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A review by thegreatmanda
Heir to Thorn and Flame by Ben Alderson
Did not finish book. Stopped at 30%.
DNF at 30%. I always feel a little like I personally failed when I DNF a book, but this one is just wall-to-wall relentless angst inflicted on undeveloped, irritating characters via shoddy writing.
I always feel guilty trashing indie authors who manage to get their work out there in front of an audience without the benefit of the traditional industry, but this one needed a team of professional editors. The language is overly flowery and wordy and tries too hard to sound like a high fantasy novel, to the extent that everything sounds overwrought all the time. (Example: “The blood drained from my entire body” as Max experiences a moment of minor tension.) There are multiple instances of the wrong word being used, referring an ancient hero’s valiance as “valance”, or saying that a woman swathed in a formal dress is “swaddled” in it. I also saw a lot of poorly structured clauses/paragraphs, such as sentences where an introductory clause’s subject is not the same subject as the rest of the sentence, which is an issue that I’ve seen in almost every self-published novel I’ve read. (Example: “Recoiling with a hiss, the shallow cut stung, coated in spilled oil.” I assume it’s Max who recoils, but this reads as though the cut itself recoils and hisses.) And there are frequent passages that are ambiguous or just confusing, made worse by the unnecessarily embroidered wording. (Example: “A single tear of sweat” [what? Is it tears or sweat?] “ran down my temple, leaving a nasty shiver in its wake. I dared reach up and clear it because every one of my movements were being scrutinized by King Gathrax.” Either there’s a word missing in that last sentence, or a different word than “because” should have been used. Also “every one of” makes the movements singular, so it should be “was being scrutinized”.)
I can forgive a lot of writing sins for an engaging story and interesting characters, but this book unfortunately lacked those things and I had to give up. There’s nothing to recommend here.
I always feel guilty trashing indie authors who manage to get their work out there in front of an audience without the benefit of the traditional industry, but this one needed a team of professional editors. The language is overly flowery and wordy and tries too hard to sound like a high fantasy novel, to the extent that everything sounds overwrought all the time. (Example: “The blood drained from my entire body” as Max experiences a moment of minor tension.) There are multiple instances of the wrong word being used, referring an ancient hero’s valiance as “valance”, or saying that a woman swathed in a formal dress is “swaddled” in it. I also saw a lot of poorly structured clauses/paragraphs, such as sentences where an introductory clause’s subject is not the same subject as the rest of the sentence, which is an issue that I’ve seen in almost every self-published novel I’ve read. (Example: “Recoiling with a hiss, the shallow cut stung, coated in spilled oil.” I assume it’s Max who recoils, but this reads as though the cut itself recoils and hisses.) And there are frequent passages that are ambiguous or just confusing, made worse by the unnecessarily embroidered wording. (Example: “A single tear of sweat” [what? Is it tears or sweat?] “ran down my temple, leaving a nasty shiver in its wake. I dared reach up and clear it because every one of my movements were being scrutinized by King Gathrax.” Either there’s a word missing in that last sentence, or a different word than “because” should have been used. Also “every one of” makes the movements singular, so it should be “was being scrutinized”.)
I can forgive a lot of writing sins for an engaging story and interesting characters, but this book unfortunately lacked those things and I had to give up. There’s nothing to recommend here.