Book Review: Over Raging Tides by Jennifer Ellision

Self Published
March 20th 2018

The pirate crew of the Lady Luck lives by many rules, but chief among them is this: they do not allow men on board. 

That’s a rule that quartermaster Grace Porter is willing to break when a shipwrecked young nobleman offers her information of an omniscient map, stolen from his warship by an enemy vessel. Until now, the map was only the stuff of legend… but with its help, Grace may finally be able to hunt down the Mordgris, the sea monsters who stole her mother away from her.

Unfortunately, some members of her crew have other plans…

To find the map and face the Mordgris, Grace will have to confront her past, put the Luck between warring nations, and uncover treachery aboard the ship. And ultimately, her revenge and the destruction of the Mordgris will come at a hefty price: the betrayal of her crew.

Grace promised them they wouldn’t regret this.

She just isn’t sure that she won’t.- Goodreads

This book could have changed the game. It really could have but although the summary caught your attention too many things led to its downfall.

Grace Porter is weak. She is emotional, untrustworthy and selfish (to a certain extent). For a woman, who was raised, most if not all her life at sea, by two women onboard of a all women’s ship, she couldn’t have turned out worst. Grace allows her emotions take over her responsibilities as a leader and I know this is supposed to make her “human” so to speak but its annoying because she does this throughout the book.

She’s untrustworthy because she hides the most important things that can affect her crew from who she considers family. She is shady and I wanted to like her but she gave me no reason to. Her relationship with the Captain left you wanting to know more about her backstory. I wanted to know more about her mother’s relationship with her father and the Captain. I wanted to know what type of inspiration the Captain was to Grace. None of those really came. You got glimpses of their past together but nothing that made you feel there was a real love bond between each other.

Speaking of relationships, you don’t see a real relationship between Grace and her crew. It was disappointing; considering that she had a title and some form of leadership on that boat.

The overall story was slow and not a whole lot happens towards the end. The romance wasn’t worth the curiosity because it was predictable and it contained not chemistry. This book feels like a rough draft. It feels like the author needed to get the story out but didn’t go back to add anything into it.

2 Pickles 

 

Book Review: Nightblade’s Vengeance by Ryan Kirk

47North
Published Oct. 24, 2017
333 Pages

In a feudal land, a Kingdom is at risk. With no heir to the fragile throne, its future rests with the powerful members of the dying king’s Council, including Minori, a nightblade warrior, and Kiyoshi, a dayblade healer. The two men are bound by the sword but divided by two opposing principles: rule the land, or serve it. In their challenge for supremacy, a spark has been lit.

Her name is Asa. Her creed is revenge.

A fierce nightblade warrior, she’s spent a decade in pursuit of the enigmatic general who killed her father in a violent revolt—then mysteriously vanished from all records. Now, her desire for reckoning has led her to the village of Two Falls—and straight into the heart of an impending civil war. Minori and Kiyoshi are vying for her loyalty. And Asa must choose sides.

As fresh betrayals unfold and a new uprising looms, Asa knows that chasing a ghost is no longer just a personal quest for retribution. It’s going to alter the fate of the entire Kingdom. -Goodreads

This could have been a really good book. It started off strong… really strong but there were things that caused your attention to drop.

Firstly, the book is told in different points of view. All the perspectives are connected and they add some much appreciated complexity to the novel. Although the transitions aren’t as smooth as I like, I did think the author did a good job of weaving in different stories to form a larger one. But the only issue was it lost focus on Asa. She felt more of a catalyst as opposed to a main character that I should invest into.  She was the boulder rolling down a already shaky hill.

I didn’t really care for her character. She wasn’t as strong as you initially believe and she is very selfish. She makes decisions and then expects people to forgive and understand to justify what she has done. She doesn’t grow and that was another issue for me.

Because the author was trying to add so much to the story, the book was slow. There are a lot of details and I don’t believe it was really necessarily to go that deep because it didn’t add to world building. It was more of justifying and getting the reader to like the characters and pick a side.

There wasn’t enough action or even confrontation with this novel, which left a disappointing taste when you actually finished the book. Then ending when you finally get there was not worth the hours you spend reading for the grand ending. Also the surprising twist? You saw it about half way through the book.

Despite all of this, I strongly believe this book is a good foundation. As this is the first in the series, you can only hope it gets better in book two right?

Overall,

2 Pickles