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A review by stefhyena
Beyond the Valley of Thorns by Patrick Carman
2.0
It seems to be one of those mass produced, written in a hurry series. There's an assumption that you will read the whole series it does not stand alone particularly well. The world-building is half-hearted (more like a D and D game thrown together one weekend than a carefully crafted thing) the plot is full of holes and it has that weird "pretend not to be sexist by having a strong female character but keep slipping into patriarchal ways of being every second" thing that used to annoy me about American TV back when I could still be bothered watching TV sometimes.
I predict that there are about 20-30 of these and they get progressively less thought out. I don't blame the author of course there are hundreds of series like this and it's a way to make a living by writing. I just feel really sad that it's harder for writers to get published by writing slow, careful, beautifully crafted stories.
The metaphysics of the book (God-like figure and Devil-like figure) was a bit intrusive and OTT (like the creator of the world seems to be kept in reserve to be deus-ex-machina eventually in a book when they run out of other options). My kids might have liked this when they were little and wanted lots of series to read. I will put it in a street library (probably where I found it).
I predict that there are about 20-30 of these and they get progressively less thought out. I don't blame the author of course there are hundreds of series like this and it's a way to make a living by writing. I just feel really sad that it's harder for writers to get published by writing slow, careful, beautifully crafted stories.
The metaphysics of the book (God-like figure and Devil-like figure) was a bit intrusive and OTT (like the creator of the world seems to be kept in reserve to be deus-ex-machina eventually in a book when they run out of other options). My kids might have liked this when they were little and wanted lots of series to read. I will put it in a street library (probably where I found it).