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

130. Melissa Stone, Path of the Warrior
     This next book is a Sci-fi fantasy that reminds me of Dune for its non-AI tech meets religious order. The prose is competent, the setting details are good and not overbearing, but I’m finding it impossible to engage with.

I feel the first half of the prologue could have been cut entirely, as the religious order seem to mostly be chatting while they wait for news and then actually just waiting, and then we get news that there’s no news and it all starts again…

It feels like a novel that starts, but a story without a beginning. I have only the vaguest sense of what’s going on except that this religious order is looking for someone, but the who and why of it all is so frustratingly withheld in favor of dithering patter.

I think the writing is good. There are characters on the page. The dialogue sounds real. The setting seems interesting. This may just be a case of a novel that would be better off if the prologue was cut altogether. I’ve got to pass.

Day 45

131. John Champaign @jccwrites, Endless Seas
     Fantasy sea adventure with elemental sprites aiding the progress of the ship, including underwater! Unique fantastical races, ship’s crew patter, and a quick pace await.

The prose is competent and quick, moving right along with a workmanlike quality with nicely direct descriptions of the many characters. The dialogue feels natural, and the scenes feel focused.

Yet, this doesn’t read like a story in a hurry. It has a film quality opening, introducing us briefly to setting details about the magic and the ship, and then leaping forward to the next bit as we build towards The Story.

The unique fantastical races I mentioned remind me a bit of Trudie Skie’s Thirteenth Hour races, with lots of variation. I don’t know what they are yet, or how many different kinds I’ll meet, but their difference is interesting.

We’re only slowly getting to know our characters. I’m not yet sure who among them is our lead, but I suspect our Captain and his 7-foot orange sprite master.

It might be nice to get a little more explanation of the magical stuff, and of the goals of our MC, whoever they are, but I’m prepared to be patient to discover these things as the scenes rapidly unfold.

As a fan of nautical adventures, I appreciate the light approach this has to the technicalities of sailing, emphasizing its crew. At under 300pgs, this promises to be a tightly packed read. I’m in.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106341880-endless-seas

132. MC Burnell, The Spider’s Friend
     I’ve read a few paragraphs of this next opening and I have to stop. I’m glad, having gotten through close to half the SPFBO entries, I haven’t seen many openings like this.

I’m struggling to describe exactly what’s going wrong with the writing here because it’s a few things all at the same time. It’s straining for a lofty, complicated, writerly style of prose, but the end result lacks clarity.

The faux poetics of the imagery don’t communicate an image. The construction of the sentences produces a confused tangle rather than pleasing complexity. I almost entirely do not know what this author is trying to day. I don’t think they do either.

They are reaching for something that reads like what they think good writing is. They’re trying too hard. I think there’s some interesting and weird ideas here, but god help me if I know what they are. Pass.

133. Bogdan T, Galaxy of Thorns
     Interestingly, this one is also a pass for a very similar but different reason to the previous book. The prose is ordinary, but the story for pages and pages is like reading the Star Wars opening crawl.

There is no experience about the information being relayed. There is almost a distant fairy tale quality to the story, but, still, nothing lands. It is a prolonged telling.

In the previous book what I was being told was impenetrable. For this book, it is impersonal. It is a fact sheet. A gloss on a story. A stylized outline. If it were short, it might be a bit camp, but an effective introduction.

This goes on and on. I think it is a good idea to start your story where the story starts and leave the birth of your MC up until that time to your notes so that the details can emerge, if necessary, in the due course of the story. Pass.

Day 46

134. Catherine M Walker @CMWAuthor, Unwanted
     Soldiers of the Warlord who can speak mind to mind prepare a surprise counter-attack on their unsuspecting enemies in this inventive sword-and-sorcery fantasy

The reader is dropped right into the calm before the storm or this story, as our protagonists wait in the dark before the clash of their forces on the unsuspecting Sylannian troops raising a village.

The prose is well grounded in sensory details, and gives the reader a viewpoint MC right away. In addition to his psychic communication abilities, he also has contact with “the veil,” from which he can draw and shape magical powers.

I’m slowly getting to know the magic in this setting amidst the action, and I think that makes for a good read. There’s intriguing details about the enemy Sylannians that I’m waiting to learn more about.

For instance – their attack force is entirely female, with a single male Sylannian who, if killed, will leave the attackers in disarray. I’d like to know how. I’d like to know if the Sylannians are something other than human, too.

I almost stopped reading this after the first paragraph or so (they were lackluster and confusing … village something or other), but I’m glad I didn’t. This finds its voice quickly once we meet our MC.

The action is just crashing onto the pages, and this has more than enough setting details to keep me interested. I’d like to know just what the story is going to shape up to be. I’m in.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/121312604-unwanted

135. Aisha Urooj, The Stone Mermaid
     I don’t think I’ve bought into a MG yet in this opening read thru, and sadly this Little Mermaid romance retelling isn’t an exception.

Although I feel like to does have a sense of voice and that the narration is clear and readable, the fairy tale, zoomed out, overview telling of the narration is leaving me at a distance from the characters and story.

Some of the character details seem interesting, but these opening pages continue to read like an outline, or a pitch for a story rather than the thing itself. Pass.

Day 47

136. C Litka, Beneath the Lanterns
     A historian returns home to the Valley of Azera in this richly detailed and imagined, wonderfully written fantasy/sci-fi that wow’d me in no time at all with gorgeous natural descriptions. And it’s FREE!

This is beautiful. I feel myself melting into the rhythmic, descriptive prose. I am completely disarmed. I’ve read little more than a page, but already I feel I could read this all morning.

I feel as if I am just waking up inside the story, softly roused by the tap of our travelers staff and pad of his tread as he makes his way down into the sweeping Valley of Azera, returning home through the warm, stretching twilight shadows.

There is the lake in the valley’s lowest hollow. There the specks that are boats plying between the city and its six, pine-dark pleasure islands.

I am a lover of classics. Of great diction as well as pulp fiction, and everything in between. So far, this reads like the work of any of the greats. It is measured, steady, the world unfolding through the eyes of our knowledgeable viewpoint narrator.

The narrators voice – intellectual, but self-conscious of his tendency to turn a simple story into a lecture – emerges in short order. This has obviously wow’d me.

I don’t know yet where the story is going to go, what conflicts are going to develop, how the dialogue will land, etc, but I feel I would follow this prose anywhere. Time will tell.

Sincerely, go have a look at this opening right now. Heck, the book is FREE on Amazon. Get it! I’m in!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41832848-beneath-the-lanterns

137. Susan Maxwell @BiblioRefuses, And The Wildness
     Myth and wonder thrive in the Wilderness that borders Cobwell Farm in drought-stricken Hibernia. A woman with horses and clad in ivy crosses the blender and transforms into something more … conventional.

To be perfectly candid, I’m not entirely sure what to make of this opening. It’s more curious than confusing, tho. I’m intrigued. I don’t think I’m supposed to understand everything yet.

The prose and rich natural descriptions are more than competent enough to get me to trust that this author is doing something here, and that all will make sense in due time. The oddness, I trust, is intentional.

Once our strange woodland figure transforms into something more human and the narrative focuses on three characters, they’re dialogue wins me over completely.

It’s natural, charming, and hints at some growing disquiet as our transformed woodland wanderer hands off a basket of gathered herbs and such.

I’m not sure yet exactly what the relative time-period is, or how much the mortal world differs from our own, but I’m prepared to have those setting details sorted out in time.

For now, I’m captivated by the oddness and descriptive poise of this opening. This is unusual in a good way. The characters are quickly leaping lively off the page. It’s billed as a read for all ages. I’m in.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/126307388-and-the-wildness

Also, I really like the maps in this. Not a story detail, I know, but they have a great, artistic, non-cartographical approach.

Day 48

138. Sarah K Balstrup, The Way of Unity
     “Gorgeous, vivid, enchanting, and dark” is an entirely apt summation of the opening of this fantasy swimming in visions and steeped in the oils and smokes of the religious order of the Intercessors.

I want to draw special attention, first and foremost, to the efficiency of Balstrup’s prose. This does a wonderful job of cutting the fat out of moving her characters through physical spaces and time. The setting is expertly woven into the narrative.

We are immersed, always, in the story, even when that immersion is only darkly understood. The dialogue is dripping with worldbuildling, but leads always with character. It feels rich, but uncluttered.

We are introduced to the world of Velspar, but most of all to the visionary abilities of the characters & the Intercessors, a religious order that reminds me of the Dune’s Bene Gesserit for their strangeness and the creeping malevolence I begin to fear from them.

All is not well. There is violence and madness in their secret initiations. I cannot tell if the monsters brought on by their rituals are real or imagined. There is too much for me to summarize here. The story is much too heady for that.

I am still working to understand all the things I am reading (or listening to, in my case) but, like some of the characters, I feel increasingly compelled to receive this story. It binds me tighter the deeper I go.

It is strange and wonderful and, most importantly, at its heart, human. Like Dune, a family is at the center of this story, at least for now.

Young Sybilla, unwilling to speak overmuch of her growing unease at a vision she cannot escape, becomes my anchor point early on, keeping me from losing myself in the swirling red feelings of this story.

Perhaps if I were reading the text instead of listening to the audiobook (which has a generously evocative performance), I could take my time reading back over the text to understand parts of it better, but I am holding on, and I am eager for more.

This was without a doubt a well-chosen semi-finalist from Before We Go Blog. Semi-finalist at least for now, that is. Who knows. It’s certainly like nothing else I have read this year in this competition or otherwise. I’m in.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74880415-the-way-of-unity

139. Christiana Knight, In Sleep You Know
     This one has a link to a Spotify playlist in the opening pages. I think that’s a really neat idea, especially as a way to further communicate some of the story vibes. Not everybody’s reading and music taste line up, of course.

I think the prose here is competent. It isn’t confusing, but I do think the narrative is too MC focused to the exclusion of much else. We’re being chatted at rather than told a story.

By which I mean this is very much like if a friend of yours started telling you something that happened to them. There are only very general setting details.

What makes this special house our MC goes to special is not divulged, nor are there any concrete details about the place at all.

There’s a silly chance encounter that, although it has spirit, is along the lines of a beat in a cheap hallmark movie (no offense meant).

The dialogue is natural enough, and even energetic, but I find myself totally uninvested in the characters and their wholly ordinary circumstances. There’s surely a fantastical turn coming, but I only know that because this was submitted to SPFBO. Pass.

140. Aaron Bunce, Wings of the Storm
     I’m torn, and that’s usually not a good sign. We have an extended prologue of action with characters who I don’t believe we’re going to ever see again.

They’re warriors. Something bad is happening monster related, potentially geopolitically realigning. We get some good worldbuilding patter in dialogue – nothing I really understand yet, but it creates a sense of realism.

The prose is competent and active, and yet it does feel like it’s in a rush to get to the fighting without building up enough anticipation or intrigue for the reader.

My main hang up her is with the storytelling. I don’t really know where we are or have any sense what the stakes might be, and then suddenly it seems like something very very bad is happening.

And yet, the one thing that might make me invested in the moment is the characters, but I don’t feel I know them either. They’re just there. They talk to each other, and the dialogue is a strength here, but it isn’t enough.

Furthermore it is all the more difficult to muster some investment in the characters if I feel we will be shortly (relatively) leaving them behind.

I wonder very much why this prologue is the opening and not Ch1, which introduces our MC, and I suspect it was b/c the author wanted to start with action.

The action itself is commendable, but in the absence of grounded characters and context, it isn’t enough, not in fiction anyway, and not for my impatient read-through. Pass.