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A review by t_shaffner
Six Sacred Swords by Andrew Rowe
2.0
This book was entertaining enough that I finished it and didn't return it (barely), but it was mostly just disappointing. It was a long series of fight scenes that felt a bit repetitive and were mostly solved via deus ex machina kind of endings. The characters made a point, instead of being clever, of solving all problems via cheating (by virtue of being from somewhere else so he didn't know how to do otherwise), and perpetual talk about how excited the main character was to find a "worthy fight" was in stark contrast to the fact that he perpetually got his ass kicked and had his injuries massively talked up, which then perpetually conflicted with the fact that he'd join yet another fight five minutes later. The point being, nothing was really believable, the "show don't tell" advice for authors seemed not only to be ignored but to be in conflict since what the characters actually "showed" was in stark contrast to the courage, intelligence, or fighting ability that was perpetually attributed to them.
So yeah, quite disappointing. I also had a minor complaint, which is that in the opening scenes in a fight between two characters, one of the two characters was described as "they." I don't know what this was about, but all it did for me was make the scene very confusing as I kept having to rewind to check and see if someone else had joined the scene only to discover that the plural was in fact being used to apply to a single character, again. Not sure what that was about, but it made an already rather mediocre book start with a rather annoying writing dynamic that made one distrust the narrator in a way that also further detracted from the whole story. This then fed into the sense that what was described about the characters conflicted with the traits they exhibited, leaving one with a broad sense of inept characters and a dishonest narrator both. This made the book frustrating on top of being disappointing.
So yeah, quite disappointing. I also had a minor complaint, which is that in the opening scenes in a fight between two characters, one of the two characters was described as "they." I don't know what this was about, but all it did for me was make the scene very confusing as I kept having to rewind to check and see if someone else had joined the scene only to discover that the plural was in fact being used to apply to a single character, again. Not sure what that was about, but it made an already rather mediocre book start with a rather annoying writing dynamic that made one distrust the narrator in a way that also further detracted from the whole story. This then fed into the sense that what was described about the characters conflicted with the traits they exhibited, leaving one with a broad sense of inept characters and a dishonest narrator both. This made the book frustrating on top of being disappointing.