Posts Tagged ‘review’

Snake: The First Review!

Posted: July 2, 2014 in Novel, Progress Report, Review, Scary Stuff, Writing
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snake

I’m going to be perfectly honest: I nearly jumped out of my chair when I saw Snake had its first review. The only reason I didn’t was because my computer was in my lap and it’s not even six months old yet. It’d be a pain in the butt to get it fixed because of some well-deserved excitement.

Anyway, back on point: Snake received its first review, from fellow author and dear friend Angela Misri, who helped with the editing and sprucing up of Snake prior to publication. She named her review If you LOVE to be scared, you should read this book, and gave Snake four stars out of five. Here’s what she had to say:

Rami Ungar makes a promise to (the reader) in all his writings: he WILL scare you, and if he does “his job is done.” Snake will scare you. I am a huge Stephen King fan, so this should give you some idea of my tolerance level for gore, death and mayhem – I was scared. Rami takes you into places you would never have believed possible, and manages to pull his hero (and eventually his heroine) out of them against all odds. If you like to be scared. If you LOVE to be scared. You should read this book.

Okay, any review with me and Stephen King, and even being scarier than him, makes it onto my list of favorite reviews of all time. And I’m glad you found it terrifying, Angela. There were times I wanted to hold back on how terrifying to make the story, and I’m glad I didn’t. And I’m glad you gave Snake such a strong recommendation. Coming from you, it is a really huge compliment.

If you would like to read Snake after reading that review, you can check it out on Amazon, both in paperback and in e-book (which until the 7th is on sale for $1.99, so now’s a great time to get it). If you do decide to get Snake and end up reading it, please let me know in a comment or in a review on Amazon what you think. Good or bad, I love feedback, and I would love to hear yours.

And while you’re at it, you should also check out Angela’s book Jewel of the Thames, which I’ve reviewed here. It’s a great mystery in the style of Sherlock Holmes (in more ways than one), and great for mystery lovers. Check out her blog for details, which I’ve left a link to above.

That’s all for now, I’m off to get some more writing done before the evening’s done. Have a good night, my Followers of Fear.

The Quiet Game: The 10th Review

Posted: June 30, 2014 in Progress Report, Review, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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tqg cover

Ten reviews. I’ve never gotten ten reviews on a single book before. I only have three right now, but still, this is a major milestone that I’ve been hoping would happen for a long time. And today it finally happened.

The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones was my first book, a collection of short stories I wrote and assembled while still working on the final draft of Reborn City. By far it’s also my bestselling book, which doesn’t surprise me considering that it’s my oldest book and I’m still very early in my writing career. It’s taken nearly a year for it to get to ten reviews, but I’m so glad that it finally did. This one comes from reader kimberly brouillard, who named her review liked this book a lot and gave The Quiet Game four stars out of five, bringing the book’s average to a 4.3 out of 5. Here’s what she had to say:

All of the stories were really diverse and fun to read. I also enjoyed the authors blurbs about each stories origination and development. Keep up the good work!

Thank you kimberly, I’m glad you enjoyed the book. And I’ve got two more if you want to read either of those, one sci-fi and one thriller. I’m also very glad to you and all those who provide feedback on my work. It’s very touching and it means a lot to me, because it shows where I’m doing well and where I could stand to improve. And this early in my career, I’m sure there’s spaces and places to improve.

If you would like to read The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones, you can find it on Amazon and on Smashwords. And if you do decide to get a copy and read it, please let me know what you think in a comment or in a review. I love feedback, positive or negative, so I’ll be happy to get yours.

That’s all for tonight. I’m tired, so I’m going to get read for bed and do a little reading. Goodnight, my Followers of Fear. Have some pleasant nightmares.

The “Joyland” Mix Up

Posted: June 26, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Reflections, Writing
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See the difference?

In 2006, author Emily Schultz published her first novel Joyland, about a teenage boy growing up in an Ontario town in 1984. This was her second published book, coming after a 2002 collection of short stories. It apparently got some really great editorial reviews from national publications, calling it a great coming-of-age novel and an exploration into teen sexuality.

About seven years later, His Royal Scariness Stephen King published a novel with the exact same name, about a college student in 1973 who gets a job at an amusement park and finds himself solving an unsolved murder (I’ll have tor find time to read it one of these days). Plenty of King fans went online to download the e-book (some may not have realized that for a while the book wasn’t available in that format, which will explain what happens next). But the funniest thing happened: several of these King fans downloaded Schultz’s book believing it was King’s book. And right until the end, some of them never realized they got a literary coming-of-age by a Canadian-American author instead of a dark, creepy whodunit from Stephen King!

And it reflected in the reviews some of these people gave Schultz’s book. Here’s one who absolutely hated it:

I have always loved Stephen King novels. However, this one was a rambling, stream of consciousness mess. I had to go back and read over the last pages again and again to try to understand what was happening. For a person who reads several books a week, this is annoying, to say the least. I will still read his next book, if there is one. He fascinates me with the way he thinks, generally. This book was not my favorite, by any means.

And here’s one who thought they’d try to counter-balance all the negative reviews from King fans:

However somebody give it a one star rating because THEY accidently purchased it thinking it was Stephen King, i’ve no idea how they did that but this review is too counter balance that one.

Here’s a prankster who thought they’d satire the whole confusion:

As soon as I learned Steven King had his sex change operation AND changed his name, I immediately rushed out and bought this book. The surgery (and hormone therapy) have really changed his appearance AND his writing. It’s amazing. It was almost like reading a completely different author.

Mrs King (Schultz), your new vagina has served you well! Nicely done!

And here’s one from someone who actually thought it was a great Stephen King novel, if you’ll believe it:

Full of suspense and mystery and real, visceral horror. Don’t be put off by the new nom de plume. King’s new pen name signifies another evolution in his career, just as he emerged from the Bachman years’ “Thinner” into the soul-baring masterpiece of “It”. Writing from a feminine perspective is admittedly experimental, but this experiment is a SUCCESS.

Now, I’m sure plenty of authors would be upset about this confusion. Ms.. Schultz has actually kind of taken advantage of the confusion and the money coming her way by creating a Tumblr blog called Spending the Stephen King Money, where she details how she’s been spending her unexpected royalties, from donation to charitable organization to IKEA shopping trips. And of course, it’s only brought more attention to her, and her book. I’m sure plenty of people will read it now just to read the story that got confused with a Stephen King novel.

In fact, there’s a certain author who plans to read the book:

Yep, King is ordering her book, and Ms. Schultz in turn is planning on reading Stephen King’s Joyland. It’s a really weird but hilarious ending to a rather strange series of events stemmingfrom a simple misunderstanding. But hey, I’m sure both authors will laugh about it when they look back on it years from now, if they aren’t laughing about it now. And who knows? Maybe they’ll collaborate torelease books around the same time with the same titles and see what happens. In fact, I kind of hoping they do!

I’m not sure how this sort of thing happens, except through serendipity. In fact, this is the first time I’ve heard of such a thing happening on such a scale that even some media organizations report it. Sure, we all have or know someone who went to get a certain book or movie or check out a certain TV show and ended up reading or watching something with a similar or identical title (that actually happened to me a couple of weeks ago). But on this massive scale? It’s almost a little hard o rap your head around. If Saturday Night Live was airing new episodes right now, this would be the subject of a Weekend Update joke.

Well, like I said above, this is a case of serendipity at work. Just a happy accident. I wish something like that would happen to me, and I’m sure plenty of people will echo the sentiment. Not only is it a funny story, the royalty checks and recognition wouldn’t be too bad either. But it’s still very unlikely, even when your book has a similar name to a bestseller (The Quiet Game and Snake aren’t the only books out there with those names, believe it or not).

But I don’t think’s that’s a bad thing. After all, it’d suck if a lot of negative reviews brought down your book’s average because of some silly confusion. And I’d prefer to get success through my own hard work, creativity, and the help of my good friends and/or readers rather than through some silly mix-up of random chance.  More satisfactory that way, anyway.

I just have to write something that will allow that sort of success. Well, hopefully that story will come soon, if it hasn’t already. We’ll just have to wait and see.

What do you think of the King/Schultz mix-up?

If this happened to you, how you would react?

Review: I Am a Ghost

Posted: June 19, 2014 in Review, Scary Stuff
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Two words: awesomely freaky!

Ever since I heard of this film and saw the trailer for it, I’ve been dying to get my hands on it. I mean, it’s won a lot of awards, and just watching the trailer you can tell it’s a truly terrifying movie. I’ve seen it a couple of times, and I still jump every time they do those creepy notes. (If you were unable to watch the trailer for any reason, please click here)

If you thought that was terrifying, you can see why I wanted to get this movie. Sadly, it was really hard for me to get my hands on, so I only got it tonight by downloading it off of Amazon. Suffice it to say, it was money well spent.

I Am a Ghost follows Emily, a woman in a 19th-century white dress living in a house with a strange mix of Victorian and early 20th century furniture. Slowly, you see her act out certain activities over and over. Each time, it’s a little different, a little stranger, a little freakier. And then comes in Sylvia, a psychic whom we don’t see. She is only accessible to Emily and to the viewer as a disembodied voice, a medium hired by the family who owns Emily’s house to help her move on. (We don’t see the family either, but if we did, I’d say it’s a couple of cheery kids who break into tears when freaky stuff happens, a wife who’s opened herself up to the paranormal because it threatens her family, and a father who’s reluctant to admit his house is haunted, let alone that they need a medium). From there, it is a strange, deeply psychological story that keeps you glued to the screen from strange start to terrifyingly freaky finish.

H.P. Mendoza, the writer, director, and cameraman of this film, weaves a very fascinating story, showing Emily’s chores and life through different angles as she repeats them in a dream over and over again, and then finding new ways to make them even freakier. Slowly but surely, you will find yourself drawn in like a fish on a reel, and as the film moves towards the end, we become shocked with more and more information on Emily’s life and death, which ultimately leads to an ending that will leave you terrified to the core.

Anna Ishida, the actress who plays Emily, gives a wonderful performance as a ghost stuck in time (or floating in time, considering that she’s comfortable in a house with furniture and technology from several eras, wears a 19th-century dress, and speaks like she’s from modern times). You find yourself unable to look away from her as she becomes slowly aware of why she’s been unable to move on and on how to get out. It became quite easy to identify with her early on. And Jeannie Barronga, who voices Sylvia, makes a great counselor, with a kind, maternal voice that makes you want to get on the red couch.

The script is well-written, and H.P. Mendoza has earned the comparisons to Hitchcock and Kubrick (though I have no idea who Bergman is), mixing suspense and avant-garde filming techniques in perfect harmony. And he found a gem in his make-up artist Diana Tenes, who did a wonderful job with a certain character near the end of the movie (I won’t spoil it, but I’m still reeling from what she did near the climax of the film with a certain creepy character). I’m sure in years to come, I Am a Ghost will receive plenty more awards, and a lot of analysis and interpretations, not just from filmmakers, but from academics and philosophers and filmophiles everywhere (in fact, there’s already a few on the website, but don’t read them till after you’ve seen the movie). I’d certainly love to read some of those analyses, if they ever make it into a published essay.

All in all, I Am a Ghost is a wonderful, terrifying tour de force, and well worth the time for any true fan of horror. I’m rating it a 4.5 out of 5. The only flaw, in my opinion, is that it wasn’t a little bit longer. I certainly wouldn’t have minded the movie being a little longer than it was. But the rest is just great, and I think H.P. Mendoza did an awesome job creating it. He’s definitely a director I wouldn’t mind letting adapt one of my stories or collaborate on a film together. And I don’t say that about a lot of directors.

Reborn City: Review #6

Posted: June 12, 2014 in Novel, Review, Writing
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Reborn City

This just in folks, Reborn City just got a new review on Amazon! This one comes from my mother, whose review I’ve been waiting to hear for some time. Now, I know what you’re thinking: his mother? It’s obviously a good review! Well, this is my mother. She can actually be a bit critical of my work if she thinks it isn’t up to snuff. I’m glad to say this time though she really liked this one. This review, which she gave 5 stars, goes like this:

This book was amazing. I really loved the story line, and especially the social lines of a post war society looking for answers. I did think that the “gang speak” was sometimes difficult to manuver [sic], but a fantastic story, all in all.

Thanks, Ima. I’m sorry you had a hard time with the gangster speak, though. I was hoping to make things a bit more authentic with the gang speak, but not everyone enjoyed it. Luckily the new edition I uploaded recently has a lot of grammar corrections and less gang speak, so it should be easier reading from now on.

If you are interested in reading RC, you can check it out on Amazon and on Smashwords. Currently the e-book is $1.99 until Saturday, so now’s the time to get it at a really good discount. And if you decide to read it, please let me know what you think when you’re done. Positive or negative, I love feedback (though I usually tend to get the former rather than the latter. Not sure if people are being nice or if they really like the stories sometimes).

Until next time, my Followers of Fear!

Snake: Published!

Posted: June 10, 2014 in Novel, Writing
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Snake

How far would you go for love and revenge?

I don’t know what I should be happier about: today’s my 21st birthday, it’s exactly two years from the day I began work on Snake, and it’s also the day that Snake has become available for the public. I think two of those are cause for public concern!

Anyway, I’d like to focus on the latter, if possible. I’m very excited to announce that Snake is now published and available in paperback and e-book. It should be, anyway: it always takes Amazon a while to get e-books on the same webpages as the paperback versions. So if you go onto Amazon and you don’t see the version you’d like immediately, please come back later and hopefully it’ll be there. (I’ll write another post when all the kinks are sorted through).

It’s still pretty amazing to me that two years of work is finally available to the public. I just hope the public wants to read it and enjoys it now that it’s out! And if you do decide to buy a copy of Snake, please let me know what you think once you’ve read it. Did you love it? Did you hate it? Did something strike you as totally weird or that made it hard for you to enjoy the book? Did you get turned off by the painting of a naked woman on the cover (if you did, then that might be judging a book by its cover)? Let me know. I love feedback, whether positive or negative (except when it comes from trolls).

Anyway, if you’d like to check Snake out, you can go to Amazon to get a copy. I hope you like it and thanks for checking it out. And if you’d like to know a bit more about Snake before checking it out, you can click here.

That’s all for now. I’ve got some work to do, so I’m going to get on that. Have a great day, my Followers of Fear.

Review: Maleficent

Posted: May 30, 2014 in Review
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For my first review upon returning from Europe, I’d like to do Maleficent, a retelling of the 1959 Disney film Sleeping Beauty. And like its predecessor, Maleficent has some storytelling problems. Emphasis on the “telling” in “storytelling”: during the course of the movie more is left to narration in this film than to actually showing us the exact events as they happen. So we basically skip over several of the formative events in Maleficent’s early life, and in King Stefan’s early life as well. The result is that we really don’t get to know the characters very well, We just see Maleficent go from sweet girl to young woman to angry witch, all in the course of maybe half an hour. We also don’t get to see Stefan’s development either, which would’ve made his character easier to understand and relate to.

And this is only the tip of the problems with the story here. I don’t want to go into great detail, but let’s just say the writing and the lack of characterization leave much to be desired, with huge plot holes and characters that are as two-dimensional as paper cut-outs and as unrelateable as them too. I know Disney made this film mostly to catch in on the trend of retelling old fairy tales for a new, modern audience (explaining why Once Upon a Time is heading into its fourth season and why Disney is doing retellings of Cinderella and a Cruella DeVil movie and Alice Through The Looking Glass, among others), but it wouldn’t have destroyed te studio to add maybe another forty to fifty minutes to a ninety-seven minute film and fill out those characters and plug up the plot holes.

Overall, I give Maleficent a 1.6 out of 5. Not even its good moments (few and far-between) are enough to redeem this film. Not even Angelina Jolie can fix it, and she’s an amazing actress! I really can’t wait to see how the guys at How It Should Have Ended decide to fix this film up. Because like I said, it’s not a very good film.

The One Diverse Character

Posted: May 28, 2014 in Reflections, Writing
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Diversity is a big thing these days. We need more diverse student bodies, more diverse workforces, and above all, more diverse casts in movies, books, and TV shows. And I don’t consider that a bad thing. On the contrary, diversity is a good thing, because it represents our diverse population and the many wonderful people on it.

However, I take issue when writers stick in a single minority character or one female character into the main cast and say, “Diversity element added”. Because that’s not diversity. That’s just being lazy. You see, a really diverse cast doesn’t just have a couple of characters you don’t usually see in these sort of stories. A really diverse cast has fully developed characters that grow and evolve over the course of the story, and they all come from many different backgrounds.

Take the main cast of Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier (I would’ve done Reborn City instead, but I have a strange feeling that more people have seen Captain America 2 than have read RC. Just a feeling, but it’s a strong one). In that movie, the four main characters have great depth, they do some growing in the movie, and we see sides to them that have not been revealed previously. Three of them also happen to be the exact opposite of the usual superhero protagonist, namely a white guy on the front lines. Black Widow is a woman and Falcon and Nick Fury are both black, but neither of those traits define them or are the main points to make them interesting.

Okay, the main points that make them interesting is their fighting abilities, cool gadgets, and the awesome things they can do, but that’s beside the point! There’s more to them than the fighting and what’s on the surface. They are all given a chance to grow in this film, and we really get a chance to know them. Natasha and Steve Rogers develop a relationship over the course of the film that swings between best friends and a sibling love for each other, while San Wilson becomes the one person who can relate to Rogers because of their shared experience. And Nick Fury, besides revealing information about himself that might have been a surprise to many fans, also had to question the organization he lead. Specifically, is it doing more harm than good? And is it worth it to keep SHIELD around?

All these characters are different from what might be or have been considered normal for superhero films, but that’s not what makes them great. What makes them great is that they have depth, they have growth, and whoever wrote the film didn’t feel that just because they were black or female that was character development enough!

So with the upcoming Batman vs. Superman film, they’ve apparently already cast Wonder Woman (who is obviously female) and Cyborg (who is black). I don’t know what sort of role they’ll have in this film (or in any sequels which will inevitably pop up), but I do hope that their characters are given as much time to develop and grow and reveal their hidden sides in the movies as the other characters. There’s a huge literature from which the writers can draw wonderful storylines from. I’d really like to see what they do.

And if they only focus on Wonder Woman’s being a woman or don’t give Cyborg enough treatment as a character, it’ll diminish my enjoyment of the film that much more.

So thanks for listening to my rant on the need for real diversity in our popular media. I’ve got a flight in a few hours, so I’ll write again when I can (though when that’ll be I have no idea). Have a lovely day, my Followers of Fear.

Reborn City: Six Months Since Publication

Posted: May 1, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Review, Writing
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Reborn City

It’s been exactly six months since Reborn City was released. I can’t believe how long it’s been since RC first came out. I’ve sold some copies, gotten five reviews, and I managed to get to the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Not bad for a first book.

For those of you who don’t know much about RC, the novel is the first in a trilogy. It tells the story of Zahara Bakur, a Muslim teenager living in a world that has emerged from the ashes of a third world war. The society she lives in is made up mostly of small nations and independent city-states, some of which are plagued with Islamaphobia due to the role certain terrorist groups played in the war. This includes Reborn City, where Zahara lives, and this hatred gets her parents killed. Soon afterwards, she is forced to join an interracial street gang, the Hydras, in order to repay one of the leaders, Rip, for saving her life. However things get worse after that: the leaders in the Hydras all have very strange powers, and there is a rumor it’s connected to the corporation that rules over Reborn City, the Parthenon Company. The decisions she and her new friends make will impact not only her life, but the lives of so many others.

And apparently people have enjoyed reading it. Check out some of these reviews:

This is not a genre I typically delve into, but I took this book on vacation and couldn’t put it down. The plot had me turning pages at quite the clip. The characters were unique and interesting and the imagery had me creating my own visual of what Rami’s interpretation of the future looked like. For first time novelist, Rami Ungar, this was an outstanding showing of talent and commitment to his passion of writing. Looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next!

Michele Kurland

Gangland violence, superhero-like enhancements, a futuristic setting, and social commentary that stems from a semi-post-apocalyptic theme. And then there’s a story where people come together as a family to deal with mutual loss and tragedy. What’s not to like?

Matthew Williams, author of Whiskey Delta and Papa Zulu

As a reader who does not read books in this genre, I must admit that I could not put down the book. I attribute this to the talent of the author. I am looking forward to reading the next books published by Ungar. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy action with features of supernatural powers and sci-fi.

Enji

And for the six-month anniversary, I’ve done some really awesome things. For one thing, I’ve uploaded a second edition, free of any editing or technical problems with the book (I hope). Secondly, I’ve put RC‘s ebook on sale. From today, May 1st, to May 31st, RC’s ebook will be available for $0.99. That’s two dollars lower than usual. Afterwards from June 1st to June 14th, RC will be available for $1.99.  So right now is the best time to get the e-book and see for yourself whether or not you like Zahara and the Hydras.

I wish I could say that the print paperback is also on sale. Regrettably though, Amazon controls that, not me. But you can still get the physical book for $8.80, which is a very good price for a book.

So if you decide to check out Reborn City, you can find it on Amazon and on Smashwords. If you’d like to read a bit of it before you do, you can read some of it by checking out this excerpt. And if you do decide to read RC, please let me know what you think. Write a review or leave a comment. Positive or negative, I really don’t care. I just want your feedback.

That’s all for now. I hope you all enjoy reading RC and I hope to do some editing on the sequel, Video Rage, this summer when I get back from Europe. Have a wonderful day, my Followers of Fear!

Review: “Jewel of the Thames” by Angela Misri

Posted: April 26, 2014 in Novel, Review, Writing
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I was very excited to read Angela’s first book (you should read my interview with her back in late March) and I’m sorry it took me so long to get through it. Now that I have, I have to say I had a lot of fun reading the first book of the Portia Adams adventures.

Jewel of the Thames is three stories (or “casebooks”) in one book, each detailing a different case young Portia Adams, a young woman with an inquisitive eye and a thirst for knowledge who moves to London from Toronto upon inheriting a very notorious property from some very distinguished ancestors. When she gets to London with her guardian Irene Jones and moves into 221B Baker Street (yes, you read that address right), she soon finds herself getting into some very interesting mysteries, each one more thrilling than the last, and all will have you scratching your head till the last page. Of course, the most interesting mystery will turn out to be Portia’s ancestry, and its resolution at the end of the book will leave you stunned. Or at least it did me, and I had an inkling on how the story would end.

I only had a few critiques on the story. One is that a couple of moments in the story, Angela uses more telling than she does showing. That’s not a huge problem, but I thought a little more showing would make the scenes a bit more real to me. Also, I would’ve liked to see more delving into the lives and personalities of the other characters, even those that only showed up for one or two pages. Portia’s the most developed of all the characters, and I’d like to know more about Constable Brian Dawes, or about Sergeant Michaels and Mr. Archer, or even that snooty girl from Portia’s class at Somerville (I’d love to see her mentioned in a sequel! Imagine if they became friends).

All in all, JotT is a wonderful book for mystery readers looking for an exciting new read and especially for fans of Sherlock Holmes stories, earning a 4.5 out of 5 from yours truly. I can’t wait to read the sequel.

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