High on a Mountain: Tommie Lyn
As a boy, Ailean MacLachlainn dreamed of living an adventurous life and longed to be a celebrated warrior of his clan. Until a shy smile and a glance from Mùirne’s blue eyes turned his head and escalated his rivalry with Latharn into enmity and open conflict.
When Ailean became a man, his boyhood dreams faded. Until Bonnie Prince Charlie came to reclaim his father’s throne. The Jacobite loyalties of Ailean’s clan chief involved the MacLachlainns in the uprising and set Ailean on a course toward a destiny of which he could never have dreamed.
What happens when a man’s dreams turn to dust? And when a man loses everything, does he have what it takes to go on?
High on a Mountain is the stirring tale of one man’s remarkable journey through life; a story of adventure and love…of faith, loss and redemption.
About the Author
Tommie Lyn resides in the beautiful Florida panhandle with her husband of 48 years (who was her high school sweetheart). She spends part of each day engrossed in the lives of the characters who people her novels.
Visit her on the ‘net: http://tommielyn.com
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There’s a lot of action and emotion in High on a Mountain
Where the book really failed for me was in the writer’s style. Ms Lyn is rather fond of extraneous detail; she has a tendency to list her characters’ actions instead of showing her readers the action is unfolding. There’s a tendency to hammer plot points home by telling the reader what is happening two or three times: and there are a few very clunky transitions from one point-of-view to another which made the text quite difficult to follow at times.
What really put me off this book, though, was the stereotypical Hollywood treatment that the author gave to the Highlands and its people; and the lack of freshness present in the storyline and in the writer’s style. This book has a dull and dated flavour, I’m afraid, from its tin-of-shortbread tartan cover to its two-feuding-men-both-fall-for-the-same-girl storyline. It’s a valiant attempt but despite the relatively clean text, it didn’t work for me. I read thirty-four out of its three hundred and seventy-nine pages and doubt that any editor worth her fee would be able to bring this up to a good enough standard.
The Self-Publishing Review 
Okay, so this one didn’t float your boat either. What I’m wondering is how in the world did you get your hands on a self-pub book written by some lady in the FL panhandle?
I’m sitting here (in US) critiquing a book written by someone in the UK, considering self-publishing my own book, wishing it was as ready as the one I’m critiquing, trying to think of a name I could self-pub under to test the water, calling self worst kind of coward…
All I am certain of at moment is that this woman can write – the one I’m reading, I mean.
Have read 7 chapters, am sitting here thinking maybe have missed calling; could see self pounding on doors for this one.
Meanwhile, wishing you a self-pubbed gem in the near future – there must be one out there somewhere!
Hi jfishler: I’m not Jane (I shall refrain from any other comment) but anyone who’s self-pubbed can post Jane a copy of their book. Details are found by clicking on ‘How It Works’ above.
And just a few posts ago, Jane found one she loved – PINS, by Christine Todd. I don’t get the sense that she’s a particularly harsh critic. It seems to be the point of the exercise: she judges self-published books with the same editor/reader goggles that she’d use on any book she’d pick up off the bestseller table at Waterstone’s.
It’s a valuable tool for people looking to self-publish.
Judging by what I’ve seen in the bookstores of the self-published presses, a 20:1 dreck to quality ratio is about normal. It reminds me of the statistics about American students’ academic achievements vs their self-assessments. I think we’ve got self-esteem just about mastered. Objects in the mirror may not be as large as they appear. Jane is a bolt of honesty, and I tremble as my book moves up in her queue.