Janelle Stalder
Autor de Eden: A Novel
Sobre El Autor
Créditos de la imagen: Janelle Stalder
Series
Obras de Janelle Stalder
Dangerous Lovers 12 copias
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1985-06-29
- Nacionalidad
- Canada
- Lugar de nacimiento
- Brampton, Ontario, Kanada
- Lugares de residencia
- Brampton, Ontario, Kanda
- Ocupaciones
- Schriftstellerin
Miembros
Reseñas
This book was kindly given out by the author in the Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Fanatics R2R group in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!
PROS:
I really like the cover. It's very simple, but catches the eye. Good job :)
Very good, exciting read of a YA adventure story.
My favorite character is Elisa. She’s strong, talented and speaks her mind. I just wish she could have been all that without being characterized as beautiful also. Most women aren’t beautiful, they are average looking and it would’ve been nice to have an average looking female heroine who was talented, strong and smart.
I enjoyed Logan’s comedic comments throughout the story. He was probably my second favorite character although we didn’t get to see him much.
The humor throughout the book was enjoyable.
There were multiple viewpoints of almost every single character in the book which I sort of liked, but I’m not sure yet.
Good portrayal of Aiden’s problems in school with the bully and his reluctance to talk with his parents about it.
The author didn’t turn Aiden into a superhero as soon as he entered Eden which I liked. Aiden had to work for his skills. He got beat up and got tired all throughout his training.
I also liked that the themes running through the book were about family and friends. That a person didn’t have to be perfect, everyone is flawed but has their own skill, and they just need to find what it is. And it doesn’t matter if you’re handsome or small and plain, you can still be a good friend.
I liked how the author ended the book with the father’s comment:
His father shrugged his shoulders, looking back down at the article he had been reading.
“Hormones?” he said, putting the conversation to an end.
CONS:
Nooooo! Poor Felix! Why was the author so cruel and killed him off? Why author, whyyyyyyy? And Rose will never see her brother as she had hoped. And poor Felix will never know that his sister had survived.
Please don’t tell me Rose is falling for Callum. Rose is an interesting character, but come on; Callum murdered her parents and then took her captive. She sees him slit another girl’s throat and he brushes it off as its war, meaning that’s acceptable. Seems Rose is a victim of Stockholm syndrome. So much so, she can’t even escape when she’s given the chance. And she’s 16 and Callum is what, 32? That is creepy to me, even though for the time the book is set she is probably of marriageable age. And somehow this is supposed to be romantic? Forgiving the murderer of her parents so quickly that she falls for him? That is way too far a stretch for me. Unless of course she didn’t get along with her parents and Callum killing them was a godsend. In any case, nowadays people would say Rose needs to see a psychologist if she falls for the murderer of her family.
Don’t like the stereotypes that women are either virginal or whores, or women that dedicate themselves to a career like Diana, which is sort of like becoming a nun, which means virginal again.
There are multiple viewpoints from almost every single character in the book. (See Pros) I don’t think I’ve ever seen those many POVs in a book before.
The author went into too much description over rooms, houses and places. The action would come to a screeching halt as soon as Aiden or another character walked into a room or saw a place for the first time and we had to sit through the description.
Wolf is a jerk that doesn’t have much respect for women unless they fit into his preconceived view of how they should behave, which is as whores or perfect ladies.
This part bugged me a lot. Aiden was not supposed to be able to die while in Eden. This point was emphasized. That’s why Aiden was brought to Eden in the first place. Then comes the climax of the book, and what happens? Aiden is dying! Either he can die, or he can’t die. Not both. If it was said at the beginning of the book that it was highly unlikely Aiden would die in Eden since he wasn’t from there, although there was a very remote possibility or even if they said that they didn’t believe Aiden could die while in Eden, then I could understand the climax of the story. But as it was, it felt like a bait and switch. A lie created by the author in order to have a dramatic exit of Aiden back to our world.
I needed to reformat the PDF version I received for my NOOK and it wasn’t pretty. I wish the author had supplied epub format so I could accurately judge if the formatting works. But as it was, I had to make do with the converted version and this is what I found: If there was dialogue, that dialogue was often cut off in one paragraph and resumed in the next paragraph in mid-sentence. Also if there were changes in viewpoint, it was not uncommon to find two different POV’s in the same paragraph with no separation between them. Also the POV’s would switch between paragraphs without any paragraph separators or extra lines between the paragraphs to indicate change of viewpoint. Since there were so many characters and the POV was constantly changing, it would have been nice to have some kind of head’s up on what was going to happen.
I hope there are more books to come after this one. I want to know what happens to Aiden’s friends and if Callum changes his evil ways and grows up emotionally and if Rose will be crazy enough to fall in love with the murderer of her parents. I want to know if Aiden’s experience in Eden changes him when he returns to school and if he falls out of love with Elisa, because the author makes it look like the fighting between Wolf and Elisa will lead to romance. You know the typical love/hate thing.
I was thinking of giving the story five stars because it was exciting and the storyline was very good. But after re-reading my review, Aiden’s ‘death’, the Rose situation and the way the author personifies women in this book doesn’t sit well with me. And the bad formatting of the paragraphs I had to read on my NOOK was very annoying. So I can only give the book four stars.
… (más)
PROS:
I really like the cover. It's very simple, but catches the eye. Good job :)
Very good, exciting read of a YA adventure story.
My favorite character is Elisa. She’s strong, talented and speaks her mind. I just wish she could have been all that without being characterized as beautiful also. Most women aren’t beautiful, they are average looking and it would’ve been nice to have an average looking female heroine who was talented, strong and smart.
I enjoyed Logan’s comedic comments throughout the story. He was probably my second favorite character although we didn’t get to see him much.
The humor throughout the book was enjoyable.
There were multiple viewpoints of almost every single character in the book which I sort of liked, but I’m not sure yet.
Good portrayal of Aiden’s problems in school with the bully and his reluctance to talk with his parents about it.
The author didn’t turn Aiden into a superhero as soon as he entered Eden which I liked. Aiden had to work for his skills. He got beat up and got tired all throughout his training.
I also liked that the themes running through the book were about family and friends. That a person didn’t have to be perfect, everyone is flawed but has their own skill, and they just need to find what it is. And it doesn’t matter if you’re handsome or small and plain, you can still be a good friend.
I liked how the author ended the book with the father’s comment:
His father shrugged his shoulders, looking back down at the article he had been reading.
“Hormones?” he said, putting the conversation to an end.
CONS:
Nooooo! Poor Felix! Why was the author so cruel and killed him off? Why author, whyyyyyyy? And Rose will never see her brother as she had hoped. And poor Felix will never know that his sister had survived.
Please don’t tell me Rose is falling for Callum. Rose is an interesting character, but come on; Callum murdered her parents and then took her captive. She sees him slit another girl’s throat and he brushes it off as its war, meaning that’s acceptable. Seems Rose is a victim of Stockholm syndrome. So much so, she can’t even escape when she’s given the chance. And she’s 16 and Callum is what, 32? That is creepy to me, even though for the time the book is set she is probably of marriageable age. And somehow this is supposed to be romantic? Forgiving the murderer of her parents so quickly that she falls for him? That is way too far a stretch for me. Unless of course she didn’t get along with her parents and Callum killing them was a godsend. In any case, nowadays people would say Rose needs to see a psychologist if she falls for the murderer of her family.
Don’t like the stereotypes that women are either virginal or whores, or women that dedicate themselves to a career like Diana, which is sort of like becoming a nun, which means virginal again.
There are multiple viewpoints from almost every single character in the book. (See Pros) I don’t think I’ve ever seen those many POVs in a book before.
The author went into too much description over rooms, houses and places. The action would come to a screeching halt as soon as Aiden or another character walked into a room or saw a place for the first time and we had to sit through the description.
Wolf is a jerk that doesn’t have much respect for women unless they fit into his preconceived view of how they should behave, which is as whores or perfect ladies.
This part bugged me a lot. Aiden was not supposed to be able to die while in Eden. This point was emphasized. That’s why Aiden was brought to Eden in the first place. Then comes the climax of the book, and what happens? Aiden is dying! Either he can die, or he can’t die. Not both. If it was said at the beginning of the book that it was highly unlikely Aiden would die in Eden since he wasn’t from there, although there was a very remote possibility or even if they said that they didn’t believe Aiden could die while in Eden, then I could understand the climax of the story. But as it was, it felt like a bait and switch. A lie created by the author in order to have a dramatic exit of Aiden back to our world.
I needed to reformat the PDF version I received for my NOOK and it wasn’t pretty. I wish the author had supplied epub format so I could accurately judge if the formatting works. But as it was, I had to make do with the converted version and this is what I found: If there was dialogue, that dialogue was often cut off in one paragraph and resumed in the next paragraph in mid-sentence. Also if there were changes in viewpoint, it was not uncommon to find two different POV’s in the same paragraph with no separation between them. Also the POV’s would switch between paragraphs without any paragraph separators or extra lines between the paragraphs to indicate change of viewpoint. Since there were so many characters and the POV was constantly changing, it would have been nice to have some kind of head’s up on what was going to happen.
I hope there are more books to come after this one. I want to know what happens to Aiden’s friends and if Callum changes his evil ways and grows up emotionally and if Rose will be crazy enough to fall in love with the murderer of her parents. I want to know if Aiden’s experience in Eden changes him when he returns to school and if he falls out of love with Elisa, because the author makes it look like the fighting between Wolf and Elisa will lead to romance. You know the typical love/hate thing.
I was thinking of giving the story five stars because it was exciting and the storyline was very good. But after re-reading my review, Aiden’s ‘death’, the Rose situation and the way the author personifies women in this book doesn’t sit well with me. And the bad formatting of the paragraphs I had to read on my NOOK was very annoying. So I can only give the book four stars.
… (más)
I received this book through the Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Fanatics group for an honest review, thank you.
Eden West is the second book in the Eden Series.
Summary:
Since Aiden’s near death in Eden, he has been healed on his return to Earth. Summer vacation has passed and Aiden starts school as one of the in crowd. He’s grown taller, stronger and wiser but he isn’t necessarily happy. He’s hasn’t heard anything from Diana the witch, or his friends in Eden and he grows concerned with the outcome of the war.
One night he spots a bright light and thinking it’s from Diana, he chases it down. Perplexed at not finding Diana nearby, Aiden makes the choice to go with it. He is immediately whisked away to Eden. Only this time to Eden West, the country of the Riders, Wolf’s people. There he tries to figure out who brought him back and why.
Many of the original characters return to the story and new ones are introduced, which I’ll discuss in the pros and cons
Pros:
First this book has a beautiful cover, I just love it. I think it’s even better than the one for Eden and I really liked that cover also.
The author was able to pull me immediately back into the story. It was like I had never stopped reading from one book to the other. The continuity between the books was very good.
I didn’t want to put the book down, it held my attention from beginning to end and is a very fast read. I think most people would be able to read it in one day.
There doesn’t seem to be as much excessive description in this book as there was in Eden, but maybe I just didn’t notice it.
I enjoyed learning about the different cities, Avalon, the home of the Riders, protected by an invisible screen of magic, and Nysa, the city to the South, a glittering city of decadence and overindulgence. One of things revealed, was that in Avalon women must be homemakers and wives, they cannot be warriors, hunters or anything like that. This bit of information helped me understand Wolf’s view about women I had made in my review of Eden. This could also partly explain why he treats Elisa the way he does.
There were new characters introduced, Hawk the leader of the Riders and father of Wolf, and Moose the eldest son of Hawk who will be the future leader of the Riders. I think Moose is now one of my favorite characters besides the more mature Aiden. I still really like the very funny Logan and wish we learned more about him, but we didn’t. He is once again only comic relief in the background.
Markus is the King of Nysa and has taken an interest in Elisa. Whether his interest is genuine or for some other purpose we don’t know. His interest does however, make Wolf very jealous.
There are two new female characters, Lily, a forest person. She is swift, skilled with a bow and arrow and stronger than a man. Apparently forest people can cast a spell on men and lure them away to the forests so they never return. But somehow Aiden is not affected by Lily to that extent, although he is very drawn to her and appears to have forgotten his attraction to Elisa because of Lily. Lily, I’m not quite sure what her motivations are with Aiden other than orders from the Goddess to protect him. The other important female character is Rain, Moose and Wolf’s younger sister. She plays an important part in the events of the story.
Jameson and the witch Diana return as well as Turk. My hope is that Jameson and Diana finally get their happily ever after. But I’m not sure how that can happen if Diana has to be single in order to devote her time to her magic and she doesn’t like travelling to the High Kingdom, let alone staying there. So this subplot is still developing.
I like the fact that the author is having Elisa mature with more interest in womanly things. But I don’t like that she seems to be confused a lot. She doesn’t seem as confident about who she is unless she’s angry at Wolf or challenging him.
This time I received this book for review in epub format and it made a wonderful difference in the formatting. I didn’t have any of the issues that I had in reading Eden, I had received that story in pdf. It was much more pleasant to read with epub this time.
And I don't want to forget, Cliffhanger!!!. With one word, literally one word, the author wrote the perfect cliffhanger, it was awesome.
Cons:
There are a lot of grammatical errors, missing words, extra words and misuse of words. I’m surprised they slipped by all the betas, proofers etc. For such an interesting story, so many errors was sad to see.
The author repetitively used the terms, “He rolled his eyes,” “She rolled her eyes,” a lot, and I mean a lot. It’s noticeable enough to be considered excessive.
As in the first story, the book has multiple points of view from many characters. With Eden I wasn’t sure if I liked it, but I’ve decided there are just too many. Having so many povs seems to thin out the impact of what is happening, rather than concentrating on just a few major players.
I don’t remember if the author did this in the previous book, but in Eden West the story would be in the middle of an action, and then the author would have the character jump back in memory to the time that lead up to the action. I found that this broke the tension and drama of the situation and diluted it to be less exciting.
I have no idea what’s going on with Wolf. He’s jealous of anyone else’s attention to Elisa, but treats her like crap beneath his shoe. Elisa is attracted to Wolf and finally at an important point in the story, lets it be known what she wants from him, but Wolf acts just like he always has. I hope there isn’t going to be a huge ‘epiphany’ moment where one of them is almost at death’s door before they realize they love each other. That would be such a cliché it would be laughable.
I’ve saved my major comments for Rose and Callum. If you read my review of Eden you’ll know how I feel about this pairing. I very much dislike them and grit my teeth reading the chapters dealing with the two. The only reason I read the chapters is because I had to have the information for the rest of the story. I know there will be readers who think their relationship is romantic and Callum is strong and silent with a heart of gold, but I find their relationship twisted. There is no way for it to be OK that a girl falls in love with the man who murdered her parents. Callum is a killer, not because he defends his family or property which would be self-defense, but because he wishes to invade another land and claim a people and a kingdom. In order to achieve his end, Callum would likely even kill his own brother Jameson to claim the throne. Callum is not a good person, no matter how nice he treats Rose, she is delusional. Rose is definitely suffering from a very severe case of ‘Stockholm Syndrome.’ At one point she thinks,
“Rose had realized soon after arriving that many of the people here were afraid of Callum. She couldn’t imagine why, knowing how kind and caring he was.”
Rose seems to have conveniently forgotten that Callum is brutal and vicious. He had no qualms about killing her parents in cold blood or slicing a girl’s throat who just wanted to escape from her captors. Callum most likely rules his servants by fear. The author has Rose being conflicted at times about what Callum does and Rose feels bad for the people who will die when Callum invades their land, which is a nice change from Rose's plain devotion to him. However Rose is more concerned with the people who are nice to her, like Brutus and Callum, who are the aggressors. Because she’s in love with Callum, she justifies that the war is OK because Callum loves Eden and wants what’s best for it. I suppose that includes murdering families, destroying lives so it’s OK for him to show his ‘love’ like this so that he can conquer and force his will on a people. In a way she has turned into a monster herself with her warped rationalizations. I really dislike the Rose/Callum pairing and it’s not a pleasure to read about them.
Eden West was as good a story as Eden. It’s a fast read with interesting new characters and new places. However there are quite a few grammatical errors a long with the over use of the phrase “rolling his/her eyes.” Finally there is the Rose/Callum pairing where I don’t like the message it sends about loving a killer who doesn’t mind destroying other people’s lives not for defense, but for his own ambitions. I give this book 4 stars
… (más)
Eden West is the second book in the Eden Series.
Summary:
Since Aiden’s near death in Eden, he has been healed on his return to Earth. Summer vacation has passed and Aiden starts school as one of the in crowd. He’s grown taller, stronger and wiser but he isn’t necessarily happy. He’s hasn’t heard anything from Diana the witch, or his friends in Eden and he grows concerned with the outcome of the war.
One night he spots a bright light and thinking it’s from Diana, he chases it down. Perplexed at not finding Diana nearby, Aiden makes the choice to go with it. He is immediately whisked away to Eden. Only this time to Eden West, the country of the Riders, Wolf’s people. There he tries to figure out who brought him back and why.
Many of the original characters return to the story and new ones are introduced, which I’ll discuss in the pros and cons
Pros:
First this book has a beautiful cover, I just love it. I think it’s even better than the one for Eden and I really liked that cover also.
The author was able to pull me immediately back into the story. It was like I had never stopped reading from one book to the other. The continuity between the books was very good.
I didn’t want to put the book down, it held my attention from beginning to end and is a very fast read. I think most people would be able to read it in one day.
There doesn’t seem to be as much excessive description in this book as there was in Eden, but maybe I just didn’t notice it.
I enjoyed learning about the different cities, Avalon, the home of the Riders, protected by an invisible screen of magic, and Nysa, the city to the South, a glittering city of decadence and overindulgence. One of things revealed, was that in Avalon women must be homemakers and wives, they cannot be warriors, hunters or anything like that. This bit of information helped me understand Wolf’s view about women I had made in my review of Eden. This could also partly explain why he treats Elisa the way he does.
There were new characters introduced, Hawk the leader of the Riders and father of Wolf, and Moose the eldest son of Hawk who will be the future leader of the Riders. I think Moose is now one of my favorite characters besides the more mature Aiden. I still really like the very funny Logan and wish we learned more about him, but we didn’t. He is once again only comic relief in the background.
Markus is the King of Nysa and has taken an interest in Elisa. Whether his interest is genuine or for some other purpose we don’t know. His interest does however, make Wolf very jealous.
There are two new female characters, Lily, a forest person. She is swift, skilled with a bow and arrow and stronger than a man. Apparently forest people can cast a spell on men and lure them away to the forests so they never return. But somehow Aiden is not affected by Lily to that extent, although he is very drawn to her and appears to have forgotten his attraction to Elisa because of Lily. Lily, I’m not quite sure what her motivations are with Aiden other than orders from the Goddess to protect him. The other important female character is Rain, Moose and Wolf’s younger sister. She plays an important part in the events of the story.
Jameson and the witch Diana return as well as Turk. My hope is that Jameson and Diana finally get their happily ever after. But I’m not sure how that can happen if Diana has to be single in order to devote her time to her magic and she doesn’t like travelling to the High Kingdom, let alone staying there. So this subplot is still developing.
I like the fact that the author is having Elisa mature with more interest in womanly things. But I don’t like that she seems to be confused a lot. She doesn’t seem as confident about who she is unless she’s angry at Wolf or challenging him.
This time I received this book for review in epub format and it made a wonderful difference in the formatting. I didn’t have any of the issues that I had in reading Eden, I had received that story in pdf. It was much more pleasant to read with epub this time.
And I don't want to forget, Cliffhanger!!!. With one word, literally one word, the author wrote the perfect cliffhanger, it was awesome.
Cons:
There are a lot of grammatical errors, missing words, extra words and misuse of words. I’m surprised they slipped by all the betas, proofers etc. For such an interesting story, so many errors was sad to see.
The author repetitively used the terms, “He rolled his eyes,” “She rolled her eyes,” a lot, and I mean a lot. It’s noticeable enough to be considered excessive.
As in the first story, the book has multiple points of view from many characters. With Eden I wasn’t sure if I liked it, but I’ve decided there are just too many. Having so many povs seems to thin out the impact of what is happening, rather than concentrating on just a few major players.
I don’t remember if the author did this in the previous book, but in Eden West the story would be in the middle of an action, and then the author would have the character jump back in memory to the time that lead up to the action. I found that this broke the tension and drama of the situation and diluted it to be less exciting.
I have no idea what’s going on with Wolf. He’s jealous of anyone else’s attention to Elisa, but treats her like crap beneath his shoe. Elisa is attracted to Wolf and finally at an important point in the story, lets it be known what she wants from him, but Wolf acts just like he always has. I hope there isn’t going to be a huge ‘epiphany’ moment where one of them is almost at death’s door before they realize they love each other. That would be such a cliché it would be laughable.
I’ve saved my major comments for Rose and Callum. If you read my review of Eden you’ll know how I feel about this pairing. I very much dislike them and grit my teeth reading the chapters dealing with the two. The only reason I read the chapters is because I had to have the information for the rest of the story. I know there will be readers who think their relationship is romantic and Callum is strong and silent with a heart of gold, but I find their relationship twisted. There is no way for it to be OK that a girl falls in love with the man who murdered her parents. Callum is a killer, not because he defends his family or property which would be self-defense, but because he wishes to invade another land and claim a people and a kingdom. In order to achieve his end, Callum would likely even kill his own brother Jameson to claim the throne. Callum is not a good person, no matter how nice he treats Rose, she is delusional. Rose is definitely suffering from a very severe case of ‘Stockholm Syndrome.’ At one point she thinks,
“Rose had realized soon after arriving that many of the people here were afraid of Callum. She couldn’t imagine why, knowing how kind and caring he was.”
Rose seems to have conveniently forgotten that Callum is brutal and vicious. He had no qualms about killing her parents in cold blood or slicing a girl’s throat who just wanted to escape from her captors. Callum most likely rules his servants by fear. The author has Rose being conflicted at times about what Callum does and Rose feels bad for the people who will die when Callum invades their land, which is a nice change from Rose's plain devotion to him. However Rose is more concerned with the people who are nice to her, like Brutus and Callum, who are the aggressors. Because she’s in love with Callum, she justifies that the war is OK because Callum loves Eden and wants what’s best for it. I suppose that includes murdering families, destroying lives so it’s OK for him to show his ‘love’ like this so that he can conquer and force his will on a people. In a way she has turned into a monster herself with her warped rationalizations. I really dislike the Rose/Callum pairing and it’s not a pleasure to read about them.
Eden West was as good a story as Eden. It’s a fast read with interesting new characters and new places. However there are quite a few grammatical errors a long with the over use of the phrase “rolling his/her eyes.” Finally there is the Rose/Callum pairing where I don’t like the message it sends about loving a killer who doesn’t mind destroying other people’s lives not for defense, but for his own ambitions. I give this book 4 stars
… (más)
I received this book free from the publisher via netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.
Please see my full reviews available at www.coffeeandtrainspotting.com.
A nice, easy read. Romance, friendship and clever writing.
Please see my full reviews available at www.coffeeandtrainspotting.com.
A nice, easy read. Romance, friendship and clever writing.
Premios
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 14
- Miembros
- 135
- Popularidad
- #150,831
- Valoración
- 3.7
- Reseñas
- 15
- ISBNs
- 16
It reminded me of Tamora Pierce's Tortall series and Marianne Curley's novel Old Magic, so if you enjoyed either of those you'll like this a lot. Brilliant characters and complex relationships which conjure so many questions.