Tower Of Obsidian - L.T. Getty

After reaching 11%, I am abandoning this book. I wanted to give it a chance for the plot to kick in, but it is simply not polished enough. Why should I waste my time on something that’s not edited correctly? It’s so poorly done in this novel that I have decided it’s one of three things:

 

1)      This book was not edited.

2)      This book was edited, but poorly.

3)      This book was edited very well, but the starting manuscript was so bad the editor missed all the other errors.

 

The errors are most notably the incorrect capitalisation of proper nouns and repeating the same word in a following sentence – or even the same sentence.

 

Here’s an example:

 

Kale left his mare Maebh with Aaron, so Kale told the servants he was ready to see his father.

He met his father in his family’s arms room. Father, I trust you and mother are well?”

8%

 

Here's the thing: we have already been introduced to the mare by name a few pages ago so we don’t need this reminder, Kale is still the active subject in the sentence so we don't need a reminder in the form of the second use of his name, the use of 'father' three times in succession drives me crazy, and 'mother' should be capitalised as it's her title. It would be 'say hello to my mother' or 'Hello, Mother'. That's how English works.

 

Here's an example of repetition:

 

They marched their horses proudly down the streets toward Camlyn Killiath. Kale was proud enough on the streets as a victor, but Aaron could see the worry being to crease his brow...

4%

 

and another:

 

Kintai would fly at squirrels and small birds she'd spot randomly, but would attack randomly and without the grace common to the larger, better trained raptors.

8%

 

Here's another example of poor editing:

 

"I hope your father will return to good health, so his daughter need not continue to command in his steed."

4%

 

Yes, steed. That's not a typo on my part.

 

And finally, I'm not even going to bother ranting on terms of address because I did that in my Words Once Spoken review, but here are some more errors I found:

 

"Is his grace all right?" Kale asked. [should be His Grace]

8%

 

and

 

"As protector, my duke?" he ventured. [should be Your Grace or simply Duke]

8%

 

This isn't everything, it's only the ones I could be bothered to both note down and retype here. But it's all within the first 11%.

 

It pisses me off to high hell when I know more about English than actual authors.

 

The whole thing reads like this. Every few pages I’m jolted out of the narrative because of the poor storytelling, mentally correcting all the errors. I can't enjoy this. Maybe someone who doesn't understand the intricacies of English might enjoy it, but I can't. I have this thing called standards, you know? They're pretty high. Why shouldn't they be?

 

The first 50 pages are supposed to be the most polished because they're a) what you query with and b) what keeps a reader who started flicking through the book reading. Or the preview on Amazon.

 

Fuck.

 

Here's another thing: the last book I finished I probably should have DNF'd because it didn't improve. I should have listened to my heart. Also, I've had presses pull books from publication in response to my criticisms on editing.

 

Seeing as how this turned into a DNF review, I do want to repost the funniest thing in the book so far:

 

“You’re not even trying.” Niamh shook her head, looking at her eldest daughter. “It’s a wonder Gesalve’s son ran off with that strumpet from Daraby.”

“Gesalve’s son couldn’t run far without being out of breath, perhaps said strumpet carried him off,” Fianait countered.

9%

 

(btw, I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be ‘it’s no wonder’.)

 

It's a no wonder I decided to put this book down and never pick it back up.

 

Thanks to Burst Books and LT Getty for providing a copy of this book for an honest review. The fact that it was free has absolutely no bearing on my being annoyingly opinionated.