Hey, y'all!! I'm crawling out from under my rock to jot down some notes about The Maelstrom ...

Well, first I had to download the story from the Library and convert it to PDF so I could load it onto my Kindle. Reading from the computer screen gives me a headache and I adore my Kindle. It is kind of a long story - is it actual novel length or novella? Regardless, I never felt it was a chore to read - it didn't drag on and believe me, I've read some books that seemed ENDLESS. (Thinking of that dreadful Life of William Marshall book I had to read for British History class <shudder>)

Anyway, I digress ...

The first note I made was in chapter one - hyperdrive in atmosphere? Really? I don't think so. But, ya know, that was resolved in chapter 2. Trying not to drop many spoilers, but some are inevitable ...

Heh heh, the line about Straker's flight suit 'clinging to his body like silver sweat' struck me as so Chandleresque - I got a kick out of several such lines in the story. (Like later there is one that reads: 'She faded into the spotless linoleum like floor cleaner' - LOL!) 

Some of the slang words used were not in my dictionary, but some were - very strange what is included in my dictionary and what isn't.

I thought the fountain pen collection was inspired.

There was a sentence that reads: '... all attired in what might have been actors in costumes awaiting their cue to take the stage.' It doesn't really make sense the way it's worded.

I questioned George and Algernon having the same last name - not sure gay marriage is legal in Britain, but a legal name change doesn't require a legal marriage, so it's kind of a moot point.

When Jay is stopped by Algernon and pipes up with 'I'm Jewish, keep that in mind,' I had to smirk - I mean, did he REALLY think that would somehow protect him? LOL! He was such a creep.

  But when Algernon does what he does, I was like, WHOA, WTF?! A bit shocking. Not sure how I feel about that. It might have been for the best, but still .... I dunno ...

'He was an elephant being asked to clean up his own shit!' ROFLMAO!

  I'm not sure I like Straker tossing Frances' letter into the fire. I guess the Anglican church is pretty much Catholicism without the Pope. Therefore, suicide would be considered a mortal sin and so Angel would be upset to think his wife was in Hell and I can understand that.

When Straker is talking with Claire about Devon, he says she 'murdered' him. I thought that was a bit heartless - she killed him in self defense.

Oh, and Ford asking Lake out on a date? LOL! That was so sweet!

Um, I didn't really understand how Straker was ... well, brought back to life after the fire. That kind of confused me. (And yeah, THAT is a major spoiler - sorry).

Over all, I enjoyed this. I know that I'm weird and yes, I'm a smutty-minded perv with a certain reputation to uphold, but this was absolutely the slashiest story without consummation I've ever read! I soooooooooooooooooooooooo wanted Ed and Alec to just hop into bed and get it over with. LOL! But I am all about the comic relief and the two of them going at each other was fun. Oh, and that crack about killing Alec with the electric razor being more difficult was HILARIOUS - LOL! That one had me giggling.

Now, I have discussed the use of 'a' and 'an' with Amelia before and she has gotten much better with that - I only found one or maybe two 'a-an' mistakes in this one. The one I remember was with the word 'hour.' 'A' should be used before a word that begins with a consonant and 'an' should be used before a word that begins with a vowel, but while 'hour' begins with a consonant, it SOUNDS like it begins with a vowel.

But, Amelia, I really would not stress about that. There are not many exceptions like that and minor things like this are hardly noticed by a reader. When I think of some of the MANY really bad typos and other mistakes found in mainstream, store bought novels these days, I could just cringe.

Anyway, the whole concept of The Maelstrom was very interesting and I wouldn't mind seeing it explored further, so, um ... started on the next one yet, have you????? Hmmmm?

 

Librarian wrote on Mar 24^th, 2011 at 9:04pm:

I too found it quite helpful when I had to go back through all my stories and replace the alrights with the correct term all right. But that is why they put erasers on pencils!

Hi, Yuchtar!     Nice to hear from you!

Well, technically, alright would be a contraction of 'all right' in the vein of 'already'. But 'already' does have a slightly different meaning than 'all ready', so the equivalency doesn't work as well as it might. So some of us prefer 'all right'. 

And just so you all know, when quoting, the smilies don't come out right so you have to manually replace them.

Neesierie wrote on Mar 25^th, 2011 at 3:04am:

I found the correction in one of the online grammar guides. (Matt just opened a can of worms! Runs away to hide. )

We all have different bugaboos - I have the well justified nickname on another board as the 'Queen of the Split Inifinitive' - 'To boldly go' is , in my book, lousy Latin but perfectly good English. Actually, you can't split an infinitive at all in Latin. The Romance languages don't create their infinitives by adding 'to' in front of the verb. Neither does German from what I remember from WAY back when.

I drive the General Editors over there crazy when they do the final run through before my stuff goes into their archive.  :

Amelia,
I think your avatar rocks!     I don't see any disrespect there.

I finished Maelstrom.  So much occurred from start to end that I'll need a bit to process it all.  But I enjoyed the ride!    I'm glad you're considering a sequel!