60 replies to this topic

[kuenjato]

double post

Edited by kuenjato, 31 May 2011 - 10:32 PM.

[MattL86]

As far as examples go, I just opened the book to the page I am on and grabbed the first few sentences I saw:

"The smoke became overpowering, forcing Tahn and Sutter to cough even through the cloaks they held over their noses and mouths."

"They descended several more sets of stairs, and turned down countless corridors, rushing through the labyrinthine maze behind their knowing guide."

"The scrivener quaked, his senses appearing to have beheld too much."

None of those are particularly damning on their own, but every single page is that wordy and clumsy.  Okay, actually 'labyrinthine maze' is pretty terrible on its own.

One thing I've noticed is he doesn't make definitve statements.  Instead of saying "The scrivener quaked from what he saw" or something equally simple and definitive, it's always 'appeared' or 'seemed' or 'perhaps'.  It makes for wordy and sloppy writing.  I think he has trouble with the whole POV style.  Or maybe I'm just being overly critical of the prose because the plot is so formulaic.

[Little Valkyrie]

Mjolnir, on 28 May 2011 - 10:54 AM, said:

Bernobich's Passion Play -- which crosses epic fantasy with romance/erotica in a Kushiel-esque way -- seems to be heading down that dark road too.

I finished that not long ago, but perhaps my reaction of "I know this is the first in a series, but right now I really don't care if there's a sequel because there is no dramatic drive going on to the next book" has been too widespread.  Googling shows me a cover for Queen's Hunt posted back in November, which usually means publication is slated for some time...and even if I didn't wholeheartedly love a book, I'd be sad for anyone who did to be deprived of the continuation.  [I'd love to talk about the book with anyone else who's read it; time to make a thread for it?]

ETA: Silly me, author's page says 'July 2012' for QH.  Seems like an awful long time to let it sit, but the ways of publishers, who knows them.

Edited by Little Valkyrie, 01 June 2011 - 09:40 PM.

[kuenjato]

MattL86, on 01 June 2011 - 04:37 PM, said:

As far as examples go, I just opened the book to the page I am on and grabbed the first few sentences I saw:

"The smoke became overpowering, forcing Tahn and Sutter to cough even through the cloaks they held over their noses and mouths."

"They descended several more sets of stairs, and turned down countless corridors, rushing through the labyrinthine maze behind their knowing guide."

"The scrivener quaked, his senses appearing to have beheld too much."

Ouch, those are pretty painful. I'm guessing this is the part where they enter the old city/encounter the ancient evil/get split up?

[Mjolnir]

I'm certainly willing to concede there was probably something funky going down on amazon -- I really try not to go there, "there" being not the site but the customer review pages; I drain my brain enough on the interwebs as it is without delving that den of sin -- but I'm sure it wasn't author or publisher. Looking forward to getting my hands on the book from the library so I can join in the, um, discussion. I genuinely hope it's good, and also that I'll be able to give it a fair chance, but I have to say things are not looking good.

Quote

Little Valkyrie:
I finished that not long ago, but perhaps my reaction of "I know this is the first in a series, but right now I really don't care if there's a sequel because there is no dramatic drive going on to the next book" has been too widespread. Googling shows me a cover for Queen's Hunt posted back in November, which usually means publication is slated for some time...and even if I didn't wholeheartedly love a book, I'd be sad for anyone who did to be deprived of the continuation. [I'd love to talk about the book with anyone else who's read it; time to make a thread for it?]

ETA: Silly me, author's page says 'July 2012' for QH. Seems like an awful long time to let it sit, but the ways of publishers, who knows them.

I haven't read it yet myself; I admit I'm kinda hoping my local library'll buy the paperback. I'm very interested to try it, but my "buy-in-hardback" list of authors is very very short these days.

Despite my defense of them above, which I do genuinely believe, Tor has done some things recently that are pretty hard to get even a guestimate handle on from the outsider /fan perspective and are just generally alarming. These mostly have to do with picking up several series and then kind of giving up on them if they don't immediately catch commercial fire. There've also now been a couple cases of what appears to be Tor taking a quite astonishingly long time to turn draft manuscripts around, even by the understandably slow standards of publishing. Bernobich's Queen's Hunt was complete a while ago, I believe, and of course the most notable case of this is the sad tale of Ian Tregillis, which we don't need to go into again here. I believe Sarah Monette's new novel The Goblin Emperor existed in draft form in very early 2010, and it might, might, be published in spring 2012, which is a little extreme even by normal publishing speeds.

I'm sure for a while they were looking for new hits, what with the impending end of WoT, the then-presumed end of the Yeard's reign of terror, what seems to be a drop off in enthusiasm for the increasingly dire Dune spin-offs, and the ... Cardness of Card. But surely they're alright now? They've got Sanderson, whose got The Stormlight Archive series as a sales force once WoT is done; presumably that will only grow in strength. The Yeard has returned. Card has too, Todd help us all. John Scalzi's popularity waxes. Sounds to me like they're doing okay. So maybe they could stop thrashing about looking for the next big thing and carry on with the intriguing and excellent midlist stuff from awesome authors they often publish when they're not going market crazy? But then, seriously, what do I know?

Edited by Mjolnir, 03 June 2011 - 01:13 AM.

[Grack21]

Dune is Bantam I thought. Maybe. Me up read late. Brain not work so good.
And yeah have been dragging there ass. It took I believe a year and a half for Glen Cook's third Instrumentality book to be published after he turned in the final draft. And there's others they've been shitting ahem, sitting on, but the names escape me at the moment.

Also what they did with Abraham is CRIMINAL.

[jdiddyesquire]

For those who have read this... if you'd never read WOT would this still be terrible?  Or would it just be on par with something like Sword of Shannara?

[Mjolnir]

Dune is Tor I'm afraid. Fairly sure about this. Or rather, the Dune sequels / prequels / spinoffs are Tor; I don't believe they have the rights to the original Herbert books. [This is odd, I know.] Checking... Hmm. The 40th anniversary edition of Dune is published by Ace. Hunters of Dune and The Winds of Dune, on the other hand ... yep, Tor.

Glen Cook is another of those they've taken forever on? Wow, I didn't know that. Tsk, Tor, tsk. I mean, most of us can't have any idea how publishing works from the inside, but this is getting pretty weird. Wonder what's going on over there. Disturbing.

[nickg]

Well I'm glad I had no interest at all in this book, aside from the nice cover. Made it half way through a sample before deleting it. Very similar to WoT, right down to the prose. Pretty sad for how much it was hyped.

On another note, if Sandersons writing in the last WoT books is that much worse than Jordan's I will just give up on the series now. I did enjoy The Way of Kings though, but i didn't go in expecting the quality of something written by Gene Wolfe

[Sci-2]

jdiddyesquire, on 03 June 2011 - 08:06 AM, said:

For those who have read this... if you'd never read WOT would this still be terrible?  Or would it just be on par with something like Sword of Shannara?

I never read WoT and I couldn't get into it. You can check out the prologue and some sort stories on the site: http://www.tor.com/s...embered-excerpt

[Lexicon Devil]

Grack21, on 28 May 2011 - 11:20 PM, said:

We're not supposed to like D&D novels. Apparently it makes the board look bad and it will drive people away forever.

You like what??

I am outta here...forever

[pat5150]

My review is up on the Hotlist...

Given the expectations and the book's potential, it can be nothing but a major disappointment...

Patrick

[MattL86]

pat5150, on 08 June 2011 - 10:29 AM, said:

My review is up on the Hotlist...

Given the expectations and the book's potential, it can be nothing but a major disappointment...

Patrick

Pretty much bang on.  6.5 might be generous though.

It annoys me that the author is sending you notes on how to read his book.  The regular reader doesn't get those, so why should anyone take them into consideration? And besides, it sounds like he knows that the books a total ripoff; if he did it and never realized his mistake I could forgive that easier than being told to wait for a sequel.

[Sci-2]

MattL86, on 08 June 2011 - 11:45 AM, said:

Pretty much bang on.  6.5 might be generous though.

It annoys me that the author is sending you notes on how to read his book.  The regular reader doesn't get those, so why should anyone take them into consideration? And besides, it sounds like he knows that the books a total ripoff; if he did it and never realized his mistake I could forgive that easier than being told to wait for a sequel.

Yeah, 6.5 seemed generous but then I never finished the book so what do I know? Pat, I wonder if might go into detail about what aspects of world building you actually liked?

It's sad this is meant to be a trilogy. Perhaps the smart to do is for the author to write one or two standalones, make a better name for himself, then hit the second volume? I wonder even then how many would trudge through the first to get to the rest of the story though.

Edited by sciborg2, 08 June 2011 - 01:37 PM.

[jdiddyesquire]

sciborg2, on 08 June 2011 - 12:06 PM, said:

Yeah, 6.5 seemed generous but then I never finished the book so what do I know? Pat, I wonder if might go into detail about what aspects of world building you actually liked?

It's sad this is meant to be a trilogy. Perhaps the smart this to do is for the author to write one or two standalones, make a better name for himself, than hit the second volume? I wonder even then how many would trudge through the first to get to the rest of the story though.

It's why I'm a big fan of what Pyr is doing lately with authors like Sprunk and Hoffman.  Releasing short novels under 300 pages to give a taste of author and the world they're going to write.

[kuenjato]

have to agree with some of the opinions expressed at the hotlist, the names are typical "exotic mishmash" with an overabundance of apostrophes and some stupid-sounding "original" concepts (the untabernacled? wtf?). Even the map suffers when the country/location names are so... uninspiring or tongue-twisted.

[Grack21]

I tried to get into this finally and......no. A world of no. It's fitting that Ed Greenwood has a blurb on that back, because that's what this reads like, except without Greenwood's occasionally sense of humor.

The dialogue is some of the most terrible I've read in a long time. It feels like it was translated poorly from another language.

I'd be able to give it some credit if it had say, even one original idea. At all.

[Lummel]

Grack21, on 31 July 2011 - 12:05 AM, said:

I'd be able to give it some credit if it had say, even one original idea. At all.

It was interesting looking at the reviews on Goodreads (nice shelving there Grack21!).  A lot of the positive four and five star reviews mentioned having an ARC, were glowing but were also unspecific.  Hmmm.

[Grack21]

Lummel, on 31 July 2011 - 07:52 AM, said:

It was interesting looking at the reviews on Goodreads (nice shelving there Grack21!).  A lot of the positive four and five star reviews mentioned having an ARC, were glowing but were also unspecific.  Hmmm.

The thing that really baffles me is people seem to ACTUALLY like it. There's been a few iffy reviews on amazon, but they were taken down pretty quick. I've given serious consideration to the idea that an editor/publisher at TOR lost a bet of some kind.

[RedEyedGhost]

Great review of the book here.