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!