Location: United States
Member Since: Aug. 08, 2011

Jack DeTate

Smashwords book reviews by Jack DeTate

  • Coventina on Aug. 25, 2012

    I completely enjoyed Coventina. Denise, Layla, the Legionnaires, Coventina, Lucilla and Aja, are delightfully charming, affirmational and down to earth(I’m laughing here) at the same time. They’re like people I encounter every day. I relate to their perspectives on dealing with each other in a genuine, personal manner, their ability to see value in surrendering to life, with its imperfect situational harmony, while avoiding the trap of selling out to cynical, material greed. The Cartel of exploitive, avaricious manipulators was, on the other hand, in a chilling way, all too real. The dichotomy between these two groups of people represents the struggle we are in, globally, today. I'm not a fan of fantasy, but was immediately caught up the story, because it projects a concrete sense of the complex world we are in & the imperfect nature of options we have, to preserve and evolve our identity and place in the cosmos.
  • DeniseZen on Sep. 03, 2012

    The adventures of DeniZen and Layla are exciting and entertaining. I was running Google Maps, in a seperate browser window, so I could get a better sense of their travels and what they were seeing. At some point, I became facinated with the concise, neatly packaged way the story was being told. The way each chapter or two, has been put together as a complete set of events adds to the enjoyment, in the same way that a good mini-series is a sequence of selfcontained stories, with familiar themes that frame them and add the flavor. Thank you for the fine work.
  • Mylaren on Feb. 11, 2014

    MylAren The thing I like best about the Denise Zen adventures is their pace and purpose. They hit the ground running. In a world where reality is more bazaar than science fiction, it’s not easy to engage the imagination time after time, with any sense of comfortable continuity and heart pounding urgency. DZ adventures do just that. They are serial novels, with a thread of good vs evil, us against them and time is running out. It’s a little like running into old friends who always have exciting things to talk about whenever you see them, and you end up spending the day together. Mylaren, the latest installment of DZ adventure, picks up where Coventina leaves off and is instantly familiar and engaging. The cast of characters, the surroundings and the circumstances come to life in a way that is like waking up to the morning at a friend’s house, complete with familiar sounds and smells. Good work Jamie.