This is a fun Young Adult Fantasy Quest novel which needs polishing to clean up a rough writing style.
First, the positives. This tale has great characters. They are individualistic, quirky and empathetic. Not necessarily the sort of people you’d want to take on a long quest, but an entertaining bunch to hang with for a couple of hours while you read their story.
The general tone of the writing has a light-hearted lift to it, especially the setting and character descriptions, which often use creative metaphors. Such as a wizard with “copious amounts of white hair sprouting out of his face,” and a mob of goblins that “resembled a box of puppies, if the puppies were bald, with finger sized fangs, and possessed a distinct lack of charm.”
Likewise, the setting is creative and irreverent, a blend of old medieval and steampunk. There is plenty of action, and the multiple conflicts keep the suspense roiling.
However, the writing style suffers from multiple small errors that distract the reader. Here are few examples.
- Dialogue tags: “Show, don’t tell,” is the rule to follow.
“Who says that?” Guillermo checked the man’s sources.
Here the author tells us something that the dialogue has just done a perfectly good job of showing us.
- Fluid Point of View
Writing allows us to see the story from inside the head of a character. It is normal to stick with one character per section of the story, to avoid uncertainty as to who we are following at any given moment, and to build sympathy for that character.
- Awkward sentence structure, especially misplaced modifiers.
She gave the closest person a long hug, which happened to be Guillermo.
This is a particularly fun example, because it looks as if the hug has a name.
- Events out of sequence
Simple rule. Write the events in the order they happen.
I don’t like to dwell on these errors, but they do get in the way of the reader’s understanding and enjoyment of the novel. This is a great story in need of serious polishing.
Three stars.
.