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silver_sunI know there are lots of different writing styles out there, and not all of them work for everybody, but most of the time when I start a book I do like to to try and finish reading it.
I'd actually wanted to read The Blade Itself for a while, touted as a realistic fantasy adventure it's the sort of thing that I read. The storyline might have been good, but the style of writing, ended up making me stop reading. I'm glad I borrowed it from the library as I would have been disappointed to have paid for it.
It's things like having multiple people talk within a single paragraph without indicating who is talking, bits of most paragraphs being italicized to show one of the characters thoughts, again without it always being clear whose and epithets everywhere.
This is just a small bit of it to show you what I mean.
“Excellent,” said Glokta. Practical Frost turned the document over. “And this is the list of your accomplices?” He let his eye scan lazily over the names. A handful of junior Mercers, three ship’s captains, an officer of the city watch, a pair of minor customs officials. A tedious recipe indeed. Let us see if we can add some spice. Glokta turned it around and pushed it back across the table. “Add Sepp dan Teufel’s name to the list, Rews.”
The fat man looked confused. “The Master of the Mints?” he mumbled, through his thick lips.
“That’s the one.”
I know that it's a very successful series of books (think there are about four or five in all now), so there must be a lot of people who do like this style of writing, but it wasn't for me.
So has anybody else come across a book where they might have liked the story but the writing style put them off? Or a book where the storyline perhaps was all that great but the writing style meant they kept reading?
I'd actually wanted to read The Blade Itself for a while, touted as a realistic fantasy adventure it's the sort of thing that I read. The storyline might have been good, but the style of writing, ended up making me stop reading. I'm glad I borrowed it from the library as I would have been disappointed to have paid for it.
It's things like having multiple people talk within a single paragraph without indicating who is talking, bits of most paragraphs being italicized to show one of the characters thoughts, again without it always being clear whose and epithets everywhere.
This is just a small bit of it to show you what I mean.
“Excellent,” said Glokta. Practical Frost turned the document over. “And this is the list of your accomplices?” He let his eye scan lazily over the names. A handful of junior Mercers, three ship’s captains, an officer of the city watch, a pair of minor customs officials. A tedious recipe indeed. Let us see if we can add some spice. Glokta turned it around and pushed it back across the table. “Add Sepp dan Teufel’s name to the list, Rews.”
The fat man looked confused. “The Master of the Mints?” he mumbled, through his thick lips.
“That’s the one.”
I know that it's a very successful series of books (think there are about four or five in all now), so there must be a lot of people who do like this style of writing, but it wasn't for me.
So has anybody else come across a book where they might have liked the story but the writing style put them off? Or a book where the storyline perhaps was all that great but the writing style meant they kept reading?
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Date: 2014-05-05 01:13 pm (UTC)Having said that, I have about 11 of his books on my shelves but of those 11 I only really like about 3 of them - the others are series that have been abandoned due to my issues with them.
I find Cassandra Clare's style a bit too simplistic for me (I'm still struggling to finish book 1 of The Mortal Instruments - City of Bones) but my friends don't seem to have the same problem and insist she shouldn't just be lumped as a YA writer (while to me, her style means she most definitely is a YA writer). A simpler style isn't necessarily a bad thing, Mercedes Lackey is also essentially a YA writer, but I really enjoy her stuff.