Review of Tales of Horror by Margot Ling
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[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Tales of Horror by Margot Ling" by Margot Ling.]
Tales of Horror by Margot Ling is a collection of three short stories with horror as their main theme. The first story is “The Dragon.” This story follows Luther, a high school student with some magic powers, as he meets the Wizard Con. The Wizard Con wants Luther to join him in his dark magic and destroy the dragons. The second story is “Halloween Is Coming to Town.” This one follows a set of siblings and a group of alien invaders who are posing as humans. The final story is “The Vulcan.” In this story, we see the Dark Queen and all of the harm she causes.
One of the biggest downfalls of this book is that the plots of the stories are very difficult to follow. I found myself very frustrated as I read. If I weren’t reading this book for a review, I would have definitely given up reading within the first few pages. Trying to come up with a succinct summary for this review was very difficult to do. It is nearly impossible to tease out what the overarching plot actually is for each story. The book jumps from the fantasy portions back to real-life events without warning. The timelines also skip around.
The book is not professionally edited. It is riddled with errors from start to finish. Some are minor, but others make the writing difficult to understand. Many of these could have been easily fixed by just reading through the book another time. The writing style is choppy and repetitive. The same sentences and ideas are often repeated with minimal change. Similar to the editing, this is something that would have easily been caught with just a quick review of the book.
Another downfall is that there are several out-of-pocket comments that seem to portray the author’s biases. Some of these go past horror and are more disturbing than anything, especially since they rarely fit with the rest of the story. For example, there are several comments about wishing a character would be assaulted or raped. There are also homophobic, sexist, and racist comments and descriptions that could have been avoided.
Unfortunately, I have to give this book 1 out of 5 stars because I cannot recommend this book to anyone. I would advise readers against purchasing this one. The only positive aspect is that the author has some creative ideas. However, the presentation of these ideas needs a lot of improvement. It seems to be more of a rough draft than a finished book. It needs a lot of editing and revision before it is ready to be enjoyed by a general audience. For anyone that does still choose to read it, the content is for a mature audience; there are vague sexual descriptions and vulgar language in addition to some of the other comments mentioned above.
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Tales of Horror by Margot Ling
View: on Bookshelves |
Tales of Horror by Margot Ling is a collection of three short stories with horror as their main theme. The first story is “The Dragon.” This story follows Luther, a high school student with some magic powers, as he meets the Wizard Con. The Wizard Con wants Luther to join him in his dark magic and destroy the dragons. The second story is “Halloween Is Coming to Town.” This one follows a set of siblings and a group of alien invaders who are posing as humans. The final story is “The Vulcan.” In this story, we see the Dark Queen and all of the harm she causes.
One of the biggest downfalls of this book is that the plots of the stories are very difficult to follow. I found myself very frustrated as I read. If I weren’t reading this book for a review, I would have definitely given up reading within the first few pages. Trying to come up with a succinct summary for this review was very difficult to do. It is nearly impossible to tease out what the overarching plot actually is for each story. The book jumps from the fantasy portions back to real-life events without warning. The timelines also skip around.
The book is not professionally edited. It is riddled with errors from start to finish. Some are minor, but others make the writing difficult to understand. Many of these could have been easily fixed by just reading through the book another time. The writing style is choppy and repetitive. The same sentences and ideas are often repeated with minimal change. Similar to the editing, this is something that would have easily been caught with just a quick review of the book.
Another downfall is that there are several out-of-pocket comments that seem to portray the author’s biases. Some of these go past horror and are more disturbing than anything, especially since they rarely fit with the rest of the story. For example, there are several comments about wishing a character would be assaulted or raped. There are also homophobic, sexist, and racist comments and descriptions that could have been avoided.
Unfortunately, I have to give this book 1 out of 5 stars because I cannot recommend this book to anyone. I would advise readers against purchasing this one. The only positive aspect is that the author has some creative ideas. However, the presentation of these ideas needs a lot of improvement. It seems to be more of a rough draft than a finished book. It needs a lot of editing and revision before it is ready to be enjoyed by a general audience. For anyone that does still choose to read it, the content is for a mature audience; there are vague sexual descriptions and vulgar language in addition to some of the other comments mentioned above.
******
Tales of Horror by Margot Ling
View: on Bookshelves |
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