Rogan’s Monsters 3

So the title says it all. We have another book that is a good story (if a bit repetitive), a decent continuation with the characters growing, but all let down by an author who obviously seems more interested in simply putting out a product quickly rather than ensuring said product is good.

The same errors from the last installment also abound in this one. Largely a heavy dose of amateurism. Plethora of poor sentence structure with words inserted that don’t belong. (Noted this before, author has a horrible habit of starting a sentence one way, deciding to change how he was going to phrase something and then not bothering to clean the sentence up so words that no longer belong remain in the sentence structure)

Further, the author is not that literate. He wants to be, and tries to pretend to be so, but isn’t. By that i mean he uses words where it’s obvious he’s thinking of a certain word but doesn’t know what that word is, so he uses what he thinks is the right word, but it’s not. A monster “extruded” itself from the rubble. No, it EXTRICATED itself from the rubble. Unless the monster was made out of paste, putty or aluminum, it didn’t extrude anything. If you’re going to try to use big words to make your book come across as sophisticated, you better actually know what you’re talking about, otherwise you just look …. silly.

And hyperbole. My god, the hyperbole. It’s useful in certain scenarios. Not when you’re getting smacked in the face with it repeatedly and in egregious ways that just don’t work. Tone it down.

The sad thing is, the series has great potential, an awesome concept, horribly let down by someone who just isn’t that good at what they’re doing. I think the author can get there, but not without acknowledging these failings and making a concerted effort to fix them.

Part of me wishes I could give this story negative stars. I HATED the plot in this book.

First we have the villain from book 1 reappear despite not having a way to track the hero through the caverns, and somehow he’s got no less than 4 “armies” of flying monsters to throw at the heroes…… in a desert…. on a planet that is nothing more than wasteland…. and these armies are healthy enough to fight?

Then as soon as villain #1 dies, we get the villain’s mistress for a short conflict, that she runs away from only to bring out villains 2, 3 and 4! Yes, there are no breaks in the tension here.

And that last sentence is why I absoluted HATED this book. There are no breaks in the tension, and honestly its as if the story had no brakes either. It went what I’d call “full kinetic” with a plot that raced along with no breaks, no character development, no real plot development, no changes to the stakes (once they get high enough you can’t go higher.)

The emotional tension of a well plotted story should move more like a reverse rollercoaster, with the start setting the stage and stakes, but after the tension rises there needs to be periods where the tension falls down a bit and we see the plot and characters move. Here its all action. Without plot, without character, without foundation.

And yes, I know some readers will say “but the human-wraith war from 600 years ago is the foundation”. You know, it should be, I agree, but Jack Porter dropped writing about that in this book. It’s all about the various wraiths attacking Rogan and the girls, and Rogan’s amazing ability to “save them all”.

Honestly, Jack needed to figure out what save meant first, because in my opinion he had no idea what is was supposed to mean here.

Not as good as the first two, not that its badly written quite the opposite but repetition raised its ugly head. In summary, fight monsters have sex..wash rinse repeat..

I debated giving this one four stars, but went for five because overall I thought it was an outstanding book and I very much enjoy Jack Porter’s work. My one issue is that the ending, though satisfying, was abrupt. In my experience, Porter writes micro stories that focus on the relationships between his main characters, all against the backdrop of an epic world. But his stories are not epic novels, and that’s just fine. But nevertheless, their ending connects to the broader epic world in which they take place. I think this book would have benefitted with just a little more time going into how things play out.

The only problem I have encountered with these books is that they are too short and I finished them too quickly.

Thoroughly enjoyed each and every moment of this final installment and could only wish for more.

Although I would note it would have been more interesting to include a bit more varied environments, I can understand the usage of mostly the bleak desolation in this series.

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