Mike Sullivan

22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards   Entry Title Slaibron: A World Apart Author: M.T. Sullivan Judge Number: 15 Entry Category: Genre Fiction   Books are evaluated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “needs improvement” and 5 meaning “outstanding”. This scale is strictly to provide a point of reference, it is not a cumulative score and does not reflect ranking.   *If you wish to reference this review on your website, we ask that you cite it as such: “Judge, 22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards.” You may cite portions of your review, if you wish, but please make sure that the passage you select is appropriate, and reflective of the review as a whole.   In some cases, you may see special or out of place characters/symbols in your commentary. For example, you may see that a character/symbol replaces an apostrophe, copyright, and other "symbols". These substitutions occur for various reasons – and are unavoidable. They are often [programming] misinterpretations due to encoding, installed fonts, web based content/sources etc. Since the “content”[data] of the commentary is comprised of data sent from several different computers (programs, fonts etc.,) and from the internet (online entry system), you may at times see an interpretation of what had been an apostrophe, dash, quotation mark etc.     Structure, Organization, and Pacing: 5   Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar: 5   Production Quality and Cover Design: 5   Plot and Story Appeal: 5   Character Appeal and Development: 5   Voice and Writing Style: 5   Judge’s Commentary*:   SLAIBRON: A WORLD APART by M. T. Sullivan is an engrossing story filled with wonder, adventure, romance, and intrigue. In short, SLAIBRON has it all for the reader who loves fantasy. The cover art is intriguing. It took me a moment to notice the character's green corn rows! The images made me want to investigate the story. So the cover does its job well. I really like the gorgeous photo of a forest on the back. I also like the back cover copy. It encourages the reader to choose this story over some of its competition. The warnings in the box are a nice touch since it's not evident that this book would contain adult language, etc. Since the book’s cover has a young adult feel, this is a great way to keep from getting complaints from irate parents. The author is very skillful with dialogue. It's vivid enough that I could easily visualize the characters by speech alone. I could see this story being adapted to film. This is a deep story with lots of excellent conflicts and the protagonist must make many critical decisions, each guaranteeing a different outcome. Yet I found the story to be fun. I enjoyed it. Nice work.