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Ruby Fire
Moving between the scenic but bitterly cold windswept Greenland ruby mine and the glamor of New York City Society.
Modern day mining explorer, Rick Huntingdon, discovers a natural ruby encrusted cavern but which also contains a mysterious destructive energy vortex. It has destroyed a earlier civilization, what will it unleash now?
Fear wasn’t enough to stop them; it was greed which drove them to risk it all.
An exciting romantic, adventure packed with action.
The venture is backed by an older, powerful man with immense financial resources, Scott Armstrong, who has married Rick's former fiancee Amanda.
Main Characters
Rick Huntingdon- Born in Australia an adventurer at heart. In it for the thrill of discovery. Has lost in love. Rick just wants to be happy and in love.
Scott Armstrong – American mining entrepreneur. Wants fame, fortune and acceptance. Greedy, arrogant, impatient, wealthy and powerful, but still feels the need to be accepted into a higher level of society. Likeable despite his ruthless streak.
Amanda – Born in Australia, young and beautiful, has intelligence and commonsense but is torn between her loyalty to her much older husband Scott and hidden love for her former fiancee Rick.
Dr Ryder Mitchell- PhD, a highly intelligent, self-obsessed character. With an off the chart IQ. Quite selfish, but well meaning. Ryder wants a Nobel Prize.
Art - ambitious and greedy. Does not have much foresight. Goes along for the ride when he thinks there is something in it for him.
Modern day mining explorer, Rick Huntingdon, discovers a natural ruby encrusted cavern but which also contains a mysterious destructive energy vortex. It has destroyed a earlier civilization, what will it unleash now?
Fear wasn’t enough to stop them; it was greed which drove them to risk it all.
An exciting romantic, adventure packed with action.
The venture is backed by an older, powerful man with immense financial resources, Scott Armstrong, who has married Rick's former fiancee Amanda.
Main Characters
Rick Huntingdon- Born in Australia an adventurer at heart. In it for the thrill of discovery. Has lost in love. Rick just wants to be happy and in love.
Scott Armstrong – American mining entrepreneur. Wants fame, fortune and acceptance. Greedy, arrogant, impatient, wealthy and powerful, but still feels the need to be accepted into a higher level of society. Likeable despite his ruthless streak.
Amanda – Born in Australia, young and beautiful, has intelligence and commonsense but is torn between her loyalty to her much older husband Scott and hidden love for her former fiancee Rick.
Dr Ryder Mitchell- PhD, a highly intelligent, self-obsessed character. With an off the chart IQ. Quite selfish, but well meaning. Ryder wants a Nobel Prize.
Art - ambitious and greedy. Does not have much foresight. Goes along for the ride when he thinks there is something in it for him.
104 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 16, 2012
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 31, 2014
This is the review I wrote on Amazon. Says it all, really.
This tiny little "book", filled with typos and grammatical errors, is beyond ridiculous. As even a short story it fails, with poorly developed characters and a plot that, as simple as it is, is actually difficult to follow, as if the author was so excited about the next scene that she forgot to complete the previous one. The chapters, such as they are, rarely extend beyond two pages, which is just bizarre. The writing is disjointed and jerky and sometimes plain baffling - in fact, it reads more like a synopsis than a finished work. The text alignment is formatted as centred, rather than justified or even left-justified, which I have never seen in a published work that wasn't poetry (and poetry this ain't). Entire paragraphs of factual information seem as though they are copied and pasted from Wikipedia, which is entirely possible. The author clearly did some googling as research, evidenced by her mention of the town of Qeqertarsuatsiaaq - though she wasn't very thorough as she described the location as being north of the Arctic circle, when it's to the south by several hundred kilometres. Other things, such as the details of the camp and the safety setup, are just wildly off - four helicopters?! I don't think so.
I keep thinking I should write novels, and frankly, I'm now convinced, as I know for a fact that I could write a far better version of this "book" in a few days - not least because I spent three years working on the ruby project that does in fact exist near Qeqertarsuatsiaaq. I'm baffled as to why this thing was even published, let alone how anyone was brazen enough to think this was worth any money. I'm all for a person fulfilling his or her dream of writing a novel, but if you're going to charge money for it, there is a certain standard that must be attained. This is far more suited to a creative writing critique website for amateurs. I have no idea what product the previous customers were rating four stars, but it cannot possibly have been the same thing I downloaded.
I would give this no stars if I could.
Yikes.
EDIT: After a couple days of something niggling at me, I had a look at an article called "Conflict Rubies" written by Tida Ravn in 2008 [...]. The penultimate paragraph of Chapter 3 of Ms Howarth's "book" consists of a quote from a fictional Greenlander which is actually a directly plagiarised statement made by Thue Noahsen in Ms Ravn's article. Nicely done, Judi. Next time at least paraphrase it.
Edit #2: A few months ago I read a charming memoir set at the Peterson Air Force Base in Thule in North Greenland. I found it so interesting that I did a bit of online reading on the subject and setting, and on the main page of the air base's website, I found a link to the "Thule newcomer's welcome package". This PDF was a professional and informative document about what to expect when arriving and living in Thule - but it was the description of the storm warnings that caught my attention. I referenced in my original review of Ruby Fire many paragraphs of technical information that I found incongruous in Ms Howarth's work, and now i know why. It seems that these sections were copied verbatim from the welcome package to new personnel at Thule. It also explains the bizarrely inaccurate description of the location of Qeqertarsuatsiaaq: what the author describes is precisely the location of Thule, pinched from the second page of the document. So, not content with just plagiarizing local journalists, Ms Howarth has actually plagiarized the US military. Kudos.
This tiny little "book", filled with typos and grammatical errors, is beyond ridiculous. As even a short story it fails, with poorly developed characters and a plot that, as simple as it is, is actually difficult to follow, as if the author was so excited about the next scene that she forgot to complete the previous one. The chapters, such as they are, rarely extend beyond two pages, which is just bizarre. The writing is disjointed and jerky and sometimes plain baffling - in fact, it reads more like a synopsis than a finished work. The text alignment is formatted as centred, rather than justified or even left-justified, which I have never seen in a published work that wasn't poetry (and poetry this ain't). Entire paragraphs of factual information seem as though they are copied and pasted from Wikipedia, which is entirely possible. The author clearly did some googling as research, evidenced by her mention of the town of Qeqertarsuatsiaaq - though she wasn't very thorough as she described the location as being north of the Arctic circle, when it's to the south by several hundred kilometres. Other things, such as the details of the camp and the safety setup, are just wildly off - four helicopters?! I don't think so.
I keep thinking I should write novels, and frankly, I'm now convinced, as I know for a fact that I could write a far better version of this "book" in a few days - not least because I spent three years working on the ruby project that does in fact exist near Qeqertarsuatsiaaq. I'm baffled as to why this thing was even published, let alone how anyone was brazen enough to think this was worth any money. I'm all for a person fulfilling his or her dream of writing a novel, but if you're going to charge money for it, there is a certain standard that must be attained. This is far more suited to a creative writing critique website for amateurs. I have no idea what product the previous customers were rating four stars, but it cannot possibly have been the same thing I downloaded.
I would give this no stars if I could.
Yikes.
EDIT: After a couple days of something niggling at me, I had a look at an article called "Conflict Rubies" written by Tida Ravn in 2008 [...]. The penultimate paragraph of Chapter 3 of Ms Howarth's "book" consists of a quote from a fictional Greenlander which is actually a directly plagiarised statement made by Thue Noahsen in Ms Ravn's article. Nicely done, Judi. Next time at least paraphrase it.
Edit #2: A few months ago I read a charming memoir set at the Peterson Air Force Base in Thule in North Greenland. I found it so interesting that I did a bit of online reading on the subject and setting, and on the main page of the air base's website, I found a link to the "Thule newcomer's welcome package". This PDF was a professional and informative document about what to expect when arriving and living in Thule - but it was the description of the storm warnings that caught my attention. I referenced in my original review of Ruby Fire many paragraphs of technical information that I found incongruous in Ms Howarth's work, and now i know why. It seems that these sections were copied verbatim from the welcome package to new personnel at Thule. It also explains the bizarrely inaccurate description of the location of Qeqertarsuatsiaaq: what the author describes is precisely the location of Thule, pinched from the second page of the document. So, not content with just plagiarizing local journalists, Ms Howarth has actually plagiarized the US military. Kudos.
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