Reba Orton's Book Reviews

Mantle: The Return of the Sha by Gary Bregar My rating: 5 of 5 stars I read Mantle; The Return of the Sha by Gary Bregar in four or five days. The story features a young female heroine who grew up feeling like an outcast because she didn't have a magical power like everyone else. But she actually did and didn't know it. She later discovers that she is a sha or a good witch, like Glenda in the Wizard of Oz. I could relate to her feelings of isolation and having only a few friends because I grew up deaf in a hearing world. I liked Lizabet's rambunctious character. She is also an independent and self-reliant girl. On the other hand, her sister, Bella, is a beautiful woman who caught the eye of the king during the last leg of his travels around the kingdom. A quick romance ensued. The wedding that followed reminded me of Princess Diana's elaborate wedding to Prince Charles in England. In the story, the celebrations that followed the weddi...

Legacy of the Gods by Ray Mott My rating: 3 of 5 stars I read Legacy of the Gods Book 1 by Ray Mott in two days because much of it was repetitive. The author liked to exhaustively copy similar phrases from different places in the Bible when making a point. He listed the same verse from numerous Biblical versions with slightly different wording. I understand this kind of writing style and probably would have structured my writing the same way if I wanted to show all the evidence in the Bible for an ancient alien concept. However, these long lists are still overkill. I think that he should have used prototypical verses and limited his lists to less than a page. In addition, the lists are not very effective when he does not include his own explanation for some odd entries in the lists. For example, he had a list of verses about sons of gods that also included verses about giants, but he does not explicitly explain the theory that the gods mated with human women and the...

The Quest for Merlin: Magimakía by Rafael Lovato My rating: 4 of 5 stars I read Magimakía; The Quest for Merlin by Brazilian author Rafael Lovato in two days. Its tone was light, slightly mocking, and ridiculous in a good way. It is written in a style that conveyed a sort of surrealistic Dead Sea Scrolls importance. The book was an enjoyable read even though there were points in the book that evoked disgust and were clearly designed to appeal to a guy's cruder sensibilities. It is clearly meant for an audience of teenage boys. The Portuguese to English translator used a mixture of American and British English with some typos, grammar quirks, and even some words I've never seen before. The plot included a merging of souls into one body. When a demon's soul is merged with a mage's soul, the result is called a necromancer. Merlin's long life is credited with another type of merge between a dragon and a mage. According to the book, a ...