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Hello and welcome to my humble abode. I am Shadow Knight, also known as SK and 'that guy over there.' Please, have a seat and help yourself to whatever strikes your fancy, including leaving any comments to my forthcoming book reviews. Speaking of which, that's the purpose of this thread, in case you've failed to deduce that on your own accord. I have so much stuff to read, mainly series that have been recommended to me, that I figured out I might as well make my thoughts public. Most of the time, I stumble across something that not only fails to capture my interest but annoys me a great deal. The by-product of such event is snark. Lots and lots of vitriolic snark. Which in most cases end up being a lot more fun, to me, than the reading itself. If you enjoy that kind of humour, read on! If not, I would advise you turn back now, before it's too late... FIRST BOOK: INK EXCHANGE, BY MELISSA MARR. Apparently, the story is about a paranormal romance set in Huntsdale, where three of the four Courts of Faerie reside. Apparently the King of the Summer Court is looking for his Queen, who was taken the form of a normal girl. This should make you frown right from the start. This is the Wikipedia page for the series. Prologue: Bland and rather uninteresting, full of clichés and ominous characters. Ooh, spooky! A poorly explained evil is rising and this random girl is... part of a vague plot. I have never seen THAT before!1 I can tell already that you aren't a particularly gifted author, Mrs. Marr. Your only saving grace? You present the convincing illusion that your heroine might have a strong personality, rather than the AFGNCAAP2 protagonists normally plaguing novels. Veredict: Barely passable. Keeping a vomit bag in hand. Chapter One: Let's start with the only thing you got right, my mentally-challenged author: tiny details about everyday life in a broken home. Hiding food, struggling with the bills, yaddayadda. Don't say I don't give credit where it is due. Now, let us move on to dissect what you did oh so very wrong: EVERYTHING ELSE. You did a reasonably believable attempt at representing a broken home, hovering between dysfunctional and 'please, someone call social services NOW!,' but then you fucked that up like there was no tomorrow. Your attempt at portraying the mental state of someone in that kind of situation not only fails utterly and in every single way, it also reveals quite transparently your sheltered, WASPy background. A girl that (apparently) GETS RAPED BY HER STONER BROTHER'S FRIENDS would never act the way you describe. What you describe is an upper-middle class suburban girl who thinks about hot boys and getting herself a tattoo because her head is vacuous. A struggling teenager from a broken home is, in no way, that ridiculously vapid, no matter how much she whines about wanting to maintain the illusion of normalcy. Also, you fall into the typical trap of making potential romantic characters (or what's worse, the 'magical race' of the novel) absolutely gorgeous. That is clichéd and fucking annoying. Ten lashes for you, you shallow imbecile. As an aside, your intolerable shallowness is further exposed when we examine the heroine's reason for getting a tattoo. It's implied in the title of the book and the prologue that this is rather important. One would expect this to be given more thought by the heroine, I would expect an entire fucking chapter of waxing poetically about body art and its significance, its meaning, its implications, about her thoughts, desires, fears, emotions. YOU GIVE ME NONE OF THAT. Bitch. I get, at best, a vague desire to express herself, then a lazily explained internet search about tattoos and their history that just 'resonates with her.' Yeah, right. You aren't fooling anyone, Mrs. Marr. I can tell you just find tattoos 'cool' or 'hot' and like the imagery. The amount of effort you put into disguising this is so small it borders on the insulting. As an aside to any writer reading this, to avoid making the same mistakes she made, do try to avoid presenting anyone (much less a whole race of Marty Stus in a paper-thin disguise) as objectively beautiful. It's fine if you're in the protagonist's PoV and you state stuff like 'she felt inexplicably attracted to him' or 'she found him extremely handsome' or 'there was something about him that she couldn't quite place, something that stirred dark desires within her' or something like that. That is biased. It explains that the character is beautiful to the protagonist. There's nothing readers (especially old snarky fuckers like me) hate more than being told what to think/feel. We enjoy making our own judgements about the characters, thank you very much. No, you do not get to argue with me about characters being 'objectively beautiful' because there is no such thing. We all have different standards for beauty and it is simply bad writing to force yours upon me. So you find a certain kind of fashion/looks/scene hot. Good for you. Now have a little courtesy to the reader and assume that applies only to your protagonist, no matter how 'universal' you think it is. Also, avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid AVOID the old 'oh my life is so awful! If only some hot person would rescue me...!" personality, because it annoys the ever-loving fuck out of me. I am reminded of all the passive people stuck in awful situation that refuse to lift a finger to help themselves, instead waiting for a shining knight (AHEM!) to swoop down and save them. Yeah, right. Dream on, kid. Dream on. Veredict: Dear Mrs. Marr: You fail. You eat failure for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Please do me a personal favour and set yourself on fire. I will not progress further into the book nor the rest of your series3. Thank you. SECOND BOOK: WICKED LOVELY, BY MELISSA MARR. Dear Shadow Knight: YOU STUPID FUCK, CHECK THE ORDER OF THE BOOKS BEFORE STARTING A SERIES. Twenty lashes for you. Yours sincerely, COMMON FUCKING SENSE. Prologue: *groans* GIVE ME BACK THE FIVE MINUTES OF MY LIFE I SPENT READING THAT ATROCITY! I facepalmed so hard I almost knocked myself unconscious. Holy shit lady, you sure know how to start a book! There are so many things wrong about your plot that I simply have no clue where to start! Firstly, your AFGNCAAP decoy protagonist is an idiot. She is warned that she might spend eternity cursed, doomed to actively fight against those who might actually free her from that curse, and she chooses to go ahead because 'she's in love with that boy'? I get it, Mrs. Marr, you were deeply in love when you were young, and you were fucked and then tossed aside like a used toy, but dear heavens, woman! Leave your personal history aside! We don't want to read about retarded people doing retarded things just so that you have a cheap way to make the real protagonist's plight even more dramatic later on. We, the readers, are NEVER convinced when a random extra gets offed at the beginning, just to prove how dangerous the plot device is. Or do you think we have all failed Genre Savvy 101, like you? For shame, woman. For shame. Veredict: I am stopping here. No more torture for me. Mrs. Marr, eat glass shards and choke on your own blood. COMING UP NEXT: SOMETHING THAT HOPEFULLY WON'T MAKE MY BRAIN BLEED. STAY TUNED. 1: For more details on this overused, unrealistic plot, see Changeling Fantasy. 2: Ageless-Faceless-Gender-Neutral-Culturally-Ambiguous-Adventure-Person. Many writers do try to give their main characters a personality, though. Most of the time, however, they just give them a gender and call it a day. In which case we end up with a Ageless-Faceless-Stereotypically-Gendered-Culturally-Ambiguous-Adventure-Person. But the acronym is nowhere nearly as catchy. 3: Retarded, retarded me, confusing the first book of the series with the second. NOW I HAVE TO ENDURE MORE TORTURE.