WHO LIKES FREE BOOKS!? Sorry, got a bit excited. Ahem, who likes free books? I'm looking for some readers who would be interested in getting a free PDF copy of Code Jumper (my GameLit novel) ahead of the official release in exchange for an honest review. At the moment this is simply a call for expressions of interest (everyone who asks will be added to a group that I will create, and you can feel free to leave at any time before I send out the manuscript) as the novel could be finished in the next two days or another week depending on editing times and me combing through with rewrites. The goal is to give the ARC readers at least a week before the official release and have some reviews ready for the launch, however, I understand everyone has lives and each person reads at a different pace, so there's no actual requirement that it be read and reviewed instantly. I've got most of the chapters up on RoyalRoad Legends (link below), so if you'd like to have a flick through before committing to anything there is something available, though please keep in mind that that is the unedited manuscript and is missing some rewrites. Just to clarify, this is not a call for beta readers, the PDF you receive will be the final edited version (aside from any embarrassing mistakes you or I may find over the week leading up to release ). Anyway, thanks for reading through all that, have an awesome day. https://royalroadl.com/fiction/14516/
I can’t do PDF (it doesn’t display well on my phone) but if you’ve got a kindle-readable format (mobi) I’ll ARC for you.
That'd be awesome! I've got a mobi fresh from the KDP previewer. It's too large to send through here though, have you got an email I can send it to?
Finished it. Here’s what I’ll be posting as a review (remind me when it actually drops on amazon so I can put my review in, yeah?) So. I used to play role playing games when I was ... younger. And while my friends all refused to play anything that wasn’t related to either cartoons (Toon RPG and the TMNT games) or wizards and pointy eared hippie freaks, I always wanted to try Shadowrun. I still remember the day I cracked the book open for the first time, and after I finished drooling over the artwork on the glossy page inserts, I started reading the rules from cover to cover. Sadly, the rules were - and still are today - an incomprehensible mess. But one thing that’s remained the same from edition to edition (up until recently but that’s a gripe for another review) was the introduction to the world as told by a hacker. Which brings me to Code Jumper - it reminds me a lot of the tone from that Shadowrun world introduction. It’s snarky and full of wonderful details, memorable characters, flawed anti heroes, and somehow manages to be an incomprehensible mess as far as the “game’s” actual rules. The lack of explicit world building really hurts it. The atmosphere is top notch, and I got a vivid snapshot of the state of affairs, but the author’s focus on snappy dialogue really made it difficult to build the world in any understandable fashion. It also doesn’t help that there was a good bit of the book that was portal hopping through other worlds that were even less fleshed out than the main world. The pacing also suffered because of it, with almost no time for the protagonist to catch his breath between scenes, and there were a lot of editing misses on the writing. Basically, the author tried to cram too much into too little space. It’s not *bad* by any measure, it could just be so much more. Kinda like the Shadowrun rules system - it’s a great game ... if you can figure out how to play it. One thing I will note specifically is that practically every page turn was stuffed to overflowing with pop culture references. It isn’t really believable for a book set that far into the future to have someone constantly referencing things from the media being created decades prior. It’d be basically like someone today who won’t stop talking about the Andy Griffith show, or Leave It To Beaver. This is a problem I find in many books set in the future; the date will be 4680AD or something and the characters will *still* be talking about “Earth’s Second World War.” TL;DR: it was a flawed book, but there was enough good parts about it that I enjoyed the ride. Full disclosure: I was provided an advance review copy (ARC) by the author in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.
Thanks. I try to make all of my reviews special in their own way. I grabbed a copy off KU and pager through it to the end, so you should also get the dosh for a KU read as well (the phone app actually won’t let me post reviews unless it’s posted from the book itself anyway, so I figured I might as well). Keep me in mind if you’re looking for an editor for your next project, eh? I’m affordable!
