The Wrong Choice
by Luke Jackson
Zany Books
ISBN 9780984160372
$14.95 Paperback
.99 cents Kindle
156 Pages
I have to admit that I’m not usually a fan of historical fiction that takes place in time of war. Battle scenes and descriptions of armory bore me, but I decided to give Luke Jackson’s book, The Wrong Choice, a read mainly because I’ve been researching the Civil War a lot lately for a project of my own. I thought reading something else from that genre might help or inspire me.
The Wrong Choice centers around Jean-Pierre, a French Canadian student, who has agreed to spy for the Confederacy believing the Confederates will help free Quebéc from its English oppressors if the Confederate army wins the war. Posing as a reporter, Jean-Pierre witnesses a first hand account of what its like to be a Civil War Soldier. Distraught by the everyday scene of death and destruction, he begins to question if he’s made the right choice or not.
This book is basically his reporting and presents a nice point of view from an outsider. Jean-Pierre becomes caught up in several small story lines which cause him to stray from his main goal, including a love interest in a Kentucky girl who he meets after following a Confederate deserter in the hills. Civil War buffs will enjoy following Jean-Pierre on his journey because Jackson has penned several historical locales into his book. From the Battle of Bull Run to Shiloh, to a raft trip down the Mississippi echoing the tales of Twain and then a trip through New Orleans on a steamboat, setting plays a huge part in this book as the war plays out. I was impressed with the lead character and not bored by his travels or descriptions of the war taking place before him, and felt the “coming of age” tone to Jean was well written.
However, that cannot be said for the physical book itself. It could use a complete overhaul as far as editing and formatting goes. The front cover is a drab brown color and contains a grainy black and white picture of a solider camp. The blurb on the back cover is fuzzy and contains a red wavy line under one of the words from where Microsoft Word thought the word was misspelled. There’s also a blue cursor that’s been captured in the text from where the blurb was probably copied and pasted as a picture. The first page of the book serves as a title page and copyright page, and also contains the word count. There are no page numbers throughout the entire book. And the right margin has not been justified.
Also, there are black and white images throughout the book which add a nice touch when they were used to introduce chapters and were high resolution. There is a picture of barges on the river and of an old depot that I found to be mesmerizing and really set the tone for that part of the story. However, there are also stock photos, probably from Word, such as cartoon images of arrows, music notes, and letters scattered in the text which feel like anomalies, serve no important purpose in the story, and only distract the reader.
Overall, I think The Wrong Choice is a good read, and just suffers from too many wrong choices as far as formatting and design goes. With an extreme rework, new cover art, and good manuscript formatting, this book could have quite a “historical” impact.
Tweet This Post 
Buzz This Post 
Delicious 
Digg This Post 
Facebook 
MySpace 
Reddit 
Stumble This Post
New Comments