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A review by dark_reader
Ancient Alliance 1: The First Human Mage by JesperSB
1.0
Welcome to the 'No Exaggeration' zone. Every statement in this review is 100% free of hyperbole.
This is the absolute worst thing I have ever seen.
I will elaborate, but first, I'm supposed to lead with a positive. Here it is: the author is not afraid to have his characters ask the hard questions:
The author set himself a goal of writing six books in six months, of which this is the last. But to call this or any of the others a "book" stretches any functional definition of the word to its limits. Are they composed of words on pages? Yes, but they are not good words. They are certainly not correct words for the vast majority. By any reasonable standard, "book" implies revisions, editing, proofreading, design, and a suitable knowledge of the language in which it is written. Add to this list pesky concepts like character, setting, atmosphere, dialogue, description and so forth. None of these are to be found here in a recognizable form. I see no evidence that this author has ever actually read a book, otherwise one would think he might even just casually have noticed that paragraphs exist.
There are plenty of bad books, and plenty of incredibly godawful books which still manage to intrigue the reading public through their sheer incredible ineptitude. But, this text doesn't even have the clueless charm of [b:Moon People|6584471|Moon People (Moon People #1)|Dale M. Courtney|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347678941l/6584471._SY75_.jpg|6777964], the hilarious overexuberance of [b:Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes|2640834|Antigua The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes|Larry Ellis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348749558l/2640834._SY75_.jpg|2665570], or the hyper-narcissism of [b:Empress Theresa|23308436|Empress Theresa|Norman Boutin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1412516865l/23308436._SX50_.jpg|42863005] to give it a layer of interest. No, it's merely dreary, repetitive, and shockingly stupid.
Lest you think I am exaggerating despite this review's opening announcement, let's do a little experiment. I will use a random number generator to select page numbers (from 1 to 694) and I will quote from those pages. All punctuation, capitalization, and line spacing is preserved from the original.
Page 572:
It's not only that the author's English grammar skills are routinely surpassed by eight-year-old children. Reading through the barrier of wrong words reveals a story that lacks the slightest dynamism, characters devoid of any personality beyond "good" or "evil", lifeless worldbuilding that steals liberally from Dungeons & Dragons, and dialogue and action that, in part because of the stilted, caveman-like writing, are unbelievably dull.
What is this book even about? Well, it begins as follows:
In this ancient temple or whatever, they find twenty thousand stone tablets carved with unknown language, and the family then spends the rest of their lives trying to decipher it. At the end of the chapter, they are having some success, finally. THE END, because the whole rest of the book involves fantasy races and magic and shit. I suppose the first chapter is supposed to be a framing event for the main story, like the deciphered tablets tell this tale of the ancient world, but who the fuck knows because there is no indication of this and the book never returns to the old asshole's story.
The rest is about an Elven (or elven, who knows what is supposed to be capitalized and what isn't when the book flips between upper and lower case hapharzardly all the time) city on top of a giant turtle. They keep humans and ogres as slaves and servants but they're considered lesser races. Then there's one human boy named Turtle, which leads to this hilarious exchange when he goes inside a literal giant turtle:
It doesn't take long to get to some weird sex stuff, when one of the book's many narrators relates the following:
Why did I even read that far? It's a problem I have, I know. Don't despair at the book's absurd page count of 694; most of that is white space, because most lines of text don't reach the right margin because of the author's incorrigible habit of hitting 'enter' after every single damned sentence, with an extra line break ninety-seven times more than is necessary, plus every third page or so is only one or two lines and otherwise blank, because of the mind-numbing lack of formatting. It's much closer to a 200 page book by normal human standards.
Look, writing incomprehensibly badly is one thing, a HUGE thing, but to cap off the achievement, the author managed to make a worse cover than this classic:
Move over, Moira, there's a new reigning champion:
I will end with a final, hopeful, apt quote, from the book's epilogue. The second epilogue, that is, the one at the actual end of the book:
This is the absolute worst thing I have ever seen.
I will elaborate, but first, I'm supposed to lead with a positive. Here it is: the author is not afraid to have his characters ask the hard questions:
If You was not who You are, what would You like to do.?That's all for positives.
A sentence I have mold over in my brain a million time.
The author set himself a goal of writing six books in six months, of which this is the last. But to call this or any of the others a "book" stretches any functional definition of the word to its limits. Are they composed of words on pages? Yes, but they are not good words. They are certainly not correct words for the vast majority. By any reasonable standard, "book" implies revisions, editing, proofreading, design, and a suitable knowledge of the language in which it is written. Add to this list pesky concepts like character, setting, atmosphere, dialogue, description and so forth. None of these are to be found here in a recognizable form. I see no evidence that this author has ever actually read a book, otherwise one would think he might even just casually have noticed that paragraphs exist.
There are plenty of bad books, and plenty of incredibly godawful books which still manage to intrigue the reading public through their sheer incredible ineptitude. But, this text doesn't even have the clueless charm of [b:Moon People|6584471|Moon People (Moon People #1)|Dale M. Courtney|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347678941l/6584471._SY75_.jpg|6777964], the hilarious overexuberance of [b:Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes|2640834|Antigua The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes|Larry Ellis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348749558l/2640834._SY75_.jpg|2665570], or the hyper-narcissism of [b:Empress Theresa|23308436|Empress Theresa|Norman Boutin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1412516865l/23308436._SX50_.jpg|42863005] to give it a layer of interest. No, it's merely dreary, repetitive, and shockingly stupid.
Lest you think I am exaggerating despite this review's opening announcement, let's do a little experiment. I will use a random number generator to select page numbers (from 1 to 694) and I will quote from those pages. All punctuation, capitalization, and line spacing is preserved from the original.
Page 572:
Fennepe says: "Yes. Or I think that was what they meant. She control A Dark Elven priest.Page 328:
He was the one, who raised all those undead in the first battle."
Hinto ask: "One guy raise like a hundred undeads.?"
I point to the room, the ogres are in, and says: " Worm-killer and Mammoth-Hunter and some of their clan members was also in the battle."Page 157:
Worm-Killer is looking out of the room, and ask: "What is happening.? Battle.?"
I have nothing against war, but I just don't want to use magic.I think you're starting to get a sense of the quality that pervades this title. To think that producing multiple things in this fashion is somehow an accomplishment? I have written this before and will quote myself: I could write a book called "Fartknocker: Fart Knocked" that contains 230 pages of text reading "Fartnocker fart knock fart fartknocker fart fart all work and no play makes Fart a dull knocker" and "publish" it in 10 minutes, and this would produce something of exactly the same literary value as any of this author's output.
The ogres are not magic user, and we have the upper hand, even without magic.
Our bows have them outreach and out-shot, and they loses ten or more members each time.
An alarm is sounding.
Not a normal alarm.
Not a we are under attack alarm.
It sound more like... a fog warning.
It's not only that the author's English grammar skills are routinely surpassed by eight-year-old children. Reading through the barrier of wrong words reveals a story that lacks the slightest dynamism, characters devoid of any personality beyond "good" or "evil", lifeless worldbuilding that steals liberally from Dungeons & Dragons, and dialogue and action that, in part because of the stilted, caveman-like writing, are unbelievably dull.
What is this book even about? Well, it begins as follows:
I have lived a long life.Ninety-five what? Nobody knows. Anyway, this old asshole recounts the time that his 12-year old son almost died in a rockslide at Machu Picchu. While locals are pulling him up by a rope, he happens to spot the entrance to a lost structure, and while he's being hauled up from near death by a rope tied around his waist, his dad makes the rescuers stop, and tells his son to rummage in his backpack for a camera and get some pictures. Later, because the entrance to the new discovery is small, and "There are dirty all around the opening", he makes his son go in for him.
The passport says, ninety-five.
He is a little to big, to easily get into the hole, but after stripping naked, but for underpants...But noticeably no pants. How exactly did taking his clothes off help him to fit through a dirty hole?
He gets inside.
Maybe the first human in a Thousand years, to walk there.
I give him his shoes and a shirt.
In this ancient temple or whatever, they find twenty thousand stone tablets carved with unknown language, and the family then spends the rest of their lives trying to decipher it. At the end of the chapter, they are having some success, finally. THE END, because the whole rest of the book involves fantasy races and magic and shit. I suppose the first chapter is supposed to be a framing event for the main story, like the deciphered tablets tell this tale of the ancient world, but who the fuck knows because there is no indication of this and the book never returns to the old asshole's story.
The rest is about an Elven (or elven, who knows what is supposed to be capitalized and what isn't when the book flips between upper and lower case hapharzardly all the time) city on top of a giant turtle. They keep humans and ogres as slaves and servants but they're considered lesser races. Then there's one human boy named Turtle, which leads to this hilarious exchange when he goes inside a literal giant turtle:
He say: "I just realized something. Turtle.?"You know, when you as the author name a character Turtle, and you place him inside a turtle, is that joke then clever? Really? And the character never thought of it although he lives on a giant turtle, and just gets the joke now? Uh-huh.
I say: "Yes. That is my name."
He continues: "... inside the turtle.
Turtle inside the turtle."
He laughs, and I get the joke.
It doesn't take long to get to some weird sex stuff, when one of the book's many narrators relates the following:
Flardryn, who like to walk around in his battle armour, treats the human as slaves.The named character here confirms his fetish in first person soon after:
He has three, big human girls, that he has sex with.
But that is like having sex with dogs.
Or that is what he says.
Why has he choose the girls with the biggest bodies, and the biggest breasts.?
Elven females have slim, strong bodies, that can run or fight for many hours.
Not like the human females he chooses...
I have three cages, each filled with something.I don't want to know what happened to the third large-breasted female. Why does this even come up? What does it say about this character? Does this information have anything to do with the rest of the story? It does not. Anyway, their giant city turtle gets sick, because as you know,
The second cage is two human female, that I have sex with.
I like them with big breast and large behinds.
The elven female does nothing for me, with their slim, athletic forms.
A big turtle like Jevrog, can get lots of small infecting.So parties of various species venture inside the turtle's body, kill some worms in its stomach and then some moles in its brain, and cook and eat the latter, naturally. All this could have been an interesting adventure sequence, but as written it's just . . . so . . . dull.
After an hour, we come to an area with lots of yellow things.Really, the only "story" is that an elf decided to teach humans, and one human boy happens to be really good at magic, and continually finds new ways to advance in magical skill to everyone's amazement, including his teachers.
The old dwarf says: “If You took some very, large ropes, and threw it on the floor.
It would look like this.”
Turtle comes up to us, with the book.And eventually this all leads to inter-species war. Then the book ends (?) at 32%, because for some reason this thing is split into two "books" with a new table of contents for the second "book" at that point, but for the life of me I can't see why it is separated like this. It worked out well, though, because once I reached the first "Epilogue" it gave me the perfect opportunity to DNF. I mean, really, I should have DNF'd at the first page but, you know, then we wouldn't be here. I quickly skimmed the rest to confirm that nothing improves.
He says: “Why are You speaking Elvish.?”
I smile and says: “We have secret, that You are not ready to know.”
He smiles and says: “Yes. Good, You didn't learn me 'Comprehend Language' as one of my first spells.”
I said: “I never learned You that.?”
Why did I even read that far? It's a problem I have, I know. Don't despair at the book's absurd page count of 694; most of that is white space, because most lines of text don't reach the right margin because of the author's incorrigible habit of hitting 'enter' after every single damned sentence, with an extra line break ninety-seven times more than is necessary, plus every third page or so is only one or two lines and otherwise blank, because of the mind-numbing lack of formatting. It's much closer to a 200 page book by normal human standards.
Look, writing incomprehensibly badly is one thing, a HUGE thing, but to cap off the achievement, the author managed to make a worse cover than this classic:
Move over, Moira, there's a new reigning champion:
I will end with a final, hopeful, apt quote, from the book's epilogue. The second epilogue, that is, the one at the actual end of the book:
I write my final words in the book. I close the book, turn of the candle, and sits for a time in the darkness.