Reviewed by: Corina
Genre: Gothic Horror
Approximate word count: 100-105,000 words
Availability
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Author:
Cornelius Harker
has reputedly studied gothic literature for several years And has three degrees He has two more books out at
the time of this review: Words to the
Wise: Book 2, Towards Darker Climes,
and A Dish Best Served Cold,
described as a supernatural thriller. For more, visit his blog.
Description:
Our anti-hero
recounts his life since he encountered a man with bleeding eyes, who turned him
from alcoholism to wandering the earth in search of answers about himself and
his past.
Appraisal:
I did not like
the protagonist of this novel, named the Wanderer. He changes his behavior in
the book, but does not exhibit growth. He interrupts his storytelling in
disruptive ways, and he uses too many words. The Wanderer slips out of his
first person limited point-of-view(POV) into a third person omniscient POV in
which he can ascertain the motives, emotions, and intent of people he has just
met, with no explanation. At one point, the Wanderer says “I became capable of
a skill to thwart the most competent of seers. I began to unravel a tapestry of
Truth concerning her origins, and which provided me with my first factual taste
of things to come.” Even if you take each accidental lapse into omniscience as
foreshadowing, it still comes out of left field and is not explored further.
The story would
be strengthened by extensive editing, mostly to pare the excessively ornate and
archaic language to succinct and arrow-sharp prose. I understand that the genre
begs for archaic language, but it does not need to be trowelled on. They should
be applied more sparingly.
A few minor examples
of the ponderous sentences in this book are quoted below (I’ll leave it to the
truly adventurous to excavate the truly abominable sentences encased in this
marmoreal quarry of a novel):
Again my slumber was infested with
visions of an impenetrable mass that loomed on the horizon of some remote and
deserted land, only now it was taking shape. Materialising before me into a
solid structure tall enough to smite the clouds above, this fluid accumulation
of Cimmerian obscurity was becoming all too frighteningly familiar.
Occasionally I was saluted by the
salubrious few whose summer jaunt along the river was undoubtedly an annual
custom, but I had neither the will or [sic] the inclination to return their
convivial and sedulous gestures.
(Salubrious means “health-giving,”
and Sedulous means “showing
dedication and diligence.”)
Hidden among
these ubiquitous and obstreperous sentences are sparkling gems like this little
paragraph:
Stillness is something that has always
managed to unnerve me. Within silence plots are hatched, thoughts are made and
unmade; worlds of the conscious mind are destroyed by will alone. In the hush
of peace wars are forged; in the quietness of humanity there is a rage in the
soul that goes unnoticed; unspoken words become harbingers of vengeance and
hatred while everywhere, everything, everyone changes in those hushed
deliberating moments, becoming something they are not for just one second in
ten, an instance wherein murderers are made, loathing is developed, and images
of wickedness are formed. It is the stillness, the silence of foreboding that
most are able to conquer while others are slowly consumed by it.
To summarize, I
felt that Harker did his readers a grave disservice by failing to have this
novel properly proofread for grammatical errors, for vocabulary faux pas, for
continuity of voice, and by failing to have his main character become a more
complex person by the end of the book than he was at the beginning. Even in a
series, the character should grow and change in each installment.
Harker himself,
outside of this series (this is a series debut) and pending a couple more years
of experience publishing, has tremendous potential as a writer. I look forward
to reading anything he writes in the years to come.
FYI:
This novel
contains a few highly graphic, gory scenes, and uses complex run-on sentences
with an overabundance of five-dollar words throughout the novel. I am an
English teacher who reads Shakespeare and H.P. Lovecraft for enjoyment, but
reading this book was like slogging through a swamp. If you don’t read at a
university level, you should have an enormous dictionary close at hand (or in
your e-reader) to read this book.
Format/Typo Issues:
There are comma
errors and some words don’t actually exist (such as “sanguineous”), and there
are some grammatical errors, but many readers will not notice them.
In this frame
story, the author used open quotation marks at the beginning of every
paragraph in which the Wanderer is recounting his story, as is used at the
beginning of an extended quotation. It is not necessary at this length, and he
is telling a story, not quoting another person, so it could properly be omitted.
Rating: **Two Stars
3 comments:
I haven't read the book you're reviewing but I'm impressed by the depth of your analysis. The author may not feel this way when he reads it (!), but I'd say he should be pleased to get such constructive criticism. I'm glad you remind self-published authors - who already have a lot to prove - that proof reading their work is so important.
I haven't read the book you're reviewing but I'm impressed by the depth of your analysis. The author may not feel this way when he reads it (!), but I'd say he should be pleased to get such constructive criticism. I'm glad you remind self-published authors - who already have a lot to prove - that proof reading their work is so important.
Many thanks for the review, Corina. I agree wholeheartedly with your criticisms. I published the wretched thing too hastily in order to get it out there on the Kindle. It was naive, unprofessional and impetuous of me. Since submitting it to your site it has been edited, proofread and has had 20,000 words removed. That'll teach me, eh?
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