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Taylor Longford

Autor von Valor

9 Werke 59 Mitglieder 3 Rezensionen

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Werke von Taylor Longford

Valor (2011) 44 Exemplare
Defiance (2013) 4 Exemplare
Dare (2012) 4 Exemplare
Reason (2012) 2 Exemplare
Victor (2014) 1 Exemplar
Chaos (2013) 1 Exemplar
Force (2015) 1 Exemplar
Courage (2015) 1 Exemplar
Havoc (2016) 1 Exemplar

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A clean and uncomplicated young adult paranormal romance, Valor is first book in the Greystone series and introduces the Greystone gargoyle pack, nine brothers/cousins who are reunited after 800 years asleep.

Valor follows the first member of the pack, Valor Greystone and his love interest, Mackenzie Campbell as the work together to find the missing members of the pack, acclimatize the Greystone's to modern life and deal with an ancient enemy who might not be as dead as they thought - all while falling in love.

This was a decent start to a new paranormal romance series featuring two of the rarer species in the paranormal genre - gargoyles and harpies. There's nothing particularly new in the narrative but it's a lighthearted read with likable characters and a straightforward plot.

I liked Mackenzie. She's a bit young but she's generally smart, mostly confident and not too stupid to live so it worked for me. There's a little bit of romantic drama but there's no major miscommunications, just your normal insecurities and awkwardness which made it a refreshing change of pace.

Valor was a bit more of an enigma but he was kind and protective and clearly felt strongly for Mackenzie. I would've liked to see more relationship development - especially before the committed to each other so irrevocably - but that tends to be a problem with the genre rather than just this book. In the same vein the world building was a bit thin - I would've liked to know more about the runic tattoos the boys had and what, if anything, it does if given to their partner - but it made sense and worked well enough for the rest of the plot. 2.5 stars, rounded to 3 stars.
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funstm | 2 weitere Rezensionen | Sep 9, 2023 |
I was given this book through the Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Fanatics R2R group for an honest review, thank you.



Valor wasn’t a very long book, but it felt long. I think that’s because the action was slow to begin with and didn’t really start until a third of the way through the story. Plus the style in which the story was told made it seem longer, which I’ll explain in the next paragraph.

The one thing I dislike about stories in first person is that more often than not, the MC comes across as flat with no personality and ‘tells’ the story instead of describing the scenes with emotion and sensation. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened in Valor. I never feel drawn to MacKenzie because it’s like I’m reading a technical paper when she describes everything, including describing any action taking place. It’s always ‘I did this, and then this happened.’ I’m going to give a paragraph example from the book of what I mean when I say the author conveys no ‘feelings’ during what are important scenes. This isn’t really a spoiler since it’s very short, but it’s necessary to tell you what I mean. This action happens to MacKenzie and she describes it to the readers as a heavy tool chest falls on her:

Unfortunately, as I reached for the heavy bar of metal, the tool chest tilted toward me. Too late, I realized I shouldn’t have pulled out all the drawers; the chest had overbalanced. I tried to back peddle out of harm’s way but wasn’t fast enough. The chest crashed down on me, taking me to the floor. My head hit the concrete so hard I’m surprised I didn’t crack my skull.

That example is what I mean by ‘telling, flat, and bland.’ The author’s writing style doesn’t draw me in. I don’t feel MacKenzie’s surprise or pain. Instead I would like to read something like this: “Scrambling backwards, I tried to get out of the way, but the chest crashed down on me and I yelped as I was thrown to the floor. My head snapped back, cracking against the concrete and sending shooting pains ricocheting through my skull. I lay there taking slow deep breaths and blinked several times to clear the stars swimming before my eyes.”

I realize many people don't care if a story is written in a telling, monotone manner. But bland, flat writing is a big peeve of mine. If it happens once and awhile in a story, it's not so bad, but throughout the whole book, and I mean the whole book, not just sometimes, it's really unacceptable, I don't care how good the plot idea is. Show; don't tell us readers the story.

Continuing on with the lack of descriptors, there's no `emotion' whenever the author has MacKenzie go into internal dialogue,and boy is there an overwhelmingly large amount of internal chatter going on with MacKenzie. It felt like a teenager talking or texting non-stop. It's not just because MacKenzie is emotionally 'detached,' which is OK for a character, it's the way the author does not convey feelings or sensations through MacKenzie's thoughts and speech. The author again tells instead of shows us MacKenzie, that is not a 'detached' character, that is poor writing. The dialogue scenes are few and the action scenes aren't described in a way that makes me feel a part of them.

I can’t really tell you much about MacKenzie other than she’s got red hair, the gargoyles consider her a witch, and that she does the usual teenage girl angst over Valor. ‘Does he like me? Or doesn’t he?’ MacKenzie’s angst moments came across as artificial; it was as if I could see the author thinking where more drama could be inserted into the plot. The whole situation between MacKenzie and Valor was a typical romance formula.

The gargoyles on the other hand were a great idea. I loved their background history and the harpies, also the names of all the gargoyles. It was fun to read about the pack’s reactions and adaptation to their new world.

The author had a bad habit of jumping days and time in the story without notice so it sometimes took a while to figure out where the story is in the timeline. The story could jump forward or back without any warning ignoring the use of any chapter or paragraph separators to help the reader figure out where we are in time. At one point the story switched forward in time, then backward, then back to the present and then into the future all within four paragraphs. It was very confusing.

The formatting had some problems. Dialogue between two different people often ran together in one paragraph, making it difficult to tell who was talking. Pages where not completely filled with text, sometimes only filled with a couple short paragraphs leaving the rest of the page empty, but continuing on the following page.

The author had a good idea when creating Valor, with the history of the gargoyles and the names. I think this story would have been much more interesting if the author had concentrated on developing the plot about the gargoyles, the harpies and possibly the nefarious activities of her step-father. Instead the author focused on the teenage angst of MacKenzie and this story turned into a simplistic teenage romance when it could have been so much more. If you’re interested in teenage romance stories and don’t care how simple the writing is, than you’ll probably like Valor. The story unfortunately, doesn’t have much action and the writing style is too flat and dull. This was the most disappointing, and glaring flaw with this story, the telling rather than the showing.

The flaws outweigh the good idea the author had about gargoyles and harpies. I can only give Valor 2 stars

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Penumbra1 | 2 weitere Rezensionen | Oct 11, 2022 |

Statistikseite

Werke
9
Mitglieder
59
Beliebtheit
#280,813
Bewertung
½ 3.6
Rezensionen
3
ISBNs
10

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