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elise_rashaStarting with the Reading List as I just knocked another story out. And I'm jumping out of order, too. I'll get to that in just a moment.
Current Reading List
The Age of Shiva by James Lovegrove
I Bring the Fire, Part 1: Wolves (A Loki Series) by C. Gockel
Northern Magic: Rune Mysteries and Shamanism by Edred Thorsson
The Rites of Odin by Ed Fitch
Yeah, that's actually where I'm at with reading. I have The Age of Aztec by James Lovegrove but haven't picked it up yet, and I need to dig out my book on Chakra healing because, as I write this, I have an idea for augmentation on my magical system for Arc of Fantasy. Hey, we humans have evolved over time. Why not combine a few systems and see where it goes?
Okay, so I am jumping out of order here. I was originally going to do the next few Tuesdays as follows: The Age of Shiva, The Trials of Apollo, Book One: The Hidden Oracle, and a movie review of Crimson Peak. However, last night, I finished reading I Bring the Fire, Part One: Wolves by C. Gockel, and I really need to speak on this, given it's taken me two months to finish this story.
That's the great thing about purchasing an ebook. You know precisely the date in which you "purchased" something. in this case, the book was/is a freebie so I took a chance on something with zero financial cost to me.
This story was an overall disappointment for me. I think I knew it going in because I'd held off every time the book appeared in my recommendations list on Amazon.
That's the great thing about books on Amazon. They have a preview option so you know if it's actually going to be worth your while. I only caved, as I said, because the story's listed price is zero.
The first several pages are the author's thanks to her friends and family for encouraging her to become a writer. To not only become a writer but to move away from fanfiction writing. Hey, why not, right? We writers all have someone who has encouraged us to do something more with our writing. Not all of us start out as fanfiction writers. Some of us just write stories because, hey, we got a story inside of us, and someone out there thinks we're good enough to actually try publishing. Might as well try to make a profit from it, right?
What has made this story a disappointment for me?
For starters, I can tell the author used to be a fanfiction writer, not only by her words confessing as much but by her writing style. It's something I've noticed in myself when I've written fanfiction and in others. Most of it are just not good habits, period.
Overly descriptive of places, people, and clothing.
While this can be good in a fantasy setting, at some point, when you're dealing with an established pantheon like the Norse, they already have given appearances. Loki and Thor are redheads. Heck, Loki is called a firehair. Stan Lee deviated the way he did because he didn't know any better at the time he created the Thor comics, and that's okay. What's known now wasn't known then.
Now, as a writer, by no means am I perfect when it comes to description. Finding the right balance is something I will always struggle with, and I admit it. But I'm not going to use the term raging to describe someone's eyebrows. Wild, bushy, and looking like a fuzzy caterpillar, yeah. Or nearly non-existent. But raging doesn't actually describe anything. Raging makes it sound like the eyebrows are angry.
Adopting a stance on a particular character and what to do with the research, if any, that's been done
Within any given fandom, when a character does something to a beloved character and no one likes it, the view of that character tends to become one-sided and almost quickly. While this author's treatment of Odin was marginally better, it was still rather cookie cutter, and there was no actual character development.
More disturbing for me on this was, while there was some research done, whatever was done was tossed in favor of what I am presuming to be artistic license.
I do not care for this author's treatment of Sigyn. At the start, she's Loki's ex-wife. In a flashback, she's had at least one sexual encounter with Baldur, and Loki only knew about it because he and Thor went to talk to Baldur about a troll-slaying and she happened to walk out, adjusting her clothing.
As for the rest of the research, I had a hard time believing unicorns are a part of Norse mythology and Asgardian culture. I really do. I have looked up whatever I could, whenever I could, and wherever I could on Norse mythology. It started with a generic encyclopedia (called the Encyclopedia on Mythology - I still have it. Somewhere), and my research has gone from there. Whenever I question something, I'm on google and bringing something up. In the past few years of my research into the Norse mythologies and into Loki in particular, I've not once encountered anything where unicorns were involved. Maybe I am missing something there, maybe there's something in the Poetic Eddas and the Sagas of the Icelanders I haven't discovered yet so this maybe something I have to be forgiving on should I be proven wrong. I don't know yet. My research, while extensive, is far from over, will may never be over because not only is my research for my writing, it's also for my spiritual path. Again, this is something where google is my friend, and even Wikipedia has not yielded unicorns in Norse mythology. If anything, unicorns are more Celt.
Unicorns aside, there's also the dinosaurs in this story. Hadrosaurs and velociraptors. Don't know much about the hadrosaur, but, one thing I have learned since embarking on this path of writer/author is that ignoring particular fields of study will eventually backfire on said person. I feel that the lack of research into the velociraptor itself for this particular story was quite glaring. I say this because I've read Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. Granted, it was after I'd seen the movie, but one thing I have noticed is that the amount of information discovered about dinosaurs tends to grow and expand, and the author has ignored what has been done in the past by Crichton and Spielberg.
Terminology
The Void.
The usage in this story smacks of Marvel. Plain and simple. While a void does exist in the Northern histories, it's been filled by the heat of Muspelheim and the cold of Niflheim.
Ending
The author just ended. It's part one. Part one is titled Wolves. The story just ends with the female lead's grandmother falling down and ending up in the hospital and the FBI approaching her.
This is actually not an unusual tactic for fanfiction authors. It's something I've employed myself. It's called a cliffhanger. But usually that cliffhanger is at the end of a chapter. Fanfiction authors don't always post a completed story. Got something planned to be twenty chapters? It's eked out over a course of time. This is how fanfiction authors build a readership. One-shots are great, one-shots sometimes turn into more, but this is not a tactic a writer should use when publishing for pay. This story would not have been accepted by any publisher or agent with the way it ended. This was an actual complaint amongst the lower ratings for this story, reviews I was reading as I was finishing the story, and then I got to that point and it's like . . . holy shit, yes, I agree with this.
And it's a definite cliffhanger, not an open ending. I've written about this before. An open ending invites the reader to imagine what happens next. I love open endings for that reason alone.
This was not an open ending. I've written enough cliffhangers for chaptered fanfiction to know the difference.
The story just could not hook me, not in the way Lovegrove and Riordan have hooked me with their stories. I can't complain about the flow. The flow was okay. I can't complain about the grammar. For the most part (I did see an error or two but would be hardpressed to remember where at this point).
I just don't see how this series became a USA Today Bestseller. I really don't, but then I had a hard time shutting off my writer's head and turning on my reader's head for this story.
I will not be picking the rest of this series. I wouldn't care if it was offered to me for free. This book was free. I was not impressed nor hooked.
Now, I have left a similar review on Amazon. This is a little more in-depth because I didn't mention how Sigyn sleeping with Baldur actually appalled me and left me saying, she would never do something like that. And if the author wants to contact me about her works, that's cool. That's great. I'd tell her the same things. I would even go as far as to say she needed it peer-reviewed before publication for the very reasons that I'd stated.
Transitioning from fanfiction to original material is not always going to be easy. Some can do this better than others. I don't know where I stand in all of this, personally I think I've done well in some cases and not so great in others. That's just my take. As for this author, it's not an epic win.
I do not recommend this book.
Current Reading List
I Bring the Fire, Part 1: Wolves (A Loki Series) by C. Gockel
The Rites of Odin by Ed Fitch
Yeah, that's actually where I'm at with reading. I have The Age of Aztec by James Lovegrove but haven't picked it up yet, and I need to dig out my book on Chakra healing because, as I write this, I have an idea for augmentation on my magical system for Arc of Fantasy. Hey, we humans have evolved over time. Why not combine a few systems and see where it goes?
Okay, so I am jumping out of order here. I was originally going to do the next few Tuesdays as follows: The Age of Shiva, The Trials of Apollo, Book One: The Hidden Oracle, and a movie review of Crimson Peak. However, last night, I finished reading I Bring the Fire, Part One: Wolves by C. Gockel, and I really need to speak on this, given it's taken me two months to finish this story.
That's the great thing about purchasing an ebook. You know precisely the date in which you "purchased" something. in this case, the book was/is a freebie so I took a chance on something with zero financial cost to me.
This story was an overall disappointment for me. I think I knew it going in because I'd held off every time the book appeared in my recommendations list on Amazon.
That's the great thing about books on Amazon. They have a preview option so you know if it's actually going to be worth your while. I only caved, as I said, because the story's listed price is zero.
The first several pages are the author's thanks to her friends and family for encouraging her to become a writer. To not only become a writer but to move away from fanfiction writing. Hey, why not, right? We writers all have someone who has encouraged us to do something more with our writing. Not all of us start out as fanfiction writers. Some of us just write stories because, hey, we got a story inside of us, and someone out there thinks we're good enough to actually try publishing. Might as well try to make a profit from it, right?
What has made this story a disappointment for me?
For starters, I can tell the author used to be a fanfiction writer, not only by her words confessing as much but by her writing style. It's something I've noticed in myself when I've written fanfiction and in others. Most of it are just not good habits, period.
Overly descriptive of places, people, and clothing.
While this can be good in a fantasy setting, at some point, when you're dealing with an established pantheon like the Norse, they already have given appearances. Loki and Thor are redheads. Heck, Loki is called a firehair. Stan Lee deviated the way he did because he didn't know any better at the time he created the Thor comics, and that's okay. What's known now wasn't known then.
Now, as a writer, by no means am I perfect when it comes to description. Finding the right balance is something I will always struggle with, and I admit it. But I'm not going to use the term raging to describe someone's eyebrows. Wild, bushy, and looking like a fuzzy caterpillar, yeah. Or nearly non-existent. But raging doesn't actually describe anything. Raging makes it sound like the eyebrows are angry.
Adopting a stance on a particular character and what to do with the research, if any, that's been done
Within any given fandom, when a character does something to a beloved character and no one likes it, the view of that character tends to become one-sided and almost quickly. While this author's treatment of Odin was marginally better, it was still rather cookie cutter, and there was no actual character development.
More disturbing for me on this was, while there was some research done, whatever was done was tossed in favor of what I am presuming to be artistic license.
I do not care for this author's treatment of Sigyn. At the start, she's Loki's ex-wife. In a flashback, she's had at least one sexual encounter with Baldur, and Loki only knew about it because he and Thor went to talk to Baldur about a troll-slaying and she happened to walk out, adjusting her clothing.
As for the rest of the research, I had a hard time believing unicorns are a part of Norse mythology and Asgardian culture. I really do. I have looked up whatever I could, whenever I could, and wherever I could on Norse mythology. It started with a generic encyclopedia (called the Encyclopedia on Mythology - I still have it. Somewhere), and my research has gone from there. Whenever I question something, I'm on google and bringing something up. In the past few years of my research into the Norse mythologies and into Loki in particular, I've not once encountered anything where unicorns were involved. Maybe I am missing something there, maybe there's something in the Poetic Eddas and the Sagas of the Icelanders I haven't discovered yet so this maybe something I have to be forgiving on should I be proven wrong. I don't know yet. My research, while extensive, is far from over, will may never be over because not only is my research for my writing, it's also for my spiritual path. Again, this is something where google is my friend, and even Wikipedia has not yielded unicorns in Norse mythology. If anything, unicorns are more Celt.
Unicorns aside, there's also the dinosaurs in this story. Hadrosaurs and velociraptors. Don't know much about the hadrosaur, but, one thing I have learned since embarking on this path of writer/author is that ignoring particular fields of study will eventually backfire on said person. I feel that the lack of research into the velociraptor itself for this particular story was quite glaring. I say this because I've read Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. Granted, it was after I'd seen the movie, but one thing I have noticed is that the amount of information discovered about dinosaurs tends to grow and expand, and the author has ignored what has been done in the past by Crichton and Spielberg.
Terminology
The Void.
The usage in this story smacks of Marvel. Plain and simple. While a void does exist in the Northern histories, it's been filled by the heat of Muspelheim and the cold of Niflheim.
Ending
The author just ended. It's part one. Part one is titled Wolves. The story just ends with the female lead's grandmother falling down and ending up in the hospital and the FBI approaching her.
This is actually not an unusual tactic for fanfiction authors. It's something I've employed myself. It's called a cliffhanger. But usually that cliffhanger is at the end of a chapter. Fanfiction authors don't always post a completed story. Got something planned to be twenty chapters? It's eked out over a course of time. This is how fanfiction authors build a readership. One-shots are great, one-shots sometimes turn into more, but this is not a tactic a writer should use when publishing for pay. This story would not have been accepted by any publisher or agent with the way it ended. This was an actual complaint amongst the lower ratings for this story, reviews I was reading as I was finishing the story, and then I got to that point and it's like . . . holy shit, yes, I agree with this.
And it's a definite cliffhanger, not an open ending. I've written about this before. An open ending invites the reader to imagine what happens next. I love open endings for that reason alone.
This was not an open ending. I've written enough cliffhangers for chaptered fanfiction to know the difference.
The story just could not hook me, not in the way Lovegrove and Riordan have hooked me with their stories. I can't complain about the flow. The flow was okay. I can't complain about the grammar. For the most part (I did see an error or two but would be hardpressed to remember where at this point).
I just don't see how this series became a USA Today Bestseller. I really don't, but then I had a hard time shutting off my writer's head and turning on my reader's head for this story.
I will not be picking the rest of this series. I wouldn't care if it was offered to me for free. This book was free. I was not impressed nor hooked.
Now, I have left a similar review on Amazon. This is a little more in-depth because I didn't mention how Sigyn sleeping with Baldur actually appalled me and left me saying, she would never do something like that. And if the author wants to contact me about her works, that's cool. That's great. I'd tell her the same things. I would even go as far as to say she needed it peer-reviewed before publication for the very reasons that I'd stated.
Transitioning from fanfiction to original material is not always going to be easy. Some can do this better than others. I don't know where I stand in all of this, personally I think I've done well in some cases and not so great in others. That's just my take. As for this author, it's not an epic win.
I do not recommend this book.
