Rate this book

All My Crimes (2013)

by Tal Valante(Favorite Author)

3.85 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1937551938 (ISBN13: 9781937551933)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Riptide Publishing

review 1: The Art of the Short Story: All My Crimes by Tal Valante I know what the objections will be to this story. No need to read other reviews. There will be complaints about the lack of romance, the lack of sex and the length.If I read those reviews, I will react badly. So. It's quite simple.This is how a short story is meant to be written. THIS. Every movement, every detail furthers the action, the characterization, the central themes. Every word is there for a reason. Every scene is necessary.We're given glimpses and hints of world building, through the action, through the surroundings, but the details are so integral that you know there's a complete world behind this story, not simply a few Scrabble-word, fantasy realm names and such sprinkled around. There's a system of mag... moreic. There are rules. You FEEL them.I often despise first person and loathe present tense even more. They distract me. Pull me out of the story. Here. Oh, here...it makes the story raw and immediate and painful. We discover the back story and the answers as the character does and it's awful and painful and flipping terrible things have happened. There's violence, but not long-drawn out gore fests. There's sex, but off screen because it's not important to go into detail. It was short. Yes. It was intense. I took maybe an hour and a half to read this and won't be able to forget it. Perhaps ever.The author's name intrigued me. It's one of my own favorite character's names, after all. But I'll be looking for longer work from this author. Write more, Tal. Write epics. Because I want to see what you do when you give yourself room to roam.
review 2: So if I were evaluate this story as emotionless machine (yes, I know such reviewers do not exist), I would have given it five plus stars - for such shortish novella, it is extremely tightly written (as much as I can see as ESL reader anyway), it evokes very vivid imagery in reader's mind, it asks hard questions, it is extremely morally ambigious and in theory all those are the things I am looking for in the well written story which I should like.I am sure that I will not tell you any secrets when I say that I am not a machine, I am a reader and sometimes my emotional reaction to the character grabs me and won't let me go and causes to feel negative things, which I have no idea if the author intended for me to feel or not. I think I fulfilled my internal obligation of being fair to the book when I stressed all of its positives and want to emphacize again that for the right reader it can easily be a five plus read.I am allowing myself a luxury of taking away only one star for intense hatred I felt at the end of the story for King Gidden. Yes, it is just my emotional reaction nothing more, and yes, I know wars sometimes end with this result, but this is fiction, I can allow myself a luxury of not to care. I do not feel that somebody who does not seem to feel any remorse in wiping out the whole nation is somebody who deserves a happy ending, even happy for now.At least main character suffered a lot, but honestly after listening what they did, I did not feel that he suffered a yota less than what he deserved.And yes, I know it is possible that tables could have been turned, and then I would have cried for another nation who would have been wiped out. I am kind of sensitive to this kind of thing (personal history in a sense, or more precisely with whatever real world asocciations this story caused me). less

Download links for: All My Crimes

Advertising