Novel: The Book of Air and Shadows
Author: Michael Gruber
Hello and welcome to today's episode of Stupid Bad Literary Devices That Suck! I'm your host, Big Bad Blog Writer. Today's contestant is Michael Gruber. Come on down, Michael!
MG: Thanks, thrilled to be here, even though I'm smarter than you and erudite and stuff.
BBBW: So Michael, tell us a little about yourself.
MG: I'm from Seattle, Washington. The Oregonian called me "compellingly original." I used to be a marine biologist and a speechwriter but now I just torture people with my stupid bad literary devices that suck.
BBBW: Perfect! Okay, Michael, here's our first question. How many words are in the longest sentence on Page 5 of The Book of Air and Shadows? Here's the book for reference.
MG: Ummm.
BBBW: Take your time.
[ten minutes later]
MG: 51 words.
BBBW: And what is the second longest?
MG: 50 words.
BBBW: Third longest?
MG: 45 words... are you trying to make a point here?
BBBW: Why yes, I am, Michael. My point is that unless you are Charles Dickens, you shouldn't be writing pages full of 50 word sentences. Using over-long sentences in an attempt to engage the reader (hoping they won't quit reading until they finish the sentence) is a Stupid Bad Literary Device That Sucks. Congrats! You've earned a point!
MG: Yay.
BBBW: Question two: On page 53, your narrator states, "Reading this over I see I have screwed up the line of the narrative beyond all repair." Is this line: a) clever in a fourth wall-breaking way; b) self-effacing and amusing, or; c) A Stupid Bad Literary Device That Sucks?
MG: I'm going to go with choice A.
BBBW: Bzzzzt! The correct answer is C. Constantly referring to how badly your main character is communicating the story is neither clever nor amusing. All it does is point out how bad your writing is. But we'll give you a point anyway, because you really suck.
MG: Woohoo.
BBBW: On page 90, after a multi-page conversation in flashback form that seems crucial to the plot, you follow it up with this sentence: "As far as I recall, that is, since the above is a complete fabrication." Our last question is: What the HELL?!
MG: Haha! I really got you there. You thought I was finally telling a coherent story and then I say it's all fake. HAHAHA.
BBBW: You now have THREE Stupid Bad Literary Devices That Suck points. Congratulations, you win a trip to Pluto! Please take it.
MG: I will bring my own books to read to pass the time. Because I am awesome.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Please help me.
I have been reading The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber for six weeks and after frequent nodding off and gnashing of teeth, I am now on page 91. That's right. Six weeks. Approximately 45 days. Ninety-one pages.
Someone please kill me.
I abandoned my original plan to review this book chapter by chapter because, quite frankly, that isn't possible. There is no coherent narrative structure to speak of. It bounces around between first person present (with frequent first person flashbacks in the past tense), third person past, and a new narration style I have named Please Make It Stop.
Characteristics of the Please Make It Stop narrative style are as follows:
* Letter format. To remind us of this, the letter writer randomly throws in his wife's name every third line, so that we don't forget this is a letter he's writing to her.
* Italics--unending italics across pages and pages.
* First person present tense which frequently flashes back to first person past tense (sound familiar?) and then back to present tense and perhaps to future tense if you're really lucky.
* Reallie badde ande fake Olde Englyshe characteryzed by switchynge the Letters "I" and "Y", addinge "E" to the ende of nearlie everye worde, and randomlie capitalizynge Nounes and sometimes Adjectyves and Verbbes dependynge upon what drugge Michael Gruber was takynge that evenynge as he sat downe to wryte.
If you're getting the impression that this narrative style is annoying and Fuckynge Impossyble to reade, you have more insight into the human condition than does Michael Gruber, so congrats!
I have to go hang myself now, but I'll be back shortly to describe the terrible, terrible characters who populate The Book of Air and Shadows.
Someone please kill me.
I abandoned my original plan to review this book chapter by chapter because, quite frankly, that isn't possible. There is no coherent narrative structure to speak of. It bounces around between first person present (with frequent first person flashbacks in the past tense), third person past, and a new narration style I have named Please Make It Stop.
Characteristics of the Please Make It Stop narrative style are as follows:
* Letter format. To remind us of this, the letter writer randomly throws in his wife's name every third line, so that we don't forget this is a letter he's writing to her.
* Italics--unending italics across pages and pages.
* First person present tense which frequently flashes back to first person past tense (sound familiar?) and then back to present tense and perhaps to future tense if you're really lucky.
* Reallie badde ande fake Olde Englyshe characteryzed by switchynge the Letters "I" and "Y", addinge "E" to the ende of nearlie everye worde, and randomlie capitalizynge Nounes and sometimes Adjectyves and Verbbes dependynge upon what drugge Michael Gruber was takynge that evenynge as he sat downe to wryte.
If you're getting the impression that this narrative style is annoying and Fuckynge Impossyble to reade, you have more insight into the human condition than does Michael Gruber, so congrats!
I have to go hang myself now, but I'll be back shortly to describe the terrible, terrible characters who populate The Book of Air and Shadows.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
New Book!
After a one month break for Comic Con in San Diego with a side jaunt to Las Vegas, I am back with a new book to read that my mom assures me is terrible. (She says it's even worse than Labyrinth; I find this hard to believe. We'll see.) This time we'll be going chapter by chapter, more or less, unless the author pulls the Dan Brown stunt of wildly uneven chapter lengths.
Book: The Book of Air and Shadows
Author: Michael Gruber
You know what "they" say: don't judge a book by its cover. I'm pretty sure this was the same person who said "don't walk under a ladder because it's bad luck" so I'm going to ignore them.
I always become suspicious when I look at the back cover of a book and it has vague praise for the author rather than the story. I realize the author likely has little control over these blurbs, but still. I feel like this kind of stuff is setting the bar a wee bit too high for the first time reader:
"Gruber is nothing less than masterful."
"Gruber is a gifted and natural storyteller."
"Michael Gruber... joins the elite ranks of those who can both chill the blood and challenge the mind."
The last one concerns me because "challenge the mind" usually means the author is dumping reams of research onto the unsuspecting reader. Hopefully this isn't the case here.
On the back cover I'd rather see a concise plot summary and a feel for the type of genre(s) in which the book fits. I like pictures of the author too--when did we start relegating these to a 1.5" square space inside the back dust jacket? Boohoo.
Anyway, on to chapter 1!
------------------------
Okay, chapter 1 is a hot mess. Here, in my opinion, is what SHOULD happen in a chapter 1:
* The protagonist is introduced.
* The protagonist's background is made clear.
* Some sort of conflict or storyline is introduced (doesn't have to be the main conflict... but something of interest that will keep me reading).
* A setting is established.
Here is what happens in chapter 1 of The Book of Air and Shadows:
* The protagonist is introduced. Ad nauseum. He's an intellectual property lawyer, and he's kind of a dick. There, I just summed up ten pages of wordy, stream-of-consciousness garbage for you. Now you don't need to read it.
* The protagonist's parents are introduced (I have no idea why) but only in narrative form. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the four pages devoted to their history are completely and utterly irrelevant to the plot, since he follows it all up by saying:
He used the "S" word. And a sentence fragment. Edgy.
* The narrator refers to a bunch of characters who haven't appeared yet, assuring I will remember nothing of what he said about them. Sigh.
Note to Michael Gruber: the narrator saying how his own story is boring is not a clever literary device--all it does is taunt the reader with how boring the story is. Seriously. Why not just put a footnote at the bottom reading "hahahaha suckerz!!1!11!!". Also: the "F" word. Edgy.
* At the end of the chapter there is an encounter (in flashback form) with a bumbling professor called Andrew Bulstrode who wants to hire the narrator to do something or other with some old document he found. This is presumably the real beginning of the story. Why we couldn't start there I don't know. Probably because that wouldn't be edgy.
* There is no setting yet. I have no idea where the narrator is writing from except it's on a lake somewhere. Guess it doesn't matter yet since we are now apparently flashing back.
Book: The Book of Air and Shadows
Author: Michael Gruber
You know what "they" say: don't judge a book by its cover. I'm pretty sure this was the same person who said "don't walk under a ladder because it's bad luck" so I'm going to ignore them.
I always become suspicious when I look at the back cover of a book and it has vague praise for the author rather than the story. I realize the author likely has little control over these blurbs, but still. I feel like this kind of stuff is setting the bar a wee bit too high for the first time reader:
"Gruber is nothing less than masterful."
"Gruber is a gifted and natural storyteller."
"Michael Gruber... joins the elite ranks of those who can both chill the blood and challenge the mind."
The last one concerns me because "challenge the mind" usually means the author is dumping reams of research onto the unsuspecting reader. Hopefully this isn't the case here.
On the back cover I'd rather see a concise plot summary and a feel for the type of genre(s) in which the book fits. I like pictures of the author too--when did we start relegating these to a 1.5" square space inside the back dust jacket? Boohoo.
Anyway, on to chapter 1!
------------------------
Okay, chapter 1 is a hot mess. Here, in my opinion, is what SHOULD happen in a chapter 1:
* The protagonist is introduced.
* The protagonist's background is made clear.
* Some sort of conflict or storyline is introduced (doesn't have to be the main conflict... but something of interest that will keep me reading).
* A setting is established.
Here is what happens in chapter 1 of The Book of Air and Shadows:
* The protagonist is introduced. Ad nauseum. He's an intellectual property lawyer, and he's kind of a dick. There, I just summed up ten pages of wordy, stream-of-consciousness garbage for you. Now you don't need to read it.
* The protagonist's parents are introduced (I have no idea why) but only in narrative form. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the four pages devoted to their history are completely and utterly irrelevant to the plot, since he follows it all up by saying:
Rambling. Who gives a shit at this juncture?
He used the "S" word. And a sentence fragment. Edgy.
* The narrator refers to a bunch of characters who haven't appeared yet, assuring I will remember nothing of what he said about them. Sigh.
...this account will be another Tristram Shandy, never getting to the fucking point.
Note to Michael Gruber: the narrator saying how his own story is boring is not a clever literary device--all it does is taunt the reader with how boring the story is. Seriously. Why not just put a footnote at the bottom reading "hahahaha suckerz!!1!11!!". Also: the "F" word. Edgy.
* At the end of the chapter there is an encounter (in flashback form) with a bumbling professor called Andrew Bulstrode who wants to hire the narrator to do something or other with some old document he found. This is presumably the real beginning of the story. Why we couldn't start there I don't know. Probably because that wouldn't be edgy.
* There is no setting yet. I have no idea where the narrator is writing from except it's on a lake somewhere. Guess it doesn't matter yet since we are now apparently flashing back.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Errata
Novel: Labyrinth
Author: Kate Mosse
I was wrong about Authie. He DOES have a personality. Here are his main personality traits:
1. He likes to "shoot the cuffs" on his shirt. He does this at least three times in the last half of the book. Example: Authie shot the cuffs on his crisp white shirt. He even takes the time to shoot his cuffs just before his death.
2. That's it, really.
This personality trait makes him different than Audric, who never shoots the cuffs on his shirt. Also, Audric is really really and I mean really old. Older than Authie, I am almost positive.
I was so wrong about these characters. They couldn't BE more different. Sorry, Kate Mosse!
Author: Kate Mosse
I was wrong about Authie. He DOES have a personality. Here are his main personality traits:
1. He likes to "shoot the cuffs" on his shirt. He does this at least three times in the last half of the book. Example: Authie shot the cuffs on his crisp white shirt. He even takes the time to shoot his cuffs just before his death.
2. That's it, really.
This personality trait makes him different than Audric, who never shoots the cuffs on his shirt. Also, Audric is really really and I mean really old. Older than Authie, I am almost positive.
I was so wrong about these characters. They couldn't BE more different. Sorry, Kate Mosse!
Sunday, June 27, 2010
One Rule to Rule Them All
Novel: Labyrinth
Author: Kate Mosse
Writing fiction can seem daunting, especially if you're a rule follower. A Google search will turn up hundreds of long lists of "rules" for writers. Some of these lists are sturdy advice while others are nitpicky, and it's hard to tell the difference when you're still learning how to write. However, the one guideline that turns up on every list, and the one you should always, always, always follow is:
SHOW, DON'T TELL.
That means you don't TELL the story through a series of dry speeches in dialog or narrative form, but rather you SHOW the story by having the characters experience it.
This is the same principle behind labs in science class. For most people, it's not interesting enough to simply learn the dry facts with no context; to truly become engaged in a concept you must experience it by participating in it. This personal interaction provides a richer understanding and (hopefully) an affinity for the subject.
In a work of fiction, the plot is the science and the characters are our lab partners. We become engaged and reach a rich understanding by viewing the story through the characters' eyes. The author should write in such a way that we feel an affinity for the characters and through them the plot. The plot should not be a dry recitation of facts.
We should not feel like we are memorizing this:
CH3COOH + NaHCO3 ---> CH3COONa + H2CO3
H2CO3 ---> H2O + CO2
We should feel like we're doing/watching this:
Simple enough, right? Even the Brady Bunch can do it.
I regret to inform you that Kate Mosse has never heard of "Show, Don't Tell."
Whenever possible, she has her characters break into long speeches or else reverts to narrative to give us infodumps on such topics as:
* The Occitan language
* The history of medieval France
* The Crusades
* Egyptian Hieroglyphs
* Herbs and shrubbery
* The geographical layout of Southern France
* The types of wares available at a market in medieval France
* The relationships between medieval French nobles
...and on and on.
The culmination of this comes around page 400 when after hundreds of pages of running around that goes nowhere, one of the two main characters meets up with a heretofore extremely minor character, who then proceeds to give a twenty page lecture on the history of the Holy Grail. Said lecture reads like this:
Twenty pages of this, folks.
Do I exaggerate? A little. Some of those twenty pages are spent as the same character lectures us about what happened to the characters in the parallel plot of the book, which takes place in medieval times. So not only do we get a huuuuuuuuuge twenty page infodump, we also never get to see the other main character (Alais) again until the moment of her death!
The irony is, the events this guy describes sound like they'd be about 10,000 times more exciting than the feeble, yawn-inducing storyline we saw poor Alais through. Why couldn't Kate Mosse have started the story at a part that mattered? So basically we watched Alais run around for 400 pages collecting herbs and sneaking about the castle and the village for nothing? The "real" plot is delivered to us as a lecture by some minor character old dude we only saw for about four pages towards the beginning of the book and barely even know?
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME, KATE MOSSE?!
(Note: Can you tell I'm angry? And can you tell I'm angry even though I didn't say, "Gosh, I'm angry"? That right there is an example of Show-Don't-Tell.)
I don't want to finish this book. I'm going to do it, because I only have like fifty pages left, and I'm sure in those fifty pages there will be something even better/worse to write about on here. Plus I have a whole nother list of really horrible similes saved up to post. Can't stop now. Kate is not yet done SHOWING me how bad her writing is.
Author: Kate Mosse
Writing fiction can seem daunting, especially if you're a rule follower. A Google search will turn up hundreds of long lists of "rules" for writers. Some of these lists are sturdy advice while others are nitpicky, and it's hard to tell the difference when you're still learning how to write. However, the one guideline that turns up on every list, and the one you should always, always, always follow is:
SHOW, DON'T TELL.
That means you don't TELL the story through a series of dry speeches in dialog or narrative form, but rather you SHOW the story by having the characters experience it.
This is the same principle behind labs in science class. For most people, it's not interesting enough to simply learn the dry facts with no context; to truly become engaged in a concept you must experience it by participating in it. This personal interaction provides a richer understanding and (hopefully) an affinity for the subject.
In a work of fiction, the plot is the science and the characters are our lab partners. We become engaged and reach a rich understanding by viewing the story through the characters' eyes. The author should write in such a way that we feel an affinity for the characters and through them the plot. The plot should not be a dry recitation of facts.
We should not feel like we are memorizing this:
CH3COOH + NaHCO3 ---> CH3COONa + H2CO3
H2CO3 ---> H2O + CO2
We should feel like we're doing/watching this:
Simple enough, right? Even the Brady Bunch can do it.
I regret to inform you that Kate Mosse has never heard of "Show, Don't Tell."
Whenever possible, she has her characters break into long speeches or else reverts to narrative to give us infodumps on such topics as:
* The Occitan language
* The history of medieval France
* The Crusades
* Egyptian Hieroglyphs
* Herbs and shrubbery
* The geographical layout of Southern France
* The types of wares available at a market in medieval France
* The relationships between medieval French nobles
...and on and on.
The culmination of this comes around page 400 when after hundreds of pages of running around that goes nowhere, one of the two main characters meets up with a heretofore extremely minor character, who then proceeds to give a twenty page lecture on the history of the Holy Grail. Said lecture reads like this:
"The origins of European Catharism lie in Bogomilism, a dualist faith that flourished in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Dalmatia from the tenth century onward. It was linked with older religious beliefs--such as Zoroastrianism in Persia or Manicheism. They believed in reincarnation. [...] In the Palais des Arts in Lyon," he continued, "there is a manuscript copy of a Cathar text of St. John's Gospel, one of very few documents to escape destruction by the Inquisition. It is written in the langue d'Oc, possession of which in those days was considered a heretical, punishable act. Of all the texts sacred to the Bon Homes, the Gospel of John was the most important. It is the one which lays most stress on personal, individual enlightenment through knowledge--gnosis. Bon Homes refused to worship idols, crosses or altars--carved from the rocks and trees of the Devil's base creation--they held the word of God in the very highest esteem."
Twenty pages of this, folks.
Do I exaggerate? A little. Some of those twenty pages are spent as the same character lectures us about what happened to the characters in the parallel plot of the book, which takes place in medieval times. So not only do we get a huuuuuuuuuge twenty page infodump, we also never get to see the other main character (Alais) again until the moment of her death!
The irony is, the events this guy describes sound like they'd be about 10,000 times more exciting than the feeble, yawn-inducing storyline we saw poor Alais through. Why couldn't Kate Mosse have started the story at a part that mattered? So basically we watched Alais run around for 400 pages collecting herbs and sneaking about the castle and the village for nothing? The "real" plot is delivered to us as a lecture by some minor character old dude we only saw for about four pages towards the beginning of the book and barely even know?
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME, KATE MOSSE?!
(Note: Can you tell I'm angry? And can you tell I'm angry even though I didn't say, "Gosh, I'm angry"? That right there is an example of Show-Don't-Tell.)
I don't want to finish this book. I'm going to do it, because I only have like fifty pages left, and I'm sure in those fifty pages there will be something even better/worse to write about on here. Plus I have a whole nother list of really horrible similes saved up to post. Can't stop now. Kate is not yet done SHOWING me how bad her writing is.
Friday, June 18, 2010
My Two Cents
I left the book at my mom's last week and hence have been unable to comment on any specific passages from Labyrinth this week. D'oh. To make up for the lack of blogging, here's my review I wrote a few days ago for Amazon.
Fails as literature June 14, 2010
WARNING: Labyrinth by Kate Mosse blatantly ignores the following standards of fiction:
1. That the human characters resemble human beings in their thoughts, speech, and actions and thus allow the reader to identify with them in some way. The human characters in Labyrinth: a) rarely carry through a thought to its logical conclusion; b) habitually abandon conversations halfway through, and; c) unless they decide to do something supremely stupid such as ride alone at night through a war-torn countryside populated with armed thieves, never take action of any sort unless forced to do so by a cackling villain.
1a. That each character has a distinct personality. Upon reading a piece of dialog or a reaction, the reader should reasonably be able to guess at who said or did that thing based on the personalities presented. The reader shouldn't have to struggle to the realization that Authie and Audric are different characters, nor be forced to puzzle out that Raymond-Roger and Trencavel are in fact one and the same man (who is called by both his first and last name seemingly at some random whim of the author). The main personality traits of a Mosse character are blandness and forgetfulness, in that order. We can add to that apathy and stupidity, if the character is good, and a fondness for sex and/or torture, if the character is bad.
1b. That the characters, once established, act in a manner consistent with the author's description. For instance, a girl described as "brave" and who is volunteering at an archaeological dig should not be tremendously upset upon discovering some skeletons. Nor should a medieval, married girl described as "fearless" and "independent" quake in fear at the sight of a distant corpse and then go running to her daddy.
2. That the story progress at a healthy enough pace that if the reader turns 100 pages ahead, he does not see the characters doing the same things they were doing 100 pages ago. Let's say that on page 119 a man hands you a phone number, then is immediately run down by the bad guys in front of your eyes. What do you do? Call the number to find out what's going on, or wander France for 200 more pages before thinking of the number again, and then only after it is told to you a second time? I bet you can guess what Kate Mosse's heroine does.
3. That the historical references and the researched facts be a natural part of the story and presented only as necessary to the plot. The reader should not have to maneuver around them like orange barrels at a roadwork site. Kate Mosse continually violates this simple rule.
4. That the author should regard the reader as a thinking human being with a memory. It's enough to mention once or twice that Pelletier has gone to Montpellier. After five mentions even the most forgetful reader will have acquired this information; by the ninth or tenth mention the reader will become annoyed, and by the twelfth mention the reader may want to throw your novel across the room.
5. That the phrases "suddenly" and "straight away" should be used sparingly, not well over 100 times in 500 pages. It's not necessary, for example, to describe Alice ordering her meal "straight away"--would it not suffice to say she ordered food? Kate Mosse tends to use "straight away" to begin sentences, which makes this even more distracting. Straight away, I noticed that Mosse has an obsession with the term "straight away."
6. That an English language book be mainly in English; that foreign words be used appropriately--such as when the English word will not do--or occasionally for flavor. We don't need entire strings of conversation in French, especially not when the conversation consists of someone telling their secretary to make a phone call. And we don't need to be patronized by having words like "allo" followed immediately by the English "hello" by way of translation. Kate Mosse believes she's the only person in the English-speaking world to ever learn French, and she is darn well going to teach it to us.
7. Finally, and most importantly, that the story and/or characters entertain the reader. Judging by other comments here, Kate Mosse has a rival in Dan Brown. Dan Brown's novels suffer from some of the same mistakes as Mosse's do--infodumps, wafer-thin characterization, repeated words, excruciating dialog, etc. However, Dan Brown, for all his human failings, knows how to create a story and move it along, and thus ENTERTAINS the reader. I'll take an over the top, ridiculously implausible Holy Grail story over a meticulously researched, deadly dull Holy Grail story any day of the week. Et toi, Kate Mosse?
Fails as literature June 14, 2010
WARNING: Labyrinth by Kate Mosse blatantly ignores the following standards of fiction:
1. That the human characters resemble human beings in their thoughts, speech, and actions and thus allow the reader to identify with them in some way. The human characters in Labyrinth: a) rarely carry through a thought to its logical conclusion; b) habitually abandon conversations halfway through, and; c) unless they decide to do something supremely stupid such as ride alone at night through a war-torn countryside populated with armed thieves, never take action of any sort unless forced to do so by a cackling villain.
1a. That each character has a distinct personality. Upon reading a piece of dialog or a reaction, the reader should reasonably be able to guess at who said or did that thing based on the personalities presented. The reader shouldn't have to struggle to the realization that Authie and Audric are different characters, nor be forced to puzzle out that Raymond-Roger and Trencavel are in fact one and the same man (who is called by both his first and last name seemingly at some random whim of the author). The main personality traits of a Mosse character are blandness and forgetfulness, in that order. We can add to that apathy and stupidity, if the character is good, and a fondness for sex and/or torture, if the character is bad.
1b. That the characters, once established, act in a manner consistent with the author's description. For instance, a girl described as "brave" and who is volunteering at an archaeological dig should not be tremendously upset upon discovering some skeletons. Nor should a medieval, married girl described as "fearless" and "independent" quake in fear at the sight of a distant corpse and then go running to her daddy.
2. That the story progress at a healthy enough pace that if the reader turns 100 pages ahead, he does not see the characters doing the same things they were doing 100 pages ago. Let's say that on page 119 a man hands you a phone number, then is immediately run down by the bad guys in front of your eyes. What do you do? Call the number to find out what's going on, or wander France for 200 more pages before thinking of the number again, and then only after it is told to you a second time? I bet you can guess what Kate Mosse's heroine does.
3. That the historical references and the researched facts be a natural part of the story and presented only as necessary to the plot. The reader should not have to maneuver around them like orange barrels at a roadwork site. Kate Mosse continually violates this simple rule.
4. That the author should regard the reader as a thinking human being with a memory. It's enough to mention once or twice that Pelletier has gone to Montpellier. After five mentions even the most forgetful reader will have acquired this information; by the ninth or tenth mention the reader will become annoyed, and by the twelfth mention the reader may want to throw your novel across the room.
5. That the phrases "suddenly" and "straight away" should be used sparingly, not well over 100 times in 500 pages. It's not necessary, for example, to describe Alice ordering her meal "straight away"--would it not suffice to say she ordered food? Kate Mosse tends to use "straight away" to begin sentences, which makes this even more distracting. Straight away, I noticed that Mosse has an obsession with the term "straight away."
6. That an English language book be mainly in English; that foreign words be used appropriately--such as when the English word will not do--or occasionally for flavor. We don't need entire strings of conversation in French, especially not when the conversation consists of someone telling their secretary to make a phone call. And we don't need to be patronized by having words like "allo" followed immediately by the English "hello" by way of translation. Kate Mosse believes she's the only person in the English-speaking world to ever learn French, and she is darn well going to teach it to us.
7. Finally, and most importantly, that the story and/or characters entertain the reader. Judging by other comments here, Kate Mosse has a rival in Dan Brown. Dan Brown's novels suffer from some of the same mistakes as Mosse's do--infodumps, wafer-thin characterization, repeated words, excruciating dialog, etc. However, Dan Brown, for all his human failings, knows how to create a story and move it along, and thus ENTERTAINS the reader. I'll take an over the top, ridiculously implausible Holy Grail story over a meticulously researched, deadly dull Holy Grail story any day of the week. Et toi, Kate Mosse?
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Foolish Inconsistency...
Novel: Labyrinth
Author: Kate Mosse
In today's reading, our new acquaintance Authie is searching someone's apartment. I say acquaintance rather than friend, because like almost every other character in the book, Authie has no personality and we thus can't know whether we're supposed to like him or not. Anyhow, Authie is searching, and...
There was a bureau in the corner on which sat an old electric typewriter.
We could note that since this part of the story takes place in 2005, all electric typewriters would be considered old. Then again, a page later Authie runs into an ink well, quill, and blotting paper (!) on the desk and shows no surprise at this setup. Perhaps modern day France lacks the communication niceties enjoyed by the rest of the Western world? After all, I hear they're still eating moldy cheese over there. Ha-ha!
But wait! Authie is so impressed by the typewriter that he is momentarily distracted from his mission of searching the apartment.
He pressed the on/off button and it buzzed into life. He slipped a piece of paper in and struck a couple of keys. The letters appeared in a sharp black row on the page.
We won't go into whether two letters constitute a "row on the page." After this effort, Authie moves on to search the rest of the bureau, presumably leaving the typewriter turned on and the piece of paper in it, as there's no mention of him turning it off and removing the paper.
Surely there will be some significance to this later in the book, you think. Maybe they pull Authie's prints from the paper, or maybe he's left some sort of cryptic message in the typed letters. But nope, a search of the book's text on Amazon reveals no other mentions of the typewriter after this. Authie, the Worst Thief in the Whole World, was simply bored and decided to play with someone's old skool typing toy while rifling through the victim's belongings, and no one ever notices.
Here are some of my suggestions to fix this predicament:
1. Remove this paragraph from the book, since it's useless to the story and to Authie's character.
2. That's it, really. Remove the paragraph.
In conclusion, I have a few letters of my own for Kate Mosse:
WTF?
Author: Kate Mosse
In today's reading, our new acquaintance Authie is searching someone's apartment. I say acquaintance rather than friend, because like almost every other character in the book, Authie has no personality and we thus can't know whether we're supposed to like him or not. Anyhow, Authie is searching, and...
There was a bureau in the corner on which sat an old electric typewriter.
We could note that since this part of the story takes place in 2005, all electric typewriters would be considered old. Then again, a page later Authie runs into an ink well, quill, and blotting paper (!) on the desk and shows no surprise at this setup. Perhaps modern day France lacks the communication niceties enjoyed by the rest of the Western world? After all, I hear they're still eating moldy cheese over there. Ha-ha!
But wait! Authie is so impressed by the typewriter that he is momentarily distracted from his mission of searching the apartment.
He pressed the on/off button and it buzzed into life. He slipped a piece of paper in and struck a couple of keys. The letters appeared in a sharp black row on the page.
We won't go into whether two letters constitute a "row on the page." After this effort, Authie moves on to search the rest of the bureau, presumably leaving the typewriter turned on and the piece of paper in it, as there's no mention of him turning it off and removing the paper.
Surely there will be some significance to this later in the book, you think. Maybe they pull Authie's prints from the paper, or maybe he's left some sort of cryptic message in the typed letters. But nope, a search of the book's text on Amazon reveals no other mentions of the typewriter after this. Authie, the Worst Thief in the Whole World, was simply bored and decided to play with someone's old skool typing toy while rifling through the victim's belongings, and no one ever notices.
Here are some of my suggestions to fix this predicament:
1. Remove this paragraph from the book, since it's useless to the story and to Authie's character.
2. That's it, really. Remove the paragraph.
In conclusion, I have a few letters of my own for Kate Mosse:
WTF?
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