Review: The Sea Was a Fair Master

The Sea Was a Fair Master by Calvin Demmer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not gonna lie, this was actually a lot better than I was expecting!

What can I say? I'm a skeptic when it comes to e-published authors. So many people seem to write a complete story then just go about self-publishing the ebook ASAP, which means they skip editing, beta reading, etc. - all the refining processes that turn a raw story into a compelling novel. I still enjoy reading amateur work, but mostly because I want to give feedback, suggestions - ways to clean it up and make it a bit more marketable. So many great stories out there meet early deaths because they carry too much dead weight. I like to help lighten the load - Tetris it a little bit, sometimes.

(Yes, I'm a word nerd. I want to do this stuff for a living but dang is it hard to break into the industry. So I just do it for free. :D)

Anyhoo, I digress.

Reading this book, I wasn't compelled to consider ways it could be improved. It never felt raw or unrefined, and the writing is fantastic. Maybe a little too fancy in places (there are A LOT of similes) but it really draws you in and paints quite colourful pictures.

It's such an intriguing mix of stories and I was captivated by every. single. one. Sure, some of them were totally bizarre and left me scratching my head, but there were also others that really sucked me in and had me thoroughly entertained. The Santa one still stands out. I loved that they were so short and got straight into the action. The characters were easily apparent and varied and there was so much refreshing originality here that I just settled in to enjoy the unexpected.

The writing is impressively communicative for such short works but it never gets so descriptive that it detracts from the story. It packs a hard punch and keeps things entertaining.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this one, and I'm thankful for being given the chance to read it! Highly recommend for lovers of the bizarre, particularly in horror and sci-fi.

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