In general I believe I’m a pretty generous reviewer of the books I read. I can usually find something positive to focus on which helps me to leave honest 3 & 4 star reviews for the vast majority of what I read. This is probably why, leaving my very first 1 star review has been a bit traumatic for me. I left the review this morning and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since, so I decided to ‘blog it out!’
I’m currently in an ‘Egypt state-of-mind’ so I’ve been reading quite a bit of fiction based in modern and ancient Egypt and that is how I stumbled across Phil Philips’ Last Secret Chamber (Joey Peruggia #2). As I was reading about the book before downloading it to my Kindle, I noticed Philips’ first Joey Peruggia book had been an Amazon bestseller so I figured this one would be worth a try. (Plus, I like to support self-publishers!) So, I took the plunge and downloaded Last Secret Chamber and began reading…
This was one of those books that you plow through just so you can be done with it. I was telling George about it last night and he’s like “why don’t you just stop reading it?” and of course my response was,”I can’t stop reading when The Book War is on…I can’t afford to lose precious reading time!” I assure you that if I was not currently in a Book War I would have put this book down before I was halfway through. Beyond the ‘not great writing’ and lack of character development, there were many instances when I felt like I should really contact Hollywood movie makers to let them know this author is violating copyright on their films/tv series. Wow! The whole plot was a pathetic mash-up of Indiana Jones movies, Stargate, Stargate Atlantis, and Star Trek!! The author didn’t even attempt to make minor changes…for example, the ‘heroes’ found a Stargate which was a devise that created an artificial wormhole that transported people to other planets. Sound familiar to anyone? And honestly, it was called a Stargate in the book!!! Oh yeah, and it was found at Giza! And on top of that, once the heroes were transported to another planet they found the lost city of Atlantis…seriously?! Oh, and almost every booby trap the heroes encountered was pulled strait from the Indiana Jones movies, it really was quite ridiculous.
I also find it humorous that this book series is called the Joey Peruggia series because the story wasn’t told from his perspective nor would I say that he was the main protagonist of the book. It felt like the author couldn’t quite decide from whose perspective to tell the story so there was no continuity in the writing and only towards the end did I feel the Joey character became a main character of the story.
Anyway…while I honestly do not understand how this author could get away with his blatant rip-off of several films/tv series, I guess it was inevitable that I would read some books that were less than spectacular as The Book War wears on. One good thing about the book…I got to post my first 1 star review and you all got to read a different kind of blog from me! 😉
Read on my friends! (But unless you find yourself in the midst of a Book War, just put down bad writing…not worth your time.)
