Showing posts with label history mystery books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history mystery books. Show all posts

Tuesday 25 August 2015

Fact or Fiction by History Mystery Books

I've downloaded this book as a freebie during a kindle give-away and that's why it was lucky to get a 3 star review. It was badly written, research was just plucked out of the air without quoting many sources and full of errors. The writer is hiding behind History Mystery books and I haven't found a way to contact him directly, so unusually my editing issues were mentioned in the review.

fact or Fiction by History Mystery Books on Amazon.com

This was a book I was very much looking forwards to reading. I have an interest in vampire myths, especially before fiction got its hands on it. The author has certainly put a lot of effort in researching his topic, going back as far as Egyptian and biblical times to get to the root of the vampire myth. My problem is how it was presented. The writer often mistakes cannibalism as a start of the vampire myth. I also thought some of the views were contradictory, such as the mention that vampires were not really mentioned before the Middle Ages, but then taking it back to the Egyptian myth of Osiris (which according to Wikipedia has nothing to do with vampirism.) I would have liked the author to have mentioned where he found his sources, as he claims to establish whether vampires are fact or fiction. You can do two things with a book like this, be meticulous with your research and really get to the root of the vampire myth,(quoting sources etc.) or just have fun with all that is being said and written about vampires. I think this book succeeds at neither. I also think that the book will benefit from a good edit. The sentences are long and rambling and there are still a lot of mistakes, but this can be amended and has not influenced my rating.