another terrible story!

Resurrecting this deadjournal to provide a link for people who want to pay me for artwork.

Chapter 8 of Anana Banana by corset-rebellion-follower
Sporked!

I ran all the way out of the oasis.
And then she ran out of this fanfic! The end!
I couldn’t stay there any longer. I was already pushing it by coming in the first place. I feel so stupid! I knew this would happen! I wiped the crystal tears of Sueish doom from my eyes and sat down.
I looked around me. I was next to a waterfall. I knew I should get away from it, with my luck. But I didn’t move. This time, water was going to help me.
Help her drown! Muhahahaha!
I jumped into the pool. Swimming down to the bottom, I grabbed a tangle of plants and tied them to my ankles as tight as I could. This is it.
Yes! Do it! Do it!
I released the air from my mouth. My lungs were straining, and my vision was going fuzzy. My life was flashing before my eyes.
*gleeful laugh* Is it wrong that I'm enjoying this suicide attempt? No? Just checking.
I didn’t like what I saw.
It was really boring.
Then I blacked out.
But my plan backfired.
No! I'll keel the character that saved her! Keel them!
I felt a warm flush through my body, and a vague feeling of pressure on my face. A blurry vision came into view. Am… am I seeing heaven? Did it work?
The blurry figure came into focus. It was Timon. Obviously not.
Aaagh! Timon was almost free! *stabs idiot!Timon with a spork* Now he is.( Read more...Collapse )

I decided to change “Inept Professional Authors” to “Lazy Authors.” I really believe all of these authors are capable of better writing. They’re just not trying - it’s like they’re writing while sipping pina coladas in Jamaica. And the author in this review is the laziest yet.

Title: Pendragon: Book One: The Merchant of Death

Genre: YA/Tween Fantasy

Plot: Fourteen-year-old Bobby Pendragon is spirited away by his Uncle Press to a fantasy world where an oppressed tribe is about to unleash their WMD on the ruling class. Sounds promising enough, but the actual story manages to be both predictable and perplexing.

Strengths: Pendragon: Book One actually has a really strong opening, which makes the rest of the book even more of a let down. But more on that later. The story is told in the form of Bobby’s letters to his best friend Mark, with omniscient narrator interludes showing Mark’s reactions (he takes it better than I would). Bobby provides a sympathetic, witty voice for this novel.

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Problems: The story starts going downhill after Bobby arrives in the magical fantasy world. It’s weird, because most fantasy books are the opposite: they start out mundane and get very interesting when the character goes through the magic wardrobe/twister/whatever.

Part of the problem for me is that it demanded that I suspend a lot of disbelief right away - even more so than most fantasies.

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Title: The Burning City

Genre: Fantasy

Plot: In an ancient city where magic and killer plants creep around, young Whandall dreams of a better life, but the system beats him down.

Problems:

Nate (Zaphod236) commented that he didn't like Footfall, one of Niven and Pournelle's other novels. Footfall wasn't available, so I picked up Burning City instead. It's actually not awful, but it's not good enough for me to slog through all 613 pages.

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Title: Next

Genre: Thriller / Science Fiction

Plot: I merely skimmed through the book (you didn't expect me to read the whole thing, did you?), so I couldn't make out a plot. The inside cover wasn't much help either.

Problems:

I won't touch the plot for this critique, but there are still plenty of reasons to pick apart Crichton's writing. After a few decades in the business, one would expect an author's writing to be impressive, or at least polished. In this case, one would be dead wrong. ( Read more...Collapse )

Introduction: I've decided to shift from mocking bad fanfiction to mocking bad novels. Novelists deserve more criticism anyway. They should know better.

Title: Blink

Genre: Christian/Thriller

Plot: Miriam, a Saudi princess, flies to America to escape an arranged marriage. There she meets Seth, a clairvoyant college kid who helps her stay one step ahead of both the Saudi and US governments.

Problems:

The biggest problem with Blink is that it drags even as it tries to excite. There is never a real sense of peril, nor is there any doubt that the hero and heroine will make it to the last page. It is telling that the most intriguing parts of this "thriller" are the debates about God, prayer and the future. One would think that the Seth's clairvoyance would be enough to carry a novel. In the hands of a more sophisticated author it probably would be, but that's not the case here.( Read more...Collapse )