Hayden Thorne

I was given this book through the Making Connections ARR group for an honest review, thank you.



Summary:

A super villain appears in Vintage City and Eric is often in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily for Eric, there are also a couple of super heroes that appear just in the nick of time to save him from the dastardly deeds of ‘The Devil’s Trill,’ and one of those super heroes happens to be mighty fine indeed. Eric develops a crush, as does most of the city, on the perfect ‘Magnifiman.’ Thankfully Eric’s boyfriend Peter doesn’t seem to be too upset about it.

Who are these super people? What does the Devil’s Trill want? And will Magnifiman and his sidekick be able to stop the villain before too much damage is done to Vintage City and its citizens? Stay tuned to find out.


Review :

Rise of Heroes is told in first person through the eyes of Eric a sarcastic and overly dramatic 16-year-old student at Renaissance High. Skinny with pale skin, he keeps his hair dyed in his favorite color, ‘Smurf’s Blood Blue’. In fact he loves blue so much, he spends his money on small bottles of blue food coloring in order to dye his milk and eggs blue, and any other food that will make his older sister Liz, cringe. Eric enjoys writing tragic haikus and reading ‘depressing existential German fiction’. At other times he is a hopeless romantic and compares himself to a breathless, corseted heroine from a bodice-ripping romance novel whenever he kisses his boyfriend Peter Barlow. To say Eric has a fruitful imagination is putting it mildly. At one point during a bank robbery, Eric is taken hostage by the Devil Trill’s thugs. Eric contemplates his death and takes an odd comfort in imagining all the ways that he could be put to death, then imagines if his mother will weep for him for the rest of her life as she sets an empty plate for him at the dining table every night.

I enjoyed the characters in the story, especially Eric’s family and his friends, Peter and Althea. Each personality has their distinctive quirks.

Told in the style of a comic book, the author’s use of descriptive wording to conjure up just the right imagery was excellent. Not too much, or too little. This kept the pace of the story moving along at a nice clip. The book only felt like it slowed when Eric is describing the environment he is in, be it Vintage City or a room. These less vibrant paragraphs often made it difficult for me to stay focused on the story and I would find my mind wandering. It’s Eric’s interaction with his friends, family or observations about himself that brings the story alive. I enjoyed Eric’s emo tone of voice, although it wasn’t always consistent throughout the book. At times he sounded like a girl and others like an adult preaching his beliefs.

One thing that bothered me a bit in the story was how easily Eric, Peter and Althea, would talk about the superheroes in public places like at school and the coffee shop, while using the real life names of the heroes, because they knew who those heroes really were. Being a humorous comic type story, I suppose it doesn’t really matter since comic books are a bit outlandish in their stories anyway. But it is something that I noticed immediately and thought that a villain or nosy reporter could take great advantage of the information if they eaves-dropped.

I read Rise of Heroes on my NOOK in pdf format and there are some annoying problems. The one that bothered me the most was where the dialogue of two characters would appear in the same paragraph, instead of in separate paragraphs. The two characters’ conversation had the sentences following one right after the other, confusing me on who was speaking or responding to whom. This happened in almost every conversation that happened in the book. Trying to unravel the dialogue pulled me out of the story, and because it happened so frequently, became irritating.

Another formatting issue was where the pages were not completely filled in with text. Some pages were completely full, others half to a quarter full, before preceding to the next page. The partial pages were not at the end of paragraphs or chapters necessarily, but could happen mid-sentence. There were also quite a few grammatical errors that were easy to spot.

Overall I found this story enjoyable and Eric’s voice humorous. It’s an interesting world the author has created and I would read future books in this series. Since I am a stickler on formatting for ebooks, the main complaint I have are the paragraphs running together making the dialogue a bear to read for quite a bit of the book. Next would be the numerous grammatical errors I found. I’d recommend this story to anyone who loves comic books and the beginnings of romance between two high school teenagers. I give it 3.5 stars.


… (meer)

This is not the first time I have the pleasure to read a Young Adult novel by Hayden Thorne, and the tastefully setting is always confirmed, story after story, novel after novel. The fantasy elements can be more or less marked, but in any case, the alternative-historical universe is always an asset.

In the main story, The Winter Garden, the story reminded me the Secret Garden, one of my favorite young adult novel when I was young. The setting is a Victorian undefined city, perhaps even London, the time is beginning of XIX century. The plot develops around two boys, to a modern concept teenagers, but for the time, practically adult; and indeed one of them, is already working with his father, behaving like a young man, drinking and talking of girls; the other instead is sheltered by his own parents due to his weak constitution and mostly spends his time in their walled garden, the same wall that the other boy climbs to meet with him and turn upside down that sheltered life.

While to an adult eyes, you can see it’s a romance between the two boys, to a reader of the same age it can be the story of a friendship lasting forever, cause no sex, not even a kiss is shared between the two boys. But that doesn’t mean the feelings are less stronger, or not real; they are so strong and real that will overcome even the realm of possible to become fantastical. That is another asset of this author, the ability to mix reality with fantasy and still maintain the story touching and moving, near to the heart of the reader. I personally was really moved by the story of these two boys, and even if they have their happily ever after, it’s bittersweet.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/147505727X/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (meer)

This was a lovely book and it was fun meandering down the streets with the characters the author created but the story did just that, meandered here and there with little or no direction. The author seemed to have ideas as to where he wanted things to go but was unable to find direction for those ideas. The characters were developed ever so slightly so that as a read I could sympathize with the fathers who had lost their sons and with the young man trying to find his way in a world that doesn't accept same sex love. I did like how both fathers found a way to heal themselves and their families. And it was interesting to see the impact of the two lovers with out them actually being there, like a ripple effect in the lives of those who loved them. I would've liked to know more about those two men because the little slices the author shared from the journal were hardly enough. Over all the story was beautifully written but with such a promising premise I expected more.… (meer)