domingo, 14 de enero de 2018

An interesting intake I'm getting from reviews

We all formulate something different after reading a book and what one person might consider to be a masterpiece, another review will call it rubbish. Just look at Tolkien novels and you will find plenty of 1 star reviews claiming the books wander around too much with flowery writing. I myself didn't like the filler Tom Bombadil chapter in The Fellowship of the Ring but I otherwise enjoyed the book.

While I loved reading Harry Potter (I chugged the 7th novel in less than 11 hours of binge reading which merely proves how good the book was), I detested the 5th novel and was overly generous by granting it a 3 star rating on Goodreads (mainly because I loved Dolores's character). The 5th novel suffered from too much filler, too much Harry's internal ramblings regarding Snape's private occlumency classes and a painfully slow pace. The book could have easily been a 4 star read if an editor had given J.K. a candid chat claiming that she needed to trim the fat a little bit.

I've reviewed a lot of books and some authors were surprised by some of the things I observed. It's also one of the reasons why authors really, really love getting reviews for their books. They not only get more visibility (Amazon starts granting you serious marketing power if your book has at least 50 legit reviews and the all mighty Bookbub site *might* accept your petition for a 1 day promo if you have a minimum of 100 Amazon reviews).

While getting a Bookbub deal is a huge (and a mightily worthwhile bang for your buck marketing feat), reviewers might see something else about the story that you haven't.

I have gotten some comparisons of my novel with Tolkien. And it's not because of the prose (I doubt I could ever reach Tolkien level), but more because of how they compare Spaulding to Frodo whose life turns upside down when they are dragged on an unwanted adventure that changes them due to something that shows up on their doorstep on the first chapter.

So far I have gotten two reviews that actually enjoy the breeze of fresh air that the child protagonists have no mystical prophecy or that they are innately special. For most of the first book, Richard and Nelida are just ordinary humans without any innate talent. Richard eventually learns how to summon his phantom beast but the endless hurdles thrown into the plot make it impossible for him to further his training. Nelida is on a separate realm of her own between being completely incompetant and the most terrifying mage in the entire story. Herb on the other hand shows enthusiasm but he never learns sorcery despite his best efforts.

The subsequent novels are vastly different in the sense that the children grow older and Spaulding becomes a more constant character in the story.

I also find it to be interesting that Froylan is universally detested. He's a main character that appears in every novel that is a mixture between awesome, terrifying, hateful and yet even funny at times.

Even though my book was killed off in the first round of the SPFBO contest and I currently don't have any other novels that could qualify for the 2018 contest (sequel novels don't qualify and I only have a few partially written novellas), I have found a lot of new books that I have attempted to read in my spare time, enjoyed hanging around in the sidelines of some discussion boards and surprisingly had my book chosen to be read and reviewed by a highly respected fantasy blogger. To get my book reviewed by two of the top fantasy blogs with mostly positive comments is thrilling.

I hope more readers that are into Young Adult will take a look at my work and see if the mostly positive feedback I've gotten so far is merited. ;)

My book on Goodreads

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