My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
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| Not the cover of the book, but I couldn't resist including this illustration from Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat, as mentioned in my review below. |
The Heirs of Atlantis (beta version) by Chris Fox DNF 30%
I have previously read a partial beta version of another of his stories, so I had no illusions that this would be a story that would appeal to me, and my expectations were met. This story is pure pulp. That is not in any way, a value judgement. It's just stating the style of story. Pulp stories have always had a large audience, and it happens to be the most popular style of fiction in self-published ebooks. I am sure that 90+% of the best selling self-published ebooks are pulp stories, no matter what genre. And by pulp stories, I mean stories that are driven, and driven hard and fast by plot, rather than characters or atmosphere. I've read and enjoyed many pulp stories in my day. I've now grown to like more character and atmospheric stories, so that while this book isn't what I am looking for to read these days, it is what his target audience is looking for. Though we'll have to see. It will be released early in August 2025.
In brief; the plot has a first person narrator, an "influencer" on YouTube whose channel is focused on lost civilizations. Somehow he determines that there is a harbor dating back to the lost age of Atlantis in the waters off of Cadiz Spain, likely with ships sunk in that sunken harbor. He hires a local boat owner to take him out to this spot in the ocean where he has determined the harbor to be. They dive and indeed, find the wreck of a ship, which they uncover and explore the next day, taking off some tablets and a jewel encrusted device.
Unbeknownst to them a secret society has been following his activity, and when they learn he has discovered something, they swing into action, preventing further explorations of the wreck and its cargo. But never mind, our hero has other places to investigate, and the boat owner, now his partner, is willing to take him there, for half of the profits. The device he found allows him to experience the mind of writer of the tables, a scholar of some sort from Atlantis, just before the twin meteors hit the earth, melting a lot of ice, raising the sea levels and washing over Atlantis and the other civilizations, some 12,000 years ago. It was at this point where I decided I'd read enough.
One of the big problems for me with this story is that I found it to be unbelievable from the get-go. Our YouTuber not only goes almost directly to the location of the wreck, but goes scuba diving down to it without any training in scuba diving. They excavate the wreck in over the course of three dives the following day, with trowels after a long swim to get there. You have this beautiful woman, Yvette, of course, an agent of this secret society, who sort of likes our nerdy hero even as she steals his discoveries and works to discredit him. You have the magic device to give the reader a background of Atlantis as it was, all of which is told in the first 70, double spaced pages, so you can imagine the pace of the story.
The first person narrator breaks the fourth wall to talk to the reader, or rather his YouTube views as if on a video, which is an interesting choice, but he's such a thin character that it makes him even more silly. He might well resonate with the target audience, as by and large, this reads like a YA book, including sharks and a near attack by squids when exploring the wreck that comes straight out of Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat. Except that the Tom Swift books put more effort into fleshing out the story.
I guess what surprised me the most was the speed of the story telling, whatever effort was put into creating any sense of place and atmosphere or for that matter, believability, was perfunctory, at best. And though you had a first person narrator, you also had chapters with Yvette's point of view, so that the reader knows far more about what is going on than the narrator of the story. In my opinion, not knowing just what is going on raises the stakes and keeps the reader guessing. This story takes the other approach; the reader knows far more than the hero, and so worries about him. But this story is tell all, including that nor only does Atlantis really did exist, but using he magical device, we get to go back in time and experience it. Where's the mystery?
As a writer, I see so many missed opportunities to create a deep mystery; a story filled with mysterious happenings and danger. Friendship with the boat owner is almost instantaneously, another opportunity to create tension and mystery. And the uncertainty of Atlantis was real it quickly given away. Everything is there on the surface, merely sketched out, just to keep the story moving.
As I said at the top. It's not a story for me. I'm not its target audience, so my reaction takes nothing away from the story for the readers it is targeted at. I am truly disappointed, if not surprised, that I didn't find any satisfaction in reading it. I just think it could've been so much more if it just slowed down. All in all, a lesson in what sells in the world of Kindle Unlimited. Thankfully, I know of eight rare exceptions.
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