Book Review #1

Some secrets are meant to be shared; and a boy’s encounter with England’s most legendary archer will change his life forever. This is the tag-line of a new story by Mike Evers, due for release by Great Minds Think Aloud on March 16, 2012.

There's a lot to like in this story. Most notably, the authenticity of the dialog - both from the modern characters and from Robin Hood - and the visualizability of the characters and the action. For this I give it 5 stars.

I also like the availability of links - both within the story and as an appendix at the end - to articles regarding many of the historic events mentioned in the story. I'll give a gold star on that.

For punctuation, spelling, and grammar, I give this story 4 stars. Unfortunately, I found myself distracted from the story on several occasions by typos. While some of these may be the result of dialect differences (the author is from the UK), others were clearly intended to be other words and I found myself abruptly pushed out of the story by these. I also found myself wondering about the punctuation, but I put most of that down to different speech patterns. After all, a person who speaks differently than we are accustomed to hearing will punctuate his written sentences differently as well.

The formatting could also use some work. Primarily the use of block-style formatting (this blog is an example) instead of indent style - the former is primarily used for non-fiction while the latter is used for fiction. Not a tremendous turn-off, but it was still a bit offputting. Also, there were several instances where the ends of sentences were cut off and placed separately two lines down, and at one point there was an entire blank page. All these were due to formatting irregularities. I cannot honestly give any stars for this.

The feel-good ending wrapped up all the story threads nicely, and while I felt Robin Hood's sudden appearance at the end to save the day was a bit of a deus ex machina the overall effect was not off-putting. It is, after all, intended for young adults and I feel it likely that most younger readers will find this ending highly satisfying. For the ending, 5 stars.

All in all, Mike Evers' "The Spirit Archer" is highly entertaining and I will recommend it to all the young readers I know. If you want to find it for yourself, go here http://www.greatmindspublishing.moonf...