Review: Sterling

Sterling by Dannika Dark

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is one of those books where half-star ratings would really come in handy. I enjoyed this book more than it's 3-star rating; however, the misspellings and word misuse negated me giving it the 4-star rating I would have normally. A 3 1/2-star would have been perfect.

The premise of the story is unique and well-formed. The story is engaging, captivating, and the reader is fairly well immersed in the world the author is portraying. There is a bit of a gap, as is typical with self-publishing. The author, of course, knows his or her world well. When trying to translate it to the reader; however, there could have been a bit more explanation. Several points in the story left me wondering what on earth was being discussed when, had a little back story been added in, it could have been avoided. Regardless of this tiny oversight I found the story enjoyable enough to forego sleep to read it. I will also read the rest of the series.

My largest pet peeve with the story is the improper use of words and spelling. I tend to be pretty picky when I read a book. I expect my money to be well spent, whether I spend $0.99 or $99.00. I do NOT enjoy purchasing a book, then seeing the word "vain" used in place of "vein" as I did in this story. I really feel that inexpensive editing should be available to self-publishers to help eliminate this problem. With the online world being as it is everyone should know what a beta-reader is, and utilize them. I, myself, would be more than willing to read over a story and help to edit it. Let's face it, editing one's own writing is just not feasible on anything longer than a 2-page paper. Even if you use all the old tricks such as reading it backwards, sentence by sentence. You have simply got to have someone else look over your work.

In short, this book is well worth a read...just be willing to overlook self-publishing grammar errors and plow on through. If you do that, you'll find a new world that finally steps away from the plethora of werewolves and vampires that have flooded our feeds for the past several years and into one that has a wonderfully fresh perspective.



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