Ok, here is a review of my first book, warts and all.

One thing I will state openly is that book 1 did go to print with typos and I have been pulled up about this before...I am sorry about that and have endeavoured to learn from my mistakes and the reprinted versions which are now available should contain no typos. But the bit I am focusing on is where he says that for all that,
he loved it! So I guess I must be doing something right...

 So here it is.
...
I’ll start with this: on a technical level, this book is utterly horrendous. From the very beginning it is filled with misplaced commas, excessive exclamation marks and ropy formatting. Various words are capitalized which probably shouldn’t be, most notably “Pet” and “Eyon”. In general, this book gave me the impression of an author with much raw talent but with little care for the editing process.

And yet, for much of the time reading it, I absolutely loved it.

The book’s concept is certainly a novel one. In Alone, humanity is dominated a race of avian humanoids called eyons. The creatures frequently take in human children to live as pets and servants; Loni and San, the book’s protagonists, are two such pets. Their owners, like most other eyons, spend most of their lives hooked up to mysterious “work machines” and are consequently oblivious to the world around them. Loni, however, is different in that she spends most of her time with her owner’s hatchling, who she calls Little. When Little’s work machine arrive, the two flee in order to keep Little from becoming like the others. San, meanwhile, leaves without prompting in order to discover the truth behind humanity’s place in the world.

Chapters alternate between Loni’s and San’s perspectives, with the final chapter incorporating both points of view at once. Of the two, I must admit that I preferred Loni’s sections by a fairly long way. I could genuinely feel the bond between Loni and Little as I read about them, making them very easy to emphasize with. There is a real sense of progression in Loni’s chapters, as both she and Little learn about the world around them and vow to change it for the better. San’s chapters were hardly bad, but their events felt quite random at times and I didn’t feel that he developed as much as he could have done.

My only major criticism of this book is the ending, which leaves almost all of the book’s plot threads open and seems intended solely to set up a series. This is compounded by the fact that all other “Owners” books have been prequels so far, which leaves me to wonder if the author will ever go back to Loni, Little and San. I really hope that she does, as it would be a shame to end their tale where it currently is. Here’s hoping it happens.


Found on http://theparasiteguy.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/tpg-reviews-alone-by-carmen-capuano/