At bat:
Tenlyres (Bondmage, #1) by Tim Neiderriter
I’m doing this in a sort of homage to Jefferson Smith’s “Immerse or Die” challenge, which since late 2018 is defunct or on semi-permanent hiatus.
It occurred to me that I was spending enormous amounts of my limited pre-sleep time dutifully slogging through books I wasn’t interested in--mostly from bundles of various sorts. I had a moment of “what would happen if I just stopped reading?” The answer of course, is that I read more stuff I enjoy.
Mostly, the books just trail off. Now and again, though, there’s something so bothersome I find myself slipping into one of Jefferson’s “WTF” moments. One of those is presented here.
I’m going with a baseball theme: three strikes and you’re out.
The Premise: Ilsa is a sort of warrior or mage or religious figure, or combination of the three, or some of the above, who travels with Blue, who is not well described. They live in a politically fractured land or world threatened by the possible outbreak of war, and are doing something to stop it. After visiting Ilsa’s mother, uncovering some tantalizing clues to Ilsa’s expulsion from “Saint Banyeen’s” along the way, they got street food. That’s as much as I read.
Strike 1: Descriptions
There is a recurring issue in the way things are described. There is detail, but not descriptions. It all seems weirdly unmoored from context, where we get lots of elements but they don’t really add up to a usable picture. I found this really hurt my ability to form a mental image of what the book was describing and thus my enjoyment of it.
For example, from the fourth paragraph:
“Fingertips brushed Ilsa’s arm as her traveling companion, Blue, sat forward and peered out the window past her. Black braids fell around Blue’s shoulders. Those braids shifted only a little as the train came to a full stop.”
This is our introduction to one of the main characters. We get nothing about Blue, except that she has black braids which respond more or less to gravity and she’s sitting inboard from the window next to Ilsa. Does she react to the sight of the city? Is she look at something specific? What does any of it mean?
I was already annoyed at this point. The previous three paragraphs described where they’re going. They were a collection of similar semi-detailed descriptions that never added up to enough information to help you build a good mental image of the city they were entering.
Strike 2: Water Torture
I appreciate the urge to not give a data dump outlining the whole fictional world and the characers up front. Unfortunately, Niederriter’s style is to drip out clues which--see above--don’t have a lot of context linking them to the story.
“She didn’t like pointing an open palm at her companion. For most people, the gesture meant resistance in peace, but for someone who knew Ilsa’s bond, the motion implied a threat. When she summoned the weapon bonded to that symbol, it would appear in that hand.”
Except we don’t know Ilsa’s bond, since it’s the first chapter of book 1. Also no idea what “resistance in peace” signifies. Several pages later, we hear Ilsa reconcile with an old enemy who tells her “be red” in reference to a proverb the old enemy has written. Nothing further.
I think this style is supposed to be mysterious or oracular, but it misfired.
Strike 3: General Lack of Polish
I don’t mean only proofreading, but genuine editing.
The main point: a lot of what I noticed about Strike 1 seemed to be details which weren’t descriptions, almost as if the author felt compelled to say something but wasn’t sure what. Okay, I can relate to that.
The problem is that over a book’s length, you get bogged down if there are too many constructions like this:
“Ilsa smirked at her companion, hoping it did not seem forced. She had ridden with Blue for so long, she did not know if she could really trust her as a friend. ‘Thanks, Blue.’”
Ok, so: the smirk was supposed to seem genuine? And what does the next sentence even mean? The comment before this quote, Blue has compared Ilsa to a sister so this seems odd. Normally, if you can’t trust someone you spend less time with them in dangerous places, not more. Are the thanks ironic? Why?
There is a lot of really good independent SFF. And there is a lot that could be really good, if someone dispassionate read, noticed, and questioned things like that.
The breaking point for me was this sentence: “The wheels of the small transit car squealed, and it bobbed against the guidance wire overhead as the driver put on the breaks.” No, it’s a “brake”.
Ugh.
Final Score: Read to location 207 (Kindle), or 4% of the way through. The thought of a couple of hundred pages of the same avalanche of small but annoying pain points sent me off to the next one.