Time to trade out those spork goggles for a mortarboard. We're takin' an honest-to-God serious look at why this book fails... And it might take us a while.
In a sense, I'm actually very glad that I chose to liveblog this book. Not just because it ended up being funny; because it helped keep me alert to this book's inanity. If I had just read this by myself, I suspect I probably would have noticed only half of its true ridicuousless. Then again, maybe not.
As you may have gathered from this liveblog, Adventurers Wanted: Slathbog's Gold is not a very good book. In fact, I daresay (with some assurance) that is is probably one of the worst things I have ever read that was professionally published. No work, be it a Joe Everybook you pick up at Barnes & Noble's or a celebrated classic, is without its flaws. But the truly remarkable thing about Adventurers Wanted is how it manages to have very nearly every flaw they warn you against in Creative Writing class.
Even without looking at the plot, characterization, or heaps of cliches, the first and most standout thing is the very writing itself. It doesn't always come across in the tiny snippets I post, in my terrified attempts to not violate fair use laws, but the prose in this book is really, awfully dull. There is no verve or fire anywhere in the descriptions that might truly paint a picture of this world we've been transported to. There is never unexpected or vivacious word choice. The adjectives are as bog-standard as a turtle—and, on that thought, there's barely any metaphor or simile. And have we mentioned how much it tells instead of shows? Voice is one of the most important parts of truly getting a reader into a world, and this book speaks with the voice of a middle school math teacher. Yes, Beige Prose can work, so long as it's being used for a point. Especially getting to a point—Beige Prose works well when you just need to get through something unimportant quickly; no need to waste elaborate descriptions on something that won't be relevant. It also works if you want to purposefully make something seem dull or nondescript. But when the entire book is written with the same level of "exictement," it does nothing but drone. There's nothing to hook the reader. There's no clear mood to anything, and it's hard to get a feel for any emotion in any scene or character. The book is flatter than week-old root beer.
Of course, some very well-regarded authors are rather beige themselves—it's easier to forgive sloppy sentence construction if the plot and characterization are good. And there's a certain glimmer of goodness to this plot. The idea of a company that actually "sells" adventures, in a world where "adventurer" is actually a common (and well-respected) career path, is a fun idea. Ditto the idea of an unwitting teenager accidentally signing on to combat the worst and most ferocious evil in a thousand years—Fish out of Water comedy works. A Genre Savvy author could have some real fun with it. However, practice often differs from idea, and what we've ended up with is more or less a Random Events Plot—there is no centralized conflict, and while our characters move towards a MacGuffin, they are essentially unencumbered by it. Normally, in a "hero vs. villain" story, the antagonist drives most of the conflict, but Slathbog is a complete non-entity. Even during his eventual appearance, he does little but growl and die. A "Villain MacGuffin" (I don't think we have a trope for that yet, do we?) can work, so long as other things the heroes encounter along the way provide a passable threat. Smaug doesn't do much in The Hobbit either, but between goblins, giant spiders, and Gollum, he didn't have to. Bilbo and posse were always getting in scrapes without Smaug's input. The difference between The Hobbit and this book is that Bilbo has to use all of his wits and skills to get himself and his friends out of trouble. Snap your fingers, and Alex hands you the bad guys on a sish kebab. The only really prolonged encounter—and the only one with any threat level—was the three-legged troll. But the bandits and the wraiths were relatively minor encounters compared to everything else that happens. Anything else that might possibly provide a sense of tension is immediately disposed of. It would be like Slice of Life, but any scene which might show us the characters interacting in a friendly fashion is either told to us from afar or cut short.
But Slice of Life relies on its characters, and that's yet another thing this book egregiously lacks. The full team is composed of eight people, but aside from Arconn (who is usually the mouthpiece of exposition) and Skeld (who is intented to be Plucky Comic Relief, but just comes off as erratic and inappropriate), they're largely interchangeable. Although we are told certain things about them, it's usually no more than one rudimentary trait: Tayo is silent and gloomy, Bregnest is a fearless leader, Thrang is a dwarf, Halfdan is also a dwarf, and Andy is the plucky young guy whom Alex bonds with. But their actions often defy these characterizations: Tayo talks plenty, and mopes almost never (except for the "fear of death" bits). Bregnest behaves like a spoiling, perfectionist parent, heaping compliments and rewards on Alex that he's not comfortable with, but openly berates Alex when he dares suggest he doesn't deserve it. After his initial appearance, Thrang doesn't do much, and Halfdan might as well be absent completely (given that his few references in the text tend to be concerned with his current state of inebriation). And for all that Alex decides he "likes" Andy and they seem to bond, they almost never interact, and don't do anything that would affirm their supposed "friendship." Everyone (save totally gratuitous Halfdan) has something that's probably supposed to be an Establishing Character Moment, but that's all we get, and we're probably supposed to take it on faith. And the only person with any arc whatsoever is Tayo.
And Alex. Oh, Alex. Most of what I have to say about him has been said over the course of this liveblog, but I'll reiterate: He's utterly vapid while he, at the same time, manages to make the entire story revolve around him. Although he is worshiped and beloved for his "potential," very little of this is actually shown—he does a few tricks involving fire, but given that other characters teach him these easily, it's not clear why he's any more "wizardly" than anyone else—except, of course, us being told this. If he had some more character—again, again might this be forgivable. But he asks no questions except those necessary for exposition. He makes no observations. He doesn't react to any situations. The narrator provides us a direct-feed to his emotions—he's angry, he's happy, he's sad—but never once does he display them; aside from the two-word phrase "Alex felt," there's never any indication in his words or actions on what's going through his head. If not for his narratorial mood-ring, he would be a Straw Vulcan. Sure, he gets in an occasional smile or a reassuring "Do not worry, my friend," but again, due to the lack of interactions between anybody, there's no sense of that friendship. These people may as well be strangers. Even Alex's dialogue is as beige as the writing, and he has no Catchphrase, no Verbal Tic, no distinctive speech pattern, no anything that shouts, "Yes! This is a teenager from Planet Earth who is now stuck in Fantasyland!" He has nothing identifying and he's not identifiable. If I were still a teenager and met this guy in school, I'd accuse him of being an adult plant to find out which of us was taking drugs. Even some Totally Radical slang would be better than his utter blankness. And yet, he can do no wrong and is a Mary Sue slash Gary Stu to the very letter.
There aren't many things left that could redeem the book, after all of those flaws, but what's the icing on the cake? The cliches. If this book were a good book—say, it lacked all but one of the above flaws—it would be an example of how to work well within a formula. If this book were merely bad, with fewer cliches, it would be just another classic example of a writer ripping off something more popular without a clear understanding of why the original worked. But with everything wrong with it that is, and with the utter Cliché Storm surrounding it, it goes from being simply inept to downright disasterous. Imagine a pair of children baking a cake. They want the cake to taste good. But they have no idea how cooking actually works, so they simply take everything they know tastes good and throw it into the cake with no regard for how the flavors might blend, what textures might be created, and what might overwhelm something else. The result would be an utterly inedible mess. The author, to me, seems like those children—he borrowed a bit of everything that seemed cool without thinking of how it would work together. It's a bit obnoxious for the Genre Savvy among us, but, worse than that, it's predictable. Tropes Are Not Bad, but Tropes Are Not Good, either, and in terms of tools, he used a ballpeen hammer to adjust a bolt, and tried to drive a screw with a blowtorch.
No single aspect of this book is utterly inexcusable by itself. (Well... the scene with Slathbog's hidden lust for happiness, and the What the Hell, Hero? moment that follows, is somewhat in question.) But all together, now, that's where the "magic" happens. This book is so seemlessly maladroit, I can't help but wonder how it got published. If I were a publisher and somebody sent me this, I would reject them so fast their head would spin—politely, of course. Was it nepotism—is the author related to someone in the company? Was it a dare? Did somebody lose a bet?: "OK, if but if I win, you have to pick a book at random out of the slushpile and publish it!" But let's be charitable to the author, here: Maybe the book was good at one point, but got meddled to death. Maybe this is a Stealth Parody, and the joke's on me. Maybe, even, the author knew it was awful, but he had to get the story out of him before he could move on to anything else—something like the novel that spawned the "OH JOHN RINGO NO" meme.
However it happened, I have to admit: It kind of makes me sad. When I first picked up this book, I had been craving some cheesy, unpretentious, swords 'n' sorcery, High Fantasy brain junk food. The written equivalent of a Frank Frazetta painting. If it was missing even one of the flaws above—just one of them—it might have gone from being totally rotten to a nice Guilty Pleasure.
To that end, here are some books I recommend you read instead of Adventurers Wanted. They're not great. I don't even know if I can call some of them "good." But they all have one thing AW doesn't: They're enjoyable. They commit many of the same mistakes. But they don't do all of them. They're kind of stupid. But not wholly stupid. And, if you don't mind turning off your brain for a while, they're quite a bit of fun.
It's the Mediocre Fantasy Calvacade!
- Song In The Silence
- Author: Elizabeth Kerner
- Plot: Farmhand Lanen Kaelar is Not Like the Other Girls, and wants more than working on her now-deceased father's horse ranch and getting married to her cousin Walter. So she and her best friend, a farmhand named Jamie, go off an adventure, and she goes to meet the True Dragons because every girl loves dragons. Further books in the series involve Lanen's attempt to restore dragons to their former glory as mankind's teachers and friends. And fall in love with the dragon king.
- Why It's Stupid: The prose is sometimes really awkward, the point of view switches all the time, the Rule of Cool really gets pushed to the limit here, there's a lot of linguistic Author Appeal that will be confusing to people who aren't obsessed with phoenetics, Fourth-Date Marriage, the sequels tend to drag with a couple obvious Ass Pulls, and if Lanen were any more of a Strong Female Character, Samus Aran would be rolling her eyes.
- Why It's Still Awesome: Lanen's cliche-ness aside, the other characters are actually pretty awesome, and the author manages to do a romance between a tiny human woman and a giant silver dragon in a way that is somehow both not creepy and genuinely touching. And while the world looks very Generic Fantasy on the surface, there's actually a decent amount of worldbuilding here, including a cool creation myth. Also, it did win an ALA Best Books for Young Adults award.
- The Magickers
- Author: Emily Drake
- Plot: A bunch of kids sign up for a summer camp because it looks fun. They find out that their camp counselors are in fact wiz—er, "Magickers" who want to train them to be as such too. But there are dark powers who want to stop them, and send evil forces like jackal-wolves after them, and I guess the protagonist possesses the power to unlock gates so they can find a world to set up a proper Wizarding School.
- Why It's Stupid: Very Harry Potter-ripoff plot, classic problem of kids not necessarily acting like kids, Contrived Coincidencees out the wazoo, classical awkward prose, characters aren't necessarily well-defined, the evil forces are stupid and not really that menacing (also bad at naming things, "jackal-wolf?" Really?), some of the worldbuilding feels a bit cheesy and generic.
- Why It's Still Awesome: Rule of Cool concept is really, really fun, some of the background characters are interesting and more complex than you'd expect (especially some of the adult good guys—more Gray-and-Black Morality than you'd expect all around), and the character of Bailey, who I'll admit is a lot like me and I identify with her quite a bit. She's just awesome. And a chapter in the first book has the lulzy name of "Lanyard Ho!"
- Leven Thumps
- Author: Obert Skye
- Plot: A criminally-mistreated boy learns (due to the sudden appearance of a tiny purple imp-like creature named Clover) that he is actually the only one who can save Foo, the land where dreams are made, because he's the descendant of the only person ever to leave Foo. He must stop Foo from merging with Earth!
- Why It's Stupid: The writing constantly thinks it's much more funny than it really is, the main character has the same sort of unquestioning limpness that Alex does, getting "Foo-ized" is a huge Esoteric Happy Ending for anybody that it happens to (to the point where it's hard to see why the man who first escaped is supposed to be a bad guy), the villain's badness is also mostly informed, and, for some reason, lots of Unfortunate Implications involving fat people.
- Why It's Still Awesome: Clover is genuinely amusing most of the time, Foo actually manages to be genuinely whimsical (and make it work) most of the time, the power-building is cool even if it is kind of random, it has that sense of spontaneousness that works really well in kid's books, and you have to respect a guy who can make a talking toothpick a total Woobie. And, for a series that's supposed to be about the land of dreams, he actually conveys the nature of dreams pretty well.
- The Otto seires
- Author: Charlotte Haptie
- Plot: In a secret city where magic went to hide from the rest of the world... magic is still hiding, because Humans Are Bastards and people are still bigoted towards The Fair Folk. Protagonist Otto finds out one day that his twin sisters can fly, and learns he actually has magical ancestry. So begins his quest to help his people become accepted again.
- Why It's Stupid: The author has heard of commas but decided she's not fond of them so the prose is completely breathless and it rambles on and on and also run-on; CAPSLOCK ABUSE; plot about acceptance and bigotry gets really heavy-handed near the end, and everyone but the Good Guys suffers massive Aesop Amnesia.
- Why It's Still Awesome: When it's not heavy-handed, the book's morals about acceptance actually work well thanks to good characterization and some nicely touching scenes; although the twists are easy to see coming, they still work; Jerkass-itude aside, the City seems like an enjoyable place to live and is well-constructed.
This post is long enough as it is. So, keeping these books in mind, join us for the next and last time when we discuss how Adventurers Wanted could have actually been good.
See you then, fellas.
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