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Monday, April 8, 2019

[Mrs. Y Reviews] Skyjack by K.J Howe

Book Cover via Amazon.com
Amid all of the crises in the world, Action and Adventure fiction can make my day better. Today I am going to review a book that is heavy on the action and adventure, as well as tells a tale of tolerance and understanding. Gather up your tray tables, turbulence is nasty, be sure to have some orange juice and whatever you do, get many train tickets when you get to Bucharest. It’s time for a review of “Skyjack” by K.J Howe. 

Opinion

I want to thank K.J Howe’s fantastic team for contacting me about reviewing this book. They were so kind, they sent me a free copy to read, and I appreciate that I was considered for an honest review. Specifically, any author who has a real team of great people to help them out is a lucky writer indeed in my opinion.

To begin let me go into the first impressions of the book, and that has to do with the prologue.  It wasn’t an info dump if anything it was well done and I liked reading it. So much so, I was thrilled to start reading the book, and I found that the prologue had set the tone correctly and made me happy.  I enjoyed the way that it made sense to the book. My only minor critique, I felt that later on, this beautiful prologue was diminished when it was then discussed in exposition. I wouldn't say I like how that was handled, it almost felt that reading the prologue was utterly unnecessary, but I still loved the prologue. This is one of my critiques, so that shall segway us into the next one.

Specifically, this critique comes from the “Story Structure, Foundation, and Presentation” portion of my scoring. Specifically, there isn’t any indenting on the first paragraphs of chapters, there are no spaces between paragraphs on the e-copy, and there are loads of giant walls of unbending text. This isn’t a huge problem, but it does tire the eyes out great, and it doesn’t look very posh.

Now, all of that aside from my friends, here is what I want to talk about and that is what I love about “Skyjack.” One thing I didn’t know, this is the second in a series. I was able to read it out of context to the first book, and I was fine with it. So if you are worried if you can pick up “Skyjack” without the first book, the answer is yes. I was able to follow along well.

Do you love fun characters who can be both serious and light gave a situation? I do. Do you enjoy characters that are well thought out and enjoyable despite a conflict? Well, I do as well. The good news is that this book has some of the best characters developed for these given situations I’ve ever seen. I’m going to do my utmost not to give spoilers. There was a lot to love about this book, but I narrowed it down to the three things I enjoyed the most, and I wanted to be sure you all understand where I am coming from.

First I enjoyed that such a pressing and important issue with hate crimes and terrible discrimination was handled very well in the book. The characters that are involved on all sides are well represented, there isn’t a weird slant in my opinion on any of them, and I enjoyed how the plot moved. Also, the character of Fatima is terrific. I love her so much, and I hope we can see more characters like her. She’s the heart of the story in my opinion. Everything from her description to her warmth is amazing and transcends the page to me. I think we as a people can always learn from characters like her about the struggles of choosing things, and what it means to our beliefs. I enjoyed her in the plot she was in, and my heart broke for her as things came to a head in her portion of the story. No joke, I cried for her plight, and it takes much work to make me cry over a plot twist like this, but I couldn’t help it.

Let me praise “Skyjack” for the beautiful editing job on the story and plot points. I know much work went into this book to keep things moving and tightly set with the plot. I know this because I could feel it in how seamless the book read when it came to transitions. I can also give high praise to all of the research put into the story. I know that there was much work done on the subjects involved with the CIA and government stuff, and I’m not sure if it’s all accurate or not, but frankly, I don’t care. I didn’t feel compelled to research it independently because it sounded logical and legitimate enough to keep my believability. That’s not always easy to do in writing fiction. Sometimes writers pull things out of the aether, and it doesn’t translate well, which makes me want to research things independently, so I am grateful that wasn’t the case here.

Lastly, I think K.J deserves high praise for the discussion on diabetes. I know that as a disease it’s lumped into things often, but very rarely do you see it used well in a story. I think the last time I recall any story using type 1 diabetes well within the parameters was “Godfather 3” which isn’t saying much. In this case, what I enjoyed was that the character who has it had very well established rules to live within not only for the story but also for their parameters. I didn’t view the use of Type 1 Diabetes as inappropriate, nor that it was contrived nor did I feel it was added unnecessary pressure in the tension of the story. For the portions where it was the most important, I loved what was done with it, and I think that is commendable. If you have a character with a major flaw such as a disease, it helps when the subject is well used, and the information on the ins and outs are done with precision.

Score

With all of this in mind, “Skyjack” earned an 82/100 from me and that’s a 4-star review on Goodreads and Amazon.com. If you are interested in some original action adventure with heart and soul, this may be the perfect read for you.

I want to thank K.J Howe’s team once again for sending me this book, and I hope you all have a fantastic day!