Stephen Aryan's first trilogy was published by a major publisher in 2015, it earned out and he was offered another contract for a second trilogy. That didn't do as well, and he seemed to have been not offered another contract, since he ended up selling a duology to a smallish publisher, Angry Robot. The first of those books did well enough to be offered a second contract for a trilogy. However, the second book has only 1/3 the number of ratings on Goodreads - which I use as a stand in for sales numbers, which indicates a big drop off in sales. The first book in his next trilogy has even less ratings then that second book. When the first book of a trilogy bombs, the next two books are usually DOA, and the second book did nothing to change that trajectory, nor does the third book appear likely to change that trajectory either.
He is now without a book contract.
It is said that 90% of the authors in traditional publishing are out of the business within 10 years, so Aryan's trajectory is, well, let's say, educational. Being without a contract, and with a track record of his books not selling particularly well...he could well be said to be out of the business within 10 years. This is not to say he's given up. He has several ongoing projects that he hopes his agent can sell, perhaps by changing genre. But in the meanwhile, he has released his first self published novella, which is what I will be talking about below. And, though he is no longer putting out new videos, he had been, in the last year, calling himself simply "A Fantasy Author", no doubt seeing the handwriting on the wall. We will have to see how he fares going forward.
As the fantasy author Mark Lawrence said in a recent blog post:
"The trajectory of most author careers is a modest boom followed by a rapid return to the day job as sales trail back down to insignificant."
Anyway, enough of a backstory. On to the review.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
New York Minute by Stephen Aryan C
This is a crime-noir novella set on a world settled by humans. The New York in the title is the name of the city on this new world that was meant to reproduce the Earth city of that name. But things didn't go as planned, so we have a much more primitive culture living in the remains of that high-tech, but unfinished city. The story involves an ex-cop now private eye, Cole Blackstone, who is hired by the most feared crime boss of the city, Karl Dolman - a job he dared not refuse - to locate the crime boss' missing daughter. We follow Blackstone as he, and an old pal of his, with an incurable disease, one that makes him tougher before it kills him, try to trace the whereabouts of this wayward daughter. It takes them into the meanest streets of New York. Here they meet ruthless gangs and ends in a long running fight scene with lots of action, blood, and death. It turns out the plot was pretty much one big MaGuffin.
If you are going to write a private eye noir story, it is going to be compared, in my mind at least, to the work of Raymond Chandler on the lyrical end of the spectrum and Georges Simenon on the other, cold, hard attention to detail end. There are many other writers of private eye stories, but those are the two I know and appreciate the most. They're tough acts to follow.
Aryan is neither. Indeed, I found it somewhat surprising that, as an author of 11 traditionally published books, his writing was, while serviceable, very mundane, nondescript. There was, I felt, no real style or flair in it. None of Chandler's wit or deft descriptions. This was not too surprising, since I had read those several pages of a previous book, and felt the same way. So the bar was low going in, and while he may have reached it, he did not exceeded it.
However, since I am big fan of style in writing, my criticisms may be ignored to many, if not most readers. The story has lots of action, if that's your cup of tea, going for it, just know that nothing in the story sets it apart from any other book in the genre.
However not only was his writing uninspired, his plot was as well. It had all the familiar tropes; Blackstone is an ex-cop, the police are corrupt, the hookers are alluring, the streets are mean, in a medieval style, with horse drawn trollies and all the usual smells of a rotting city are cataloged. Everything in the story is, in fact a mashup of, bog-standard noir and urban fantasy settings. There is nothing really unique about this New York.
Strangely enough, he has his first person narrator spend a great deal of time explaining the whole backstory of the city, even though most of it has nothing at all to do with the story he's telling. As for the New York of the story, he uses just the names of the various locales of the real New York, which have no relationship to the real city save that it was originally meant to be a new version of it. There is really no sense of the original New York, and the use of the old locale name adds nothing to the story, save confusion. He plans to write several more stories to build out his world, so there was really no need to do all that info-dumping world-building in this one. It could've been left for later stories when that information might be more relevant.
All told, my rather low expectations were more or less met. I am, however, still surprised that an experienced, published author of 11 novels, should still be writing on what I consider an such an unexceptional level*. As always, I grade books more or less on how much I enjoy them. This book wasn't my cup of tea. It may be for you. Kindle Unlimited readers can read if for free and see what they think. It's short enough to read in a day.
*Since reading this story, I've read the beta version of a best selling self-published sf/fantasy author's newest novel, and I was no more impressed with his writing. Indeed, I didn't even bother to finish it it was so sparse and elements of the story so unbelievable. I guess for most readers of genre fiction, story does indeed trump writing. They don't think about the underpinnings, or the lack there of. Being a writer myself, I do. I'll talk about that story in a couple of months...
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