Another Broken Wizard
Colin Dodds
2 Stars
Colin Dodds gives us a glimmer of a story here, but it falls flat for many reasons. The biggest of these is personal growth. The ebook itself was formatted well and I didn’t catch too many spelling/grammatical errors that ripped me out of the story.
The story revolves around two friends, Jim and Joe. Jim is your typical small town boy moved on. He leaves Massachusetts, gets a job in New York City and things are going well. Until he is laid off and he returns to his hometown to take care of his father who is having open heart surgery. Joe is the friend who stayed behind, never growing up from the drugs an alcohol induced fog that was his high school and early twenties years.
From the get go, it is hard to see Jim even making a half-hearted attempt at his actual responsibilities of life. He spends more time drinking and doing drugs with Joe than he spends contending with his father’s needs, which don’t seem to be much even after the surgery. Jim’s inability to have any integrity in his personal relationships is disappointing.
Joe is just a train wreck, and SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He crashes HARD, no big surprise really.
There are a few shimmers of light and profoundness, but they are grossly overshadowed by the complete foolishness of the scenes that play out.
It took nearly the entire book to get to this shining passage: “You can interpret and re-interpret what happens to you. But reality only lets you get away with so much.” Maybe the author should have led with this line and let reality have a bit freer hand in the rest of the prose.
Honestly, disappointed and glad it was free from a mailing list I was on.
Father, Author, Blogger, Publisher 