You know hwat, I’m feelin’ generous today, so…
Actually serious critique of the Book of Tears
Generally I enjoyed this book so far, but I have some… actually pretty major problems with it, I’d say the most major in the entire series, so let’s go through them.
- Some characters don’t have any role in the story
Every character is supposed to have a purpose, this is one of the most essential things you should keep in mind when writing them. If a character doesn’t do anything and is just dragged along as the story progresses, it can lead to them becoming redundant and blending into the background, especially if that character doesn’t have any outstanding personality to show.
This is where my criticism comes from: the majority of Tott’s party literally don’t do anything throughout the story. Only Diero and Tott himself are active, while Racie, Cordax and Winger just sort of… exist around them. Cordax’s case isn’t as severe, since he has a very memorable and distinct personality. His presence is always noticeable, yet he still doesn’t really do anything. Unlike in the previous books, here he doesn’t provide much of anything other than comedic relief. I feel like his ability to get himself into absurdly dangerous situations and still somehow escape them and his lockpicking skills are greatly underutilised in this book.
But Cordax’s case is incomparable to the other two, Racie’s and Winger’s, that is. Not only has Winger not done anything, he also doesn’t have much personality. There was very little dialogue with him, so we didn’t really have a chance to get to know him better in this book. Although, his case was improved slightly in the last two chapters where he got some character development by confronting his dad.
And Racie… oh, Racie… I think she is the weakest character in the entire series. She doesn’t have a single line of dialogue in the entire book, a single character trait other that being mortified all the time: she doesn’t bring anything to the table whatsoever. Which is a real shame, I think you could have utilised her being a hacker and given her the sense of humour of the user she is based off of. Right now she very much feels like one of those stereotypical characters that are very cowardly, but actually have great strength, but without the twist regarding strength which makes this comparison completely pointless and now I look like a fool…
- The story feels very rushed
This book has two parallel plot lines unraveling independently at the same time, which is one plot line more than usual. So, it would make sense for it to be significantly longer than the other ones. But, judging by the rate at which the story has been developing, this isn’t going to be the case. Currently there are 16 chapters in total, 11 of which are about Tott and the other 5 - about Tomorrow, (my math might be incorrect because I can’t count) and, judging by this statement,
The end is very near. In three chapters, even.
And the problem is that not much has happened in the book. There is no room for the characters and the reader to breath and, because all the events occur at such a fast pace, none of them feels all that important. The most severe example of that, in my opinion, is the party’s stay in the town there the street fight took place. Their presence there was so abrupt that I thought that this entire section was completely redundant… and that makes for a perfect transition into the next criticism:
- There in no buildup and direction in this story so far
Because of the story occurring so quickly, I didn’t feel much buildup to its culmination: the standoff against Volume.
Normally, a story has a direction in which it develops, which is set by the goal(s) of the main character(s).
The party in Tott’s part of the story has a clear goal: to find and kill Ghid, which is good because you can easily build the entire story around this, but here’s the problem: the characters don’t really do anything to find him, they are just led there by the invisible hand of the author.
Let’s look at the overall story so far: the party get arrested by the police because they were burying a bunch of bodies in an inappropriate location; they kill the officer and find out that the car is possessed by a skeleton king; they’re chased by the police; they are arrested by the police again; they escape from the police to some random city; they meet some kind on an AI there, but they’re separated because the police arrests them once more; they get dragged back to the police building, where someone called Volume wants to meet them; turns out Volume is actually Ghid; they fight.
As you can see, there’s next to no direction in the story. Essentially they just sort of stumble into Ghid by accident in the end with no buildup to that moment.
I think that Tomorrow’s side of the story is much better in this regard: there was a clear goal: to overcome Ghid’s influence, and Tomorrow completed that goal. But his journey to that wasn’t all that long to begin with and consisted out of two steps. And now we loop all the way back to my second criticism.
Well, I’m hoping that your words about those three chapters were not true and we will get many more. There are still so many users left that didn’t appear in the book yet, and there’s no way you’re gonna cram them all into those supposed three chapters, right?
Well, Ghid, you certainly got what you asked for, now it’s my turn.
That’s a very convoluted way to say “yesn’t”
Yeah, but which of the Ghids?
