On authors who make up arbitrary units of measurement

[erratio]

For anyone who cares, the author in question is Carol Berg. I'd just read an excerpt from one of her novels after Zhe told me that he borrowed a book of hers from the library. The following conversation ensued.

me: there was far too much exposition in it though, and i really hate it when authors come up with arbitrary units of measurement to make

Comments

[lotusvine]

I read Carol Berg's Transformation and enjoyed it, but don't recall the made-up units of measurements (assuming that was the book in question.) The sequels were a little bit disappointing, as I thought they drifted off into a tangent, like this comment here.)

In my current writing, I was using imperial as the basic measurements - technically it should be cubits or whatever, but imperial is more intelligible and isn't as jarring as metres in a raw, typical fantasy setting.

[erratio]

Hmm the one I read the excerpt from was about some guy who steals a bunch of maps and is addicted to pain or something like that, and it was actually quite enjoyable (silly units of measurement notwithstanding). She won a bunch of awards for it. I'm guessing the Transformation one is the 4-book series that starts with the premise that magic is banned? The blurb turned me off, since magic being banned and the protagonist either being a mage or being forced to protect one is practically a subgenre in itself.

Basically, I don't think it matters what units you use, as long as it's somewhat intelligible to the reader. If you want to make your world seem more exotic there are better ways to do it than to rename basic terms.

[lotusvine]

Four book? I've thought it was a trilogy. Maybe there's a sequel. Argh!

Transformation is essentially about a former mage who's the slave of an ruler, a young Alexander the Great type. It does fit into the subgenre you mention, but is well told. The relationship between them, and how the ruler is slowly changed due to his slave's influence. The friendship/relationship was quite well done. I recall what ruined it for me (now that I'm thinking of it again) was that the secret culture of demon-hunting mages was hiding in a My Secret Valley only a few days away from the Imperial capital, which seemed rather ludicrious to me.

The sequels are more about what the demons are/where they come from, which was a rather large shift in gears from the strong character-based work in the first book. I liked the ideas, but it didn't have what I liked in the first book. Will investigate fourth book, however.

I've got the books somewhere. Will dig them up if I remember.

[erratio]

Ha, no hurry. I'm not allowing myself to read new cool things until after this month (my exam is conveniently on the 30th Oct so are my assignments more or less, for easy planning)

I would appreciate getting to read them at some point though :)

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