To illustrate this point, I'll use the story that sunk Beneath the Lanterns in the contest; Deceit by Sharon Rivest. It was chosen as a semi-finalist by Liis over my entry. The blog has to narrow down their selection to just one book, so the other members of the blog's reviewing team read and share their own views on each semi-finalist for their blog. You can read their entire reviews; here. But here is a sample of what everyone thought of Liis' chosen story.
Liis said of Deceit:
Sometimes, and it doesn’t happen often, you start reading a book and it just works. Everything is exactly the way you like. The story flows, the writing is smooth, the pacing is perfectly unhealthy for your heart rate but this is what we want! Every word, every bit of dialogue, every scene has captured you and before you know it, the book is finished. Deceit was that book for me. I read a page and I just knew I was going to enjoy this. And I did, all the way to the end...
Deceit is structured to follow the main character in two timelines, the present and the past. This structure is imperative for a story as grim and brutal as this. This!… is the perfect example of what I want my main character to do to me – sink his teeth in me so deep that it’s as if I live through every disaster and tragedy right there with him. The character development – the internal conflict and guilt (man, I do love a bit of guilt!) strike me as the perfect tools to make any story interesting.
What it did incredibly well, for my tastes, was the mental anguish, the torment of regrets, the heaviness that lies upon the soul of that very one character. If the author has managed to put that on paper, in written word? Magnificent!
Then we have Bjorn who only read half of the book before DNFing it:
The book begins in the future, with a battle where the best men have been schooled by Mace personally. In the second chapter – one of the strongest, but completely confusing to me (I didn’t know there would be multiple timelines) little Mace is sold by his father, who’s mostly concerned about whether the pouch of coin he receives contains as much coin as he was promised. It’s too late for me to be heartbroken, though, because I already know Mace will do quite well for himself. In chapter three, we return to the future from the first chapter, while in chapter four we move to earlier future than the later future from the chapter before. When I am starting to develop interest in someone, I have to re-shuffle my brain to the other timeline, and by the time I’m back I either forgot why I cared for the character, or they left. Also, it’s possible for a character to die a dramatic death, only to reappear, younger and in perfect health, five pages later.
Thing is – Deceit is not a bad book at all. It’s a semifinalist, because it was one of the judges’ favourite, after all. It just doesn’t work for me... But the real reason for my low score is that I could never forget I was reading a book. I was not in the author’s world, neither did I identify with any of the characters. I was very much reading a book and the ever-changing timelines sometimes made it feel like work.
Every chapter of the future builds into a mystery that somewhat plays off the past...The past chapters let us understand Mace’s early life – where he was sold as a boy to apprentice in one of the houses, working its way up to the reasons behind his exile and finally – his need for revenge...Every chapter in the past was like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion. Seriously, in my notes for him I wrote, “Dammit! Why does his every decision make me dread finishing the chapter?”
Olivia read 40% of the book, and her take away was:
I would probably describe Deceit as a low fantasy grimdark road trip novel… Road trip novels are, by their nature, incredibly difficult to pull off; because characters are often coming and going, an author needs a really deft hand in order to flesh out those new characters in a hurry, over and over...As a grimdark book, Deceit never really managed to gut-punch me, and I spent more than a little bit wondering why this was. For a while, I wondered if I’m just jaded by several years of grimdark stories one-upping each other on the gritty violence scale—but I think this problem also comes down to the road trip formula. Because the book never allows characters to linger on-screen for more than a chapter or two, I’m not very attached to them as a reader by the time bad things happen to them.
Paul's take after having read the entire book:
Based on the synopsis alone, Deceit is a book that I expected to really enjoy. It promises a large amount of grimness, an intriguing revenge plot, and casts a grizzled older mercenary as its main character. Sadly, though, the promised elements themselves didn’t quite come together, and it just wasn’t something that I could entirely connect with...As a character, Mace wasn’t one I ever found myself engaged with. All of his problems stem from his constant bad decisions, so it was hard to sympathize with him to any degree, and we don’t actually see him actively develop (physically, skillfully, or emotionally), he just becomes the greatest warrior off-screen. There aren’t really any solid characters outside of Mace, so I found myself meandering through the story rather than being pulled. One point I would have to mention, given that I have mentioned it with other books, is surprisingly poor handling of the female characters. From what I can recall, there wasn’t a female character who wasn’t beaten, murdered, raped, or threatened with rape (sometimes multiple times).
And finally we have Timmy's reaction, having read 52% of the story:
I’m going to be upfront and say right out that Deceit is not a book I would have picked up for myself if I had the choice. Simply because it’s not my jam. I’m not a huge fan of epic fantasy, and I don’t have much interest in books centered around fighting and traveling. I fully expected to dislike Deceit, and I think I was the most surprised by the fact that I didn’t. I actually think it’s pretty good all things considered, and I can see it finding its audience. So why, could you ask, did I not finish reading it? I just wasn’t invested in the story enough to continue... I found young Mace’s timeline more interesting personally, despite the many training/fighting scenes. But then adult Mace has enough fighting so there is that too. If you ask me, there is way too much fighting and not enough character-building for my tastes. Either way, Mace’s background story was at least interesting, if a bit way too gloomy. Poor man rarely had any joy in his life – far as I could tell, that is. Too bad the plot in the present timeline was dragging. By the 50% mark, I really couldn’t tell where it all was going.
So there you have it. Four takes on one book. I should also note that all the reviewers for the contest make a point to cut your throat as positively and politely as possible; balancing the positive with the negative, and pointing out that what doesn't work for them might work for another reader.
Next week, some more thoughts on what I learned from the contest, and Liil's review.
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