Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The Unsuspecting Mage- Brian Pratt

The Unsupecting Mage by Brian Pratt

I think I will in fact be able to keep this review very, very short. This book is terrible. Don't read it.

Wow. Now, I feel bad saying that. I'm sure that someday I will be reading reviews of my own book (hopefully) and I'll come across someone that doesn't like my own writing and you know what, I'll probably be devastated. I hope, however, that I'll be able to take whatever criticism they offer and move on. Regardless, I just don't have really anything nice to say about this book.

To be fair, I don't think that I am the demographic that this book is geared towards. I'm not a nerdy high school boy, or a man who once was a nerdy high school boy. A short summary is this: James, a high school student looking for a job, replies to an ad in the paper about someone wanting to learn magic. At the office he enters a door and is deposited into some Middle English-type world, where he learns to use his magic, puts all of his Dungeons and Dragons time to good use and gets in a lot of fights. This book read like one long D&D script, and I've never played D&D, or any other game like that. the writing was drab and terrible. The book itself is a case against self publishing- the editing is awful and there were countless typos and errors. Granted, the book is free, but I still don't think it was worth the time. A friend of mine recommended it to me, with the caveat that there were typos and such, but he thought the plot was great. I did not. People who love playing World of Warcraft and other such fantasy role-playing games might like it because that's how it read. Very episodic, lots of magic, finding trinkets and fights, no real plot or character arc.

Now, if that sort of thing appeals to you, then by all means check it out. It's free for Kindle, so you're not going to waste anything other than your time, but it really was not my cup of tea, or bourbon, or really anything.

2 comments:

  1. More and more I've seeing the virtue of getting a professional edit when launching into the world of self-pubbing, even if the book is free. There's really no excuse for putting out less than my best for public consumption.

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  2. I agree with J.L. Too bad you didn't like the story; hopefully there's someone out there that will. I don't think it would be my cup of tea either.

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