Saturday, June 28, 2014

Deadly Dee's Review for "The Ghoul Archipelago"

The Ghoul Archipelago by Stephen Kozeniewski

Book Summary 
After ravenous corpses topple society and consume most of the world’s population, freighter captain Henk Martigan is shocked to receive a distress call. Eighty survivors beg him to whisk them away to the relative safety of the South Pacific. Martigan wants to help, but to rescue anyone he must first pass through the nightmare backwater of the Curien island chain.

A power struggle is brewing in the Curiens. On one side, a billionaire seeks to squeeze all the profit he can out of the apocalypse. Opposing him is the charismatic leader of a cargo cult. When a lunatic warlord berths an aircraft carrier off the coast and stakes his own claim on the islands, the stage is set for a bloody showdown.

To save the remnants of humanity (and himself), Captain Martigan must defeat all three of his ruthless new foes and brave the gruesome horrors of...THE GHOUL ARCHIPELAGO. 




Deadly Dee's Review

This review took forever for me to write, because it took me forever to read this book. Amazon says it's only 362 pages, but seriously, it felt like at least 2-3 times that. When I was first approached to review this book I checked it out on Ammy and I was really excited because it's gotten so many wonderful reviews. Leave it to me to always be the stick in the mud. 

Ok, here goes... I had ZERO true interest in any of the characters. I didn't care who lived, who died, who went where, who killed who...whatever. Honestly, there were so many characters, and so little character development, that at first I had difficulty simply keeping track of them all! The story was all over the place, and try as I could, I sensed no true rhyme or reason to the way it was put together. Usually, I find myself waiting for a novel to "get back" to a certain storyline, or a particular character. With this book, I found myself thinking: do I really even want to finish this? Can I review something I've only read half of? I stuck with it because I was halfway through, and I kept waiting for it to get better... but no dice. 

The concept isn't bad (he definitely has his military background down pat), and I feel that if Kozeniewski were to get a better editor, then perhaps he'd have something here, but he's just too all over the place for me. (Maybe everyone else who reviewed him are close friends and family?) This is only his second book, and to me it's very obvious that he still has quite a way to go/grow as an author  - but he DOES have a fertile imagination, and hopefully in time (and with a better editor!) he'll get his act together and produce something I can give a more favorable review to. 

Sorry Steve.

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