Alex Letner

Goodreads seemed to think this would appeal to those who liked Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog so i checked it out.

Is this a practical joke?

The author does not have a firm grip on the English language. I was perplexed by the description on Goodreads and Amazon, but it's fully in keeping with the prose stylings of Mr. Letner.

On early pages we learn "Long, long ago (many thousand years left since then), in there, by people of now forgotten civilization, was build something significant." I mean, it's marvelous that Google Translate is now attempting to write books under the pseudonym Alex Letner (I'm assuming), but it needs more practice.

It's not just grammar and style, either: misspellings abound. "Then" where it should be "than," "build" where it should be "built," "habitants" rather than "inhabitants," "Santoriny" and "Santorinis" rather than "Santorini," and so on.

It's unreadable. Some have responded to the illustrations, but this is literally a case of your 7-year old can do just as well. Perhaps it's a performance art piece, or a put-up by former writers of Spy Magazine, or a fun elementary school project, or aliens attempting to infiltrate the self-publishing market. I'm sticking to my Google translate getting-a-hobby theory.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve!… (mehr)