribes of Mt. Shasta for land rights. Abel Cohn has hired him to find his son, Fortis, a lawyer who has fallen under the spell of Bronk Vreeland, their leader.

The mystery deepens when Raszer learns why the Order wants the land: they believe they can free the Lemurians, a lost, antediluvian tribe trapped in the center of the earth. With them, they can establish a New World Order. How do they want to do this? By blowing up Mt. Shasta, of course.

Hill blends a lot of genres: mystery, fantasy, the spy novel. My description may not tickle your fancy, but it's fascinating reading, I can assure you.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series (Enoch's Portal) but this one I did not care for very much. The Stephan Raszer series (of which this is number two, followed by Nowhere-Land) features a kind of occult detective who hires himself out at a very high price to people needing his specialized services. In this book, he is hired by a wealthy man to find his son, who has fallen in with a very wrong crowd of neo-nazis taking up residence on Mt. Shasta in California. Like all other occult detective novels, there is a nefarious world-wide domination plot involved, in which Raszer becomes involved. His investigations take him across the world and depend largely on mysterious writings left by a fortuneteller whose specialty is tarot.

While I typically enjoy this kind of pulpy occult detective stuff, this one was just way too over the top with all of the usual Neo-Nazi cliches. The first book, Enoch's Portal, was so much better (also over the top, but what do you expect in an occult detective story), and I have hopes for Nowhere-Land. But this one...I don't think I'll be recommending it.½

I just finished rereading this book because I'm planning on reading his other two (The Last Days of Madame Rey and his new one, Nowhere Land) here very shortly.

Stephan Raszer (as he is so fond of telling people, the last name rhymes with laser) used to be an actor but after a physical and mental breakdown, now he is a private investigator. He doesn't take just any clients -- he specializes in those people who have lost family members to cults. And not just any cults, either. He calls himself a faith seeker and seeker of direct knowledge of the divine. His self-proclaimed MO: "to defrock the false, and the truth stands naked." (31) In this first installment of the series, Raszer is hired by a Hollywood producer whose wife has gone over to a bizarre cult known as The Temple of the Sun. He wants her back, she wants to stay gone so she can end her painful earthly life. The Temple's beliefs are based on smatterings of arcane knowledge: Enoch and alchemy (a la John Dee and Edward Kelley), the Dogon legend of the Nommo who supposedly hail from Sirius B, the worship of Isis, the Cathars, Bogomil Dualism -- the list goes on. Basically they believe that their adherents will be able to transcend time and space by taking a shortcut through Enoch's Portal, the place of energy between the sun and Sirius B. But, as in all good conspiracy-nut novels, the Temple of the Sun is a bit more than meets the eye. Raszer's investigations and attempts to locate the missing woman put him in constant jeopardy and lead him down some paths he doesn't necessarily want to take.

Enoch's Portal is a mix of conspiracy theory, fantasy, arcana, occult fiction and a detective story, and it's hard to put it under one category. The action is constant, never letting up until the last page is turned. It's a fun read for people who enjoy occult fantasies (such as myself). Sometimes the action is a bit over the top, and there is a LOT of arcane knowledge to be transmitted to the reader. So beware -- if you have no knowledge of the legends of John Dee and Edward Kelley, you may be a bit lost. Also, there are some scenes in Poland with Václav Havel that are a bit far-fetched and outright silly that seem a bit out of place here and really turned me off and set me skimming until the action got going again.

All in all, it's just a fun way to pass some time, nothing should be taken serious at all. It's escape reading at its finest, and I'm sure was never meant to present itself as fine literature. I like pulp, I like fantasy, and I like supernatural and occult fiction. I would recommend it to readers who like all of these categories wrapped up in one bundle.½

2.5 Stars

Full review to come!