I Am Alive volume 1-3: Nice Day to Die, Wheel of Fortune, Through Your Eyes (Ya Dystopian series) [Kindle Edition]

Cameron Jace (Author)

Book Description

for a limited time I Am Alive 1 - 3 for the price of 1

Starting 01/14/2013 this is third professionally edited version, including afterword and author's notes. I will be always improving the story. Thanks to the awesome readers with their advises.

Every girl dies - not every girl really lives.

Sixteen-year-old Decca Tenderstone feels captivated when she meets gorgeous & reckless Leo, who is arrogant, silent, beautiful, and shoots almost every one he meets.

Your everyday girl meets badboy lame story... hmm... with a twist...

They live in a dystopian future in Los Angeles where every sixteen-year-old is ranked on a scale from one to ten to determine their future. Outranks, who are considered a danger to society, are forced to attend the Monster Show, a brutal sacrificing ritual that is broadcasted worldwide on live TV, where rebellious teens are labelled Bad Kidz or Monsters and get to fight for their lives in deadly games.

The only way the jury still knows that you're still alive is to scream 'I Am Alive' as loud as you can every six hours. Lower your voice, and your dead.

While Decca and Leo can't stand each other, she will find out why she doesn't fit into any rank, and why her mother tried to kill her when she was seven.

Nothing will stand in her way as she has to make choices concerning love, life, staying alive, growing up, and finding out who she really is.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for I Am Alive:

"I am enchanted .. in a deadly way."
~Alison Michelle

"Need more of these. possibly in my top tens. most people would say this is a rip off/parody of the hunger games. i say no to that."
~ Leon cpPaulnash

"I found this book randomly, and loved it!!!!! Please hurry up and publish book 2. I can't wait to read it."
~ Taylor Vlahakis

"I enjoyed the book and will read the next one when it comes out."
~ Susan Hocking

"if this series continues to be this well written, I can easily imagine it published and sitting on shelves in bookstores, walmart, target"
~reiny

"I still didn't want to put my kindle down. I would love to read the next book"
~Veronica R Pockrandt

Amazon.com Top Reviewers praise for Cameron Jace's previous work under a different pen name:

"Intriguing, puzzling, curiousier and curiousier.."
M. J. Smith - Amazon.com Top Reviewer

"Put Akmal Shebl's "The Human Effect" into the hands of the right director and Hollywood could make a most intriguing film. "
Diana F. Von Behren Amazon.com Top Reviewer

"[He] has a voice and style that set him apart from other novelists... in its originality."
Grady Harp - Amazon.com Top Reviewer

"It is doubtful that even that most seasoned mystery reader will guess the answers. This book is the work of a genius."
~ BeatleBangs1964 Top Reviewer

"Nothing is as it seems and the plots twists keep you riveted to the end.."
~ Martin A Hogan Amazon.com Top Reviewer

From the Author

Just a small note: I could've simply republished the newly edited version without some of the bad reviews, but I didn't and preferred to keep older reviews to stay true to how things came to be. Newer reviews of the edited version could be found here:  amazon.com/dp/B0095BOU5G

Product Details

• File Size: 521 KB
• Print Length: 280 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0085W8KIO
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,997 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #87 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teens > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 75 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Seriously? July 27, 2012

By BellaRose

Format:Kindle Edition

Okay I do not understand all of the raving reviews! I got a sample of this book because I read that it had a few minor editorial mistakes and that can bother me. Um a few? NO. Try I could barely understand what the author was trying to say. Was the main character supposed to be that scatty? She was everywhere with her train of thought. Her reasoning for why things were the way they were in her society was weird.

ex. "Had I been born in the Amerikas, I would've been thirteen and a half years old by now. In their times, a sixteen-year-old - still considered a thirteen by their standards - did not have the strength, hormones, and alert mind like we have in my world. It's called evolution. The human mind and physique adapt according to their needs, coping with the natural changes in the world as it advances through the ages. Dinosaurs become extinct. Monkey becomes man. A thirteen year old becomes a sixteen year old. The world has evolved. Mankind has evolved."

Seriously? That's the reasoning behind why they've changed it so that a week has ten days and a year has ten months? People have evolved? Sorry but that was one of the dumbest explanations I've ever read. Decca does some really inexplicable things such as switch her iAm device which holds her results for her placement in society with a girl known as a Monster. She says that she's been planning for a year to do this in order to rescue her best friend. Then after it's done she is shocked with herself and says she acted on an impulse. Perhaps the author should look up what an impulse is. Because to me premeditated plans to destroy oneself is not an impulse. Decca is not the only character that is awkward. The guy that she falls in love within a millisecond is a total snore. Leo is a bad boy, a "unique" case of a teenager that was chosen to be an elite nine, which are the perfect people, when he was only fourteen. In their society this is unheard of, everyone is placed when they are sixteen. So why he's so special is a mystery to me. He became a superstar singer and ruins himself by singing a ultra rebellious song against the Summit which "used to be written the Submit with a silent b, but that was recently changed". Seriously? I get that it was a play on words because the people of Faya "slang for fire" submit themselves to their god the Burning Man but it took quite a bit of thought to make that guess.

Anyway Leo doesn't impress me at all with his cool haircut or tattoos or scars or his amazing ocean blue eyes. Which is completely unoriginal. The rest of the characters were simply confusing. A smart hacker named Timmy can barely make a sentence that doesn't cause me to have to go back and reread what he said several times before I can decipher it. Calla needs some editing too but she makes sense most of the time. And Woo, Decca's best friend that taught her everything she needed to know is odd also. And I didn't even meet him! Based on Decca's memories of him he's a nutcase just like the rest of them. When he mentions the Summit as "a bunch of airheads sitting on a dining table on the back of a flying, three-legged elephant" I could hardly believe it. How did that make any sense? Was it supposed to be comical? Well perhaps I have no sense of humor. The author needs to take a class on character development and hire an editor.

I have never been so moved to write a review especially a negative one after only reading a sample. Sometimes I thought I could barely get through the sample. Who's to say what the rest of the book would be like. Very interesting concept but the poor grammar and basic writing blunders I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone that is bugged by editing errors. This book seems to be filled with them. It left me slightly disoriented and completely shocked.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good book, very poor editing July 21, 2012

By ADo4

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I really enjoyed this book but the grammatical errors and mispelled words definetely detracted from the story. At first I thought this was going to be another take on the "Hunger Games" but I was pleasantly surprised and found this story line to be quite interesting. I would have given a higher rating but there were SO MANY errors in grammar/sentence structure that I even thought that this book may have been written in another language and then translated into English! I don't know how it works so I am not sure if the excessive errors were only in the Kindle edition (I cannot imagine that an editor would have allowed this to be published in print form without catching all the problems first), so I do wonder what happened to the Kindle edition. There was one paragraph of three sentences that had almost a dozen errors! At times there were so many words that ran together so frequently and close together that it was impossible to understand the intended meaning of the sentence. The plot, characters, and dialogue were very good and at times quite eloquent ("I am not my heart rate, I am not my skills..." / "How do you rate the human spirit") but there were numerous occasions that left me wondering what happened to the editing (double negatives throughout the ENTIRE book). I definetely look forward to reading the second book but hope it is better put together and the editing is more thorough.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Confusing... July 27, 2012

By natural mama

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I just finished reading this book today, and felt moved to write a review. Overall, I do feel like the book had potential, although there are so many similarities to the Hunger Games. The grammar issues were huge and bothersome...to the point where I had to keep putting it down because I was getting so frustrated! There were many times where I felt like someone had run spell-check and just accepted every word suggested...as so many words were thrown in that made absolutely no sense in the sentence. Many words were completely missing..and often it was very difficult to understand exactly what the person was trying to say. Very frustrating!

SPOILER ALERT!!

Character development is another area where I felt like it needed to be improved. Although the story is told by Decca, I never feel like we ever truly get to know who she really is. I never felt connected to her or what she was going through..and I never really understood her thought process. She rambled on so much about things that didn't make sense. I also did not understand what made her so special, as we were never shown glimpses of why she was so different then the other children there. Why did she have more potential then the others? I never did understand this.

The romance made absolutely no sense at all. Decca and Leo barely talk throughout the whole book...just sarcastic remarks from her and annoyed glances from him. We never see how the relationship develops and how they go from complete strangers to two people suddenly willing to die for each other...why???? It drove me crazy how one second Decca is thinking about throwing him off the cliff but then later willing to sacrifice herself in order to get him medical care. It just didn't make sense. Having to wake him up every hour, she seemed to enjoy inflicting pain on him...and then a second later she's crying for him...made no sense.

Her relationship with Woo also did not make sense...I just never felt the explanation as to why she switched her ranking made any sense...she had been planning this for a year, but then seemed clueless once she got in the games...if you had planned this for a year, wouldn't you then have thought about exactly what you would do once you got in there? And Woo having saved her when she was 7 from her parents trying to kill her..again..wasn't fully developed and and just didn't make much sense. How could Woo have "seen something in her" so many years ago when she was just 7..because wouldn't he then have only been 8?

Overall, I just think the book was too confusing...just not enough details to make you know and care about the characters, and the grammar issues made it very painful to read at times.

More About the Author

Update: I know I've been late in releasing Prequels 11-14 and Snow White Sorrow, and I'm extremely sorry for the delay, but it's for the best of the series. I have learned a lot as a storyteller, and would like this to reflect on the next releases. It's not going to be long. With March and April, the two books will be released. Thank you for your kind support and patience.

Here's my biography below, where I'm supposed to say something cool about me, which I'm really terrible at.
Things you might want to know about me:
I write books that I can't find elsewhere, basically to amuse himself. Everything I do is for fun, so don't take me seriously, and never call me a writer. I hate that. I prefer the word: Storyteller. I am also full of flaws, but I'm improving everyday. If you like my books, horaaaay! I luv ya too. If ya don't, hoooray! Now we know in advance that this relationship isn't going to work.
Although my books are ordinary on the surface, they hold many secrets that I might reveal one day. What matters the most to me are characters struggling to find their identities in the world.
Things you don't need to know:
I celebrate my birthday twice a year, the day I was born and Friday the 13th. I want to live in a bubble house. I live in San Fransisco when I have no money. When I do, I travel away, and that's when I write best. I am a damn good music composer, and a damn good architecture college dropout. I like boats, beaches, bears, beards, bears, bananas, bars, barfights, beans, bikes, bones, butter, babes, bakery, blizzards, and pirates ( I thought it was spelled Birates when I was a kid. )

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