This guy claims not to be much of a reviewer, but his writeup of PC Cast’s Goddess by Mistake is my idea of a useful review. This shows exactly why I say that a good review isn’t one that tells me if the reviewer liked the book, but whether I will. As it happens, he loved this one and I found it somewhat amusing and very annoying – but if I’d read his review before I read the book, I’d have known that. (The problem for me isn’t the noble warrior centaurs but Ms. “I need a girlfriend because boyz are only for teh seks” Shannon. It’s not that she’s not realistic, it’s that the women she reminds me of are people I don’t like much.)
Moving on to much more minor annoyances, The Dragon’s Apprentice is making me wish yet again that James Owen would find himself a beta reader with a good ear for early to mid-century Oxford English. Also, so much seems to have happened since the end of The Shadow Dragons that I went looking to see if I’d missed a book between them. The fact that I’m reading this, the fifth book in the series, gives you a good idea of my general opinion of the books, and there are actually a lot fewer clunkers than in the first book (the addition of more and more original characters helps a lot) but every once in a while something is just jarring (I suspect an Oxford-turned-Cambridge don in 1945 would say “the American Revolution” or “the American War of Independence”, not “the Revolutionary War” when speaking to an English audience.)
A good ear is SO important! I’ll put up with a lot if the story swoops me up, but resent when jolted out of my story trance by an anachronistic or trite clunker. Though this bothers me more in movies than in books. Perhaps there’s less time and grist in a movie’s dialog than in a book, or better still, a book series. Like how you can forgive one meh course in a multi-course chef-prepared meal than getting a lousy burger at lunch. ~LA