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Ben Ripley
Ben Ripley
9 years ago

Hilarious and heartbreaking. *sigh*

James
James
9 years ago

Well don’t know what to say but the is a song with the wrong Spel;ling as well perhaps he didn’t include the word JOE
Ressurection Joe
“Ressurection Joe” is a single by the English rock band The Cult and was released on 14 December 1984.

James F. Brown
James F. Brown
9 years ago

Love the om-nom, too. It’s just so… so… precious!

EricL
EricL
9 years ago

Coming back to life as a wave or a setting sun? No wait, there are blobs out in the water. Coming back to life as a Zombie Marine! Storming the shores to suck our their brains! Love it! (Well, not really, but this cover is so borin…ZZZZ)

RK
RK
9 years ago

On the upside, your decision not to waste time on this book would be the right one. Description at the link:

It’s been past one year. Jerry returns to Dream Town with his cocky little sister Nicky to learn that Arrow has escaped prison. Above the cut-throat rush of his guilt to overwhelm him and the constant struggle for his identity, he manages to keep a sane mind. Then things go terribly wrong. Dark secrets come to light. Friendships and trusts are broken but none of these frighten him more than the supposed truth of Arrow being the twin brother he (Jerry) lost at infancy. Tyreka Jenkins, still fragile from a heartbreak unconsciously falls prey to Arrow’s plans and becomes the tool through which he sends the wrong messages to the fighters. To top the madness that becomes his life, Ty, Jerry’s one true love suffers an auto crash after which her body goes missing. Will Jerry lose it? Will he succumb to an old habit of faithlessness in life and God, and what axe does Arrow have to grind with the teen, Nicky. O. Jerry?
The fact that blood is thicker than water fails to hold true in this compelling saga. Find out yourself!

Not a lot of typos here, and the grammar’s all right for informal speech, but… it’s all so awkward in its construction. I’ve heard of the distinction between “fact” and “truth” from certain scientists when discussing the proper domains of science, religion, and philosophy, but a “fact” that isn’t “true” is otherwise mostly considered an oxymoron outside such highly technical discussions. The use of “supposed truth” is another such dubious construction: when the truth or falsehood of a given claim is unresolved, then it’s a possibility or an allegation.

Really, the typo on the cover is the least of this author’s problems. This kind of writing might earn a passing grade in Spelling and Grammar classes, but any Writing teacher or professor worth his salt would give this description a failing grade and demand a rewrite.

Hitch
9 years ago
Reply to  RK

Not a lot of typos here, and the grammar’s all right for informal speech, but…

Good lord, no it’s not. It’s incredibly bad. “It’s been past one year?” “Cutthroat” is a single word. “Above the cut-throat [sic] rush of his guilt to overwhelm him and the constant struggle for his identity, he manages to keep a sane mind.”

Yes, the words, by and large, are not misspelt; but the grammar is seriously clunky. The sentences don’t flow from one to the next, and it feels a bit…young. I suspect that the author has English as a second (or third, etc.) language, firstly, and secondly, is possibly a YA person. Just the construction about “Jerry’s one true love…” is youthful in having been used–and in the basic idea. Sure, the idea of HEA and “true love” are fundamental to romance novels, but generally, the idea that someone has “one true love” tends to be a teenage construct.

And, yes, the misspelt cover is awful, back OT.

(Nathan: if the quote/citation doesn’t show up correctly, would you kindly fix it for me, thanks?)

RK
RK
9 years ago
Reply to  Hitch

My guess leans more toward “young” than “English as a second language” here. Neither “cut-throat” nor “cutthroat” are misspellings according to my browser’s auto-spell plugin (plug-in?), and if you’ve never heard anyone say “It’s been…” in an informal conversation, you must be living in a rather elite enclave of high society. People talk that way all the time in the rural backwater where I live.

As I say, the grammar’s awkward, not inaccurate; “clunky” is another fitting description. I mentioned two examples of what was wrong with the synopsis; I could have written a whole thesis. As my English professor at the community college would say, the language is too abstract, the voice is overly passive, and the constructions are choppy.

To give just one example of each problem, “It’s been past one year” is too abstract. “Above the cut-throat rush of his guilt to overwhelm him and the constant struggle for his identity” (aside from the gripe concerning using “cut-throat” vs. “cutthroat”) is far too passively voiced. “To top the madness that becomes his life, Ty, Jerry’s one true love suffers an auto crash after which her body goes missing” is extremely choppy.

That “It’s been past one year” sentence, in particular, is what convinces me the author is young and inexperienced rather than foreign. In English class, using such a sentence in certain exercises might actually earn the writer some credit from the teacher for being so concise; hey, substituting “past” for “more than” shortened that sentence by one whole word! Writing to meet the academic parameters of an English test rather than the practical demands of one’s target audience is a very common amateur’s mistake.

To get “back OT” as you put it, the misspelled cover (my browser’s spellchecker is flagging your use of the word “misspelt” for being misspelled) is probably another amateur’s mistake which I’ve been seeing a lot lately in authors from every generation born after mine: over-reliance on the spellchecker. Had this author written “Ressurection” into a word processor (or as a post on this site), the program would have flagged his (her?) error immediately; and if the auto-correct function was enabled, probably fixed it immediately as well. A picture editing program with a text insertion function, however, might not have such a spellchecker; whatever program this author was using probably didn’t.

Of course, far from excusing the author’s error, this oversight just serves to demonstrate that even if you’re entirely self-published, you should always allow at least one total stranger who’s reasonably proficient at grammar and spelling to proofread your work before you publish it for a whole bunch of total strangers (such as… us) to critique.