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A criticism of a book
Oct. 16th, 2019 11:54 pmName withheld to protect the guilty.
I would say that the worldbuilding of this book leaves a little something to be desired, but that would suggest that I thought the author spent any time on worldbuilding at all. She really should have.
Instead, I'm left with questions such as: "When the evil technology hating cultists were taking over, was this one dude the ONLY guy with a plan?" and "Wow, this one dude's plan really lasted well despite the evil cult being the only worldwide power for the past several hundred years" and "Okay, so as near as I can tell the heroes have only been to a tiny corner of the world, and there's no mass communication because there's no technology. They've only overthrown this small portion of the cult, right? But everybody is dragging their centuries old tech out of hiding like they've won the whole war?" and "Seriously, I've heard of medieval stasis, but this is ridiculous! There is NO redeeming factor to the evil cult, they're deliberately cultivating dung ages motifs all over the place, and they have no dangerous weapons or mass communications. HOW are they staying in power worldwide? A corner of the world, maybe, but all of it!?" and "Good thing oral tradition is 100% and nobody ever changes the words or forgets the tune" and "How did they even take over if most people weren't evil tech hating cultists and, therefore, the existing power structures were the ones with all the people AND all the guns?" and "Seriously, nobody else had a plan? There are so many moving parts to this one, and it doesn't at all conflict with anybody else's plan?"
Honestly, a few minutes of thought would've made this all work together. But no. Instead it's NO WORLDBUILDING AT ALL! FULL SPEED AHEAD!
Bonus points for forgetting eclipses. Again, this is supposedly a worldwide evil cult. Even if there hasn't been an eclipse in this tiny corner of the world for several hundred years (and wow, that old pocketwatch works really well after all this time! those folks took good care of it!) don't they rule the whole world? There have been other eclipses in other places!
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( Read more... )
I would say that the worldbuilding of this book leaves a little something to be desired, but that would suggest that I thought the author spent any time on worldbuilding at all. She really should have.
Instead, I'm left with questions such as: "When the evil technology hating cultists were taking over, was this one dude the ONLY guy with a plan?" and "Wow, this one dude's plan really lasted well despite the evil cult being the only worldwide power for the past several hundred years" and "Okay, so as near as I can tell the heroes have only been to a tiny corner of the world, and there's no mass communication because there's no technology. They've only overthrown this small portion of the cult, right? But everybody is dragging their centuries old tech out of hiding like they've won the whole war?" and "Seriously, I've heard of medieval stasis, but this is ridiculous! There is NO redeeming factor to the evil cult, they're deliberately cultivating dung ages motifs all over the place, and they have no dangerous weapons or mass communications. HOW are they staying in power worldwide? A corner of the world, maybe, but all of it!?" and "Good thing oral tradition is 100% and nobody ever changes the words or forgets the tune" and "How did they even take over if most people weren't evil tech hating cultists and, therefore, the existing power structures were the ones with all the people AND all the guns?" and "Seriously, nobody else had a plan? There are so many moving parts to this one, and it doesn't at all conflict with anybody else's plan?"
Honestly, a few minutes of thought would've made this all work together. But no. Instead it's NO WORLDBUILDING AT ALL! FULL SPEED AHEAD!
Bonus points for forgetting eclipses. Again, this is supposedly a worldwide evil cult. Even if there hasn't been an eclipse in this tiny corner of the world for several hundred years (and wow, that old pocketwatch works really well after all this time! those folks took good care of it!) don't they rule the whole world? There have been other eclipses in other places!
( Read more... )
