Sometimes I feel cheated when the minor WTFs mount up and the rules say I have to stop a story I’m otherwise enjoying.
What I gleaned about the story: An aging and over-complacent hero tires of the celebrity life he leads and wishes for a bit more of the old adventuring. But when that comes, he quickly realizes he is not the young man he once was, and to an old man, adventures are downright terrifying.
Find this book on Amazon.
Details: I quite like this opening scene, in which the aging hero seems a bit down on his luck, pimping himself out as a roadside attraction to whichever tavern owner will pay him to show up. It’s not that the idea is entirely original, but I don’t recall seeing it in the medieval fantasy milieu before and it seems well executed.
Analysis: That should either be “as he” or “and,” but as written, it threw a stumble into my reading stride. And since it’s on the first page…
Analysis: He did it years ago, which is what led to the current drought of magical creatures to fight. So this reference back to the earlier event needs to be in past perfect. He didn’t just do it now. Sadly, this was not the first such grammatical omission, and the pattern has now become noticeable enough to pull me out of the tale.
Analysis: Verb tense train wreck. He’s talking about what he wants now, harkening back to what was so great about the old days. It could work either as a present tense declaration of what he wants now, or as a past tense declaration about what was so wonderful about the old days, but it can’t work as both. You need to pick a tense and lived in it.
Note: This is actually a pretty strong story so far. The issues that caused immersion to break were minor, so in keeping with previous reports, an immersion break is an immersion break and I stop at three. But I’ll be putting this one on the “read more later” pile for sure.
Follow up: Having now read the story to completion, I can report that it was a thoroughly entertaining yarn. It needs a complete proof-read and I was disappointed that a real plot never fully emerged, but Rawk was an engaging protagonist and his world was an enjoyable place to inhabit while it lasted.
Um… verb tense in the ‘Click to tweet’ — is that intentional?
If it is, sorry. I’m very literal.
Yes, it was intentional. I thought it highlighted the point very succinctly. :-)
Hi Jefferson
Thanks for the comments. I’m glad you like the story enough to get past the other bits. Other bits which I will now be going back to have a look at as soon as I’ve finished going over another story (the next couple of days, hopefully).
I will then be starting on Rawk’s second book which will pick up pretty much straight after ‘The Last Great Hero’. That (along with book 3) should fix the ‘no real plot’ problem, though that’s small consolation (for both of us) if you don’t feel like reading the next books. Finding the balance between the book and series is difficult. Tell a complete story so you don’t leave people hanging (which is annoying), but leave them hanging enough that they want more…
Thanks again. And I love your reviews (even this one (o: ).
I’m glad you find these useful, Scott. The biggest issue I had with the plot was the lack of urgency. I once read that plot arcs have more tension in them if there is a burning fuse of some kind that drives the protagonist forward. It usually comes in the form of a finite time limit, a dwindling set of options to solve the problem, or a dwindling set of resources at hand—some clear count-down that shows ruin and damnation steamrolling toward Our Fair Hero. And this is the critical urgency that I found lacking with Rawk. Yes he had things to do, and yes he struggled to achieve them, but without that great burning clock of doom hanging over him, I never really felt that he was in any real trouble, outside of the individual battles. As a result, it felt like he was wandering from one set-piece to the next, with no clear ambition. And a protagonist without a goal is just a guy stumbling around the story-verse.
I tried to do the time limit thing a bit– If Rawk doesn’t do it now Weaver will send someone else to beat him to it. But I didn’t want to over do that because he is (semi)retired so he does wander aimlessly in his actual life… Obviously didn’t find that balance. I don’t think I want to do a complete rewite to get that in. There is more of that sort of thing in the next one, so I’ll just have to make sure I turn the heat up on it a bit.