READER'S ROCK LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE VOL 2 ISSUE 4 NOVEMBER 2014 Vol. 1 Issue 9 March 2014 | Page 15

AUTHOR J.C. ALLEN
WHITE JADE
by Alex Lukeman
What it’s about: An ex-Marine, Nick Carter, full of
emotional and physical scars from the Afghan war and
previous conflicts, is now working with a covert
Presidential squad called The Project. He is assigned to
investigate the murder of a billionaire by a mysterious
Chinese group. He discovers they are after a 2000-yearold book which supposedly reveals the secret of
immortality. He teams up with the murdered man’s
daughter and together they must stop the group before
they seize power of the largest military force in the
world.
Look/design: The cover is well-done, although a bit
plain. I love the scuffed metal background and the gun
and gunsight graphic. It’s very appropriate to the genre
– quickly and efficiently broadcasting what to expect
from this book. I would like to see something more eyecatching and spectacular, so I’m rating it 18/20.
Editing/formatting: The first thing that struck me
when I opened the book was more than an inch of blank
space on each side of the page. That’s a LOT of empty
space! And to make it more conspicuous, the top and
bottom margins were only about a quarter-inch. It
bothered me enough to subtract a point. It slightly bugs
me that the page numbers are on the right-hand side of
each page instead of alternating on the outside edges,
but not enough to deduct points.
I expect occasional typos, misspelled words, and
missed punctuation, but noticed very few. The only
thing troubling me was the lack of dialog attribution in
places. I understand wanting to avoid boring the reader
with the constant ‘he said/she said’ tags, but there were
several places where I was unclear who was speaking,
and had to backtrack to figure it out. I hate being taken
out of the story, and took off two points. Otherwise, the
grammar and flow of the narrative was superb.
Excellent language use and sentence structure made the
story fluid and kept it moving at a great pace. I never
stumbled once over the meaning of a sentence. Bravo!

My only other suggestion would be to list his other
books and perhaps include a chapter from each. Rating:
17/20.
Content: I’ll preface this critique by saying I put
military thrillers close to the bottom of my preferred
genre list. Having divulged that fact, I loved this story!
Part of my enjoyment was because the tale included
some ancient history, and part due to the complex
political struggles, and also because it had an element
of ‘Indiana Jones’ to it. It was intriguing and exciting
from start to finish without resorting to ‘superhero’
tactics where the protagonist accomplishes everything
while suffering 50 bullet wounds, two amputations, and
a liver transplant. I personally prefer more realistic
characters and action scenes, and this book delivered.
There was no Superman – just an average Joe doing his
best. OK, maybe a well-trained GI Joe.
This author has an amazing talent for description. The
images were all vividly painted, except the love scenes
(which I personally would rather be left to my
imagination) – they came off as slightly awkward. The
physical settings and action accounts were well
portrayed and I could picture them playing through my
mind like a movie while reading. Mr. Lukeman did not
attempt to overwhelm the reader with his technical
knowledge, although given his military background,
I’m sure he has it. The only weakness in the entire story
was the language descriptions, and I doubt they could
have been explained without becoming too much of a
distraction to the story itself.
The background and history were well-laid. The
characters each had their own feel, except the villains.
Some of the scoundrels were not completely fleshed out
and I found a couple to be rather bland or cliché,
although not enough to deduct more than one point.
The plot was very smooth. It kept moving forward in a
believable manner. I could find no major holes or
inconsistencies. I had a few questions, but nothing