Bloodletting Part 1 (The Affinities Cycle) by Peter J. Wacks and Mark Ryan

[Kaldrak]

If you should happen to stumble across this book on Amazon, don't be fooled by all of the positive reviews.

Whether or not these people actually consider this worthwhile literature or are simply robots sent to push this...unique collection of words which have been loosely arranged into a book configuration, I don't really know. What I do know is that if you don't listen to me you are likely to end up wasting your money on this because of the positive reviews, which I did not actually do, oh no. A friend of mine did though and from what I read of it, this is a strictly amateurish endeavor at best.

Amazingly, Bloodletting has not one, but two authors. Don't worry about differences in style, however. They are both equally unskilled in the art of wordsmithing, so it matters not. The authors do however, have the sheer audacity to compare themselves to Robert Jordan, Brian Sanderson, and Neil Gaiman. This is an absurdity rivaled only by the many claims in the reviews about how fantastic a job the authors have done on characterization.

I...it's difficult to describe exactly what's wrong here with any sort of brevity, but I will attempt it.

In the first place, there is this little thing those of us who are skilled at our craft are aware of called: SHOW NOT TELL.

This is about as general a fiction rule as it gets, people. And unfortunately for you and I and anyone else who happens to stumble across this travesty, this is the one rule the authors simply do not follow. Oh, I think they think they are showing us what's going on, but in fact all of the information conveyed to the reader is drawn not from behind the eyes of the characters, but directly from the pool of authorial knowledge, after which it is painfully splatted down onto the page. These long, rambling bits of exposition explaining the nature of the fantasy world we find trapped within these pages are interjected into the midst of situations where they generally should not be, breaking the flow of the narrative, such as it is, and making the reader scratch their head in wonder.

Why exactly would a character be thinking about these things when they are fighting for their life?

The answer?

They wouldn't.

The level of descriptive detail in the book is quite impressive, I do have to admit. The only problem with it is that it is just so bloody awkward. You get step by step, blow by blow renditions of the action, with frequent reminders of what the character is feeling and experiencing, basically narrated directly at us by the authors. Not only is it frequently redundant, these descriptive scenes are almost laughably bad.

Everything is told to us. EVERYTHING.

I mean, if you want your hand held throughout the entire book, then what they hey, this might be the book for you.

But it gets worse.

The authors express a clear misunderstanding not only of the way real people would act or react in any given situation, but also of just how much physical damage a person can live through without straight up dying. Now I know this is a fantasy setting, with healing magic and whatnot, but the ridiculous amount of damage the main character undergoes in the first third of the book without dying is absolutely insane.

I mean, he's tougher than John McClane. You know, from the Die Hard series?

Tetra Bicks is the main character of the story. He's a young man who is perhaps literally unkillable. Not for any special magic ability of his or anything like that, but rather for the sheer fortress sized amount of plot armor he wears whilst mechanically marching towards his destination, constantly bleeding from a hole in his stomach after being impaled on a spike for an entire night. Tetra unfortunately also suffers from a severe lack of personality. He is the engine through which the badly conceived plot is driven forward and he is as poorly represented as everything else in this farce.

After his entire village is destroyed by plant type people wielding earth magic and his sister is kidnapped by them for who knows what reason, Tetra is commanded by his father the psion to go rescue his sister with his dying breath. Yep, his father used mind control on him to ensure that his obviously badly injured son would march off to his death in a hopeless attempt to rescue his sister, battling a vastly superior force of plant people who use earth magic and seem to really like impaling humans on earth spikes.

Rather than becoming a shivering, blubbering, traumatized wreck after this, Tetra can only attempt to carry out his father's wishes. Also, he is angry. And sad. And angry because of his anguish.

Which we are told.

Repeatedly.

In only the most awkward fashion.

So I got about a third of the way through this thing and I could stand no more. It's obvious that it doesn't get any better and I haven't even covered the strange magic that Tetra uses. You see, he uses 'density magic.' Only the way he uses it causes most things to react as if he were merely manipulating gravitational forces, not increasing an object's density or mass, which by the way, doesn't happen in any real sense of the word here. In this world, there is no such thing as the law of conservation of mass, but hey, it's magic so whatever.

That's another thing. Don't try to get scientific with superpowers (or God forbid, magic like they've tried to do here) if you don't understand the basic scientific principles behind what you are attempting to describe to the reader. People will notice. Just handwave it and have stuff happen. It's better that way.

It is so much better that way.

Anyway, whatever you do, don't pay money for this thing. If someone else has it, you can do what I did, which is laugh at it with them. It's good for that at least.

[Dracos]

Ouch as the dwarves felt during the great collapse of the corvian mine that brought in the historical depression of 317 F, thought Tetra as he continued his journey, his leggings half red and half black from the still spewing hole in his stomach.  Encountering a critical review was very harsh, and had hurt Tetra like no pain he'd ever felt.  It was almost as bad as the time the series of lawyers had handed him a plagiarism suit for knocking off famous adventurer Lara Croft and her propensity for saving islands after mortal wounds.  At least he had his beer here, freshly brewed by the halfing Normar who was putting him up for two days due to a religious thing about travelers.  "Times are tough."