In general, it was pretty good. The author can put words together with reasonable verve. It was just the dialogue that was killing me, and the I-suspect-it-was-added-at-the-last-minute sex scene where I couldn't tell who was who.
I'm slightly baffled by the idea of a secret society of swordspersons in the 15th century full stop. 16th c, maybe, owing to changes in miliatry technology and fashions. Then again, I would think this, being a mediaevalist by profession.
I confess I don't read these things closely (once I've determined the prose is making me itch), so it may be more sensible than it seems, but overall the feel was quite anachronistic. The author apparently did a lot of research regarding historical events and such, but I suspect she's read too many romance novels set in more recent eras, and that colored the story.
I foolishly tried to help a writer friend of mine by pointing out the lack of contractions in a manuscript he sent me. He did not receive it well, arguing that it was perfectly valid for his characters not to use them... which is, technically, correct. So then I had to shrug because it's HIS manuscript, after all. I'm sure in time he'll correct it.
In the current book that I'm reading, which is by an author I usually enjoy, I have been very annoyed by silly little word-substitution mistakes that really ought to have been caught by the author, if not an editor. I'm not an immense stickler for grammatical accuracy, since I care more about how the sentences sound than I do about how they're supposed to be written, but I draw the line at flat-out using the wrong word. I expressed this ire by underlining the words in the book, it made me feel worlds better.
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In the current book that I'm reading, which is by an author I usually enjoy, I have been very annoyed by silly little word-substitution mistakes that really ought to have been caught by the author, if not an editor. I'm not an immense stickler for grammatical accuracy, since I care more about how the sentences sound than I do about how they're supposed to be written, but I draw the line at flat-out using the wrong word. I expressed this ire by underlining the words in the book, it made me feel worlds better.
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