My biggest peeve was in his dialog. Every time he wanted to say "Yes" he wrote "Xas". I could punch him in the face for this.
I think that's part of the elf language. No reason none of the other text isn't translated into elvish, so maybe they all speak English except for that one word? But that doesn't make any sense either.
I`ve never read Erikson, there are a lot of them. My most recent fantasy is Rothfuss, have any of you read his work?
I read Name of the Wind. Liked it. Erikson does a lot of cool things with his works, and his world building far exceeds what others are doing.
I stand corrected, his name is Dylan, don't know why I thought it was David. I guess he has done some acting. His name shows up in quite a few movie rosters. I wonder if that's why he thinks he can write.
@Jack Asher If you put your reviews of each chapter in an e-book and sell it you could easily make enough money to buy the 2nd one! Took me an hour to get through it all, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of! Thank you for doing this. It was brilliant!
Yeah, me too, I`m on A Wise Man`s fear now and it`s still good, although the world expands a little more. He has a third one coming, well it`s been coming forever, hopefully not too long now. He has been doing everything else but write lately, I think that`s what annoys some people. Hmm, I`ll have to have a look at Erikson. What`s Cole`s Notes?
Actually, that's the end of the book. It just stops there. But I have a job now, so the three dollars to buy his next book will be easy to come by. I'm interested in posting a whole critique as a verified purchaser on his amazon.
It's happening guys. I'm bored at work and need a thought exercise, and dissecting the sequel to this horror is going to fill up some time. And I like the attention. Here: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/one-person-probably-reads-the-girl-with-the-solar-eyes.146073/
Wow, that whiny guys book sounds absolutely awful, and yet he published it anyway. 17 year old me is just dying of laughter at how much worse this guy is than I was. Though I think some might not like the fact that I don't even mention Marckus's name until around 40 pages in or so. But at least I use his rank and persona to identify him. But back to former me and mine of all the badness in, but at least it was a story one could follow. Probably why this guy couldn't handle the fact that his work got dissected so abrasively, he just went straight to publishing it without having someone give it the old college try first. Sounds like all the negative statements towards his book on here seem completely justified considering that is probably exactly what he has done as a writer. From what I have learned from the wonderful folks around here, is that is a big no no.
BTW, if anyone wants to read it and experience the horror themselves, it's a free Kindle book from Amazon now. I've downloaded it and started reading it. If you can get through it (I'm on chapter 2 and I'm really struggling to get through the random world history of every civilization ever, the geography and the occasional tree which is important for reasons not known to man), at least it teaches you a lot about what not to do. So it actually does have value! Just not money value...
Yeah sure, but damn you! I must charge me kindle you dirty bastard.But I will join you on the Cluster F that is this whiny boys book.
I just read this little gem in the 2nd chapter as the big battle between who-the-f**k-knows and who-the-hell-cares is about to start; "He cast Guardian Aegis on his nearby allies. It was a protection ward that gave his Caliphian allies a two-thirds chance to evade attacks." (my italics) Then a litte later, a man I assume is some sort of leader, shouts to his men: "Save thy mana!" Am I reading the notes from a Dungeons&Dragons session?
This is a fun one to unpack, because in a game, we accept individual skill can't be measured, and so settle to stacking the odd of a random outcome. As long as you accept that your enemy has a random chance to hit you, a random chance to dodge him makes sense. But when your book is supposed to take place in real life? Are all of the soldiers in the army just waling up to their opponents and making chopping motions until they connect with something? The implication is that each soldier isn't an individual with thoughts, feeling, and skills. He just wanders over to an opponent, outcomes are selected randomly, and one of them dies. The laziness of this as a storytelling technique is just galling.
I am not quite that as far as @Quixote's Biographer is. I will say this is an orgy of evidence as being a badly written LOZ Fan-Fic. The mystery boy and his "father", have knowledge of things about each other just minutes after claiming to have no idea who each other is. Also the boy knows an awful lot about the woman who brought him into this world, despite seemingly to have no bloody idea who she is. This is going to be one of those forced "because the plot demands it" heavy reads isn't it? OH dear lord, this is going to be Bet Me all over again, except more fucking random nonsense and I know everything about everything even if I haven't the slightest idea of who/what is and do. I am fairly certain the prick who wrote this, had a hand on his cock, the other on the keyboard, and this playing in a loop on his speakers: And for more fun we will assume it was all done in his mommies musty basement (take that anyway you bloody like)
General Zircon cast about his command tent frantically. The orc horde was approaching at speed, and he was caught unprepared. He turned over his mattress, pulled out the drawer of his writing desk, even checked the potted plant. Finally he called to his men: "Has anyone seen my d20?!"
Finally managed to finish the 2nd chapter and here's my main beef about this book so far; I have no idea what the book is about, who it's about or why it matters. So far we have 'The Man', 'The Boy' and 'The Woman' and there's a conflict of sorts (the boy is the man's son and the woman doesn't like it) but I don't know if any of them are main characters or why their story matters. But I do think the man, boy and woman in the 2nd chapter is the same as the man, his guest and the woman from the previous chapter, although it's not exactly specified so it's just guesswork on my part. Anyway, I don't think they've gotten enough time or space to be main characters, if that makes sense. You know Frodo is a main character because Tolkien spends a lot of time establishing him as one. No character has been established so far as far as I can tell at least. Then there's Olwyn (?) and the baby but Olwyn dies (if I understood that part of flowery language) so I'm guessing she's not the main character either. Then there's the Great War which is only Great because the writer says so. I have no idea who the war was between (other than names I'm not gonna try to spell here), where it took place, how big it was (in numbers, how many countries/cities were in it, how many soldiers etc. Are we talking hundreds or hundreds of thousands?), I have no idea which of the characters were on either side, who was the bad/good guys (which seems important), who I should root for or even who won (because the chapter ends before the war does...). I don't even know what the war was about, which seems important if it's a Great War. So far, no character has been established, no real story has been established, unless you count the encyclopedia entry of the entire world history and geography, but that's not really 'story', and I have no idea why this story is being told or why I should care. And I have, according to my Kindle, read more than 50% of the story. The battle itself read more like a fantasy RPG manual and the 'ole english' didn't seem right somehow, although I'm no expert so maybe he nailed it for all I know. That said, he did change from 'ole' to 'old' in two sentences... (Btw, this is just my own thoughts, or an outlet for my frustrations reading this book, and not an attempt to hijack your wonderful work @Jack Asher !)
Dude this thread rocks the house. You guys are hilarious. I wonder if the original meltdown still preserved on goodreads? If I recall correctly they banned him or something? I'm gonna try to find the original link...
Don't worry about it, I got it here https://www.writingforums.org/threads/author-freaking-out-over-one-star-review.139643/ The second link down is the archived responses. I'm doing the sequel here if you missed it up thread. I'm on chapter 5 now and there have been some...disturbing turns of narrative One person (probably) reads The Girl with the Solar Eyes | Page 1 | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community
Cool I will go up and read this whole thread today. Surely he has to be aware of all the cautionary articles written about him. (?) But maybe not, since he doesn't appear to have changed his tone:
