Jan 31, 2015: I found Stone Burners to be engaging quickly on, beginning with a hero that appears to have had her memories largely erased and struggling to fill in the knowledge of her world from there. The main character, Olivia, is interesting and engaging, and both her adventures and the people she meets as the story goes on serve to pull the reader in, I found. There also seems to be a good balance of story exposition and action. It’s clear to me that the author spent a lot of time thinking about their world and how it came to be, which is admirable and makes for interesting reading.

On the flip side of that, however, my main critique of the story is the amount of backstory the author presents. It’s often presented (at least in the beginning of the story) in a sort of omniscient third-person way, and frankly, I found myself skimming a lot of it. I liked it a lot better later on when the author (although still sometimes falling into the third-person infodump) did more with allowing the environment to tell the story (e.g., through newspaper/television news stories), or allowing the characters to explain things to Olivia in their own way, whether or not they put things in a biased or unbiased way. Along with that, I’d recommend the author get a friend to provide beta reader services, since there were tense issues and occasional typos that sometimes interrupted the flow of reading.

In short, I found the story appealing and interesting, although I’d like to see the backstory information presented better, and probably used more judiciously. I think most readers of superhero fiction would like this story, and I recommend it to them.

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May 26, 2014: I love my action and Stone Burners has some good action. Then again, When your main character is a dragon you’ll expect some action sooner or later.

Stone Burners is the tale of Olivia who is a human turned into a bulletproof, regenerating, flying chunk of muscle, claw and death who hasn’t got a clue what happened to her, and her group of friends who make the problems of being half a dragon in a world where non-human monsters are hunted [more . . .]

Dec 11, 2015: The world of Stone Burners, at its most basic level, is a massive, disparate melting pot of ideas. "Superpowers, sure. Dystopia, why not. Magic, screw it. Aliens, gotta have aliens. Uhh, ancient gods? Yeah, that’ll work." It’s a very easy recipe for disaster, and yet, Stone Burners not only makes it work, but actually exceeds it and manages to tell a really good story.

The plot begins with a girl waking up in an alleyway, with no memory and no clothes. [more . . .]

May 25, 2015: Stone Burners is strange.

Before we say anything else, we should get that out of the way. It has an amnesiac dragon, a techno-despot, and a gang centered around Aztec myth.

It’s a distinctly superheroic tale, but while many superheroic tales feature a sort of science fantasy melange (e.g. The Avengers, which features a Norse god and several mad scientists—fantasy and science fiction, respectively), Stone Burners takes it to the next level. [more . . .]