On The Evil Scale by Yza-Dora - Book Review

On The Evil Scale, by Yza-Dora

Keeper of La Tecla, Book 2

Published:  Amazon Kindle eBooks, July 4, 2015

Pages: 397 PDF

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Epic, Adventure

Source: Author

A year has passed and the young woman/Keeper, Yzavela, returns from her trip to Ireland with new skills. The tension between the vampires and werewolves at Ravenstone is growing and the situation is becoming more chaotic than she can handle. She must also deal with the horrific creatures known as Boar-wolves that kidnap her best friend’s little sister. After putting together a rescue party and destroying the creatures, unknown to everyone, another threat from the Great City is beginning to spread on a larger scale, causing destruction everywhere.

And now, even the peaceful sanctuary of Ravenstone will be affected. The Keeper gathers a small army of five hundred men, vampires, and werewolves to aid her in the fight against the evil that has materialized from the Great City. After the war ends, with the necromancer's death, and that of his brother and minions, difficult decisions are made to save Yzavela's life. Her vampire husband, Erik, had promised to turn her in the event of a crisis, and he fulfills his promise turning her not only into an average vampire … but his alpha matriarch.

When she returns to Ravenstone, how will they react when they find out that their Keeper has been turned into one of the most dangerous and vicious race of all?

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Yza-Dora’s second book in the Keeper of La Tecla series also comes in at a hefty 397 pages of magic, mayhem, and amazingly earnest goodness.

Yzavela and her mother return from nearly a year in Ireland, learning about the uses of herbs and witch lore, only to find things at Ravenstone in something of an uproar.  Yzavela, as Keeper at Ravenstone, must regain control over the situation in a magical place where several paranormal races exist together in a curious balance partly mediated by the Keeper.

Between the vampire-werewolf issues, boar wolves, and the onslaught of the red death from the Great City, there’s a lot going on here.  I really enjoyed this quite amazing story of Yzavela’s efforts to come into her own as Keeper at Ravenstone. She’s a brave, self-assertive young woman with a strong sense of herself which is expressed very clearly throughout the entire book.

This is a compendium of possibly every paranormal and magical thing all rolled into one with high tech and steam punk bits, set in the tone of high moral ground. So, this is a great role model/example for younger readers and a highly entertaining read, though the ending gets somewhat violent with war, changes in Yzavela, and generally more violent language.

The book has a number of structural irregularities. POV is quite irregular; in one example, Yzavela is talking about the activities of others in another city using “I”, or from her point of view in scenes where she is not present. To me, these should be omniscient. Sentence structure is a little irregular as well as it loosens out to a sort of rambling dialogue in some places. There are some incorrect word forms/homonyms (click/clique, fowl/foul), misplaced commas, and some typos. As well, I think for the age level I understand the book to be, “mommy” sounds too young to me; I’d use “mom”. So, I think the book would benefit quite a lot from some editing.

I think this is a very enthusiastic and talented story teller but she needs to slow down and focus on correct sentence structure, word forms, etc. Possibly the book was written in a bit of a hurry, or just that it’s quite long and a lot to keep control over. However, these structural issues didn’t keep me from enjoying it!

For epic story-telling and sheer positive enthusiasm, I give On The Evil Scale 4 stars. My thanks to the author for a reading copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

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