Tom Mock

Here There Be Monsters – Steamborn |
A debut with voice and an excitingly magical MC who has been through the ringer for 800s made me want to read more. A 2nd, slightly less focused opening fell short.

(from Before We Go Blog)

126. Josh Wright, Here There Be Monsters

Our regenerative MC covered in scars conjures images in my mind of anime (anti)heroes like Guts, Vash the Stampede, and more.

There’s always something thrilling about the active promise of an MC who is not exactly indestructible, but who can walk through hell and survive, whether he likes it or not.

That he has a lingering injury is evocative. He’s beat up after 800 years, even if he’s healed time and time again. He’s for a dent in his sternum and scars every-which-where. And yet, he’s still here. He even managed to regrow a toe once!

The explosive dream-rememberance of iron-age warfare our ch1 opening coupled with this modern-day, noiry expository rise-and-shine serves as a great character-centric entry into the story. It has a firm focus and voice with some great at-a-glance world details.

My critique of this opening is that, for my time, I could read less of it than I wanted to because I also had to read the much less compelling prologue put in front of it.

Much of this prologue I candidly began to skim once it became clear to me it was largely dark poeticism stacked pages high rather than story.

Name the prologue’s MC and tell me how she came to be trapped in this void-space with this demon thing and who it is she wants revenge against and why she’s been holding out and why she now gives in, and I might have been interested.

I might have stopped there. I persevered, and I was rewarded for it! Ch1 feels like it’s from an altogether different novel, and that’s a novel I want to read! I want to see more of this. I’m in.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/204269810-here-there-be-monsters

127) Eric R Asher, Steamborn

This opening has presented me with a tough choice. The prose is descriptive and competent. There’s a fantastical sense of place – a kind of miniature kingdom behind the safety or its walls. But the story feels hastily stitched together.

It moves well. The chase of a thief – his escape – a chance encounter with a friend who reminds him he has to be such-and-such place – and then arriving back home past the carcasses of the dead monsters that breached the walls.

Each of these beats checks a box in terms of being active and establishing place, story, and even character to a small degree. So what’s the problem? They don’t feel like they fit together to me and don’t form a complete 1st chapter.

It’s a scatterplot of ideas. The writing is good! But the substance left me indifferent to the characters and their story.

Our MC escapes with his loot, and his friend appears out of thin air on a secluded ally to chastise him. What was she doing there? Nothing. Waiting to step onto the page.

This convention could be completely forgiven if their conversation did more to develop the story. Instead it serves as exposition. She’s there to be introduced to us, and to introduce this minor conflict which feels cut surprisingly short.

She exposits to our MC that their supposed to dance together at some coming of age ceremony in the Highlands, which he seems indifferent about, and then she promptly disappears. To what end?

She doesn’t threaten our MC with anything. Doesn’t offer him anything to make sure he comes through for her. Just stomps her foot. So there! But what are the stakes? What does our MC care? Why?

By the end of the chapter we hear through expository narration that this girl friend of his wants to use her studies to get into the Highlands where it’s safe. Does this dance also have something to do with this?

The Highlands seem a little like they’re also high society, but is there more than a barrier to entry than money and status? What do the Highlands mean to our characters?

Our friends exposition about the dance is informative, but it isn’t quite story. Why it’s important to her to attend and get to dance with her partner is. What she does to try to ensure it happens is. The difference between what she wants and what our MC wants is.

Crowded into this first chapter are also something about pistons and mention of a mentor-type figure. These things are more set dressing tho. They seem to distract from what it’s important. Who is our MC and what does he want?

It seems like he too wants to be safe from these invading monsters, the sight of which make him shudder, but he has no hope of getting into high society. I’m guessing at this last part tho. It isn’t on the page.

Instead he apparently daydreams about fighting off the monsters and being a hero. But with the same narrative breath, we’re told he can’t even bear to look at them and rushes away from their bodies. This doesn’t add up for me.

It seems he wants to get away from them altogether, not ride toward them and slay them like some kind of knights have, apparently.

In all, this opening has been full of great ideas and good writing! I’ve just found the introduction and development of those ideas to feel rushed and lacking.

We’re in an interesting place and things are happening, but other than being kind of a scamp, I don’t feel I have much sense of our MC and what he wants at all. I don’t have any sense which way this story is going. It’s still very much up in the air. I pass. Sorry.

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