⇒ Libro Gratis Angel of Death Book One of the Chosen Chronicles Karen Dales 9780986763311 Books

Angel of Death Book One of the Chosen Chronicles Karen Dales 9780986763311 Books

Download As PDF : Angel of Death Book One of the Chosen Chronicles Karen Dales 9780986763311 Books

Angel of Death Book One of the Chosen Chronicles Karen Dales 9780986763311 Books

I was not particularly drawn to this book by the product description. I purchased it and read it mainly to support the author. Ms. Dales' work deserves attention based on the good will and support she shows for other authors in this genre alone. Hell, she even read my book. So, although I do not like vampires as heroes, and although I am not a fan of the time period and location where the principle action takes place, and the fact that it is part of something called 'chronicles', which for some reason engenders images in my mind of long, boring lists of names or something, I could not live with myself if I didn't at least give it a try.
As happens more often than not, my preconception of Angel of Death was wrong. Karen Dales has created an intriguing mythos with her version of vampire-like beings, a very strong character duo in Gwyn and Notus, and a broad plot line, the scope of which is truly deserving of a book series. I will eagerly devour the next two, three, or four books, and I actually hope it takes that long for Dales to slowly reveal just who and what Gwyn is.
Based on the above listed strengths, Angel of Death deserves five stars, and it has gotten its share of those from others; but I'm a glass-half-empty kind of guy, and there were a few things that bugged me about it and dragged the rating down to (only!) four.
First of all (no, second - I can't completely get over my preconceptions, dang it), the thing is long, almost 600 pages. There's nothing that isn't well-written, but I thought there was a lot that was unnecessary. Also, I was grateful for the built-in dictionary on my Kindle. I used it often on the many archaic or formal words she has scattered throughout.
Finally (and this is no fault of Dales') the book was poorly edited, with plenty of typos. It was as if the editor had run spell check on it without reading it. (Come on, man, it was a good book. At least read it!) Also, I read the ebook version, which had probably removed the extra spaces placed between scenes within a chapter. It was disconcerting to go to a new paragraph and suddenly be somewhere else, looking at something different through a different pair of eyes.
So, give yourself plenty of time, keep your dictionary handy, and be prepared for an occasional confused pause, and you'll be in for an excellent read. Keep the Chronicles coming, Karen!


Tags : Angel of Death: Book One of the Chosen Chronicles [Karen Dales] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Vampires of London are being murdered and only the Angel of Death can save them. When Father Paul Notus is captured and threatened with a gruesome death by the Mistress of London and her Vampires,Karen Dales,Angel of Death: Book One of the Chosen Chronicles,Dark Dragon Publishing,0986763314,Fiction - Horror,Fiction Horror,Horror & ghost stories,Horror - General

Angel of Death Book One of the Chosen Chronicles Karen Dales 9780986763311 Books Reviews

Fast paced and action packed. Good character development with out slowing down the action. I found it a little slow only one time then back to action that kept me wondering how a situatiion was going to be resolved. Kept me up past my bed time because I couldn't put it down at one point. She has given me characters that I care about and want to see what happens next. I just bought the 2nd book and the prequel. I bought the book because of the low price. Smart move pricing it low. You will get a lot of fans quickly this way.
I fell in love with Karen Dales' writing in The Changeling and am impressed with how she has taken us on Gwyn's journey to a different time and place with the same brilliant attention to detail. Her writing is gritty and makes one feel the intensity of the story as so few authors in this genre can. Gwyn is a character with so many layers...the hurt boy, the abandoned child, the Fae, the Chosen, the son, the Angel of Death....who or what is he really? The author takes us through the machinations of a good mystery as Gwyn searches for the culprit behind the poisoning of the Chosen. The juxtaposition of the vulnerable man learning to open himself to love and the relentless warrior bent on destroying evil is so well done. This is long tale, but one that will keep you enthralled as you read one more page and then one more page into the wee hours to find out what happens next. Gwyn's story elicits strong emotion and you may find yourself crying out against injustices and weeping bitterly for this poor soul. Karen Dales leads us to a dark, frightening world and we struggle to make sense of the forces behind Gwyn's very existence. This is a character who will resonate long after you are done reading the book... a must read. On to Book 2.
I confess I'm pretty mystified by some of the other reviews, they all lack specific examples but they praise the work for having things it is clearly devoid of like "characters you can relate to". Really? In what way do we relate to our paper-thin mercy killing vampire? I suspect that a significant number of these reviews are written by other small-time authors perhaps in a tit-for-tat kind of relationship.

I'm not a frequent reader of this genre so I'm not sure if heavy handed, meandering exposition is the reason people read it but if so I'm sure you'll enjoy it. In between there's a vampire searching for his Chooser and some sexual tension but despite having all these words crammed down your throat you really leave it wondering what this world is supposed to be (and not in the cool William Gibson sense or the surreal William S. Burroughs sense) or why I should care about anyone in it. This is made worse by the awkward writing. I'll provide some examples, mostly from the first chapter.

Poor word choice

"bravely feasted upon the poor souls craving death"

Now I assume that what is meant here is the vampire are being showy or something. However usually "brave" is paired with a persons action to connote courage but there's really nothing courageous about feeding on people dying and there's noting in the text implying that anyone is in any danger.

So we assume that it's the other use but it really makes you wonder *why*. There are lots of good reasons to choose a lesser usage of a term. Double-entendre, either between characters like in Emma or to put one over on the the reader. Another might be that it is period correct. None of these apply here. This phrase also highlights another problem of Ms. Dales - it's a tell and not a show. When you combine these things the prose while intelligible really fails help you imagine the story. Even if "showy" is what we are going for I'm not sure why that is important at this point. We don't know anything about this world yet - Vampires in literature have possessed a wide variety of powers and weaknesses so it's unclear why this would be a bold move.

"The sooner gets to the Thames the better"

The narrator says this but it's not clear why. It's a phrase you might use to imply that there is significant advantage to arriving early but the need for haste is left pretty much unsaid. This is a common problem with Ms. Dales writing. Often there are words there for no good reason.

"preternatural sight"

"Preternatural" isn't a terribly obscure word but it is outside the top 3000 and while there are lots of good reasons to use obscure terms this doesn't seem to qualify. One reason would be precision, to connote something in a way only a particular word can. Another would be to produce a mood - Gene Wolfe is famous for this in his use of odd terms to give people a sense of how ALIEN his world was. This does neither - in fact "preternatural" is five syllables which tell you almost nothing. He has vision that is better than most peoples for some (unknown) reason. A better approach would be to set up a circumstance which demonstrates this ability, even better if it also communicates a limitation or rules of the game. i.e. "The corpse at 300 ft was still clearly visible to him. Immortal corneas had their advantages."

"reprise winter brought"

So here we seem to be talking about the Great Plague but what was this a reprise of? The black plague? Are winters just generally more plagued than summers?

"Not have to ask which angel they believed him to be."

This is a not bad bit of text but the writer really needs to realize that less is more. i.e. "They thought him an angel, they did not need to ask which..." while this doesn't lead the reader down the garden path quite the way the original text does but that's sort of the point. Spoon-feeding your audience guarantees that you have no relationship with your reader. Not to mention that the title of book is "Angel of Death" so readers can probably connect the dots.

"individually hid in the sarcophagi"

Why "individually"? Why is that important? Is there some important aspect to the narrative? Nope. The text immediately implies (and later Notus arrives removing all doubt) that they are, in fact in separate sarophaguses. As an easy test recast the sentence as a directive "Let's hide individually in these sarcophaguses!" Now try to think if you would ever say that? or on what occasion. It would be pretty rare to say because in most cases it would be obvious if this was even possible or not. Since this is done through narration there would likewise be no reason for the narrator to note this. Unless he was say communicating to a third party - like the person reading - which is why this word breaks the flow.

In short There's a difference between writing a narrative and instructions for a fourth-grade science class.

"blistered and burnt wood"

While blistered wood is a thing, it doesn't mean what Ms. Dales thinks it means. A wood blister is an raised imperfection. It can also be a rough surface resulting from the interaction of the wood grain and the cutting method. It isn't something that happens to wood in a fire. Plastics blister in a fire - wood does not.

"Wong Zheng Ru"

Lots of writers make this mistake. "Wong" is a Cantonese word and it sounds sufficiently like the English word. Zheng - Is the pinyin of a Mandarin word but "Zh" sounds like a "J" to most English speakers. "Ru" is probably a Mandarin word - as there are a number of pinyin words beginning with this latin leter but jyutping (the accepted way to romanize Cantonese ) doesn't have an initial "r" pinyin words that start with "r" usually start with "jyu" in jyutping and that sounds more like "Yu". So the question here is What was the author trying to do? Write a name that emulates the pronunciation of the native word? Nope. Zheng is the wrong choice there. What about putting the word in an accepted Romanized form? Nope. "Wong" - would, in Mandarin be "Wang" or "Huang" depending on what Cantonese word you're thinking of. If you're going to spend some time looking at a map of London so you can talk about what street goes where. You could at least consult someone who knows Chinese.

"new fangled"

For a piece that seems to be be trying to act "in period". This is a modern expression - the old form would be "new fangle". Again it's perfectly fine to use modern terms to describe old events BUT when someone puts significant effort into having the characters use archaic speech everywhere else - to the point that one reviewer said you should keep a dictionary nearby. This comes off as sloppy rather than utilitarian and adds to the problem Ms. Dales has givingg you a good idea as to when this is taking place.

"Snuggling deeper into his black cloak"

Do vampires snuggle? Are they snuggly? Seriously?

"Ruby eyes widened"

What? These dudes have red eyes but they live with a housekeeper and meet other people who have no idea that they're not normal?

Many of these might be excusable for a novice author but there are just so many of the darn things that the work comes off as sloppy. Either it seem to carry more meaning than it does, it clashes with the existing mood or established context or is simply the wrong word to use.

Odd structure and storytelling

"In the months that followed, many had besseched Notus to become Lord and Master. Having no stomach for the politics or for how the Chosen were changing over the centuries, they enthusiastically packed up their meager belongings and left, only to return half a dozen years ago"

See the first sentence in this paragraph makes it sound like the topic is Notus's decision not attempt to become Lord and Master - which would be a good opportunity to provide insight into his character so that the reader can connect with him but instead it's used to spoon feed some exposition about what the other vampires (who we don't know and therefore don't care about) did. Paragraphs should have an narrative purpose not just an typographical nicety. If you find yourself putting exposition into your book your first question should be "Why". The usual counter I hear is "Well this is my character's inner dialogue" the obvious response would be "Well then your character is boring".

"silly stories mortals wrote to try and explain a brief encounter with a Chosen"

Karen doesn't take much care to give you an idea as to what period we are in. People appear to be dying of some kind of disease. So immediately you think either "Black Death" or "The Great Plague" which means either 1300's or 1600's. Then it seems like the later is mentioned as something in the past along with the Great Fire. So we're sometime after that? This quote makes me think we're in the 1720's or mid 1800's but then the narrator talks about how "Today men duelled with pistols". Sword duelling was still common in 1720 but by 1846 pistol dueling was non-existent. So what? Early 1800s. What plague is that?

Also why do we need to indulge the cliche that vampire stories are based on real encounters? If there's one thing to learn about Joss Whedon as a writer is that his basic formula is to take a horror trope and invert it. i.e. The hero is a girl not a boy. The possessed doll is the hero not the villain. Supernatural forces avoid Halloween. While I could go on as to why that technique was good for his work it's also not a bad general rule. As a rule of thumb Whatever is the expected trope - try to do the opposite.

Weird logic gives way to unsatisfactory explanation

So the narrator has a reputation as an angel who ends suffering by killing people. So how does that work? Who exactly continues these rumours? Not the people they "treat" so then who? Do they let friends and family come watch the sucking of their blood. Why would that rumour even survive? Is there some shortage of ways to kill yourself? If it's the most painless way to die (something I assume people might seek out) wouldn't *that* be the rumor that our main character KNOWS this most painless way. Rather than HE will end your suffering? In fact given that nobody survives the procedure and that I'm reasonably sure he doesn't do it for an audience. People would have to get their information indirectly - "a smiling corpse" or "behind closed doors they could hear him thanking the man as he died". What would people infer? Maybe a drug or a procedure but the upshot would be that people would think it's something he *knew* not something he *was*.

Someone mentioned to me that Ms. Dales is a creative writing teacher...and that reminds me of an adage.
I was not particularly drawn to this book by the product description. I purchased it and read it mainly to support the author. Ms. Dales' work deserves attention based on the good will and support she shows for other authors in this genre alone. Hell, she even read my book. So, although I do not like vampires as heroes, and although I am not a fan of the time period and location where the principle action takes place, and the fact that it is part of something called 'chronicles', which for some reason engenders images in my mind of long, boring lists of names or something, I could not live with myself if I didn't at least give it a try.
As happens more often than not, my preconception of Angel of Death was wrong. Karen Dales has created an intriguing mythos with her version of vampire-like beings, a very strong character duo in Gwyn and Notus, and a broad plot line, the scope of which is truly deserving of a book series. I will eagerly devour the next two, three, or four books, and I actually hope it takes that long for Dales to slowly reveal just who and what Gwyn is.
Based on the above listed strengths, Angel of Death deserves five stars, and it has gotten its share of those from others; but I'm a glass-half-empty kind of guy, and there were a few things that bugged me about it and dragged the rating down to (only!) four.
First of all (no, second - I can't completely get over my preconceptions, dang it), the thing is long, almost 600 pages. There's nothing that isn't well-written, but I thought there was a lot that was unnecessary. Also, I was grateful for the built-in dictionary on my . I used it often on the many archaic or formal words she has scattered throughout.
Finally (and this is no fault of Dales') the book was poorly edited, with plenty of typos. It was as if the editor had run spell check on it without reading it. (Come on, man, it was a good book. At least read it!) Also, I read the ebook version, which had probably removed the extra spaces placed between scenes within a chapter. It was disconcerting to go to a new paragraph and suddenly be somewhere else, looking at something different through a different pair of eyes.
So, give yourself plenty of time, keep your dictionary handy, and be prepared for an occasional confused pause, and you'll be in for an excellent read. Keep the Chronicles coming, Karen!