But do they sparkle?

[meganbmoore]

Some of you may recall that, a while back, I stumbled across Pati Nagle's The Betrayal in the used bookstore. It promised a True Love Mind Link and, more importantly, vampire elves.

I am now reading it, and am currently on page 85.  Unfortunately, it does not have the decency to be cracktastically bad.  Every man in the world apparently falls in love with Our Heroine, Eliani, on sight, but she wants none of them.  The vampire elves showed up just long enough to bemoan how the other elves don't understand them, the True Love Mind Link doesn't show up until page 75, and the writing is painfully flowery and over descriptive.

The amazing thing, though, is how the naming system alternates between words that seem to have been created by throwing darts at a dartboard that looks like the alphabet, and overly literal naming.

We have character names like Heleri, Luruthin, Dejharan, Dironen, Shalar, Turisan.  These are the more controlled names.  There's also a character named Firthan.  I am firaly certain his name came from a process like this:  "What do I name the fourth one in love with Eliani?  Fourth one...Firthan!"

The titles are nextkin, aeldar, theyn, eldermother.  And so forth.

Then there are place names.  There are Alphabet Dart Board names like Ghlanhras and Asurindel and  Alpinon.  But then there's Evennight, High Court of Eastfaeld, Highcourt (yes, "Highcourt" AND "High Court"),  Stonereach, Highstone,  Midrange and  South Wood.  There's also Nightsand, which I'm trying to figure out if it's "Nights and..." or "Night Sand."  Mind you, the overly literal naming wouldn't be bad, save that it isn't a consistent naming system.

Let us not forget that life enrgy is khi, and there's a famous war called the Bitter Wars.  Were there cheerful wars, too?

May I just say that I'm happy that I read enough fantasy to know that I can read tons of it without reading stuff like this unless I just can't resist?

And I should mention that 95% of what I mentioned is just in the 30 pages I babbled to lyssie about over IMs while I was reading!

Comments

[nijibug]

De-lurking to tell you that your book reviews always bring a smile to my day :]

Ahh, bad writing is always worth a chuckle, even when it fails to be entertaining. My friends and I pick up awful romance/sci-fan novels and have pass-it-around-read-alouds at sleepovers (the sex scenes are unfailingly hilarious). This "The Betrayal" of Nagle's sounds like a likely candidate.

[meganbmoore]

Hiiii! Delurk any time!

I may have to pass this one on after I finish it. And just think, I have about 270 pages to go!

[charmian]

I actually really hate that in fantasy, when they mix up alphabet dart names and English-ish names (and though it didn't happen in the book you were reading, random names that are obviously derived from non-English languages, if it doesn't make sense within the worlbuilding). It just doesn't make sense if a lot of the names seem to be like 'direct translation' and others are typical EFP language.

Mind you, this is can be a problem in actual translation. Often it is possible to translate place names literally, but it would be silly to have both "Kyoto" (literally, 'the capital') and "East Capital" (Tokyo) in the same translation. I wonder if authors make errors like this because they have never pondered the problems of translation?

[meganbmoore]

Oh, there are a couple non-English names thrown in. The worldbuilding really is rather weak and inconsistent, and the naming system is a part of that.

[charmian]

Ah, so they go for the trifecta.

Nowadays I have a hard time reading poor worldbuilding. I've become so picky in my fantasy reading, I guess.