Author: R. Wayne Jones
Rating: 3.4/5 (first book rating 3.9/5)
Comments: This is the author's first book, and he essentially volunteered for this because he messaged me on Discord and told me he had published a book. That shows he's either insanely brave, or unaware that I have earned my title of curmudgeon. Out of respect for his courage, I'm going to focus on being constructive with my commentary in the off chance he reads this.
Ok so the good parts, the characters are, for the most part, engaging. He avoids the lewd scene trap that is all too often tripped by new authors. He makes the protagonist and Sally Love Interest interactions (mostly) believable in portraying an attraction. The world setting is, again mostly, interesting. The book one plot arc, is decent.
Now for the bad part, the book suffers from things being inconsistent. The characters' behavior is inconsistent. The world has inconsistencies that you could, pardon the pun, drive a truck through. When I mentioned this to another author, he responded with "So it's like every first book ever."
I'm going to avoid the trope of "the ugly" and make my third category "Stuff that made me go 'WTF'?" This is stuff that made me think "He needed either an editor, or better research." There was a lot of this. I mean every chapter had holding down my suspension of disbelief with a submission hold metaphorically saying "It's his first book, just go with it." I'll give you some examples that have stuck with me. The rig "The Long Haul" which is central to the story, is a massive mechanical behemoth, -=with three cars, fifteen foot tires, armor, and self-defense turrets. It is described as having a six speed manual transmission. If you know anything about trucks, this is simply not plausible. A normal tractor trailer rig in the US today would have 15 to 21 gears, and those aren't for show, it needs them all. Then later we're told it has a V16 radial engine that's 12' (or maybe 20', it changed; see previous paragraph). An engine is either a V form, or a radial, I can't even conceive how you could have an engine that's both. Then there's the "Vault" on the 3rd floor of car 3, which is described as being extremely heavily armored. So car three is going to be very top-heavy and unstable. There's more and varied examples of all of this, but I'm not going to keep going.
As with most first books, it really needs a good competent editor, and it is obvious it didn't get it.
Now after all of this, my final opinion is that Mr. Jones has some talent as a writer, and he needs to battle through it. Give him another 3-4 books of experience, and enough cash flow to engage with a good editor and he could carve himself out a niche.
Bedroom Activities: None
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FTB/Explicit/None – Fade to black bedroom activities vs “Onscreen” vs No activities
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