Matt Heppe's Blog, page 7

Guest Review - The Lightning Thief

Today we have a guest review from my daughter, Amelia...

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-fareast-language:JA;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style>--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My name is Amelia and I am nine years old. My favorite subjects are history and science. I also LOVE reading! Before this school year I never really read much at all. My classmate Robert said that he loved reading <i>The Lightning Thief</i>. It looked very interesting so I checked it out at my school library. Which brings me to this review…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1:<br /><i><b>The Lightning Thief</b></i><br /><br /><i>Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson is on the most dangerous quest of his life. With the help of a satyr and a daughter of Athena, Percy must journey across the United States to catch a thief who has stolen the original weapon of mass destruction – Zeus’ master bolt. Along the way, he must face a host of mythological enemies determined to stop him. Most of all, he must come to terms with a father he has never known, and an Oracle that has warned him of betrayal by a friend.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I..." /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">-From the back cover</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Characters: Percy Jackson is a twelve year old who goes to a reform school. He has ADHD and dyslexia and always seemed to get in trouble. I loved the way he solved problems. He was very clever ands smart. Annabeth is Percy’s friend. Her mom is Athena (goddess of wisdom). Annabeth is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">very</i> smart. Her weapon is a special knife that can kill monsters. Percy’s protector is a satyr (half man, half goat); satyrs help protect soon to be demigods from monsters.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Setting: I love the setting! It is mordern day New York City and it’s mixed with Ancient Greece. Some of the places are mordern day tourist attractions but they have a Greek secret hidden in them!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Genre: It is a mixture of fantsy and Greek mytholgy. It has lots of adventure and magic.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I would give this book 10/10 or 5 stars! It is a young adult novel, but I think anybody can enjoy it!</div>

Review of The Red Knight

Twenty eight florins a month is a huge price to pay, for a man to stand between you and the Wild.

Twenty eight florins a month is nowhere near enough when a wyvern's jaws snap shut on your helmet in the hot stink of battle, and the beast starts to rip the head from your shoulders. But if standing and fighting is hard, leading a company of men - or worse, a company of mercenaries - against the smart, deadly creatures of the Wild is even harder.

It takes all the advantages of birth, training, and the luck of the devil to do it.

The Red Knight has all three, he has youth on his side, and he's determined to turn a profit. So when he hires his company out to protect an Abbess and her nunnery, it's just another job. The abby is rich, the nuns are pretty and the monster preying on them is nothing he can't deal with.

Only it's not just a job. It's going to be a war. . .

-from the book description


The Red Knight, by Miles Cameron

Characters: The Red Knight features a wide cast of characters, with each chapter giving us a different point of view. Our primary point of view is the Red Knight himself, a young mercenary commander. The Red Knight might be young, but he knows his business. I don’t put spoilers in my reviews, so I’ll just mention that there is more to the Red Knight than (of course) first meets the eye. Besides the Red Knight we have a rich cast of characters, including the novel’s primary antagonist. I enjoyed getting both the “good guy” AND “bad guy” point of views.

World building: This had to be one of my favorite elements of the novel. Cameron has taken Europe (circa 1450, I estimate) and tuned it to his own fantasy setting. You’ll recognize names and places from European history, some straight out of the history books, some given interesting twists. The book combines the author’s deep knowledge of history with a truly refreshing, well thought out overlay of magic and fantastic monsters (some you’ll recognize, some you won’t). It is a gritty, highly realistic setting.

Engagement/Willing suspension of disbelief: Cameron is a historian and a reenactor. Both come through in spades when it comes to engagement. Small details of everyday life create a rich, believable atmosphere. And Cameron certainly knows how to write a gripping combat scene. Knights in other fantasy novels wear the same armor, but in the Red Knight you really get to know what is means to be in a full suit of plate. It is obvious that the author has spent his fair share of time in full harness.

Writing/Mechanics: Tom Swan is a professionally written novel. Besides getting an exciting story, you are getting a well-written story. It is not all blood and guts, Cameron takes time to smell the roses. Love and hate, the nature of good and evil, the meaning of loyalty and friendship... Cameron writes them as well as he writes a deadly battle with a wyvern.

Impact: A terrific fantasy novel. It isn’t a YA fantasy, this is a tough, realistic telling of a bloody war in a  fantasy setting. It also isn’t a Dungeon’s and Dragons knock off - which is a great relief. It has the depth, complexity and realism of GRR Martin in a world where magic and monsters are more the norm. I can’t wait for more. 

Holy Smokes

Ok, people like free stuff.

Apparently they REALLY like free stuff.

In my last blog post I mentioned that I had set the ebook price of Eternal Knight to free. On Tuesday I took a look to see how many downloads there had been.

In ten days 2,100 people had downloaded Eternal Knight on Amazon. WOW! In the month of December I had one (1) $.99 cent sale on Amazon.

I tried to figure out how they learned about it. I'm still not sure. If you sort Amazon books (Fantasy) by price (low to high) and rating (high to low), Eternal Knight comes out pretty high on the list. Do a lot of people do that? Or is there a website that automatically promotes free ebooks? Or is something else going on?

In any case it is pretty exciting. Right now all I want is for people to read Eternal Knight. As many people as possible. Hopefully some of them will write reviews. Hopefully many of them will tell their friends how much they liked it. Word of mouth starts big things rolling.

In my last post I also mentioned that a lot of downloads would light a fire under me.

Mission accomplished.

Eternal Knight ebook is FREE

Hello!

Yes, I am a bad blogger. What have I been doing? Being a dad, teaching, reading, making bows, some gaming.

Bad author.

Time to get back in the saddle again and finish off Child of the Knight. To get me fired up I've decided to set the ebook price of Eternal Knight to FREE. So if you know anyone who recently received an iPad, Kindle, or Nook, let them know about Eternal Knight.

An uptick in sales (can you call them sales if they are free?) will definitely light a fire under me.

Best,
Matt

No, she's not Katniss...

Apparently any girl with a bow is now Katniss. That's what you call success!

But this isn't Katniss... it's Hadde.



Here she is in action.


But that wasn't her costume this year. I just wanted a fun Hadde photo. Here was Amelia's costume this year:


She saw the helmet in the costume store and just had to be a viking. The helmet was a souvenir from Epcot (I was so proud that our daughter's only Disney World memento was a viking shield). The sword was from an old pirate costume of mine.

Speaking of Halloween archers, here's a "Fire Bow" I made for my nephew.


Here are the flames:


It draws 25 pounds at 25 inches. I'll post a few pics of the archer himself as soon as I get them.

I've gotten back to writing. I'll post a progress report soon!

Review of Tom Swan

Tom Swan and the Head of St. George

A serialized ebook novel by Christian Cameron



1450s France. A young Englishman, Tom Swan, is kneeling in the dirt, waiting to be killed by the French who've taken him captive.He's not a professional soldier. He's really a merchant and a scholar looking for remnants of Ancient Greece and Rome - temples, graves, pottery, fabulous animals, unicorn horns. But he also has a real talent for ending up in the midst of violence when he didn't mean to. Having used his wits to escape execution, he begins a series of adventures that take him to street duels in Italy, meetings with remarkable men - from Leonardo Da Vinci to Vlad Dracula - and from the intrigues of the War of the Roses to the fall of Constantinople.

-from the “back cover”.

Characters: As with all of Cameron’s novels, we get characters out of history, not modern people in costume thrust into a different age. The characters’ behaviors and actions are true to the time period and this has the effect of making the book seem more real. The book opens with Tom Swan as a helpless captive, and given his desperate situation, he immediately gains the reader’s sympathy. He is a likeable, resourceful protagonist surrounded by an interesting cast of supporting characters.

World building: Cameron is unmatched when it comes to world building. He is both a historian and a reenactor and it comes out beautifully in his novels. Cameron has a wonderful way of adding rich details to his historical fiction, without sounding like a professor giving a college lecture. Tom Swan immerses the character in the world of late medieval France.

Engagement/Willing suspension of disbelief: This is not a fantasy novel, it is historical fiction. Given this, I expect realistic depictions of events while at the same time a story filled with enough action to keep me engaged. Again, Cameron does not fail. The fights are brutal and realistic, with genuine danger for our protagonist. Tom Swan is no Conan, able to charge into a horde of enemies. In fact, he reacts to surviving combat in a very human, realistic manner. At no point did I want to pull back in disbelief. Cameron kept me fully engaged in the story.

Writing/Mechanics: Tom Swan is a professionally written novel. Cameron writes excellent prose, but I’ll warn you that he doesn’t shy from historic terms for clothing and equipment, and you’ll occasionally run into non-English words or phrases. But for me, this just adds to the richness of the experience. The context of the story tells us what the items are and what the words mean.

Impact: I read the novella in one sitting and loved it. Actually, it is not a novella, but one part of a serialized novel. And this is my one disappointment. Now I have to wait a month to be a part of Tom Swan’s next adventure.

Bow Number Two

Thought I'd show you my second bow. It is another American longbow/flatbow. Overall length is 6' and the draw weight is 45 pounds at 28 inches.




Once again, I "backed" the bow with brown craft paper soaked with wood glue. I painted the paper black and did another swirling design on it. (I need to work on some new designs.)


Here's the bow at full draw. I enjoy shooting it more than my first bow, although I am far from a good shot. At this point I am willing to admit that I am definitely addicted to making bows (number three is well along).



Now that the school year has started it is time to focus on my real job. And now that I will have a normal (non-summer) schedule there will be more writing going on. I suppose bow making and archery will have to move a couple of steps down the ladder.

Finishing my first longbow

Here are some more pics of my first longbow build. In my last post I had roughed out the shape of the bow. Now came the all important tillering process. I started by putting the bow on a tillering "tree" and hanging twenty pounds of weights from it.







This was enough weight to start bending the bow. The goal is to have a very even bend across the length of the bow. You don't want any flat spots or sharp bends. You can see that the left arm was slightly more bent than right.

I continued shaving off more wood and adding more weight. Until I got to this point:


Oops! Look how much the left arm is bending. I took off too much wood. And this was with thirty-five pounds instead of the forty I was hoping for. In order to even out the arms I had to take more wood off, resulting in a bow that only drew thirty pounds. 



Here is the bow after tillering and sanding. Now it was ready for the final finishing process. I did take it out for a few shots at this point in time and was very pleased.


And here is the final bow (In the hands of my lovely assistant, Amelia)! It still need a proper string and arrows, but I am very happy with how it came out.





A detail of the handle. I pained the back (the part facing away from the archer) black and then added a swirling yellow design to it. The back was covered in glue-soaked paper to prevent splinters and cracks from developing when the bow was drawn. The paint job was to improve the brown-paper look. The handle is wrapped in glue-soaked hemp twine. You'll see a notch right above the handle. This is called the arrow rest. Not all bows have them, but American longbows usually have them, so I put on on. 



The final product "braced" with some nylon cord. Now to get some arrows and put it into action!
Stats:69" (nock to nock) Red Oak "American" longbow backed with paper.30# draw weight at 28" draw
Making this bow was loads of fun and I will definitely be making another ASAP!


 

Making a Longbow

I did a lot of research on archery while writing Eternal Knight. Combine this with a life-long interest in military history and my historical wargaming hobby and it was only a matter of time before I set out to make my own bow.

In Eternal Knight, Hadde's bow, Hawkeye, is a composite recurve bow. Composite means that the bow is made of three materials: animal sinew on the back (the part away from the archer), wood as a core material, and horn on the belly (the part closest to the archer). Recurved means that the bow actually bends away from the archer when unstrung. Composite recurve bows can be both very powerful and very difficult to string. They are also short and excellent for horse-archers.

For my first bowmaking experience I chose NOT to make Hadde's bow. Composite recurve bows are not for beginning bowyers. I am going to make a simple longbow out of red oak. The Eastern Landomeri in Eternal Knight use longbows, so that will be my bow's book connection. For my bowmaking guide I am using a variety of sources from the internet, but primarily Poor Folk Bows. I am following his "Red oak board bow build along".

Roughing out:


I have a six foot red oak bowstaff that has been roughed out with a wood rasp. The wood came from Home Depot and started out as a 1 x 2 x 6. It always surprises me how thin the wood on a bow is. I always expect them to be fatter. The protruding part is called the riser. It will become the handle. Why is it so straight? It won't gain it's bow-like shape until I start the tillering process. All of the work you see above was done in about two hours.

 Backing the bow:


Backing a bow is when you laminate a substance to the back (the part away from the archer) of the bow. Backing can be used to strengthen a bow by adding another layer, especially if that layer is a material that resists stretching. Sinew is an extremely good backing. Bamboo, hickory, ash, and maple make good backings as well. A second purpose in backing the bow is that it prevents splinters from rising as the bow is bent. Splinters lead to fractures, and fractures lead to broken bows. If your goal is preventing splinters you can use a variety of materials including silk, linen, drywall tape, and paper. I selected paper. Why? Because the Whole Foods bag says PLEASE RECYCLE THIS BAG and I always do as I am told. I used three layers of paper and copious amounts of wood glue. I let each layer set up for ten minutes before adding the next layer, making certain that the paper was completely soaked through. After adding the final layer, I coated the entire surface with glue.

Tomorrow (or whenever I get to it) I will use my handy rasp to round off the edges of my bow's back and eliminate the excess paper. After that comes the tillering process. Tillering teaches the bow to bend and adjusts the bow to the proper draw weight. I am aiming for a forty pound draw. Forty pounds is plenty for target shooting and can be drawn by most adults.

So far this has been a lot of fun. I'll be back soon with more.

Book Review: Silver Phoenix and Fury of the Phoenix

Silver Phoenix is the story of Ai Ling, a strong, independent young woman who leaves her home to both escape an unwanted marriage and to find her missing father. A fantasy in a world based on ancient China, Silver Phoenix is filled with adventure, strange creatures, and great characters. Ai Ling is joined on her adventure by a pair of brothers, the strong, serious Chen Yong and his love-crazed younger brother, Li Rong. I found the three characters to be well-written and distinct individuals.

World building: Unlike most of the fantasy novels I’ve read, Silver Phoenix has an Asian setting. It was a refreshing change from your typical pseudo-European world. It was a great to see characters confronted by new and unique gods, demons, and monsters instead of the standard orcs, elves, and ogres (or variants thereof). I loved the author’s world-building efforts; her descriptions of architecture, food, clothing, and the environment made the world come alive.

Engagement: A very engaging novel, Silver Phoenix definitely keeps the action rolling. It is fast-paced and tightly written. My only serious complaints would be with the rapidity with which Ai Ling’s powers developed and the presence of an overly helpful magic item. Other than that, I found myself engrossed in both the story and the world the author created.

Writing: The author writes very clear, straightforward prose. I enjoyed her style. Silver Phoenix reads like a blend of historical fiction, fairy tale, and fantasy. Having said that, my knowledge of ancient Chinese history is pretty sketchy and the author has clearly stated that Xia is only based on Chinese culture and folklore - it is not supposed to strictly represent China at any particular time period. The novel was, in every way, professionally written.

Impact: Although classified as a young adult novel, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel from an adult perspective. While aimed at a YA audience, some scenes felt very grown up. A few times I felt myself wondering if it was a serious fantasy or a lighter fairy tale. However, these were minor distractions. I loved the characters, there was a lot of action, tension was high throughout, and the world building was outstanding. As soon as I finished Silver Phoenix I immediately downloaded Fury of the Phoenix.

Fury of the Phoenix is the sequel to Silver Phoenix and follows Ai Ling and Chen Yong as they travel to Jiang Dao (Chen Yong’s birth father’s homeland). The novel is split between Ai Ling’s and,unexpectedly, Zong Ye’s perspectives. Zong Ye (the villain of Silver Phoenix) returns in spirit form to haunt Ai Ling. The great thing about the Zong Ye character is that we learn of his origins and he becomes a complete character. In Silver Phoenix he was just “The Bad Guy” and we didn’t know much about him. In Fury of the Phoenix he becomes a real person. Ultimately not a nice one, but a real one. He’s a great character.

Ai Ling spends much of her part of the novel either on board the ship taking her and Chen Yong to Jiang Dao or in in Jiang Dao itself. I have only two minor complaints with the novel and both have to do with setting. The opening scene of the novel has Ai Ling very improbably boarding and stowing away on a sailing vessel (at sea). It is impossible for me to imagine it happening as described and put me off in the first chapter. The second complaint has to do with the country of Jiang Dao. The author states in the afterword that Jiang Dao is not supposed to be Europe. Unfortunately, Xia is so clearly inspired by ancient China that I was constantly attempting to figure out which European country was supposed to be Jiang Dao. Don’t do this. Jiang Dao is a completely fabricated country containing an assortment of elements of European culture.

Here’s the good news: Fury of the Phoenix is excellent! It reads as a straight-up, grown-up fantasy novel and I was completely engaged throughout. The story of Ai Ling and Chen Yong’s journey and relationship was well-written and perfectly paced. Having said that, I was even more engrossed by Zong Ye’s story of his descent into evil. If a major draw of Silver Phoenix was setting and action, the big draw of Fury of the Phoenix is character and discovery (and a great lead-up to a thrilling climax). I highly recommend both books and look forward to the author’s next work.