Review: Tempest Road

Tempest Road by Justin Edison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Uh, yeahhhhhh NO. Nope. Not doing it. DNF at 32%

Why?

It lost me immediately with the confusion of tense and POV. It gets straight into the action but that action is a mess of vague thoughts and incomprehensible happenings. It was all over the place, and when it still wasn't making sense to me 20-odd pages in my insides deflated a little. I was so ready for an epic jungle action adventure.

I mean, how's this for a plot: famous man is kidnapped and dragged through jungle for mysterious reasons. I was so down with that. That's my jam, right there. I didn't even care that it was going to have boring soccer stuff. I was so ready for jungle cat maulings and giant bugs and wild chases and instead I got confusing tense, conversations that made very little sense and a whole bunch of random ... Spanish? I think?!

'Disappointed' doesn't quite cover it.

So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give this three incredibly generous stars because I want more people to read it. I want someone to work at it harder than I did and tell me it comes good and is full of crazy jungle adventure. I want someone with a greater intellect than I to unravel the mess of dialogue and explain to me what was going on.

I can see talent, and imagination, but to the point I read there was just very little creativity or logic. It was messy. It was an absolute drainer to try and comprehend. And the first person mixed with third person mixed with past tense mixed with present tense just broke me.

I hope more people read this book, and enjoy it, because I'm sure there's a decent story lurking in there somewhere, but it absolutely was not what I was hoping for. I even flicked to the end to see if there was an exciting conclusion or cliffhanger or something but even the last 30 or so pages wasn't enough to ignite my curiosity. I'm so sad at my inability to read this. I wanted it to be a winner.

Honestly I encourage you to make your own mind up about this one! The writing was not for me but honestly someone out there is gonna love this and I wanna know who you are!

With thanks to the author and Voracious Readers for my free e-copy.

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