Review of Part One
Review of Part Two
Review of Part Three
Review of Part Four

Part 5: Revelations, is a disappointing end to the Losing Latitude tale, mostly because it’s not an end at all. Like the four parts before it this one features Buck and Lilly. The former is a young adult running from his past. The later, a woman freed from her parents, after long last and through tragedy. We also revisit October, Nina, Rufus and learn of even more players coming to light.

In fact this installment is so packed full of expansion and plot building that it’s impossible to accept the scripted “The End” on the last page. With Lilly just getting out of the naval hospital where she’s spent nearly the whole story, and Buck just now finding something and someone he cares about enough to stop running away from all his problems, the story is prepared to do so much more. We finally see a bad guy, other than the nameless demon that Buck claims is pursuing him. We finally know the extent and “rules” of the paranormal aspects of the book and everything seems to be poised to come together, or clash as a climax should.

Except that’s where this story ends, flat on its face with the truly exciting and satisfactory bits just out of reach.

Review of Part One
Review of Part Two
Review of Part Three

I really enjoy rereading Ann Rice’s The Witching Hour over and over. But I rarely read the whole book. Instead I always skip to the middle, to the long, expansive Talamasca file on the History of the Mayfair witches. I don’t particularly like Rowan Mayfair and find her story to be interesting only because of the multitude of little connections between the history of the places and people that came before that she runs into and doesn’t even understand.

What does this have to do with part four of Losing Latitude by Cory Cramer? With this part the story is shaping up the same way.

Part four, The Last Place to Run, is almost entirely sections of Bucky McGee’s journal. Of course, in this installment they take a wild, suspenseful twist that still doesn’t explain the demon that’s been chasing him. But by the end of this section the tale is hard to put down, and leaves the reader with something akin to outrage. It simply cannot end there.

As for Lilly, the young adult who lost her parents to a shipwreck and became an unexpected millionaire, well, she has about as much “screen time” as her dead father in this part of the story. She’s not as unsympathetic of a character as I find Rowan Mayfair to be, but the focus so far is on the voice of Buck. This is partly because for the length of the tale so far Lilly has been in a naval hospital recovering from injuries received during the shipwreck that killed her parents. But it’s also because with her parents dead only the journal can drive the plot forward toward its resolution.

I do wonder how one more ninety five page installment can bring Lilly from her current position to solving the mystery that led her father to sail into the storm rather than away from it. But there has definitely been growth, not just of the story, but also of Cramer’s writing skills as the story has progressed. If he can clinch this tale, and continues to build his craft I could easily see his next stories published outside the sphere of self-publishing.

Review of Part One
Review of Part Two

Even though it’s been over a month since I reviewed part two I had no problem at all getting right back into the world and characters when I started Losing Latitude part three.

The tale is definitely getting more emotional. The modern day section finds Lilly, the survivor of a shipwreck that killed her parents, preparing to leave the Naval hospital at Guantanamo Bay to enter the world free and alone for the first time in her life. She’s also developing quite an attachment to Rufus, the nurse who has been helping her survive her lengthy recovery from her own wounds.

In the journal Lilly’s father left behind, which chronicles the story of Buck, a young man being chased by a demon, the plot also picks up. Buck’s tale is far more interesting once the pursuing demon forces him to leave his underage girlfriend behind because instead of wallowing in happy love he’s fighting for something again. Between the sympathetic inclusion and tragic loss of Buck’s only friend in New Orleans, and the knowledge of Miss Mable, the voodooine who finally sheds some light on what the demon is (but not why it’s after Buck) the story definitely picks up here, both in action and in plot.

The sea really seems to be Cramer’s fuel, his knowledge of sailing and fishing among other things lends this section of the story a credibility and touch of realism that balances well with the increase of magic with the increased appearances of the demon himself.

On technical and textual levels Cramer also seems to be stepping into his stride, leaving me hoping he keeps it up and nails the climax and finale.

Review of Part 4 coming soon…

Review of part one.

Part Two, subtitled “The Past Comes Back to Haunt Us”, continues exactly where the first part leaves off. Lilly North is in a Naval hospital recovering from the tragic storm that took her parent’s lives. While she’s only “on screen” long enough to remind readers that she’s still the main character it’s enough to keep all the flashbacks in context. Keeping track of the real focus of the story is important because they are a lot of flashbacks in this part of Losing Latitude.

Most of the story is told through the journal of Buck, a teenager who is wanted for a murder he didn’t commit. But what cop would believe Buck’s take on the slaying–a demon did it? While Buck’s story starts out as a somewhat selfish, hormone-infused tale Cramer works Buck into a solid, sympathetic, if not somewhat likable character.

Between the passages of Buck’s journal are flashbacks from the point of view of Lilly’s father, Brady. The answers to why Brady steered his family into the storm are answered, and in a way that piques the reader’s interest in the supernatural aspects of the tale.

However, the story still doesn’t feel like a paranormal. While the demon might make a real appearance it’s brief and its connections to Brady and Lilly are little more than implied.

The back story might throw some readers off at this point. But it does serve to expand the characters and to tie together many of the strings that began in the first part. By the end of Part two the reader has the definite feel that something bad is about to happen.

Stay tuned for part three…

Losing Latitude is a self published serial novel (in fact it’s the series that impressed me enough to write this personal blog entry.) A five part series of ninety six pages per installment Losing Latitude is experimental in more than one way.

The serial novel is tough to begin with. Even big name horror author Stephen King has had mixed results. The Green Mile was a huge success, but The Plant was a failure. Recently some smaller presses have also tried serials with mixed or inconclusive results. Apex Digest has run Temple: Incarnations by Steven Savile and Cain XP-11 by Geoffrey Girard, each a novella broken into four individual installments, but has declined to continue the serial line for now.

Losing Latitude part one is subtitled Death, Dads, and Demons. The story begins with seventeen year old Lilly, and her parents, trying to escape from their ship which is sinking under the fury of a storm. In a sudden assault by the storm on the ship Lilly is thrown against the wheel, then free of the ship altogether to be rescued by the Coast Guard. She wakes in a naval hospital in Guantanamo, suffering from painful, but not life threatening injuries, only to learn her parents were never found. Now all she has is a backpack full of things her father thought she needed to save in the rescue, a large insurance settlement, and a mysterious journal that caused her father to attempt to brave the storm in his search for some lost artifact. Alone in a hospital with the only people she knew lost to the sea Lilly feels she must find out why her father forced them into the storm, and put aside her anger at him for making her live on a boat for the last ten years to find out why the search was so important in the first place.

While the writing is decent, and the quality of the book, cover art, typesetting and copy editing is far above what has come to be expected of self published works the biggest flaw in this first installment is a vagueness of genre. The blurb bills the series as a work of suspense, but the prose lacks the language and familiar emotional manipulations typically found in suspense and thriller novels. There’s also mention of a demon and hints at a conspiracy making a reader think the tension will pick up at a later point in the series, and wonder if there might be a bit of paranormal in the future.

It’s likely that the first installment could have been improved with more focus, clearly defining the elements and empowering the prose. But the tale is far from a bad one. The settings are solid. The characters are the common man type that have given writers such as Stephen King and Dean Koontz their mainstream appeal. The format also has a great deal of potential in today’s faster moving, bite sized world.

This review, like the serial will be continued…