Book Review: Mauria by Steve North

Synopsis

Ever wonder why we humans are constantly torn by love and hate, trust and fear, peace and war? Did all of our ancestors come from Mauria? In the spirit of Lord of the Rings and Avatar, author Steve North weaves an incredibly original, fascinating, and complex story of love, power, life and death -- that takes place before we existed on Earth. Mauria is . . . A gripping tale of two races, the Maurians and the Vuervee -- one the food supply of the other-and so different there can only be one shocking conclusion. An amazing and complex cast of characters, all unknowingly marching toward the same precipice. A wild ride on a cyclone of love, power, beauty, hate and greed-tamed only by fate . . . Ours. Steve North has written for countless television shows and films, and lives in Los Angeles. He has also appeared on many daytime and evening talk shows and been profiled in the Wall Street Journal. Mauria is his first novel.

Review

Overall Feedback: At first this was hard to get into as I had to get used to the language and it uses. Once I was able to find the pattern of speach and get a basic understanding of the uses of wording it became a pageturner. As a first novel this would be a fair break into becoming a great author but just needs some fine tuning around description.

Point of View: The story unfolds from many characters viewpoints but ties together nicely at the end. I must warn that you will have to try and keep up with the differing viewpoints of which can become confusing during the initial reading.

Voice: This is where the author excels the most. He gives all of his characters great voice that compels the reader to forge ahead.

Character Development: If you focus on every character you will find some under developed but for the most part the characters grow and chage just as the story does.

Plot: Here is where a reader may get lost as the initial plot does not seem to fit about half way through. But Steve does a fine job of catching the disparity and bringing it back to the focus of the story.

Dialogue: This is another area that the author excels. He has had obvious experience with dialogue and using it to move the story from character to character.
Pacing: Initially the pacing slows the reader but eventually picks up to close out the book and leaving the reader wanting to know more.

Setting: Here I find myself at a bit of a loss. Going by the description of the book I would have thought that the author would have tried to tie humanity in with both races in the book (of which I saw him showing that each race displayed 1 part of what it is to be human) but I could not find this in the story. The technological experience of the Maurians should have been lessor than our own but I guess imagination does not have to explain all.

Continuity: There seems to be some things left out. Such as, what the meanings of Maurian time, money and other things are. How they are tabulated. I found myself a bit confused on these areas but they do not remove from the story as the reader can make a best guess.

Where to Find
Amazon