Eyes Behind Belligerence by KP Kollenborn

Title: Eyes Behind Belligerence
Author: K.P. Kollenborn
Available from: Amazon

I received a copy of this book from the author, with a request for review.

I have little patience with books that are poorly written and full of errors. I can tolerate a few here and there, but the errors in this book seem to get worse as the story progresses. It’s as if someone got tired of proofreading after the first couple of chapters and decided it wasn’t necessary to even try with the rest of the book. The more I read, the more difficult it was to differentiate between errors and what the author thinks is clever prose, but it all has the same end result: there were times when I had no idea what the author was trying to say. For example:

His face was young, as if a toddler with his eyes remaining close to his short nose.

I have absolutely no idea what that’s supposed to mean. It doesn’t make sense to me, it doesn’t help me picture the person being described and I don’t find it clever in any way.

Her slacks tightly squeezed her curvy thighs, revealing three large buttons.

I don’t even know what to make of this sentence. Her thighs had three large buttons, or her jeans? And what do the buttons have to do with her curvy thighs?

A reader shouldn’t have to decode a book.

I got 20% into the book and these types of errors were just getting worse, not better. This is the second book in a month I haven’t finished because I found the incompetent writing and lack of editing rendered an otherwise good story absolutely unreadable. I really wish self-published authors would not excuse themselves from the editing process.

Someone may be willing to slog through it to extract the essence of this story, but in my opinion it’s like squeezing a thousand oranges and getting a teaspoon of juice. The book has a good story to tell and characters that are interesting, but unless and until it is professionally edited, I cannot recommend it.