I know, I know, another review of Deceived, and you’re sick of them. 🙂  But I wanted to post this one for a different reason than mere self-promotion.

You’ve heard often enough that a book, once it’s published, belongs to the readers, to love, hate, or feel indifferent about.   I subscribe to that view fully.  Still, when you write a story, you intend for readers to be struck in a certain way, to take certain things away from the reading experience.   And if you’re lucky,  every now and again you’ll read a review where your intent and the reviewer’s reading experience align.   It’s a nice feeling.

And so it was with Pete Morrison’s review of Deceived on Lightsaberrattling.  You can read the whole review here (note that the second half contains spoilers, but that section of the review is clearly set off from the rest).  Pete has a lot of nice things to say about the novel, but these lines made me smile:

One of the strengths that Kemp has as an author is crafting very interesting and complex characters.  The strength of Deceived isn’t its plot (while good) or its action (while great), the real strength is the development of its characters and their interaction..Deceived is all about relationships.

Just so.