I finished INTO THIS MIND by Lisa Nevin late last night. I went back and reviewed my first post on this story because I knew that I had quite a few critiques.
The story is about a youngish woman who can walk into memories left behind by others. The woman, whose name is Jena, has always had an intense desire to explore a certain expanse of parkland that was closed to the public. When it finally opens up, Jena is there on the first day. While following her wayward cat, she stumbles upon an abandoned ballroom. She goes into explore and walks into the memory of the young married woman named May. Over the course of repeated visits, Jena and her friend, Katri, discover an unsolved murder mystery.
In my last post, I mentioned stilted dialog and present tense. Well, the present tense did not change, of course, but I noticed that Nevin's writing improved the further I got along into the story. I noticed this a little over halfway through. It never reached the point where it could compare with the likes of Mark J. Ferrari or David Anthony Durham, but there was a definite improvement.
By the end of the book, my only complaint was that she tended to have conversations go off into what I will call "chocolate tangents". These sort of tangents could have been used more sparingly, in my opinion. When we talk, we tend to wander off topic quite a bit. However, in our reading we pretty much expect the characters to stay on-topic. There was one scene toward the end where Jena discovered something pretty profound concerning her ability to walk in someone's memory. Jena found it overwhelming and tries to avoid crying by counting blue sheep. Granted, Jena is kind of a wacky character, but as a reader I would have appreciated a moment or two to reflect on the revelation before being dragged back into wackiness.
This and the rather rocky opening were the two biggest problems I had with the book. Since Nevin showed such improvement with her writing, I wish she had gone back and shored up her opening with her newfound skills. Otherwise, her writing was grammar-perfect, with an easy-to-read style and a distinctive voice.
There's no question that the story kept my attention. There was only one brief point where the plot slowed down. Nevin stuck strictly to her plot. There was no needless backstory. The present tense became utterly unnoticeable after the first few pages. Nevin shows a lot of potential in her ability to dole out little facts in the mystery bit by bit. The story had a few surprises and it ended fairly satisfyingly, although I can't say that Jena was ever in any true danger. One can imagine Jena becoming a sort of psychic investigator in future books. However this book stands alone.
All in all, it was an enjoyable little fantasy mystery.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Into This Mind by Lisa Nevin
Friday, November 16, 2007
INTO THIS MIND -- Opening Chapters
I've never reviewed a POD book before, mostly because I don't hear about many of them, and because I have not yet been intrigued by the blurb. Until now.
I am still reading Auralia's Colors, but for reasons I'd rather not get into online, I'm going to try to read INTO THIS MIND by Lisa Nevin over the weekend. It's a short book and so far, it looks like it will be a quick read.
But first, I wanted to share some interesting things that I've noted about this book, the author's website and the publisher. I will place links to everything that I found. The author knows that I am doing this, and she says that she thinks I will be honest in my observations.
First of all, Preditors and Editors lists this publisher, Unlimited Publishing as "Not Recommended". I do not know if P&E had given it this designation at the time the author approached the publisher. The author's book page on the website states, "This is a limited advance release, not yet available from bookstores. It is available exclusively at this location, for a limited time only!" This makes it seem like the novel is only available in ARC form, yet there are links at the bottom of the page to Lulu, where one can order a copy for 14.99.
Traditionally, reviewers do not have to pay for ARCs. Therefore, I decided to try to get an ARC from the publisher. However, my efforts only elicited a PDF file. I regularly get unsolicited books from publishers like Tor and Bantam and because of my situation at home, it would take me months to read a book at the computer. In the end, the author rushed me a copy when I asked her for one. (She also sent scads of bookmarks!)
Curiosity drove me onward, so I looked at the author's website. After following a link deeper in the site, I found a list of fourteen independent bookstores that stock her book. She's also managed to schedule a number of book signings. Since I know it could not have been easy to get bookstores to stock a POD book, I became curiouser. I scrolled down and found an About the Cover Painting heading, so I read it. There, I discovered that the author had used a painting by her sister for her cover art.
Obviously, the author has done quite a lot of work in getting her novel out there.
After all this research, I emailed the author and asked her to have a copy sent to me. You already know that story.
And now, for the review.
The book itself is a narrow volume of 199 pages. The cover has the painting mentioned above, and on the front it doesn't look bad. However, on the back I wish the publisher had faded the image behind the text, as it is quite difficult to read. However, that's my only complaint with the book itself. The pages are crisp and thick, and the text highly readable. Unlike certain low-quality paperbacks I've read recently, the ink left no smudge marks on my fingers.
The story so far is about a young woman who explores an abandoned house and apparently slips back in time to the night of a ball. There, she watches as the newlywed May, her brother August and her sister April have a tense but unknown situation brewing, where May's husband Jeffrey is apparently at its center. Just when we are getting caught up in this story from the past, Jena, the point of view character, is yanked back to the present.
The book itself is not without its flaws, but despite them it is still highly readable. I'll go ahead and get what I perceive as flaws over with. One is that it is written in present tense. I don't believe I've ever read a novel in the present tense before, and I'm damned well-read. I went to my bookshelf and took out some of my more literary titles -- ones with unusual points of view -- to see if any of them were present tense. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce? Past Tense. Candide by Voltaire? Past tense. Moby Dick by Melville? Past tense. Allegory of the Cave by Plato (actually a dialog)? Past tense.
The closest my bookshelf comes to present tense are plays. Does anyone know of a present-tense novel, classic or otherwise?
Anyway, it actually didn't turn out to be too off-putting. And it turned out to be an advantage when she would have otherwise had to use the awkward past participle tense for relating dialog that had taken place previously. Still, I think that if she had used past tense, she would have had a much more solid book.
My other quibble is dialog. Her characters tend to speechify. It's not really bad -- I wouldn't have been able to read it if it were -- but simply somewhat stilted. I read once that a character should not say more than three sentences together unless he has a very good reason. A patient editor might have been able to help her here.
It is written in first person with a chatty, often humorous style. I had several laugh-out-loud moments. While the character walked through the abandoned house, I almost felt like I was in a role-playing game, listening to a game master describe the house, room by room. She even gave the dimensions of several rooms. This was unnecessary, in my opinion. However, it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the story.
Nevin's biggest strength is her ability to build up suspense. She's doling out the mystery bit by bit, and when I thought I reached a good stopping point to go ahead and write this review, I decided to read just a bit more. This is always a good thing. Her characters are likable and I got a kick out of the "Calendar family". I was especially concerned for May, who apparently invades Jena's consciousness whenever Jena enters the house. I'm afraid that something terrible is going to happen to May (or, I suppose, has already happened) or her family.
So far, INTO THIS MIND is turning out to be an entertaining fantasy mystery.
