Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'll be honest, the only thing keeping me going with this book was the desire to write an authoritative review of it; to warn others to steer clear. Then, after I was finished, I read the author's note. This is a debut book by an indie author, a guy following his passion, who acknowledges that this is not a perfect book and seeks feedback. And that's part of the reason I picked it up in the first place, I liked the idea of someone with an (overly) ambitious story, bringing it to life and the community (overly) supporting it. So I'm not going to snark out and eviscerate this book as I was planning, but as the author requests, here are my thoughts: 1. Develop the characters and their motivations. This book is filled with throw away one paragraph backstories that are supposed to completely define the character. It's no exaggeration to say that one of the main character's motivation in the plot was derived from a death in 9/11, that might have had 3 paragraphs written to it in the entire book. There's a huge section of the book devoted to a diary substory, where the diary character is actually developed, you care about what's going on. I found myself disappointed when the focus would shift back to the main plot. Put the same effort into the main characters. 2. Pass on some ideas. This book is overly ambitious, it tries to account for every conspiracy theory and wrap it up into a single story. The idea sounds fun on paper, but good grief is it a mess in reality. The Nazi religious artifact missions, human evolutionary theories, Atlantis, 9/11, the cause of historic plagues, ancient shadow groups in an endless battle- it's so much, and so much is not necessary. The 9/11 reference is not explained at all, to the point where it's borderline offensive. There's a point towards the end of the book where a character casually mentions that he accidentally crashed a weather satellite into New Mexico in the 40s. For some reason, they thought we needed a Roswell UFO reference in there too, that served absolutely nothing; it's indicative of a lack of restraint throughout the book. 3. Choose a point of view. There's a scene in this book where two characters are walking down a hallway, and you're constantly jumping between the thoughts of each of them. Who's thinking what? It's confusing, and it also takes away all suspense if you know what all characters are thinking, all of the time. This happens throughout the book, with inner monologues and with plot revelations. You'll meet a character for the first time, and then they'll turn out to be someone else in 5 pages. It's not a twist if you don't string us along for a least a little while; it's kind of like a little kid who can't keep a secret and just blurts it out, it's better to keep it to yourself for a while. 4. Never put immortality on the table. How can I care about life or death situations, when you've introduced immortality to the story? All suspense died the moment we find out that technology exists to heal any injury, and to life for a practically infinite period of time. This is an extension of a greater issue in the book, the inability of the author to let go of characters. I would estimate that half of the characters in the book die or were thought to be dead, only to find out that they now aren't. The death of a character can be powerful emotionally and make me care about what's going on, but if you're constantly jerking me around with 'fake deaths', I'll just assume that nobody ever dies, and be largely correct. 5. Keep writing. This is a labor of love, without a doubt, someone cared about this story when they put it to paper. That was part of the problem, the author was unable to let some of their ideas and characters go. There's technical skill here, the action sequences are largely engaging(if not ridiculous, in one scene the main character shoots down a drone with a sniper rifle before leaping into a hot air balloon, wow). I feel like the environments are well described, and the world that is set up for the sequel (was published this fall), seems intriguing. Unfortunately, my time with the Atlantis Gene series is over with, I won't be reading the sequel. But people love this book on Amazon, and the author has sparks of promise. Keep growing, be discerning, and tell them your story.