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2014 book: Hatch
May. 30th, 2014 08:27 amHatch by James Stevens
Rating: 1/hated (1-5/hated-loved)
I no longer hate that self-published books exist. There are some good ones out there. Some great ones, even. Hatch was NOT one of them.
Hatch is the reason people hated self-published books to begin with.
Let's start with the writing first. Actually, let me let the author himself describe the issue:
I just wanted to address the issue of spelling and grammar issues in the book.
It is commonly recommended that when writing a book, you concentrate on the story and its details and ignore typos. That way the flow of inspiration isn't interrupted.
It's important to remember that this story was never written with the intention of being published! I wrote it specifically for my daughters when they were young, and now that they are older did I decide to share it with the world.
So he wrote the book without stopping to fix a single typo. Didn't spellcheck it. Did no editing at all. He sent it off to a "professional editing service", a company that didn't correct a single typo, and without checking their work himself, he sent it off to be published. But it's okay, because he never intended it to be published?
Oh, and the so-called "professional editing service" went out of business right after checking his book.
But hey, if the book "continues to sell well", he'll go back and edit it. How nice of him!
The story itself is as bad as the writing. I'm only about 5% in, and I could give so many examples of stupid, unreasonable stuff.
1) A blacksmith is selling a sword. It's of a metal he never saw before. It's "impossible to melt down". So he's selling it for pennies because it's trash. Buh? Would a smith not be MORE interested in some new metal? Something so strong it can't be melted down? Instead he basically gave it away to the main character.
2) The main character is dumber than a sack of dirt. A dragon (intelligent creatures, though they don't speak the same language as humans), tugs on his pantsleg, walks off a few steps and looks back at him expectantly, then comes back and tugs, walks off in the same direction and looks back at him... and the character has no idea what the dragon is doing.
3) In addition to being stupid, the main character keeps getting special stuff. That sword the blacksmith sold. A golden dragon (most are black or grey, and only a few rare knights get a dragon at all, but streetrat him ran off with one).
4) The main character is just so mind-bogglingly stupid. So he runs off with the dragon clinging to him (it has claws that can slice through armor effortlessly), he dodges guards and blah blah blah, just barely gets out of the city, is being chased by knights... and he forgot he had the dragon. It was clinging to him. It was the reason he was running at all. It's against every law in the land that he has it. And in the space of minutes, he forgot he had it.
Every single character is nothing but a caricature. The evil nephew is killing his uncle the king. The nephew nearly cackles while talking about killing children. The more minor mad guy is, of course, fat. There's a Wise Old Knight who is going to be pushed out by the evil nephew. (As stupid as the main character is, it's the evil nephew that I hate the most. He's just so unrealistically evil.)
And know what pisses me off the most? This book has 199 reviews, an average of 4.5 stars, and 135 five star reviews. What BS.
The only reason I'm still reading this darned thing is that I have a new book to review coming in soon (Winterkill -- looks interesting!), so I don't want to start another book instead. I hope it arrives today, because I can't take more of Hatch.
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Rating: 1/hated (1-5/hated-loved)
I no longer hate that self-published books exist. There are some good ones out there. Some great ones, even. Hatch was NOT one of them.
Hatch is the reason people hated self-published books to begin with.
Let's start with the writing first. Actually, let me let the author himself describe the issue:
I just wanted to address the issue of spelling and grammar issues in the book.
It is commonly recommended that when writing a book, you concentrate on the story and its details and ignore typos. That way the flow of inspiration isn't interrupted.
It's important to remember that this story was never written with the intention of being published! I wrote it specifically for my daughters when they were young, and now that they are older did I decide to share it with the world.
So he wrote the book without stopping to fix a single typo. Didn't spellcheck it. Did no editing at all. He sent it off to a "professional editing service", a company that didn't correct a single typo, and without checking their work himself, he sent it off to be published. But it's okay, because he never intended it to be published?
Oh, and the so-called "professional editing service" went out of business right after checking his book.
But hey, if the book "continues to sell well", he'll go back and edit it. How nice of him!
The story itself is as bad as the writing. I'm only about 5% in, and I could give so many examples of stupid, unreasonable stuff.
1) A blacksmith is selling a sword. It's of a metal he never saw before. It's "impossible to melt down". So he's selling it for pennies because it's trash. Buh? Would a smith not be MORE interested in some new metal? Something so strong it can't be melted down? Instead he basically gave it away to the main character.
2) The main character is dumber than a sack of dirt. A dragon (intelligent creatures, though they don't speak the same language as humans), tugs on his pantsleg, walks off a few steps and looks back at him expectantly, then comes back and tugs, walks off in the same direction and looks back at him... and the character has no idea what the dragon is doing.
3) In addition to being stupid, the main character keeps getting special stuff. That sword the blacksmith sold. A golden dragon (most are black or grey, and only a few rare knights get a dragon at all, but streetrat him ran off with one).
4) The main character is just so mind-bogglingly stupid. So he runs off with the dragon clinging to him (it has claws that can slice through armor effortlessly), he dodges guards and blah blah blah, just barely gets out of the city, is being chased by knights... and he forgot he had the dragon. It was clinging to him. It was the reason he was running at all. It's against every law in the land that he has it. And in the space of minutes, he forgot he had it.
Every single character is nothing but a caricature. The evil nephew is killing his uncle the king. The nephew nearly cackles while talking about killing children. The more minor mad guy is, of course, fat. There's a Wise Old Knight who is going to be pushed out by the evil nephew. (As stupid as the main character is, it's the evil nephew that I hate the most. He's just so unrealistically evil.)
And know what pisses me off the most? This book has 199 reviews, an average of 4.5 stars, and 135 five star reviews. What BS.
The only reason I'm still reading this darned thing is that I have a new book to review coming in soon (Winterkill -- looks interesting!), so I don't want to start another book instead. I hope it arrives today, because I can't take more of Hatch.
Edit: If you care about future LJ features and such, go join
lj_feedback!
