Review of The Wall
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- Peace Odii
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Review of The Wall
During a funeral, everyone has something to say, and it is mostly good. There's also this one person or persons who, though they may not speak up, don't feel the same as the rest. Sometimes, it may even be a family member. This is the scene we see play out as we begin our journey down the pages of this historical fiction, The Wall, by Rex Conley.
The book opened up to a memorial service held in honor of Elijah Whitefeather, who named himself Charlie. Daniel, one of the attendants, was used as a medium to give us access to what Charlie's life was like. He had been with Charlie at the hospital, as they had spent their time discussing issues. Daniel was asking questions, and Charlie was answering. They discussed issues ranging from love, marriage, heroes, Charlie's military days, etc. What were Charlie's military days like? What was his past like? Was he all holy or has a sinister past? The answers to these questions were unveiled on the pages of this book.
The writer, I must say, did a good job in his writing. Although he started clumsily, he found balance later on. There are a series of things I admire and love here. Firstly, I loved how he wrote the story from different perspectives, allowing us to travel through time. It gives you the feeling that you somehow telepathically accessed someone's mind and traveled down the person's memory lane or even sit with grandpa as he tells tales of his youth. Also, I liked his descriptive skills. He had a way of painting pictures with words to make look like you were actually present at the scene. When you read the words, your imagination does the rest for you. Furthermore, he's good at maneuvering the "showing and telling" highways; he knew when to do which.
This is good, well-documented writing, but some things should be corrected to improve the book's readability. One of the things that stood out to me as a negative factor was that in an attempt to be creative and descriptive, he made the beginning parts boring and stale. Another thing was that he was pretty inconsistent in his writing style, thereby creating confusion. At one time, he wrote in the first-person perspective, and at another time, it's in the third-person perspective. I believe this writing style would have been a nice creative thing if he had ensured proper transition.
Furthermore, his method of introducing characters was sometimes confusing and not very enticing. Again, he showed a series of inconsistencies in his assigning names to his characters. At one point, he was Daniel, and at another point, he was Danny. These inconsistencies were not reasonable, as it leaves me wondering whether it's a new character or another character.
I will give this a rating of 3 out of 4 stars owing to the initial clumsiness of the plot and the challenges I found. This book still appears professionally edited, but another round of editing will be needed to boost the excellent experience. I recommend this book to everyone that enjoys historical fiction or grandpa tales. Also, if you enjoy stories about war and military scenarios, then read this book.
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The Wall
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