Good premise, but writing is fragmented
598387
My full review will be found at [...], but I wanted to write a quick one here as well. I think this book will be a huge hit with Twitter lovers but I found the book to be disappointing.

* The writing is very fragmented, almost stream-of-consciousness with only a sentence or two devoted to an idea at any one time. I couldn't figure out why this was the case until I read the last page, where Dom explains how he wrote the book fragment by fragment. This may make for good fodder on Twitter but it makes for a fragmented book.
* I was really looking forward to reading a true "style guide for the short form," because writing on Twitter can be really creative, but few pages were devoted purely to writing style. Chapter 10 constitutes most of it. The rest is a combination of Twitter history, cultivating a following, timing your tweets, and about a hundred other related topics.
* Sometimes a tweet is placed beside a paragraph, as if it is supporting the point, but it doesn't make sense: "Someone is always there to read and listen. There is always an audience for anything. Never doubt that." ((supporting_tweet))Shut up, or I'll blog you.((/supporting_tweet))
* The entire book is structured around chapters and sections titled with a single word. Value. Master. Branch. Iterate. They sometimes are terms Dom uses for a particular method or action, but they are not explained very well and confusing. Sometimes the meaning is clear enough but the chapter doesn't match the title. Chapter 17, "Iterate," is a particularly weird example: the first couple paragraphs illustrate the meaning of iterate (which I think is a good process for any kind of improvement) but the rest of the chapter has nothing to do with improving with iteration.

I do think the book is intriguing, especially in the new field of writing about Twitter, and it's unique in that field. Students of the Twitter medium will probably enjoy it, and regular Twitter users might find something that improves their tweets.
2782554
The underlying premise of the book is an interesting, new take on the ramifications of time travel. Unfortunately though, the writing really limited my enjoyment of the story. The dialogue between the characters is often forced and unnatural, and the author spends far too much time explaining, in detail, how clever certain characters are. I prefer to see how clever the characters are through their actions, instead of having that opinion preformed and forced upon me again and again.
1970290
I liked the descriptive outlines of the main characters feelings and thoughts. The plot needs some weeding through to reinforce the backgrounds and surroundings so you can get a better point of view. Running from one area to another is fine but there needs to be some more consistency in flow. I have a wildly strong imagination so being able to flesh in a story isn't a problem but its somewhat disconcerting when what you're reading isn't in sync with how you imagine it, so its better if the writing fills in the blanks. Also its hard to imagine a big guy with huge wings carrying a woman from Alaska to New York in such a short time. The secondary characters were also left hanging and it felt like they deserved better treatment. I like the idea behind the story, its just not as satisfying as I expected.
1222499
The premise is unique and engaging:  a serial killer proposes to talk about his business on an exploitive day-time talk show (The show, Stoner!, is meant to exemplify the worst of the types exemplified by Jerry Springer and his ilk).  I was immediately drawn to the idea.
Unfortunately, the book reads as if the author wrote it in fits and starts and with half-hearted resolve.  The same way you'll end up reading it. By the way, the listed author, David Locke, is really just a pseudonym for best-selling author Robert Rosenblum.  Robert, I know exactly why you chose to remain anonymous.
Aside from the intriguing idea and a few clever crime scenes, this book is lacking all of the things that make even your typical summer schlock at least diverting and readable.  The characters have personalities that are thinly drawn.  The story itself devolves into way too much extraneous exposition.  And the emotional arc of the tale is less of an arc and more of an irregular wave.
I'm all for flaunting typical literary traditions (such as solid emotional arcs), but it can be done with more finesse and less utilitarian bluntness.  This book reads as if it were written by a short-sighted historian who chose to fill in the plotholes with laboring details about how golden the sun is or how pretty spring looks.  Just when you get used to the newstyle-writing, Locke tries to get literary.  It makes for uneven and unfullfilling writing.
I will say this: the villian (if you can call him that) is well-dressed by Locke's narrative, and although the author takes (obvious) pains to make him a loathesome man, he still comes across as the most likeable person.  I found myself engaged by him, just when I was ready to put the book down for good.  If only the bad guy had shown his face in the first third of the book, instead of the last third.
And finally, and perhaps most deadly, the ending is, in fact, a cop-out.  Instead of devising a conclusion that jives with the psychological questions posed by the plot, instead of struggling with the slippy morality of the book (by the end you may be wondering how you want the book to end, too), Locke seems to throw in the towel.
In other words:  this book, without exagerration, has no ending.
Which is bad news, no matter how good a writer you are.
4109546
There is much to like about this book, but enough lacking that I put the book down about half way down for several weeks before picking it up to finish it.
Not the best sign.

The idea behind the book is excellent, surviving victim of a serial killer whose gaps in memory may let an innocent be executed. The writing is quite good. The characters were also very good, especially our own "black-eyed Susan" Tessa. But the beginning drrraaaaggggged. Yes, the middle picked up and I, for one, loved the slightly unbelievable ending. But I must say this was and example of another book that could have used the Big Red Editor's pen to cut out a fair amount of unneeded and repetitious prose.
4481287
The idea is sound, the characters solid, and the storyline well thought out for the most part. The author needs an editor to handle flow and sentence structure, as well as past and present tense. The writing has a "See Jane. See Jane run. Run Jane run." cadence that is distracting and interrupts flow. These are the thing that keeps the story from standing out from the crowd of 'middling' authors as someone reaching for true professionalism as a writer. Otherwise, see the first sentence of this review. I will watch this writer.
1728780
I would give 5 stars to the first half of the book, which was brilliantly written and set up a fascinating premise.  The second half deserves two stars, at best.  It can't follow through on what is promised in the beginning, and the story loses its direction and momentum.  It meanders around and can't seem to decide what it's trying to do.  Since the end of a book is more important than the beginning (a strong end can make up for a weak start but not the other way around, in my opinion), I landed on three stars as a fair measure of this book.  But that first half is so great...
3886814
Fred, a seemingly average man is on his way to work one morning when he spots a tent in place of a haberdashery that had been there for years. He goes inside as if drawn on a leash, and witnesses an oddly captivating man give a speech about faith. After this performance the tent and the people in it disappear and he finds himself in the haberdashery. This is just the first in a series of weird occurrences that makes Fred consider his sanity and the reality of the world around him. I was left with the impression that this story would be from one of my favorite genres; magical realism, wherein everyday situations are interspersed with touched of the unreal and fanciful.

The writing could have been more engaging. The language is simple and direct, which is a good thing. Still, it came off as flat and was missing some prose-pep to make it really engaging to read. The author can be prone to "infodumps," or devoting long swathes of paragraphs to backstory and flashbacks that don't seem to provide anything that had much relevancy to the current story. It can be good to go into lots of detail about the histories of characters, but there are better ways, and sometimes less is more. It really slows down the story when new characters are introduced and, instead of finding a more organic way to get the reader antiquated there is instead a lot of background information all at once. There was a lot of passive writing, which naturally makes the prose have less of an impact.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. The cover is awesome, the premise sounded really good and I liked some of the themes explored. The writing and pacing of the story is too much of a mixed bag to be ignored.
953176
This book is written at a mid-level, maybe for middle schoolers or young high schoolers? That wasn't apparent to me when I first bought it. The concept is really interesting, and I enjoy seeing the worldbuilding unfold, but the writing kept putting me off. It's not bad if you skim, but that means I read like 20% of the entire book in 15 minutes.
2386011
This book had a great premise and I really wanted to like it.  The book seemed disjointed and did flow easily. I might try to start the book again.  If I fight to read the first part of the book again it will wind up in my delete pile.
2606869
The book seems to be under-developed though all the stages of the writing process. It has some promising ideas in terms of both its premise and societal critique, but those ideas are not taken anywhere beyond the obvious. The same applies to the writing style. A good start, but the author should have edited his book a few more times to remove clich formulations, repetitions, as well as to improve its readability in general. For example, consider the use of euphemism of darkness to represent death. It is used twice within a short span of pages. On page 341, somebody "barely [something] before the ship exploded around them and they fell into the darkness"; and on page 348, somebody "pulled the trigger and [somebody else's] entire world went black". Wouldn't both sentences be much stronger if they ended before the needless "darkness" clich?
2791828
Felt a bit like reading a very elaborate outline. Characters could have been more complex, world building too. Left me with a bit of a blah, and I even skipped and skimmed a few times. The premise was a great idea, but author could have really gone for it and pushed/fleshed out more. Author is good, could really feel the atmosphere and "see" where they were stranded. Could have been a lot more horrifying and a lot more exciting...
1758969
The storyline of this book has such great promise, with potentially profound insight into gender roles. The plot and characters could be spectacular. Except for one thing, the writing just is not that good. The timeline is jumbled together; characters and events are poorly described. The writing lacks any natural flow. The book would be much more successful if effort were put into the quality of writing to properly support the clever premise.
2581488
I really liked the premise for this book. The main character was likable but I wasn't sure what to make of the supporting characters, which is a shame considering one of them is the narrator/main character in the next book apparently. I didn't like her at all. I felt her character was quite a bit of a stretch.

There were several parts that were hard to get through, because they were boring and didn't seem necessary. The author's writing style is a bit dry in those areas. I felt no compunction to read through them and often found myself skimming those parts to get back to what was exciting.

All in all, I am not disappointed I read it. I'm unsure whether I'll read the second in the trilogy, but this one was more or less worth the read. Also worth noting is the immense amount of research the author has done in order to write this book. It is evident that he knew the subject material well enough to use it, and I appreciated it.
3835281
Told in alternating segments that switch between different times (3 timelines total: one current, one in the recent past, and one roughly a century ago) and places, the narrative finally settles primarily into the now.

Considering the vast geography (several European nations) and time covered, and considering the idea at the heart of the story, this work should have been more compelling than it was. But I found the characterization lacking. This likely is due to the vast territories and timelines the story covers, and so isn't really a flaw. Books that deliver this type of story don't have much space for character development. Considering those constraints, then, the author has done a fine job getting readers to care about the people in this book.

The supernatural elementsand the fact that the shapeshifter hunts a specific family throughout time and down through the generationsis a fantastic concept. Overall, this is quite an enjoyable work that can be your next beach read.

If you enjoy stories with supernatural elements and a touch of the past, then check out<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Reparation-A-Novel-of-Love-Devotion-and-Danger/dp/B01HHRETW8/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Reparation: A Novel of Love, Devotion and Danger</a>
4613947
A good mystery.  I enjoyed the premise of writing a brief biography and becoming involved in the life of the person.  The idea  of a developmentally disabled sibling and the additional responsibilities it places on a young person was were well developed.  However, much of the writing seemed contrived --the coincidences just too much to be believed. Some of it seemed to served no purpose--the scenes with the female characters earlier rapists, etc.  In other words, a good story, that deserved much better editing.
3648284
Good premise, decent story, interesting characters. It's written like a stone skipping across the water, though, and not well edited. It could be a really good book, but he's still got a long way to go as a writer. His language is limited (maybe 6th grade level at best), and he insists on a lot of info dumping that could be integrated much better if he were a better writer.
I'd love to see the entire series completely rewritten; the stories are well worth it. Whether they're worth the pain of reading as they are? Not so sure about that.