September is upon us and with it my thoughts on the next five books for the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off.  For more details on the first five books drawn check out this post.   My thoughts on the first five are here.  I am intending to read 20% of each book and if one really grabs my attention to carry on and complete that particular book.  At the end of the six months I should hopefully have read six books, one from each batch, and will then choose a favourite.

Without further ado here are my thoughts:

Gobln Fruit by S E Burr

This one gets off to a promising start.  I enjoyed what I read up to the 20% cut off point however I think it’s probably a little too slow in terms of pace, especially given the length of the story, probably a little bit too much focus on certain elements that don’t really bring too much to the story.  Otherwise I would say that I found this to be quite good up to the point at which I cut off.

Search of the Lost by Tom Gaskin

Search of the Lost – I had a shaky start with this one to be honest.  I really enjoyed the opening which has a great ‘storyteller’ feel to it but then I lost interest a little with the fight scene and the whole predicament that Havovatch found himself in.  Then there was the scene with the King which just felt irrational somehow.  Part of me is intrigued by the story and can’t help wanting to keep reading to see how things develop but I have read the first 20% and at this stage it unfortunately hasn’t worked hard enough for me to put it through to the next stage.

War Witch by Layla Nash

I’m really enjoying this one so far, I like the concept and I’m intrigued by the characters.  I’ll review this one later as this is my favourite out of this batch and I intend to complete it and see how it works out.

Land of the Gods by Justin Sloan

This story seems to have plenty going on at the start and yet I found myself strangely disconnected from the characters and I think they came across as quite emotionally immature, at least up to the point I read up to.  I quite enjoyed the setting and description of place, it wasn’t overburdened with wordiness but overall I found it difficult to become engaged with the characters at this stage.

The Devil You Know by Alan Tucker

A post apocalyptic style book with magic and aliens.  I think the writing here is good, the story flows well, but, I didn’t really get a good sense of the place at this point and to a certain extent maybe a little bit too much is going on.  I liked the aspect of Abraham and his ‘demon’ companion (for want of a none spoiler type description).  Neri – I found her magic a bit too conveniently easy and that it lacked that certain something that would make me feel intrigued.