Tom Mock

Obsidian Murders| Guarding Gus | Forged By Pain | Sailing to Redoubt |
Four or five openings today, but only one of which I felt compelled to read more of and recommend to your attention: a fun UF of a young woman who can see faeries but just wants to be a journalist and afford a living!
(from Captured In Words)

151. Nicole Pierman, Obsidian Murders

The plot, whenever it shows up, may not be a cozy plot, but the experience of reading this 1st person narrative nonetheless was an easy going time for me. It’s not faced paced, but at least something is happening.

Our MC wants to be a journalist, but she’s not really getting the chance. Her boss offers her a slight pay increase to take over someone else’s advice column. She doesn’t exactly jump at the chance.

Totally mundane, and totally relatable youthful struggles in the country we all live in: capitalism. Well, except for the faerie tugging at her shoelaces.

The dialogue is descriptive of the immediate circumstances and the three present voices are clear. Oh! And both our would-be journalist and her boss are women, so we’re spared any whiff of “so you think you can be make it in a man’s world, little lady” sexism.

This is nice, because while it’s interesting for characters to encounter obstacles, some ideas are quite played out. It’s cliché. It’s been done to death in the same careless way over and over. She’s tough because she doesn’t let the Men get her down.

This isn’t that. There is no men. Not yet. Well, okay, the faerie maybe, but he’s focused on his own petty retribution, and our MC can’t exactly let anyone know he’s there. People give her weird looks when she does this.

I do think this opening dragged a little in its location setting. Our narration gets us up to speed on the economics of the city and its development over the last X years, which isn’t really opening-page worthy.

I would have liked if it kept the focus on our character and situation establishment. Larger questions of setting can come later, especially since, as I mentioned, other than the faerie, there no sense of a plot by the close of chapter 1.

Nonetheless, the opening is charming. Our MC’s I’m-just-trying-to-do-what-I-want-with-my-life attitude makes for an ideal protagonist. She’s weary of dealing with the faeries of the unseen world. She’s not a special, magical girl, she’s just tired man.

She’s very much an MC for our times. I’m rooting for her, and I’m intrigued by the establishment of the supernatural being this thing she just has to deal with, like condescending bosses or traffic. So, I’m in!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/193937255-obsidian-murders

152. Karryn Nagel, Guarding Gus

A man in a hardware store finds a baby gargoyle left in an suv after some kind of shooting in this oddly paced, cozy fantasy opening.

It would have been more cozy, maybe, if the action of the mysterious aftermath of the shooting were less emphasized. Some slice-of-life descriptions are well detailed, but much of the opening felt like it intended to be more action coded.

That action, however, never really develops into anything. Some shots are fired and our MC runs towards the sound for some reason, only to find nothing whatsoever really out of the ordinary.

Then, bam, gargoyle baby. Chapter one ends just as the story begins. I did read further to discover this opening has, I think, very much buried the lede.

A few years ago lots of other magical creatures “came out” to the world, and now everyone is living with the newly adjusted aftermath of knowing there are actually vampires and werewolves and fae around us.

This is the kind of thing that might occur to our MC when he hears shots fired outside. Something, something, fae unrest – strained human werewolf relations – more from those masked vampire youths!

Nonetheless, I found the prose clear and easy to follow. The novel is at least getting to the story of this gargoyle baby within the first few pages, and that’s something.

The tone could be fun (as evidenced in the silly dialogue with a “stranger” who lifts weights, evidently). The story may just need some more time to get going.

Time is something I’m in short supply of for these opening reads, especially since now SPFBO11 is starting, and I’m only half way through 10!

This didn’t do quite enough to hook me on its MC, setting, situation, or writing in the first few pages, so I pass.

153) Bojan Bilos, Forged By Pain

A woman confined alone in a dungeon has suffered years of torture.

This opening over does its grim dark elements for me, checking the usual cliché boxes of shit in buckets, flies, and misery, but it was the melodramatic overacted emotions that did it in for me.

Lots of grim dark can try very hard to get across the oh-so-terrible emotional state of its subjects in a way that undermines any attempted psychological weight in a scene. At least for me, it does.

The characters and the narration go so big, the effect becomes comic. It is as if we are reading parody. This can make a novel feel very light, and that can be fun. It didn’t quite work for me here tho.

There ARE some very interesting elements of this opening, however. Our prisoner (we know not why she is here) has been tortured and her body is a roadmap of pain, but, tho naked, her scars create the effect of modesty.

Her face is perfectly unmarked. It has been spared any harm. She doesn’t know why. This is fascinating. The passive voice of this exposition also makes it seem as if what is happening to her is both unavoidable and emotionless. Not for her, of course.

There is a hunchback who she has formed a kind of relationship with. She has a pet name for him. She calls him Pretty. She says he is her favorite torturer, and he seems a simple, trusting sort her bears her no ill will.

Tho not enough to keep me reading through the melodrama, these details all speak to the creativity at work in this opening. I would like to have known more about the story and be subjected less to the death metal scream of insane misery (so to speak) of our MC. I pass.

154) Gluttony, Viljami L.

Unpublished, I think.

155) Sailing to Redoubt, C Litka

 What starts as a charming, deftly written sea adventure (in the old literary sense) promises a fantastical turn.

The prose here is descriptive, colored with strong natural images and the motion of a heaving sea. The characters slowly, easily come into focus. The narrative is not in a hurry, but it is not lagging either. It is natural, competent, real.

The dialogue stands out to me as well. It sounds like people talking, but it isn’t just filler patter either. It reveals character, reveals the world we’re in, but it doesn’t try to do too much.

It is not purely expositional. It is not trying to be funny or clever, but it does have a good, understated energy about it – something I could say about the entirety of this opening.

It is immersive. A storm is brewing. The iron and steam ship is tossing within sight of the islands. Our man who is coming home points out that there are no other ships at sea because this is not the kind of weather to be out in.

The fantasy is slow to reveal itself, but I don’t mind. What I do mind is that the author has chosen to use an AI voice to create an audiobook through Amazon. I’m conflicted about this.

The author is, from what I understand, not active on social media and not active in the community discords or blogs. He is a retired writer. He writes. His books are all as near to free as they can be. He just wants to be read.

I think he’s a talented writer and I like his subjects and style. But I’m not happy about what AI is doing to us. For better or worse, I won’t include a link to this book even tho I enjoyed my time with it. That’s all I have to say.

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