Knights, Castles, and Obscure Medieval Nouns

I just finished Lord of Vengeance, by Lara Adrian. It was recently re-released as an e-book: $0.99, 963 pages. It's a historical romance, the sort of thing my friends and I fondly refer to as a "bodice ripper."

The Pastoral Medieval Setting
We are introduced to a forest with a stream and a clearing in it, a melee, a big castle, a ruined castle, and a shabby castle. I don't know anything else about these places except that the characters ride horses in them, through them, and between them. There are some oblique references to French kings ruling England, but it's not relevant to the plot or presented in an interesting way.

About nine hundred pages of this are apparently scene setting, about fifty are alleged character development. There isn't even any court intrigue, which, if you can't be bothered to build an interesting hero/heroine paring, you really should have in this sort of book. 

The Plot
The hero and heroine spend about 600 pages disliking each other. Then, they shack up together and become soul-mates over the course of three days. After two hundred pages of vague and hurried "romance" we move onto the third act: the adversity they have to overcome together. It was almost as if the author, aware of how long and boring this book was tried to create the illusion of a brisk pace by insisting that the second half the story takes place over the course of a week. The shared adversity comes in the form of the only other characters with more than two mentions in the book. Over about a hundred pages, one dies and they defeat the other. Yawn.

Then comes the most grueling part: nearly a hundred pages of happily ever after. Normally, these sort of things wrap up pretty quick with a marriage and baby in a handful of paragraphs. Going a little further with it might seem like a neat idea, and it might be, but not here. I don't want to read about the new king (who isn't part of the book at all) or how the couple is remodeling their starter castle, riding, singing, bathing, and celebrating their inevitable offspring. I didn't care about these characters and I just wanted them to GO AWAY.

Notable Quirks
What this book did have was frequent references to obscure medieval articles of clothing, architecture, customs, and food. This is the sort of thing that really sets the e-book format apart from a paperback. With an e-reader, you can look up whatever is tripping you up without wandering off to find a dictionary. It's surprisingly comprehensive. I learned about medieval belts, knives, prayer schedules, and other things. None of this added anything to the story, except perhaps to remind us that it was supposed to be set in the 12th century.  At least it gave me something to think about besides how pointless the four characters in this book were.

Where it Comes Up Short
One thousand pages: four characters. Hero, heroine, heroine's dad (also hero's nemesis), and villain. Hero is alone in the world. Heroine is a sheltered innocent and her blouse gets torn. Dad is a reformed drunk. Villain wants heroine's dowry. It's not a bad place to start but that's all there is to them. 

So, let me give you an idea of how boring this book was. A Dance with Dragons, George R R Martin's 5th Ice and Fire book, is 1100 pages. It takes place over three continents, has dozens of developed characters, a couple wars, and some romance. Now, one might think that's not a fair comparison. Each author is trying to do entirely different things and Martin's novel is building on plot and character development from four previous novels. But consider that each of the first four novels are all under 1000 pages, and they all follow this basic trend. You can pack a lot of scenery, a lot of characters, and a lot of plot into 1000 pages. For comparison, let's also look at Smokin' Seventeen, Janet Evanovich's most recent Stephanie Plum novel. It's a fun book that follows the general romance format: four or five characters, three or four locations, and a problem to resolve. In this book Steph has a problem, gets lucky (a few times), and the problem gets solved over the course of 200 pages. All of this while convincingly setting the story in present day Trenton, New Jersey.

The point I'm making here is that an author can write a long book where lots of things happen to lots of interesting people, or they can write a short book where a couple interesting things happen to a few people. If you're straying from an established route, take a good hard look at your story. It's hard to write expansively and compellingly about a single person's day or concisely about complicated events involving lots of characters.

The Bright Side
The best thing about this ebook? The notable lack of grammatical errors, typos, and formatting issues. The level of quality control in a publisher's products is rarely seen in ebooks sold for $1-$5. That's the nicest thing I can say about it, that I didn't see a single instance of the wrong your/you're, weary/wary, or inexplicable changes in the font.

Last Words
It's too bad, really. A moderately well written bodice-ripper is a fun read. Even better, with an e-reader, you can read them anywhere without worrying about other people on the train or at the beach seeing the ridiculous cover art.

My husband bought me an eReader for my birthday a couple years ago. Since then, I've entered the wonderful world of extremely cheap literature.

I love that the ebook format has made self publishing affordable and profitable for so many creative people. I think that it's fantastic.

I loath that most of these books are in desperate need of editing. Nothing makes me sadder than a promising story using the wrong your/you're repeatedly. Nothing except wandering pointless narrative about trees, pets, or character feelings.

Here I'll review eBooks I can get for less than $5, I'll take requests, and I'll make a point of saying nice things as well as bemoan the tragic state of homonym use in American English.

I won't be reviewing "big names" here. No New York Times bestsellers here, folks, no classics, and no movie adaptations.

It should be about as much fun as you can have reading about reading.