Learning from a Book Review

I offer to review books.  Usually, I will post my review here and on Goodreads as well as post links to buy the book that I got to read.  However, every once and a while, I read a book that won’t get a good review.  This is that book.

This book is the author’s first book, so I will not mention the title nor the author’s name.  I have emailed the author about my poor review before posting, and actually have agreed to review the sequel.  With that said, let’s talk about the book and its issues.

The premise of the book is that the main character, whose name I can’t remember (problem), becomes a masked hero to save her city from a destructive alien.  The concept is great.  The execution has major issues.  I am going to put my editor’s hat on to critique the issues in this book.

The first issue is the prologue.  It could have been a chapter on its own.  I personally feel that the book should have opened on its main character.  The opening would have introduced us, the reader, to the character, who she is, and what she’s about.

This takes us to issue two, which, in my view, is the biggest issue.  The main character has no character arc.  She has no backstory.  No background.  We know nothing about her.  We don’t know what motivates her to take this journey into hero-hood.  Her personality is not shown.  And later, when a big “thing” is revealed, it has no impact on the reader, because no set-up has been built.  

You, as an author, need to build a foundation for your character on which to grow or off which to fall.  This rings true for every main character—hero or villain or supporting.  A character needs interpersonal relationships throughout the story to show personality, depth of personhood, and growth.  Even as a pantser, an author can write character backgrounds to keep in their notes for their main group of characters in their books.  Having copious notes are a good thing while writing.

Notes bring us to the next issue—intra-book timeline inconsistencies.  As I read, the timeline of events changed from one paragraph to the next.  A simple timeline outline would help prevent this.  Notes are something that can be written as you write the story.  You can keep a folder, whether physical or virtual, for all the notes—either pre-writing or during-writing.  Good organization while writing helps to keep some major issues at bay.

Another issue I found was tense changes, sometimes within the same sentence.  Changing tense is easy to do while writing in first person.  Hyper vigilance or a very good editor will help combat this.

Along the same vein are point of view changes within the same chapter.  Some of these POV changes had a scene separator.  However, I think some of them didn’t.  As I read, I got confused about through whom we were viewing the story.  If all of them did have scene separators, I missed them.  The best way to circumvent this issue is to place POV changes in a new chapter.

Then, there are the confusing word choices.  Some sentences do not make sense even after reading it again a few times.  Some words don’t mean what the sentence alludes that it is should mean.  And some sentences feel as though things were cut then the sentence wasn’t smoothed afterwards.  Again, more rigorous editing is needed.

Other underwhelming choices in the book were the overt foreshadowing.  Overt foreshadowing is when a character mentions that something didn’t go the way they wanted it to before they get into the situation.  Once or twice in a book, it can work.  Every time, it weakens the structure of the plot.  Sometimes, the reader wants to uncover the bad or surprising things as the story unfolds.

While the book progresses through the plot, I found myself not being able to suspend my disbelief.  Many of the things the main character did had no support from training or background.  Physics in many places in the book would have been an issue for her without the proper training.  At one point, the main character admitted that she was small.  According to the story, she has a desk job with no mention of outside work activities.  There would be no way for her to have been able to take down these thugs in the story Black Widow style without the proper background.  

I found myself saying aloud, “Seriously?  Where did this come from?” as I was reading the last chapters.  By that time, my suspension of disbelief had broken.  Every little impossibility shone like glittering jewels among the letters on the page.  I finished the book thinking that with some good editing, it could be such a fun story.

The author told me that the next book has a new editor.  I am curious to see how the second book fares.  That review will be posted as well.

Ideally, before publishing, have your book critiqued and edited.  I can help.