Tom Mock

NOTE: This is a backlog of my notes from SPFBO9. It may look a little rough. My apologies!

You can read my final thoughts on the contest here: Tom Mock’s SPFBO9’s Opening Reads Final Thoughts | JamReads – Making your TBR closer to infinite

70. Alex Raizman, The Dungeon That Walks Like A Man
    I haven’t read very much of this, but the prose is fairly uninviting. It’s starts with action, and that’s great! But the writing is amateurish. There’s a lack of clarity. The wrong words are used …

Stopping up the action is an odd jumble of character description details that are misplaced here. Bad “active” verbs like hair flopping around in a fight. The narration is poor. Pass.

71. Mandy Burkhead, A Single Spark
    The story here takes a nice turn in chapter one as a group of witch hunters find that a blind old healer and his daughter are not just helpless victims. A bit of YA fantasy

I’m not wowed by the prose, but the story moves right along, introducing characters and action, and there’s a competence in the exposition that is slowly revealing the world of the story to me.

I’ve seen very little of our protagonists so far, but I like them. They’re good people, but the world makes it hard to be good.

Based on the opening and what happens in ch1 – SOMETHING HAPPENS! – I think this might be a great read especially for younger readers and YA fantasy fans.

A Single Spark has been cut from SPFBO9, so you can see what Phillip Chase thought of the novel, but that won’t stop me. I’m in! This also only has 1 review, which is crazy to me. YA fans, jump in! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142403565-a-single-spark

(I’ve noticed a lot of these books start in “a village.” I don’t mind fantasy villages as a setting, but I’d like to recommend trying to avoid genericism. Even just giving the village a name can make a big difference to my imagination.)

72. Austin Windsor @austinawindsor, A Twist of Fate
    I want to really recommend this next dark fantasy novel to everyone for its refreshing brevity. The action is concise, and in only a few pages I find myself inextricably pulled into the world of the story.

There’s a simplicity to the storytelling that I find incredibly inviting. No scene overstays it’s welcome. Situations develop, resolve, and then develop again. I had to force myself to stop reading.

But for all that the story isn’t in a rush. It is patiently letting me get to know its protagonist as it introduces world details and complications that consistently surprise and increase my interest.

This is book 1 of a series, and based on its opening, I think Austin is an author to watch!

A bounty hunter making his bread and butter by turning in monster heads to inns finds himself pulled into a war between nations – and that’s only one of an ensemble of protagonists in A TWIST OF FATE. I’m in.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62708441-a-twist-of-fate

73. (Amber L Werner, Shadows That Bind Us)
    This is another story that starts like someone is describing a movie to me. The scene is described without any depth. Everything is surface.

The great advantage fiction has over film is its power of description. At a glance, you can tell me the name of the order of priests standing at the cliff side, the nature of their ritual, any of a host of inviting and world building details.

You don’t have to do this, of course. Exterior focused prose is a choice, but it can make your story seem bland and underdeveloped. You end up steering your character’s bodies around and having them look at things.

Luckily, this book dispenses with its flat prose after a few paragraphs, but I would have liked it better if it started out more detailed.

The more I read, the more I find this is a competent and interesting story, and my earlier writing note is a general consideration that doesn’t particularly pertain to this story so –

73) Amber L Werner, Shadows That Bind Us
A group of initiates must sacrifice something of themselves to the magical Palisade that keeps their home safe from the monsters without that no one has seen in 100 years – but this is only the beginning

This is a YA fantasy, as near as I can tell. I think it’s competent and interesting. I’m not sure who the protagonist is yet – this may be an ensemble read, but the world details are interesting.

Within the first section of chapter 1, tho, there is a steady drip of interesting magical details with several surprises, especially at the end.

I’m interested to see where this one goes. It feels active and well paced, and the setting of a graveyard at the opening of the second section has tickled my macabre little heart.

At just over 300pgs, this could prove to be an absorbing fantasy coming of age read (if it’s Amazon categories are to be trusted). I’m in!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63918487-shadows-that-bind-us

74. Brock Mays, Embers
    This next read is an uneven experience. I’m tempted to read more for the dialogue and what I’m understanding the story to be, but the prose leaves much to be desired.

The dialogue isn’t great, mind, but it is written naturally enough, and even has some energy to it. One character is a bit of a question machine (dull) but it serves to give us some exposition.

The story itself is giving me shades of Malazan, which is to the authors credit, but the prose… it’s heavy handed and purplish, the action is murky and not always easy to understand

The POV is fairly narrow. We only seem to see what is within 10 feet of the protagonist. I suppose I do understand everything that happens, but only eventually, once I’ve gotten to the end of the paragraphs.

And even then, I find I’m not enjoying it. The order that details are presented, and the details that are emphasized feel wrong. It’s information instead of an experience.

The execution of a protagonist with amnesia (a secret favorite of mine) is not particularly well handled. I don’t feel grounded in his experience beyond his waking up in pain.

A character can only think, “what does that mean? But who am I” so many times before it gets very tired. You don’t have to tell me the same thing over and over again. Establish and then develop.

This book, like many that I’ve had criticism for, is well rated on goodreads. People have enjoyed it and eagerly await more from the author, and that’s great to see. This is just my read of the beginning.
Pass.

75. Thomas J. Prestopnik, Nicholas Raven and the Wizard’s Web
    Competent, good character development, consistent line of thought, focused – I don’t mind a slow start when I have these things.

The prologue begins “50 years ago,” but the villain (I assume) it introduces is a newly banished young wizard. He’s having a rough time. He seems a bit mad.

Yes, I think it would have been better if we had some inkling of why he was banished, but the 3rd person pov is very close, and we get a great sense of his character nonetheless.

It manages to be immersive with its details, and though not much happens besides our banished wizard student crossing a river at the borders of the wizarding realm, this still felt like a quality beginning

I want to read the next/fist chapter to begin to learn what this book is going to be about, and what more can we demand a beginning do?

There is a young Voldemort quality to our banished student. Along with the title of the novel, can I expect other similarities to Harry Potter? (trans rights are human rights.) Who doesn’t like a YA wizarding story? I’m in.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25795886-nicholas-raven-and-the-wizards-web—volume-1

76. Marcus Lee, The Mountain of Souls
    The prose is 1st person present tense in this grimdark (YA) fantasy, and that lends to the immediacy of the action. Tense and horrible, our protagonist has been kidnapped, and they’re not alone

The dialogue at the end of the 1st section was terse & pointed, & ultimately decided my interest. Some of the dark details were overwrought, but the action and mystery of this was engaging (tho could have been tighter).

Our protagonist is a hopeful, resourceful but weak innocent, and that balances the awfulness of the situation very well. I’m routing for them.

There isn’t much more in the opening but the immediate details of our protagonist’s plight, but the focus feels appropriate because of the extremity of the situation, reminding me somewhat of Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum.

Why have they been kidnapped? Why this cruel terrible test they’re forced to endure? Who are these masked kidnappers? I want to know, and I’ll keep reading to find out. I’m in.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77268392-the-mountain-of-souls

77. Simon Graeme, Dark Lament
    I find usually horrible situations don’t need a lot of help from the prose to land with me, but this next entry draws a lot of attention to its prose (and away from the story) by coloring the action with a lot of oh-so-gritty details.

Purple prose can be immersive in its own way. It can be fun and feel light, even when the subject is grimdark violence, because the purple prose will send everything over the top such that it becomes campy.

I think this starts off going a little too far tho, and because it also jerked the reader around in time and POV on the first page, I’m finding it hard to engage with the story and its victimized characters.

I’ve seen conversations among my indie peers lately about books that begin from a specific characters point of view, but oddly withhold information from the reader that the character would know. This is an example.

I’m interested in the immediate strangeness of a necromancer(?) and his shambling host looking for a boy, but the circumstances of our opening don’t make sense.

If you see a shambling host of a hundred dead men coming toward your farm from the city, you don’t hide your son and then wait for them to get there. You run!

Poorly thought out plot conveniences on page one are a great way to lose my interest (when they aren’t cheekily winking at the reader). Along with everything else, this is a pass.

78. Richard Fierce & pdmac, Throne of Deceit
    This next DnD style short novel has a somewhat plodding, childish approach to narration. The setting is generic, as are the authoritarian king’s men.

There is a decent focus on the MC and her POV, but her musings meander, even to the point of getting distracted from our typical bad guy knights beating up a patron from her inn.

This bullying attack is treated as paradoxically unique and commonplace. Maybe the intention was that the severity of the knights abuse was unique, but our MC comes off as surprisingly naïve compared to her counterpart.

I’m disappointed that there is also no justification (however thin) for the assault. It seems to happen for no reason, just to establish our bad guys as bad.

Things escalate, but I’m neither surprised nor invested. The prose is too plodding, almost with a middle grade feel to it. There’s nothing wrong with MG, but this lacks a sense of when to tell me things.

There was a sound outside. It got everyone’s attention. Our MC tries to see, but everyone is at the windows. She couldn’t tell quite what was going on. It sounded like a fight.

The knights were bullying a man. They pushed him down. He glowered at them. They told him to lick their boots. It was so-and-so. Our MC kind of knows him. No, we won’t get to know anything else about him, but he has a name now.

It’s not exactly an engaging read. This might be just the thing were I a younger reader who played DnD. But I grow old, and my skin is cold, and I wear my trousers rolled…
Pass.

79. Chaz Lebel @ChezLebel, Litany of the Destroyer
    A grimdark historical fantasy set during the war of English King Edward in France. This promises to head in a ghoulish direction, and may be of interest to fans of Joe Abercrombie

A knight dreams of something horrific – inhuman! – overtaking his lord, but presses on with his sworn duty, doing his murderer’s work in a battle over French soil. The awful promise of this is intriguing.

The “dream” beginning is disorienting, but the specificity of world details and competent dialogue kept me turning the pages. The setting is immersive and makes this read, and the horror lurking in its background, feel unique.

The action of the opening battle was quick and greatly energetic, but did suffer from being all too unclear much of the time.

That the action (and not just the battle minutia) is frequently unclear is the single biggest strain on my enjoyment, but there’s enough else here to keep my interest, at least for now.

I’m engaged. There are a few surprises, just in the opening pages. The tone and stiffness of the knights, and steady progression of the story has my interest. One of the best things you can do as a writer is just to keep the story moving, and this does. So, I’m in.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62036371-litany-of-the-destroyer