An Idiot's Review of Splintered Lands: Through Fire Forged

You know, as someone who loves fantasy I actually come with a ton of pet peeves. Sometimes I can over come them if I like the story premise enough, but more often enough I just stew in discontentment and barely manage to finish the book. This happened to be the case of Splintered Lands: Through Fire Forged by James Tallett. And don't think I'm going to rant this entire review, I have more class than that.

So this story just shoves us straight into the plot. No real explanations on why the world is the way it is. There's a casual mention of a gigantic mage war that's made an Inquisition of sorts, but aside from that we're left in the dark. One of our main character's is Inswan, a baron within this gloomy dystopia that is doing his best to defend his lands from the invading robber baron, Iudas. Inswan is described to be a benevolent and wise ruler, who hates seeing injustice done to all people. Which is a big reason as to why he hates Iudas, this guy is a complete bastard. He rapes women, burns villages to the ground, steals from his serfs, basically he read up on the latest volume of How to be a Terrible and Cliched Villain. And this is where I have a massive issue with this book, Iswan is shown to be a man that is kind and benevolent, almost a perfect ruler. While his rival, Iudas, is a terrible excuse for a human being that needs a hot poker repeatedly ran through his ass.

On the opposite side of the country is Fryca. Apparently she is a technologist trying to make the world a better place ever so slowly. However all her efforts are constantly destroyed by The Knights of the Broken Wheel. Think Roman Catholic Church without any of the religion. Fryca is a clever and ambitious young woman...And that's it. I can't tell you much about her because her personality doesn't grow beyond that.

And by now you've probably discovered a theme with this review. While the premise is interesting, a world destroyed by a massive magic war, the characters and events are terribly written. The pace is rushed, the characters bland, and the theme on 'humans are bastards' wasn't executed very well. It was clear that the writer should have taken more time to write and establish the characters, and a bit more about the world around them. Dystopias are supposed to be dreary, but boring is never supposed to be part of the equation.

If you wanna buy it do so here.

I'm gonna go Christmas shopping now...

Writing For Yourself

Normally I have a cheesy or sarcastic thing to say at the beginning of my blog posts, just so you know to take whatever I'm about to spew with a heaping pile of salt. But this time around I'm going to be pretty serious, because my subject today is something that I've thought about for a long while. A few months ago I posted about how I excited I was that I had managed to take my WIP to a second draft. You guys gave me a ton of support in that particular post, and my pride had gone through the roof. However going through this fiasco for a second time, I realized that what I was writing wasn't entirely me. The characters and plot were definitely coming from my brain juices, but the content and themes weren't. Those were all coming from what I expected big time agents and publishers would want, not what I personally wanted to write about.

And yesterday when I was going through some of my other old WIPs, I realized that I never actually wrote for myself. It was almost always based on the expectations of people who would eventually help me make it in a publishing company, not what I wanted. I love dark themes, but what I was writing seemed muted and censored so that a publisher wouldn't think it was for a B-rate movie. I wanted more anime/manga tropes, but I always shied away because I didn't want an agent getting freaked out by them. All I was doing was covering up my voice, a likely unique voice that may or may not bring in a huge audience because of my different views and writer's education.

And now I realize I may not be the only one with this issue. Many times I see people asking 'would you read this' and 'would you be interested in that' instead of deciding entirely by what they want to write. If you don't want to write about dystopian, YA , love triangle romance then don't. It's not gonna kill your chances of getting an audience. Because if you keep going down that dark road of doing what people will expect out of you, then you'll hate your writing and what it's become.

Gosh, this was a super serious post. I'm gonna go watch Monster Musume now, I really need to laugh....

KABLAM! Super Weapons!

Yeah, I let out my inner eight year old boy, what're you gonna do about it? Anyway, recently I've been watching a boat load of super hero movies. Everything from Guardians of the Galaxy, which is awesome by the way, to Captain America. Now I love me a good superhero movie, they're usually fun, unless it's a DC movie then it's just awesome, and I get to stare at a bunch of hot guys doing cool things. But one of the most interesting things about the entire premise is that there are characters who don't have powers. Instead they rely on their smarts, skills, and weapons to save the city/day/galaxy/universe/house.

And the same thing happens a lot of the time in fantasy books. Characters don't have the super woobly wobbly magic that other characters have, instead they have their very own weapons that does the woobly wobbly for them. Normally they're in the form of talking swords, ancient bows, or the automatic wizard staff.  These babies could destroy whole armies, you know after the bad guy killed one of the hero's best friends. They always hit their marks, always stay clean, and they're sharper than a diamond that takes daily doses of badass steroids. More than likely you get them from a super secret cave, a little old lady who was missing her kitten, or the bottom of that ancient lake where virgins were sacrificed during the full moon. Basically they're super awesome dues ex machinas that will probably help solve the main story line. Heck, it might even get them a pretty pretty princess during the process.

I feel like it's all just a waste. If you know anything about nuclear missiles, then you know that there's plenty of consequences to using them. They don't really solve all problems, if anything they end up compounding them. Yes they're badass, yes they can't kill the Saint of Killers, but there's waaaaaaaay more cons than pros to those weapons of mass destruction. With this being said, wouldn't it make sense for the super weapons in fantasy to be just as destructive? And no, I don't mean killing the dark lord and all his super evil armies. I mean on the environment, the people in the vicinity of the attack, the person using them, even their psyche. The only mental problems that they ever seem to cause is corruption, but that's usually until the pretty pretty princess tells the hero that she believes in them. That's a ton of wasted material just cast aside because the writer wants to just show case all the super weapon's badass powers.

Now I'm gonna go drool over Fallout 4...

An Idiot's Review of Urdaisunia

When I read a book one of the biggest things, for me, that can make or break it are the characters. If I read a book with a flimsy plot I'm more than happy to overlook it if the characters are solid. Heck, I'm even willing to forgive shoddy world building and mediocre prose for the sake of good characters. Thankfully, in the case of Urdaisunia by Ms. Kyra Halland, it's not just the characters who happen to stand out and help create a pretty interesting story.

Now this story starts out of with a prologue. Since we all know how I feel about prologues I won't go into a rant about, instead we'll fast forward to the beginning of the book. It actually starts out with a young widow named Rashali, recently she lost her husband and her young daughter to illness. On top of that there's a drought going on, her country has been taken over by the Sazar, and the rebellion group she's apart of is full of idiots. However her entire world get's thrown on its head when the prince of the Sazar, Eruz, decides to spare her life...Well that and the gods decide to use her as the token peice of a bet. If she marries Eruz then the goddess of Earth and the god of water will 'mate' and make it rain.


Now the main plot makes it seem like Rashali is some amazing chosen one. Especially when other gods begin rooting for her, how almost every man in power wants to have her, and how her decisions will effect the entire world. Basically the whole savior shtick. However whenever Rashali makes a decision it has serious consequences. There rarely seems to be the 'super special awesome savior net' that so many stories have for their characters. If Rashali makes a bad decision it comes back to bite her in the butt later.

Now let's talk about the characters. Personally, I found Rashali to be a very strong female character. And not in this haughty, angsty, if not manish way that seems to be all the rage. Rashali was clever, had a healthy dose of common sense, and seemed to learn from her mistakes. Who cares that she couldn't fight for almost the entire story, the fact that she could use brain over brawn was really refreshing.

Eruz, her love interest, was an okay guy. I felt like he happened to fall for Rashali far too quickly, but then again it was never clear enough for me to determine if the goddess of love had anything to do with it. Aside from that I think he was a good character, not one strong enough to be the center of attention the entire story, but one that I did  enjoy reading about when his parts came up. He seemed like an honest and good man, bound between duty and love, something you often get in the romance-fantasy genre.


To be honest, I was completely disappointed by Eruz's siblings and the king. All three felt like standard villains with no real defining traits. Yes, we understand that the brothers want the throne for themselves, and yes we understand that the father has ridiculously high expectations. We get it. But there needs to be more traits in the people we have to despise aside from greed, jealousy, and greed. If anything I was more curious as to why the father wanted Eruz to die, or if that was just in the heat of the moment. Aside from that I never felt an ounce of disgust, curiosity, or satisfaction when these guys did anything.

Finally there's the gods. Not much to say here, they acted in typical tropes for each type of thing they were patron over. If anything, they heavily reminded me of the Greek gods and the story of Athena or the Titans. It was interesting in theory, but the archetypes chosen for the gods made them boring and predictable. And due to the focus on the humans in this story, there just wasn't enough room in it to evolve the gods further.

The many pitfalls in character, actually got saved by world building. First off this story happens to be in an almost Middle Eastern setting. So often times Rashali had to go through deserts, rocky hills, and fertile plains thanks to Urdaisunia's rivers. Not only is the setting interetsing, but the various cultures that we're introduced to. The Sazar have to have five wives, a contracted concubine ring, and didn't have a writing system before invading Urdaisunia. The Urdai have their own traditions and were even the ones who introduced writing to the Sazar. There were other cultures as well, but they were more left in the background so that the Sazar and Urdi world could shine.

In general I found this story to be very entertaining. An amazing read if you want a romance fantasy, that is a bit more involved than the typical romance book.

If you wanna buy the book get it here.

Okay, I need to go cry in a corner now. Tokyo Ghoul is a very cruel mistress....

Where the Idiot Has Been

Hi! Wait, how long has it been since I've been active on this blog? Um...Okay, so my life has been all over the place lately. I've been busy training to join the American Navy, helping my siblings in school, and packing my junk up so I can put it in storage. However I have been paying attention to the fantasy books being published, and have a ton of awesome reviews and topics to cover in the upcoming weeks. One book I finished months ago, in a single day actually, is Urdaisunia. So you can expect that review as soon as humanely possible. I really have nothing else to say, so I'm gonna sign off here.

Now I need to proofread my Urdaisunia review...

An Idiot's Review of The Diary of Modern Cinderella

As you guys know, I typically review fantasy books. However I decided to go with a change of pace and read a slice of life YA called The Diary of Modern Cinderella. I'm sure more than half of you are rolling your eyes at the mere title and saying: "Are you serious, another Cinderella teen drama story? Don't you have a few more brain cells than that, Luka?"

To be fair it's called an idiot's review, what did you expect? In all seriousness this story, written by Ms. Sekina Mayu, has very little to do with the actual overall plot to Cinderella aside from the fact that our main heroine, Risa, get's a stepmother and stepsister after her mother passes away. However her new mother, Riko, is actually kind to her from the get go and her new sister, Chiyu, becomes her bestest friend. Riko doesn't try to replace Risa's original mother, and Risa herself is only angsty after the initial news of her father dating someone else. However her life is tipped over when her father, a superintendent in the police force, get's sent away to Nagasaki on a case and all hell breaks loose as Riko begins to abuse both of her daughters.

I honestly loved reading everything from Risa's point of view. For her everything is usually cut into quick logic thoughts, nothing too complex or over the top. It really felt like I was reading from the mind of a young teenage girl who's confused by her step-mother's strange behavior, and struggling to keep it all a secret. With that said, I would have loved a deeper analysis on how it affected her and more scenes depicting the abuse. Risa ,in general, is a typical girl thrust in an atypical situation, there's no real defining characteristics about her.

Now comes a large problem I had with this novel. A lot of it felt rushed, with little time to actually sit down and let us absorb what was happening, or a real chance to meet the characters. Risa had an advantage since she's the eyes we see everything happening from, but everyone else is foggy and almost one dimensional. Understandably this is a light novel, meaning that you have to read the accompanying novels to get a better idea, but it would still be nice to see how Risa truly viewed them.

All in all this was an interesting take on the Cinderella trope, and is enjoyable as long as you're not going into it expecting a constant barrage of angst and drama.

If you wanna buy the book it can be found here.

I'm gonna go work on the next blog post. I'm so behind....

Fear and All It Pertains

Fear is what makes us human. It separates us from machines, guides many of our decisions, and dictates when we're gonna go to bed at night. Because let's face it;  if you watch a good horror movie at midnight, chances are you're not gonna go to bed before dawn. Anyway I digress, the point of this post is exploring the fears that your characters have. And I don't mean the typical ones like 'loosing a loved one' because unless you're a demented sociopath everyone has this. No, I mean something like a fear of the dark or a fear of spiders. I also want to take a look at how characters should/could react to their fears.

I always find it amazing that a ton of characters just don't have basic fears. All their fears have to be this noble bullcrap that makes them seem like a good person, as if it will help us like the characters more. Well you know what, the entire emotion of fear is a completely selfish thing! When you're truly afraid of something you rarely compromise with the people who need you to get something done. You're gonna do everything and anything in your power to avoid making contact/looking at/interacting with whatever it is you fear. So even though the pretty red-headed gypsy girl may be drowning in a pond full of filth, if your hero is a total germaphobe, he's probably gonna keep going on his merry way or not give his 100%  if he helps her.

Now that sounds terrible doesn't it? That poor guy I just created sounds like a total bastard but Joe, that'll be his name for now, could have other traits that balance his mysophobia. He could be a very giving person that would give the shirt off his back to save a sickly orphan that'll die anyway, he could clean the local poorhouse twice a week, all things that would generally make him seem like a good person. Balancing out traits is super important, and is slowly becoming this thing I say in a crazy tone whenever I read books. If you don't balance out his mysophobia with something like...a strong work ethic, then he's going to topple over into a character that will be seen as completely miserable. However if this is your goal then good for you, in fact you should just ignore a good chunk of this post and go do something else. Go bake a pumpkin pie, clean your refrigerator, or read and comment on another one of my other blog posts...Please?

Anyway, my obnoxious suggestion aside, this entire time you're probably wondering why Joe just doesn't get over his fears. After all, there's gonna be something in his life that he needs to deal with that also involves his phobia. And that's true, because life really doesn't care about our comforts and wants. However, people are ridiculously stubborn and selfish. Going outside your comfort zone is a hard thing to do, and takes a toll on a person mentally and sometimes physically. So even if Joe wanted to save our red-headed gypsy, it'd make his stomach twist in knots, his mind go back and forth on his moral responsibilities, and make him sweat freaking him out even more. Thinking back on all this, I wouldn't want to deal with my fears either. Three cheers for cowards!

I'm gonna go bake an apple pie now...