KD Rose: Author Tales: New Review and Author Interview for the Erasing series!

Thursday, May 1, 2014

New Review and Author Interview for the Erasing series!

New review of Erasing: Shadows and author interview! I've quoted the review below but check out the website to see the review *and* the interview!
http://bookie-monster.com/2014/05/blog-tour-erasing-shadows-by-k-d-rose-review-interview-and-giveaway.html
Review from Bookie-monster.com

Review

"I would like to thank Bewitching Book Tours and K.D. Rose for allowing us to be a part of this tour.

What would you do if your toddler started to disappear right before your eyes? Literally, one body part at a time just vanishing? Chances are I would slip right off the deep end! As a mother, losing one of my kids was always (and probably always will be) one of my greatest fears. And while Mira Ross does freak out over her three year old just vanishing… she knows a thing or two about where he got off to.

At first, I had some trouble wrapping my mind around what was going on. Michael and Mira Ross, along with their friends the “High Five Gang”, can travel to the astral plane. Even though most of them have not traveled in ten years, they are all willing to start again to save little Brandon. What starts as a simple search and rescue turns into a race to save someone’s life. It brings their friends and family closer together.

This isn’t the first book I’ve read about traveling to another plane of existence; but it’s definitely one of the most unique! The astral world is the same as the real world, yet it’s not. There are dangers all around (be sure not to step in the holes) and the scenery of the world changes with the mood of the person creating that world. The world building is exceptional and you can almost feel the changes happening as the astral world is changed over and over. My only criticism would be that the reader is sort of thrown into this travel with no basic background of what it really means. There are bits and pieces of information throughout the book, such as being able to travel “full body” as opposed to just having your spirit or soul there (but it wasn’t thoroughly explained, so maybe it’s just an image of the person traveling). But how would people appear differently? And then there is mention that people who travel full body “feel” different when they touch people in the astral world; are they solid as opposed to not quite solid? And I would have liked to have a little more background on the High Five Gang; you really do have to infer a lot about the friendships/relationships there. They’ve been friends since childhood (and are now in their 30′s), they have traveled extensively between the worlds together, but most of them stopped about ten years ago to settle down; with the exception of Michael’s brother, Jonathan. he continued to travel and learn more about traveling and the worlds from Stu. I would have liked to learn more about Stu, but perhaps his story is for another book (based on a conversation he has with Michael’s mother). And then there is Michael’s mother. Her characters transformation through the story is one of the best. We learn so much about her and why she has the relationship with her son/daughter-in-law that she has. But, as always, there is a fine line that an author has to walk in the first book of a series. You don’t want t lay all the cards out on the table, because then what will you learn by reading the rest of the series? I think Ms. Rose laid an excellent foundation for this series. I am hopeful that a lot of questions will be answered as we “travel” on more adventures with this group.

Even having felt a bit lost at times, overall I think this was a great story. The imagination that went into creating this world and mode of travel is beyond anything I have seen in quite some time. The characters, while not developed to their full potential, keep you engaged and wanting to learn more about them. I am definitely going to be “author stalking” on this one to find out when the next book is available!"

No comments:

Post a Comment

KIRKUS Review of Inside Sorrow

In 11 bare-bones, free verse poems, Rose (Heavy Bags of Soul, 2012) refines a yearslong grieving process into a heartbreakingly potent distillate of sorrow.“I am at a loss,” declares Rose’s bereft narrator after her husband’s death. Ostensibly referring to her uncertainty about what to do with his belongings, the narrator is also confronting an existential fact; she has arrived at loss and seemingly has nowhere else to go. This technique—the evocation of loss on one level to imply an unspeakably more profound loss beneath—is one Rose frequently employs. She writes that “No one ever thinks of tragedy / the other way around / when nothing is left but shoes,” noticing that the “space between my fingers / is ever present. / At any moment, / small slivers,” and other fingers will never interlace with hers again. The sparseness of her verse—often a single beat or two per line—borders on gaunt and serves to codify the body’s and psyche’s inward collapses under the weight of grief, the instinctively protective drawing inward until “we are balled up in the fetal position.” She also structurally simulates the simultaneous, and paradoxical, scattering of self that accompanies a loss of this magnitude. Upon her husband’s death, she is at once “a wall” with “no door,” “the I’s that must witness” and the peripatetic who has “been bleeding out / all over the house. / I can walk / up and down the stairs / tens of times.” The difficulty of relationships—“So much compromise / when it comes to another”—urges her to acknowledge that “some part should feel like freedom / it should feel like freedom / it should,” yet what she finds is that his absence has become a violation of self: “Sorrow has left me naked / in a way I couldn’t have imagined, / leaving my life open to all. / Every nook and cranny.” The recovery of self, the poems reveal, is a long and always incomplete process. Though slightly marred by a handful of prosaic moments, the overall force of these poems is such that lines as simple as “I see a blue sky today. / It seems like a triumph” will, in context, shock readers with their cathartic power. Startlingly touching poetry; be prepared to step inside the sorrow.

Reviews of Inside Sorrow

"This book is a gift to anyone who is dealing with the grief of a loved one,
whether recent or past, and without a doubt will bring them comfort." Danielle Marie, Amazon.com

“Inside Sorrow” is a stellar little book of poems..." Erica Lovett, Goodreads

"K.D. Rose has captured the internal world of grief in a way that very few people
share - the parts that western civilization tells us to suck up and move on, as
if the death of a loved one has no bearing on who we are, that grief doesn't
change us, that life must go on at breakneck speed." K.J. Pierce, Amazon.com

5 Stars

“This book is for girls. This book is for women. This is a book to empower females from teenagers through adults.” I Am: Poetry In Motion by K.D. Rose is not what I expected; a pleasant surprise and a fresh twist on the self-help book genre. I absolutely love the pictures that accompany each poem and writings. They are not merely for you to look at. They definitely capture the vital messages that we should embrace rather than ignore. You will definitely want to look at them more consciously, and the meaning of each picture will resonate in your mind.

It touches on every subject that the female sex is familiar with: what is the perception of beauty in today’s world, limitations that society often impose on women, women’s status in politics and so much more. There is something for everyone, and everything is layered with deep yet clear words of inspiring encouragement. This book is good, not because of the above-mentioned issues we females have to face, but because it softly compels us to confront them. I gravitated to one of the poems, the melancholic and alluring Vinyl Lines – “We are vinyl lines / We have our own groove / We require diamonds / We scratch easily / We cascade melodies.”
K.D. Rose gives us a book with a compelling message that will change the way we see life. Forty-four pages of pure, poignantly beautiful, and thought-provoking empowerment. To all my fellow females, I Am: Poetry In Motion is invigorating and engaging. It is definitely for us." Reviewed by Lit Amri for Readers Favorite

Heavy Bags of Soul 4 Stars

"Heavy Bags of Soul" paints a rather dour picture of the modern world. In this engaging collection of poems and prosody is chronicled the trials and pitfalls of an oppressive world that is as absurd as it is tiring. Yet despite this dim outlook on life the book does offer a sense of hope and unity that serves to offset the nihilism of the main theme. Woven throughout the collection - most notable in the author’s modernizations of the classic Socratic dialogue - this theme of unity maintains that although the road of life is an exhaustive one and that all on that road are laden with their own heavy bags, everyone is in this together and only through tackling the challenges of this world together, only through tapping the resources of the equally heavy bags of soul, will everyone can make it through. Structurally, the aforementioned Socratic dialogues are just one of a variety of literary forms through which the collection’s themes are conveyed. The genre utilized here include both metered and free verse, terse maxims, essays on pop philosophy and cultural movement, and even the occasional bon mot as a punctuation point. This mix of literary formats not only manages to show each and every topical point in a number of different lights, but also challenges the readers who must themselves view each literary format in its own light. Also challenging is the author’s trust in her readers’ intelligence. Though not outwardly acknowledged, that trust is implicit in the author’s habit of using the most diverse and arcane cultural references possible. Citing sources that extend in relevance from Greek taxonomy through quantum physics and on to Top 40 Radio, the topical references may at times have readers wishing they had Wikipedia on speed dial, but do provide for an entertaining, esoteric and intellectually stimulating read."