Tom Mock

Splintered Magic | Night Of The Burntmen | The Dreams Thief
I’m back with the last 3 books left on my list from BWGB. All 3 were interesting and active, but they didn’t quite hold my interest, even tho one has been super popular. I go on and on about why.
(from Before We Go Blog)

136. Jilleen Dolbeare, Splintered Magic

In this next opening a divorcee returns to her childhood wooded mansion which she is having restored. The prose is a bit purple, but is passably written. Its plodding and straightforward, but doesn’t lack energy.

Unfortunately, almost nothing interesting happens in the opening pages. I think discussing why I feel that way would be extremely useful tho.

This opening begins in motion, but I think is a great example of movement not being the same as action. Our MC, whoever they are, is driving. It’s raining. They have a trailer behind them (no mention of why, what kind of trailer, or what’s inside). They almost miss their turn off.

They’re worked up over this. It’s scary for them. They pull over, get themselves together, drive on. We’re told their excited. Their going to a house. Family connections. They arrive. We learn the house looks dilapidated.

It’s worse than our MC expected, but they’ve been having it restored. It’s surrounded by woods. It passed from their family to someone else, yadda-yadda, she bought it back after her divorce.

She starts bringing things inside. There’s renovation power tools and sawdust everywhere. Her beds been set up tho. She goes back and forth moving things.

There’s a cat at the front door. It looks just like the cat she grew up with. Maybe it’s an offspring of their old cat. But there’s 600+ acres of woods around the house. Why would it be there?

The renovators show up. They chat. They give her something. They leave. Our MC wanders around. She goes to bed. She wakes up the next morning. She talks to workers: Hi Craig – Hi Brigid – nothing dialogue. She does stuff. Eventually the cat talks.

Did you make it this far? Are you still reading my summary? How much of this feels like story?

As a reader I learn almost nothing about our MC’s divorce, the reason for it, her former partner, her work, or what has driven her back to her isolated family home. I don’t get much context for what this means to her.

The shorthand of Divorce and Homecoming can do a lot! She’s rebuilding this house just like she’s trying to rebuild her life! But we’ve spent a lot of time moving our MC around to establish very little.

Does her almost missing her turn matter? Is that interesting? Does it give us any sense of her character? We don’t know, for instance, if she’s hauled trailers much before.

Is she in completely over her head but still stubbornly going forward? That would certainly give us some character insight! We don’t get anything like that tho. She’s just stressed and then scared and then excited, but the story goes no deeper. It does not reveal.

The details that could be engaging and begin to place our character in the story – the who and the why of it all – are buried by this innocuous arrival and all its puttering around.

The divorcee, the cat, and the old house in the 600 acre wood. That’s what this opening has. The state of the house is good setting. How it makes our MC feel is story.

What her divorce was like and how it had left her feeling is story. What coming home means to her is story. How will she pick up her life? What now?

The cat is a curious detail. It is exciting because it is mysterious. WE know we’re reading a fantasy, but our MC doesn’t know she’s living one yet. Little enough time or energy is spent on the cat, tho.

The story drags its feet getting to the cat. Our MC has an interesting thought about it, asks the renovators if the cat belongs to them, and goes about her tired evening.

In the morning she talks to the cat, the cat talks back, and finally it’s like the story is going somewhere, but the opening has already lost me.

This book and series seems to have done well in Amazon, and it may prove to be a delightful read, but I’m interested in discussing openings, and this opening has not promised me delight.

Were it more focused and more revealing and less interested in having the narrative physically follow our MC around moment to moment, I might have found it more engaging.

If it started more directly – Here I am, home again, exhausted and filthy with sawdust from the renovation work going on, and with sweat and grime from unloading what’s left of my possessions after the divorce …

But all of that can be dealt with. I can soak in a hot bath (assuming the hot water is working – should have asked about that before I hauled everything up from the city), the reno can restore the dilapidated house, I can put myself back together.

I’m here! Getting here was tough, but I did it! None of that’s the problem. The problem is the cat. He was on the porch when I arrived, sheltering from the rain. He looked just like our old cat from years and years ago. But what was he doing here?

The renovators who stopped by to give me a welcome gift didn’t know anything about him. At least he wasn’t causing a fuss for the moment and didn’t appear to have any fleas, but what was I going to do with him?

This isn’t the text I would write, but this is the substance of a story that I think would entice me!

I hope you’d read the opening of this story to see what I mean. Maybe you’d find the turn of the cat chatting to our MC to be a scream and would continue on. This does feel like a light, fun novel to me.

But I think there’s two great lessons to learn from this opening. One is to watch out for just following your character around and describing what they’re doing and how that physically feels.

The other is that a maybe shaky opening isn’t going to be the death of your story as long as long as your MCs life is changing, you drop 1 leading detail, and the cat starts talking by page 5.

This didn’t quite do it for me, tho, so I pass.

BUT, this book as almost 3,000 4 or 5-star ratings on Amazon. Its book 1 of 5. It’s probably a lot of fun and is exactly the kind of thing lots of readers want to read. There’s a lesson here.

Among other things it’s probably that your book hardly has to be perfect to be enjoyed and even celebrated if you can find your audience.

137. Emmanuel Akeyo, Night Of The Burntmen

Two soldiers are assigned to a tower in the deserts to protect a priest from a suspected, tho unspecified attack.

There are several fascinating, strange world details lingering in the text, but they’re overshadowed by a close 3rd person narration that feels a bit too disorganized and unfocused to me.

The text mixes up its tenses, swerving from past tense to present tense at times. That isn’t my main issue with the storytelling, but I feel it’s revealing of a looseness in the approach to this story.

The narration is more interested in beginning to craft our sense of the protagonist and his voice than in the story at hand. Our MCs perspective is everything here – his actions, his interests, his unnerved feeling that something is going to happen – but what?

Where are we? Why are we here? There’s desert ghosts and spirits? Say more about that. That’s interesting! There’s a huge tower out here and the empire sent 2 – count them – 2 soldiers to protect a priest? Really? What are they going to do? Protect him from what?

I’m not being facetious with these questions. I’m on board with the idea. This is a fantasy story, after all. Maybe two specialist soldiers is enough, but help me understand that so I can begin to invest in the drama of the story.

You can’t hand-wave away the details that provide the context for the action of a story. Those details are the story. Without them you just have a sketch of a character and some interesting but shallow place setting.

I pass.

138. Bella Dunn, The Dreams Thief

This opening is about fae in 18th century Scotland. Our MC rushes to save a woman he loves from a magical bad guy, but he’s too late.

The vagueness of my description reflects the lack of detail in the narrative. The narration spends much more time on the weather and the emotional state of the MC than it does on illuminating the story.

I don’t want to make this out to be some great sin, because it isn’t. The circumstances of the narrative are interesting. I can glean enough in context to want to keep reading, and would if the prose was more focused.

But as I read, my interest dips. Characters appear without introduction and start talking to each other. I’m not really sure what has happened or what their relationships are. I wait for context, but I feel I’ve been left out of consideration.

Additionally, I’ve struggled with the purplish prose. The narration tries hard for dramatic effect. It overemphasizes the rain and the storm and the sleet. It’s raining raining raining, and our MC is hurrying, and it’s raining, and he might be too late.

It isn’t terrible that there is so very much of this, but each re-emphasis of how severe the storm is and what a hurry our MC is in doesn’t add any new information, and so it begins to feel repetitive.

The emphasized desperate rush of the MC is also undermined by asides about, for instance, how the bowing trees make our MC think of courtiers. He evidently is not so preoccupied by his errand after all.

This, again, is a small thing, but it is besides the point of the story. What the trees look like doesn’t matter. We needn’t draw overt attention to them with a simile.

This is what I mean about focus. All the rain and noise of the storm and physicality of this opening become a bit of a distraction. They’re taking up the place of the story, of which I understand little enough.

Were the prose oh so delightfully written, maybe I would feel differently. Instead, it feels excessive.

We’re told our MC has been riding hard for a week straight. He’s read the signs. The bad guy is going to strike again! This is the perfect moment to lay the groundwork for the action of the story.

But the narration stays locked firmly in the present, and like our MC, refuses to stop for anything. The advantage of this is that things keep happening. The disadvantage is I’m not sure what they mean.

I think anyone who likes fae stories and Scotland might enjoy this as a light melodrama. It has great energy, and high emotion. It’s a bit too over-the-top for me, tho, and feels like it was dashed off. I pass.

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