Contemporary Authors

• Stone Seeds - 2016 Urbane Publications, Kent, United Kingdom
• Festivals - 1998 Longman, Harlow, United Kingdom
• Art for Everyone - 2002 Collins Education, Honley, United Kingdom

• Urbane Publications - https://urbanepublications.com/book_author/jo-ely/

  JO ELY

  Jo spent her early years in Botswana, where the family garden was a fenced off piece of the African Bush. Having successfully dodged the snakes in the tomato plants, Jo came back to England and slowly read her way to Oxford Uni to study English. Her first job was editing multicultural education and anti-racism books for schools. Since then Jo’s published short stories, non-fiction and children’s books and written reviews for the world’s first online Empathy Library.

  Described as “an intelligent, creative, imaginative, original writer” by Guardian Book of the Year author Trevor Byrne, Jo has been Shortlisted for the Fish International Short Story Prize and has had a short story selected for an anthology edited by New York Times Notable Book of the Year author Sandra Tyler (US edition 2016).

  ‘Stone Seeds’ is Jo’s first novel.

• A Lover of Books - https://aloverofbooks.wordpress.com/2016/03/19/interview-with-jo-ely/

  QUOTED: "Stone Seeds is set in the future, in the world of New Bavarnica. Its people live under a menacing dictator, The General, and even the words in their mouths, their food, their clothes, their children, are under the control of somebody else. The punishments for stepping out of line are swift and severe, and yet … Bavarnicans have found ways to grab back their humanity."
  "There are three main characters in Stone Seeds. Antek is an Egg Boy, a government controlled machine with a chink in his system – he feels. Zorry is a Sinta slave who serves the general’s feast table by day and hunts down lethal plants in the killing forest at nightfall. Difficult, dangerous work. Jengi is the shopkeeper’s ‘tame’ assistant and the last surviving member of the notorious warrior tribe, the Diggers."
  "Stone Seeds isn’t the kind of dystopian novel to feature swashbuckling macho men or swords flying, epic battles … But there is a silent war going on in Bavarnica every day. Nothing in Bavarnica is quite what it seems to be."

  Interview with Jo Ely

  Jo Ely

  Jo Ely’s debut novel, ‘Stone Seeds’ is out on the 24th March 2016. I asked her a few questions.

  Can you tell me a bit about your debut novel, ‘Stone Seeds’?

  Stone Seeds is set in the future, in the world of New Bavarnica. Its people live under a menacing dictator, The General, and even the words in their mouths, their food, their clothes, their children, are under the control of somebody else. The punishments for stepping out of line are swift and severe, and yet … Bavarnicans have found ways to grab back their humanity.

  There are several tribes in Bavarnica and the general and his vicious accomplice, the shopkeeper Gaddys, have been clever enough to divide Bavarnica’s people. There is a living fence running like a line of spite between the tribes. There’s a killing forest which has its own mind, and a false-information system run by Gaddys. There is the stigma of ‘the greening’, a government policy in which any slave not taking their ‘forgetting medicine’ will undergo … Changes. After which anyone might take a potshot at them from an upstairs window. There have been routs and mobs against the ‘greened’. Worse things.

  There are three main characters in Stone Seeds. Antek is an Egg Boy, a government controlled machine with a chink in his system – he feels. Zorry is a Sinta slave who serves the general’s feast table by day and hunts down lethal plants in the killing forest at nightfall. Difficult, dangerous work. Jengi is the shopkeeper’s ‘tame’ assistant and the last surviving member of the notorious warrior tribe, the Diggers.

  Stone Seeds isn’t the kind of dystopian novel to feature swashbuckling macho men or swords flying, epic battles … But there is a silent war going on in Bavarnica every day. Nothing in Bavarnica is quite what it seems to be.

  Can you relate to any of your characters?

  I think this is a really great question and it makes me think of that saying, and I’ve no idea where it comes from, ‘We are all the people in our dreams’. I think that’s true of a writer and their characters, there is a little piece of me in all of the people in Stone Seeds, probably even the bad ones and the cowardly ones. Although not, I hope, Gaddys. Because Gaddys is a bona fide psychopath. I don’t even want to relate to her.

  Of course there are the characters who have the qualities I can only dream of having, I would love to have Zorry’s courage, or that of her mother, Ezray, or her elder, Mamma Zeina. I would love to have Jengi’s genius for hiding out in plain sight, slipping through and under any fence put in his way. Or his gift for reaching out to people across the lines.

  Antek is an empath and I feel very protective of him, but it’s difficult to know whether someone like Antek can survive in a place like Bavarnica, especially given that he doesn’t yet know what the general has planned for him. Little Zettie reminds me of my children when they were small, she’s resourceful and adventurous and very vulnerable. It would be impossible for me not to relate to her.

  I feel as though I’ve been living with these characters for a long time now, I know them all pretty well and I love ’em for their flaws and their weaknesses as much as for their good points. All except for Gaddys. I don’t love Gaddys at all.

  How does it feel to be having your first novel published?

  The story’s been rattling around in my head for so long that it feels really great to be able to share it with other people at last. And it does make all the hard work feel worth it. But it is pretty nerve racking at the same time, seeing it go out into the world. A bit like watching your first child start school.

  Has writing always been something you’ve wanted to do?

  I’ve always written stories and poems, although I wouldn’t have wanted to keep any of the early ones. And mostly, when I was young, I had to hide my stories from my older brother, who would find them and read them out to his friends in a high pitched voice. But actually, looking back, that is pretty good early practice for being a writer. You’d have to make sure that the line would work, even read out comically, and to a fairly disbelieving audience.

  As a child I read a lot and lived mostly in my head, in my imagination, but for some reason, and in spite of the fact I was surrounded by books, it somehow never really even occurred to me to make that leap into thinking that I might ‘be a writer’. You know, as an actual Thing. Being a writer seemed like an audacious and impossible idea for a very very long time. It still does really.

  Have you got any good advice for anyone wishing to write a novel?

  Well read lots of books, obviously. But you knew that already. I think really the first trick is to try to carve out some time in your day to do it, and this may take a little creativity in itself. I used to get the paints and felt pens out and cover the floor in Lego, when my children were very small, to try to buy me some time with the old notebooks. It didn’t always work. Skip the housework, that’s a must. Or at a minimum, lower your standards. Invest in a pair of noise cancelling headphones and head out to your favourite cafe after work.

  There is always a way to find the time if you’re truly committed – poet Salena Godden gets up at 4 am to write, and short story writer Jacqueline Crooks managed to write on buses and trains on her way to her seven day a week job at one point. Not many people have that kind of commitment, mind. But it does show that it can be done if you’re determined enough.

  Another good tip, when you’re submitting your work, is to have nerves of steel. And if you can’t manage that then a good Plan B is to have at least one friend who will be able to make you laugh about it all. My best friend wrote me a spoof version of my first rejection letter, her letter was pompous and hilarious and it cured me of fear. Well … Almost. But everyone needs a friend like that when they’re writing.

  Have any authors influenced your work?

  It’s very hard for me to be objective about who has influenced me, I can only really tell you who I love to read, and top of the list would be Toni Morrison, Melanie Rae Thon, Jean Rhys, Alice Munro and I’ve read and re-read Olga Tokarszuk’s House of Day, House of Night more often than I can remember. I suspect that the stories I’ve read aloud to my children have altered my brain just as much as the stories I’ve chosen for myself. My youngest loved Mark Twain, Philip Pullman and Jack London. You have to be careful what you’re reading, mind, once you’re really imbedded in writing your novel. I once went on a manic reading splurge of Faulkner and all my sentences came out long and dreamy and deranged without having an ounce of Faulkner’s genius. I had to read Elmore Leonard for a straight month to cure myself.

  The writer Trevor Byrne advised me to study the opening pages of Stephen King’s novels, to see what made them tick and made you want to read on, and that was a very helpful exercise. And I’m very lucky to work with a hugely talented writer, Sandra Tyler (she is a New York Times notable author and the chief editor of a small American literary and arts magazine, Woven Tale Press, which I help her to edit) and her love of a more pared back style of writing has made me tame my own words. Sometimes the best way to let the poetry come through is to say much less.

  But really, for me, the big influence was always Margaret Atwood, specifically her speculative fiction. She’s creating these science fiction worlds but it’s really all about the characters for her. Who they are and how they respond to their circumstances, and to one another. How they feel. That’s the challenge I’ve set myself in my own writing.

  What are you going to work on next?

  I’d like to write another dystopian or speculative fiction because this genre lets me go to places where I wouldn’t normally be allowed, and to say much more than I could get away with saying in a real life setting. Having said that, I always want my science fiction settings to feel realistic. To feel like something which could actually happen, given the right, or the wrong, set of circumstances. I’m allergic to magic and dragons, if I’m being really honest, and you’ll never find them in my novels. But in this genre, speculative fiction, dystopian fiction, I can really let my imagination come out to play and that’s exciting.

  Having said that, I always start with the people in my novels and that’s what I’m doing with this next novel too. I have all my characters and I’ve named them. They’re rattling around in my head. We’re just getting to know each other for now.

  If you could live your life all over again, would you do exactly the same things?

  This is a really good question but I think, on balance, I probably I wouldn’t do it the same way twice. There are the obvious mistakes I made, which everybody makes – should have worked harder in school, and at Uni, instead of partying and day dreaming. Shouldn’t have dated that guy, or err … That one either. Should have been braver in life, maybe. But these are only small things. The big thing I’d do differently is a cliche, and I apologise for that, but I think that when someone you love dies unexpectedly then you’re always left wishing that you had told them how much you loved them. Or told them it more. Those are the big things.

  About Jo Ely

  Jo spent her early years in Botswana, where the family garden was a fenced off piece of the African Bush. Having successfully dodged the snakes in the tomato plants, Jo came back to England and slowly read her way to Oxford Uni to study English. Her first job was editing multicultural education and anti-racism books for schools. Since then Jo’s published short stories, non-fiction and children’s books and written reviews for the world’s first online Empathy Library.

  Described as “an intelligent, creative, imaginative, original writer” by Guardian Book of the Year author Trevor Byrne, Jo has been Shortlisted for the Fish International Short Story Prize and has had a short story selected for an anthology edited by New York Times Notable Book of the Year author Sandra Tyler (US edition 2016).

• Woven Tale Press - http://www.thewoventalepress.net/2016/05/09/jo-ely-novel/

  QUOTED: "Writing dystopian or speculative fiction allows me go to places where I wouldn’t normally be allowed, and to say much more than I could get away with in a real-life setting. The biggest influence on my speculative writing has to be Margaret Atwood. She’s capable of creating these dramatically different science fiction worlds, but it’s really all about the characters for her. Who they are and how they respond to their circumstances, and to one another. In Stone Seeds, my first published novel, I set myself a similar challenge for my own characters, many of them influenced by my travels."
  "As local children raced after our bus, down the side of the mountain, I admired their expertise, not once losing their footing. ... These children are all wrapped up in Zettie, the youngest character in Stone Seeds."

  Woven Tale Press Editor Jo Ely | In Her Own Words
  Posted By: Press Featureson: May 09, 2016In: LATEST FEATURES, WritingNo Comments Print Email
  Facebook23TweetPinGoogle+LinkedInStumbleUpon
  Writing My First Novel
  Jo Ely

  Cover of Stone Seeds, Jo Ely's new novelIf truly committed, one can always find time to write–poet Salena Godden gets up at 4 am, and short story writer and novelist Jacqueline Crooks would write on buses and trains, commuting to her seven-day-a-week job. Not many people have that kind of commitment, and I am no exception. I mostly got my novel written by skipping the housework, writing when my kids were in school or asleep, or popping into my favorite cafe after work, with a sturdy pair of noise-canceling headphones.

  Writing dystopian or speculative fiction allows me go to places where I wouldn’t normally be allowed, and to say much more than I could get away with in a real-life setting.

  The biggest influence on my speculative writing has to be Margaret Atwood. She’s capable of creating these dramatically different science fiction worlds, but it’s really all about the characters for her. Who they are and how they respond to their circumstances, and to one another.

  In Stone Seeds, my first published novel, I set myself a similar challenge for my own characters, many of them influenced by my travels. In Peru, I remember crouching in the ruins of an ancient home at the top of Macchu Picchu, watching the light filter in through the slotted window, making patterns on the floor. Wondering who’d sat there before me. What they’d felt.

  And later, as local children raced after our bus, down the side of the mountain, I admired their expertise, not once losing their footing, not even the little ones. They followed our rattling old bus as it dipped into holes and clattered along. These children are all wrapped up in Zettie, the youngest character in Stone Seeds.

  I wrote every word of Zettie with a lump the size of a small plum at the back of my throat. She is just a little too real for me. I lacked … what’s the phrase? Authorial distance. There were things I couldn’t write about her, not even for the sake of the story.

  I mostly got my novel written by skipping the housework, writing when my kids were in school or asleep, or popping into my favorite cafe after work…

  Mamma Zeina, my oldest character, appeared to me a few times. Once I saw her in Florence, a Romanian gypsy woman in traditional dress, full skirts and headscarf. She was selling balloons. I was wondering what her life must be like, and I must have been staring, because the old woman turned and gave me a warm but shrewd and very direct stare. I felt completely and unnervingly transparent. At the same time, my small daughter let go of her balloon and burst into tears, permanently scoring that moment in my mind.

  I met Mamma Zeina again in Florence. Piazza Signoria was uncharacteristically empty, the shutters of all the cafes pulled shut. There must have been a football match, because a large group of young, male German fans came around the corner. They were chanting and drunk and the atmosphere was a bit rough. I hurried away with my two small children, bumping the pram over the cobbles, but when I’d reached a safe distance, I turned and looked back.

  I saw a very old woman in an ancient fur coat and wobbly lipstick approach the bench we’d just vacated. She sat down and pulled out a cigarette. I would remember her steely gaze at the crowd of chanting thugs. This tiny, ancient woman surrounded by giants. It occurred to me that she would have been a young woman at a time when another very different group of German men were occupying that square. I wondered what she had felt.

  After that, I began researching the role of women in the Italian Resistance. I met with a fiercely intelligent, older Jewish-Italian woman who’d been a small child during the Nazi era. She’d been spirited across the border by nuns and was brought home to Florence when the war was over. Everyone in her nuclear family had made it.

  That small girl had passed through so many safe pairs of hands on her way out of the country–not one person had let that child slip through their fingers. Here she was now, alive and well, a mother and a grandmother, talking to me. The idea for the underground network in Stone Seeds percolated in my mind for more than ten years after that meeting.

  There were things I couldn’t write about her, not even for the sake of the story.

  The settings for my novel Stone Seeds were also influenced by my travels, firstly, by flashes of memory from an early childhood spent in Botswana. I was still very young when my family returned to Britain for good, so it’s very possible, in fact likely, that these are not real memories at all, but images implanted by my parents’ bedtime stories: A tree full of monkeys, silent and then bursting into chatter; a loud and colorful market place, hot, baked earth under my dirty bare feet; black flattened trees and red skies. Some kind of worm or baby snake wrapped around the end of a stick my older brother was pulling out of the ground couldn’t possibly have been real. Or could it?

  From wherever they actually originated, these mental images have helped me to build the Edge Farms in Stone Seeds.

  Traveling as an adult certainly influenced the other settings and locations in Stone Seeds. Once very jet lagged and disoriented, I found myself driving down street after empty street in Naples, Florida, where the super-rich keep their holiday homes and gardens as large as helipads.

  But, like a classic horror movie trope, I couldn’t find my way out. I kept expecting something peculiar to happen, lightning to strike or an old woman to appear stage left and rattle a dire warning, and the idea for the OneFolks’ village in Stone Seeds popped into my head fully formed.

  On that same trip, I travelled across a shaky, rickety, wooden walkway into the heart of the everglades, when every single leaf or rotten wood stump in the cypress forest was crawling with life–I could hear every snap, crunch, squelch and slide. Just a few feet below me alligators heaved and rolled in the dirty shallow water. That experience provided the basis for the Killing Forest scenes in Stone Seeds.

  The idea for the underground network in Stone Seeds percolated in my mind for more than ten years after that meeting.

  Seeking a publisher for Stone Seeds was an entirely different experience from writing it. Over the years, I’d learned that when actually submitting your work, you have to have nerves of steel. And it took years of rejections, to learn how to hone my pitch, as well as my writing; Stone Seeds began as a rewrite of another novel I had submitted to an agent who had shown some interest in the opening chapters.

  But in that rewriting, I discovered that there was a better way to tell the story I wanted to tell. By then I no longer needed an agent, having already found my publisher, with Urbane. I approached Urbane initially via Twitter, and just a few weeks later we met to discuss the publishing contract for Stone Seeds.

  Now being able to hold a physical copy of the book is another matter entirely. And, yes, I can probably admit to sniffing and stroking that first advance copy. Apparently other writers do this too, secretly, so we are a primitive bunch it seems. The cover of the book is what I love best, designed by Indian filmmaker Cyril Rana, and perfectly evoking the sense of mystery in Stone Seeds.

  Since finishing Stone Seeds I’ve been experimenting and trying different things out. I love reading short stories in contemporary settings, but one thing I’ve found when I try to write them, something unexpected always seems to happen. A person will turn into a lamp post and then have to deal with that emotional fallout. The scenery will shift and become altered unaccountably.

  I never planned to write exclusively speculative fiction. But plans are one thing and the imagination doesn’t necessarily do what it’s told.

  Jo Ely is literary editor for The Woven Tale Press. Her first novel,Stone Seeds, has just been published by Urbane Publications.

• Writers' Workshop - http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/jo-ely-how-the-writers-workshop-helped-stone-seeds/

  Jo Ely: How The Writers’ Workshop helped ‘Stone Seeds’
  Posted on January 7, 2016 by Harry
  I’d had a couple of short stories published in magazines and one book anthology (Woven Tale Press, Chief Ed Sandra Tyler), I’d been Shortlisted for the Fish short story prize, I’d written reviews, mostly for the Empathy Library. But my unwritten novel nagged me like a child.

  I wrote the first draft fast, at the bottom of my garden, hidden behind an overgrown hedge, large crows’ nest to the left and above me. The birds would caw with disapproval. I could hear trains rattling toward me and away. It was far from romantic, although … sometimes, at dusk a fox would shake the hedge behind me, passing through. It was mid-winter and freezing. But I loved it out there.

  The first time I sloped out from my spot, flushed red with cold and a leaf sticking out of my hair, my husband stepped back and blinked. “What were you doing in there?”
  “Writing a novel.”
  He looked me up and down, wearing the coat he thought he’d mislaid, moss on the sleeves. A musty feather fell out of my hem and we stared down, considering it.
  “Are you … Alright?”

  I wrote the second and third drafts in a dingy corner of Starbucks, noise cancelling headphones, and quite transported. In retrospect I must have looked a bit odd.

  Getting The Writers’ Workshop to review my work was an intervention of the best kind – editorial. After these reviews I felt hugely encouraged. I threw a bucket of rainwater over my novel, twice. I ditched thousands of words and it was liberating.

  I pitched to Urbane, a small, innovative indie publisher. The publisher emailed me back to say how much he’d enjoyed the manuscript. We arranged to meet for coffee near Betjeman’s statue, St Pancras. Two days later I was clutching a publishing contract. Amazed.

  stone seedsJo’s debut novel Stone Seeds is available on Amazon now.

  ‘Jo Ely’s superb debut novel combines the vision of Russell Hoban and Ursula Le Guin with her own unique talents as a powerful and poetic storyteller’ — Roman Krznaric, Author of Empathy

  Follow Jo on Twitter @Jo_ely_ness

QUOTED: "The dispassionate narration and inconsistent point-of-view shifts keep readers from ... engaging in the characters."

Stone Seeds
Publishers Weekly. 263.48 (Nov. 28, 2016): p53.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Listen
Full Text:
Stone Seeds

Jo Ely. Urbane, $14.95 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-910692-87-5

Ely's mediocre debut reads less like a speculative fiction novel and more like a clunky thought experiment or allegory of despair. The isolated nation of Bavarnica is ruled by the nigh-omnipotent General, whose tactics include memory erasure, environmental control (including the barely viable seeds of the title and a deadly forest perimeter), and military attacks. The general trusts no one, not even the elevated but still miserable group known as the 1% OneFolk, or the genetically altered military Egg Boys. Lowest in this strange caste system are the disenfranchised workers, former rebels, and slaves. Jengi, last of the Digger tribe, endeavors to gather representatives of multiple oppressed groups to help him foment rebellion. The dispassionate narration and inconsistent point-of-view shifts keep readers from ever engaging in the characters or investing in the outcomes of their actions. (Jan.)

• Daily Bruin
  http://dailybruin.com/2016/03/28/book-review-stone-seeds/
  Word count: 714

  QUOTED: "The philosophical aspect combined with the novel’s singular narrative style creates an artistic and avant-garde feel. While some may enjoy the artistic liberty that the author takes in terms of her manner of writing and the obscurity of the plot, those very same aspects of the novel will frustrate and confuse others."

  Book Review: ‘Stone Seeds’
  BY UMBREEN ALI
  Posted: March 28, 2016 1:10 am A&E, LIFESTYLE
  (Courtesy of Urbane Publications)
  (Courtesy of Urbane Publications)

  SHARE TWEET
  "Stone Seeds" Jo Ely Urbane Publications March 24

  “Stone Seeds” is a work of art. But, unfortunately, a work of art is not always what a novel needs to be.

  In New Bavarnica, the novel’s world, every aspect of life – food distribution, weather patterns and even when the sun rises and sets – is under the control of one mysterious figure: The General.

  The novel follows three figures in their quest to find freedom from the oppressions they face. Antek is an Egg Boy, a lab-made soldier, who often feels more human than machine. Zorry, the slave, hunts predatory plants in the killing forest each night. Jengi, the last survivor of his tribe, searches for a way to improve the terrible conditions that he and everybody else outside of the general’s cohort live under.

  “Stone Seeds” innovatively incorporates many common fantasy components. Rather than simply describing the existence of human-like figures that were created by humans, the novel provides more specific information, explaining that each batch of Egg Boys is engineered to have specific qualities different from the previous batch and giving further details regarding their upbringing. In this regard, the worldbuilding within “Stone Seeds” is skillful.

  However, the novel lacks coherence overall. Reading the novel feels like reading prose in a stream-of-consciousness narrative style. Sentences end and start abruptly, commas are missing and dialogue is mixed into the same paragraph as observation. While the writing takes on a lyrical cadence, the resulting disjointedness in the narration makes it difficult to figure out what is happening. The end product is both beautiful and confusing.

  The author gives details about the world in scattered pieces that the reader must sew together. Rather than expressing events directly, the author describes the characters’ experiences through the characters’ eyes without use of the first person point of view. There are abrupt changes in subject matter the way a real person’s line of thought might be jumbled up. While this is an interesting writing style, for the sake of clarity, the novel needed to draw a clearer line between what the characters were thinking and what was physically happening.

  The incoherence also masks any semblance of a plotline the novel may have been imbued with. While Antek, Zorry and Jengi are all intriguing characters, the novel does not fully relate their stories. For instance, the author writes that Jengi is the last of the Digger tribe in a manner that suggests this fact is significant. However, the novel never fully accounts for that significance. This is one of many details about the novel’s world and characters that seems incomplete, and the novel lacks a sense of resolution because of the aggregated effect of all these half-formed details.

  “Stone Seeds” never seems to fully establish an end goal for its characters. Perhaps the entire objective of the novel is to show how these characters suffer and go on, or perhaps the novel is merely meant to prompt readers to consider how to face such terrible conditions. Even if the author’s aim in writing this novel was simply to share ideas about society, the novel needed a more solid plot to carry its ideas.

  The philosophical aspect combined with the novel’s singular narrative style creates an artistic and avant-garde feel. While some may enjoy the artistic liberty that the author takes in terms of her manner of writing and the obscurity of the plot, those very same aspects of the novel will frustrate and confuse others.

  For me, reading this novel simply did not feel like reading a novel, and that is its ultimate deficiency.

  — Umbreen Ali

• Queen of Blades
  http://thequeenofblades.blogspot.com/2016/04/book-review-stone-seeds-by-jo-ely.html
  Word count: 566

  Book Review: Stone Seeds by Jo Ely

  The Blurb:

  Nothing is quite as it appears in New Bavarnica. Everything is run by The General, alongside his collaborator, the village shopkeeper. The General rules by menace and unimaginable cruelties – everyone in Bavarnica knows their place and is kept in it. Everyone that is except Antek, the Egg Boy, a government-made machine with a chink in his system. Everyone except Zorry the slave, who spends her nights hunting lethal plants in the killing forest. Everyone except Jengi, the shopkeeper’s ‘tame’ assistant, and last surviving member of the notorious Digger tribe. Together, can they find the courage to fight back?

  STONE SEEDS is a beautifully crafted dystopian action thriller. Its all too real characters must use every last ounce of their courage, ingenuity and flawed humanity to keep hope alive in a world gripped by fear.
  I really had a tough time with this one. Much of the time I had no clue what the hell was going on. Characters show up randomly with no explanation how they go there, or what happened to them after the last time you read about them. It's infuriating. For a YA it's really difficult to follow. And slow. Very slow. And the PoV will change mid chapter without any warning. It's sometimes hard to keep track of who said/did what.

  It's described as a 'dystopian action thriller', well not so much. Let's start with the first word of that phrase: dystopian. Yes, I would say it is dystopian. Very much so. Check.

  Next one: action. No, not much action. Or at least not written in a way that made me care, there's a drone strike at one point, didn't care in the slightest. A bomb, nah, not bothered. There was a attempt to create quite a bit of tension and suspense, but unfortunately it did not do it for me.

  Last one: thriller. Not at all. I don't think my pulse ever went above resting at any point during this book. It shouldn't take longer than 3-4 days to finish a YA book. This took the better part of 6 weeks. It was very nearly a dnf. Under normal circumstances it would have been, but I was given a copy for the purpose of reviewing so the least I can do is finish it.

  It has some good parts, it's not all bad. The world is interesting enough, and Gaddys was the single most 'real' character in the whole book. She's a baddie, a baddie with feathers on her head. Yes, feathers. No hair, just feathers. There's also a forest that kills people, and the latest fashion is walking on stilts. It takes very good selling to make me believe all this weird stuff, unfortunately the author doesn't quite pull it off this time.

  I don't know if this will be part of a series, the ending certainly made it seem that way, but I doubt I would continue with it anyway. It was a chore to read, I hate to say it, but it's true.

  Verdict: 5/10

  *I received a copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

  Get a Copy

  Authors Web
  Posted 8th April 2016 by Tracey Cairns

• Between Reality
  https://paigeturnerreads.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/stone-seeds-by-jo-ely-review/
  Word count: 722

  QUOTED: "The plot was excellent, but empty. Excellent because it set the foundation for the next book, gave the reader ... a whole book of information on what was going on, and the writing produced vivid imagery. Stone Seeds felt empty at the same time, however, because it lacked real action or turning point of events until the end."

  STONE SEEDS BY JO ELY (REVIEW)

  May 16, 2016
  28676194

  (credit)

  Kindle Price: $1.66

  Official Rating: 3/5

  Synopsis:

  “Antek is an Egg Boy from Batch 47, one of the general’s manmade soldiers. He doesn’t know what the general’s lab technicians have repurposed him for but one thing is certain: Batch 47 is an active experiment. Antek can be ‘cancelled’ any time.

  Zorry is a Sinta slave in the general’s New Bavarnica, where it’s a crime to remember the dead and all surviving Sinta must bow and serve the OneFolk. She searches the killing forest every night for the predatory plants which can be ‘turned’.

  Jengi is the last surviving member of the war-like Digger tribe, and the leader of Bavarnica’s resistance. But grief has changed Jengi. The Last Digger has led a double life for so long he forgets himself entirely some days. What he’s for. Who to trust.

  Between the stolen rains and the encroaching desert, the living fence to catch runaways and rebels and the shopkeeper’s sinister control over the edge farms, it seems that the general and the village shopkeeper have the people by the throat. But then nothing is quite as it appears in Bavarnica.”

  My Review:

  This is a novel with an entirely new theme. It feels dystopian, but I’m not sure if it is. Regardless, Stone Seeds, just like the title, is incredibly original. The character names, the plot, the titles, all of it was interestingly new to me. So why three stars?

  I want to discuss Antek. I liked him and his mechanical but human-like thoughts and actions. The way that he thoughtfully gazes upon his surroundings and is always asking a question in his mind, even if he shouldn’t be. The story starts with him, but doesn’t quite end with him. All that happened in between was focused on different characters, including Zorry, who, in my opinion, was extremely boring. The entire time that I was reading about Zorry or Zettie or Jengi, I found myself wishing I was learning more about Antek.

  I think Zorry may be the heroine, actually, I am certain of it, but I am not convinced she is a great one. I don’t understand what qualities may shine in her if she is the leader, but hopefully it will develop in the sequel. Make no mistake, she experienced tragic events, but none of them brought out and heroine qualities in her. Even the ending, which I won’t give away, Zorry tried to come off as fierce, but it felt like the equivalent of a young child telling her parents she is going to run away.

  The plot was excellent, but empty. Excellent because it set the foundation for the next book, gave the reader, in this case myself, a whole book of information on what was going on, and the writing produced vivid imagery. Stone Seeds felt empty at the same time, however, because it lacked real action or turning point of events until the end, and that was barely more than a way to introduce a cliffhanger. Stone Seeds held many situations that I know were supposed to build suspense, but it did not succeed. Events that would normally be anything but dull, were unfortunately still just that.

  Would I Recommend Stone Seeds? I would. My answer may be confusing, since I did find the story boring, but let me be clear. Stone Seeds may not have been delivered in the most exciting way possible, but I still recognize that it has an interesting plot and topic. It is more than possible that the sequel, should there be one, will make major improvements.

  I received this novella for free via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.