K.M. Herkes

I write, I grow things, I camp and hike, I pacify cats, and I do a lot of research online and off. If our assorted alphabet-soup national security agencies really do monitor citizens based on keyword searches, then I'm probably on all of the criminal watch lists in existence.

Otherwise, I am mostly quiet with a thirty-percent chance of loud, and the rest is subject to change without warning. Professional development has included classroom teaching, animal training, aquaculture, horticulture, retail management, inventory operations, and customer service. Personal development is ongoing.

Follow the author’s quiet backwater blog, send tweets to @dawnrigger, and/or become a fan on Goodreads.com

Twitter: @dawnrigger
Facebook: Facebook profile
Wattpad: dawnrigger
Blog: http://storysculpting.blogspot.com/

• The Emperor's Finest (The Emperor's Finest #1) on Feb. 28, 2014
  
  Let me start with the good stuff: I enjoyed this book. It jumps right into a space opera plot plot based on an almost-British Empire-type navy Space Marine elements. The atmosphere of honor and bureaucracy was beautifully evoked from the first page. The characters are memorable and vividly described, they have full lives and real problems, and the action and battle descriptions are compelling. That would be 4 stars. Except. I stopped noting spelling and punctuation errors within the first chapter, the paragraph structure was often odd, with dialogue sometimes buried and sometimes not, and there were tons of awkward "saidisms." Things like, < “Way to go, Noble.” She snapped.> and really jarred me out of the reading flow. There are also distracting format issues. I downloaded epub & mobi, and both opened with an odd mix of single- and double-spacing that couldn't remedied in iBooks, SonyReader or Kindle. Formatting, punctuation errors and basic structural muddiness subtract stars from a recommendation. This would be a 2 rating, but it's free, and it's worth reading if you can tune out a lot to enjoy a good story.