Book Review: Invisible Dawn

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It has been a while has it not? I have been slacking on my reading list quite a bit, but I am eventually getting around through the titles. Anyway, in an earlier post, I said that two people asked if I were interested in reading their work when I still very much active on WattPad, which gave me three books in all to read. I have covered one of those titles in that post, so two remain. Today, I will be reviewing one of those two, which is called Invisible Dawn: Book One of Altered Realities by Weston Kincade.

Years after losing his goddaughter, Madelin, Jedd Altran is on a mission to rescue her from the clutches of a government agency, PASTOR, that is not supposed to exist, at least according to the government. When he does find her and helps her escape, they are forced to travel the infinite number of planes, in order to stay ahead of their pursuers.

I have to say that I really enjoyed this book. I can probably say that I did not really want to stop reading the moment I started, but we all know that we have needs to take care of in our lives. From the first few pages, I was able to see what was going on in the text, which I would expect since this is obviously not the first title I read from this author. I also enjoyed how fast paced the action seemed. At the same time, the book was paced well enough for me to get to know the characters. A reader like me does not want to go through a work where they cannot feel anything for any of the characters, after all. I also liked how I got see what the other side was up to during the course of the book. Another thing that I liked about this book was the fact that it covered things that we do not want to admit to in life, especially in adulthood. There is the fact that we cannot run from our pasts. In one scenario, a criminal may be caught before the statute of limitations runs out. If there is no statute of limitations, the criminal may mark himself or herself as the culprit. In another, when that criminal has gotten away with a crime, he or she may not lead a normal life because they are haunted by what they did, just like one of the characters in this book. These possibilities, on the other hand, do happen just to criminals in real life. I have said time and again on this blog that we are not perfect. We may not have gone out and taken a life, but there are things that we end up regretting for rest of our days. At the same time, the book points out another important fact, which is that we can seek redemption, which much of the characters we follow, except for those within the government agency, choose to pursue. However, the path to redemption is not the same for all. While giving compensation can fix things, others, such as murder and rape, cannot be undone. The fact that many of the protagonists seek the path to redemption makes me feel like they really do regret what they have done, but considering that this is obviously the start of a series, I cannot be so sure. The nicely done imagery and a good pacing, as well as the fact some facts of life are presented here, certainly makes this a good book.

Although I liked the book, there were some issues and annoyances. First, the Table of Contents had a gap in chapter listing. There are thirty chapter of content, including the prologue, and a three-chapter excerpt for A Life of Death. The chapter listings for the thirty chapter of the story were listed in the correct order with the correct chapter number, as seen in the actual text. However, in the listing of the excerpt chapters, a number was skipped. The listing starts at 30 and ends at 33, but since the prologue has no chapter number, as should be the case, the excerpts should have been listed as chapters 30-32. In the content however, they are marked as chapters 30-32. Although not noticeable when skimming through the table of contents, since most readers do not pay attention to the TOC, unless they are trying to find their place, it does create confusion. First, it makes people think that there are 34 chapters, counting the prologue, when there are only 33. For people that make that assumption, they are going to wonder what happened to chapter 33, when they finish the three excerpt chapters. Second, for people like me, who do take time to look at the table of contents, in order to tell how long the book is, we are left to wonder what happened to chapter 32. Since this is a minor issue, compared to Negima! Volume 34, especially since ebooks do not really have page numbers, I will overlook this problem because the author most likely made a typo, since A Life of Death did not suffer from this issue. The other thing that I did not like too much was the shifting that took place. It was nice to see what everyone was up to, but it made it really hard to follow in the beginning. Normally, we are transitioned to other perspectives in what I will call in a meanwhile moment. Words like meanwhile are not present in the book, but we normally find out what people are up to at the current moment. Here, however, when perspectives are changed, mainly between Madelin and Jedd in the early portions, Jedd and Madelin and PASTOR agents, and Madelin’s group and the PASTOR agents later on, we are backed up a bit to an earlier point. Although I got used to it through the course of reading, it was kind of confusing at first because I was wondering whether the events were taking place before or after what had already taken place. If I cannot judge when certain events take place, I cannot accurately judge how well the story went or if there even was one to begin with. Another thing that was not so great about this book was that titles of books were underlined. Yes, when handwriting a paper, one does want to underline the titles of books, but considering that I was reading from an ebook, it just creates confusion. eBooks, from my experience making and reading them, are just like web pages or websites. Unless manipulated via CSS, links are always underlined. Even though the text was the same color as the normal text, the underlining made me think that it was a link, thus I thought the title of the books mentioned was either real or a widely known mythical book somewhere in the world. Anybody wonder why I opt to put titles in italics? This is the reason and it is so widespread that even somebody that is being introduced to the Internet, and even basic HTML, will assume that it was a link. The biggest issues here, however, are with grammar and other writing issues. First, one character had an unexplained change name. When, we are first introduced to our pursuers from PASTOR, one of the leaders is introduced as Martim, but without warning, he suddenly becomes Marlin. It may be an issue with the edition I got, but it certainly confused me. Since his name had not changed from that point on, I can only assume that he was supposed to be called Marlin. Fortunately, issues like this were only a one-time occurrence. I also found instances of wrong word or pronoun. When Jedd finds Roger, he contemplates about why he is helping him. However, the book says she and her when it should be he and him. I thought both were men according to the text, so it does not make sense, especially since Madeline is not with them at this point. Another problem that I thought cropped up was that there were sentences and dialogue that did not make sense due to either the wrong word being used or a word was missing entirely or words were there that should not have been, but unlike the others, I cannot really point to a particular place. Outside of those, I cannot really think of any other issues I had. Although it was difficult to follow in the beginning and the TOC was not number correctly, the things that hurt the quality of this ebook were the fact that book titles made me think that they were links and the writing issues present.

Despite the fact that the book titles being underline made me think they were links and the writing issues, this book was certainly worth reading. I recommend this book to pretty much anybody.

What are your thoughts on Invisible Dawn: Book One of Altered Realities? Do you agree or disagree with my views? Do you have anything to add? Feel Free to comment.

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