Whenever you read about people writing novels and getting published, there are always mutters about the strange new phenomenon of self-publishing, which has only become a feasible marketing option (distinct from the vanity publishing of old) in recent years, with the advent of print-on-demand novels and e-readers. Naturally, there is some suspicion about this kind of publishing, since it involves doing without the paid services of all those fine people who proofread, check quality, support authors, make suggestions, remove rubbish chapters and tell the truly talentless to please abide by the restraining order. Self-published authors have a reputation for being the ones who are just not good enough to be published in a conventional way. I was curious to know if this was indeed the case, and as this book comes with excellent reviews on Amazon, keeps popping up as a recommendation next to books I love, and (perhaps most importantly) costs less than £1 to download, I thought I'd give it a go.
The first thing that hits is that it badly needs proper proofreading and editing. It's not that there are spelling mistakes everywhere but there are errors in punctuation on pretty much every page. There are many stylistic flaws which a decent copy editor would notice: run-on sentences, ambiguous sentences, sentences which throw in a completely redundant repetition of the one before. This kind of thing happens too often:
"After all, my master had been born when Henry VIII was on the throne and by Llewellyn's standards he'd still been fairly young when he'd died, earlier this year, but I wasn't entirely convinced that he was telling the truth about that."
(And by too often, I mean it happens at all.) Okay, I think I can figure out what he means by that sentence, but I do need to figure it out, and that shouldn't be the case. At first glance it looks as though Henry VIII died earlier this year and then had the nerve to come back and lie about it.
It's not formatted as a novel, either: usually in a novel the paragraphs are indented rather than double spaced, unless the author is trying to convey some kind of hiatus in the action which is somewhere between a new paragraph and a new chapter. That's not so much of an issue except it suggests that the author doesn't know how a novel should be formatted. Which in turn suggests that he doesn't know much about novels. Which doesn't inspire much confidence. It also means that the pages start flying by at a speed which becomes annoying whenever there's a lengthy conversation.
The next mistake which is made is throwing in new characters one after another. Each character is given a name, role, and physical description, but I'm pretty sure that most of these characters are not very important. This is just as well, because most are annoying. The thug has to say "fuck" in every sentence, just as the Welsh elf has to say "boyo" in every sentence. And then some historical chappie goes for: "Amorous Christina, it is well that you should so converse with us, perhaps a dalliance as in days gone by?"
OH SHUT UP ALREADY. YOU CAN'T DO REGIONAL VOICES OR HISTORICAL VOICES. PLEASE STOP TRYING.
Amazon reviews are full of people saying things like "I never normally read fantasy but I thought I'd try this one. Whoever thought of Welsh elves? Marvellous!" Well, actually, there's a massive genre out there which does exactly this kind of thing. All the time. Much better than Rosenburg manages. It's difficult to be different from everyone else in this genre, but here's a piece of advice: if you're going for the "silly fantasy" genre, avoid using "The Hidden Academy" as the title for your series, unless you're really fine with every single reader going:
"Hang on, aren't those two words basically synonyms for 'unseen' and 'university'? Haven't I heard of that somewhere?"
In all, I'd say that this author obviously has some creativity in him, but most of what is good in this book has been done better elsewhere, and most of what is bad really shouldn't have made it past the first draft. He needs to go away and read a lot more and study the craft of writing, and come back in a few years. I'd like to say that he's not doing the reputation of self-published authors any favours but by all accounts he's one of the better ones. God help us.
The first thing that hits is that it badly needs proper proofreading and editing. It's not that there are spelling mistakes everywhere but there are errors in punctuation on pretty much every page. There are many stylistic flaws which a decent copy editor would notice: run-on sentences, ambiguous sentences, sentences which throw in a completely redundant repetition of the one before. This kind of thing happens too often:
"After all, my master had been born when Henry VIII was on the throne and by Llewellyn's standards he'd still been fairly young when he'd died, earlier this year, but I wasn't entirely convinced that he was telling the truth about that."
(And by too often, I mean it happens at all.) Okay, I think I can figure out what he means by that sentence, but I do need to figure it out, and that shouldn't be the case. At first glance it looks as though Henry VIII died earlier this year and then had the nerve to come back and lie about it.
It's not formatted as a novel, either: usually in a novel the paragraphs are indented rather than double spaced, unless the author is trying to convey some kind of hiatus in the action which is somewhere between a new paragraph and a new chapter. That's not so much of an issue except it suggests that the author doesn't know how a novel should be formatted. Which in turn suggests that he doesn't know much about novels. Which doesn't inspire much confidence. It also means that the pages start flying by at a speed which becomes annoying whenever there's a lengthy conversation.
The next mistake which is made is throwing in new characters one after another. Each character is given a name, role, and physical description, but I'm pretty sure that most of these characters are not very important. This is just as well, because most are annoying. The thug has to say "fuck" in every sentence, just as the Welsh elf has to say "boyo" in every sentence. And then some historical chappie goes for: "Amorous Christina, it is well that you should so converse with us, perhaps a dalliance as in days gone by?"
OH SHUT UP ALREADY. YOU CAN'T DO REGIONAL VOICES OR HISTORICAL VOICES. PLEASE STOP TRYING.
Amazon reviews are full of people saying things like "I never normally read fantasy but I thought I'd try this one. Whoever thought of Welsh elves? Marvellous!" Well, actually, there's a massive genre out there which does exactly this kind of thing. All the time. Much better than Rosenburg manages. It's difficult to be different from everyone else in this genre, but here's a piece of advice: if you're going for the "silly fantasy" genre, avoid using "The Hidden Academy" as the title for your series, unless you're really fine with every single reader going:
"Hang on, aren't those two words basically synonyms for 'unseen' and 'university'? Haven't I heard of that somewhere?"
In all, I'd say that this author obviously has some creativity in him, but most of what is good in this book has been done better elsewhere, and most of what is bad really shouldn't have made it past the first draft. He needs to go away and read a lot more and study the craft of writing, and come back in a few years. I'd like to say that he's not doing the reputation of self-published authors any favours but by all accounts he's one of the better ones. God help us.
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