Winter Queen, Chapter One, Part One
Alrighty. I’ve finally gotten off my ass to get around to the review of Winter Queen, by Amber Argyle. This is the first time I’ve analyzed a book in writing, so please bear with me as I try to get into the groove of this thing. Warning: I swear. A lot. So I’m posting this as NSFW.
NSFW, people.
Summary can be found here: Winter Queen
But hey, it’s a summary. Not exactly life or death here. The premise sounds right up my alley (tough decisions to become a monster? Sign me the hell up!).
There’s a map. I don’t care about maps. Except that I can’t tell if the names on here (some are big and some are smaller) are countries or cities or what. And one of them is named Argon (Eye of Argon, look it up). I lol.
The formatting is weird. I didn’t know it when I got this from my library, but I suspect that this is self published. The font is way big and, upon searching, I couldn’t find anything on “Starling Publishing.” For now, I’m going to assume it’s a self-publish.
The book begins with Ilyenna, our seventeen year old protagonist, sitting around on her horse, who’s named Myst.
And just like that, Argyle has lost me. “Myst”? Was the “y” really necessary? Really? It smacks of my early fanfiction days.
Anyway, the horse is prancing around, and I get my first glimpse of what I suspect is going to be a running theme called, Your Metaphors Are Awkward.
“[…] the animal’s hooves clicking against the snow-covered stones that coated the land like dragon eggs.”
I’m pretty sure things don’t “click” on snow-covered anything. And dragon eggs? Are the rocks coated like dragon eggs? Or are the snow-covered rocks like dragon eggs? Because rocks covered in snow look like a goddamn field of snow. It builds up in the cracks, Book.
Argyle apparently doesn’t know how to punctuate dialogue:
“’There.” Her father pointed[…]”
Here’s how you punctuate dialogue:
“There,” Bob said. He pointed…
There’s a comma to punctuate the end of the speaking part, unless the writer opts for an exclamation mark or a question mark. It’s not a period. It’s never a goddamn period unless it ends the paragraph. Which this didn’t. Just looking at the page (we’re still on page one, you guys) I see the proper format twice. The first has a goddamn dialogue attribution adverb, and the second one is “cried.”
(This makes me cry.)
Okay. Back to the book.
There’s a shadow moving on the edge of the road. They think it might be a bear, but it’s a horse.
And, I’m sorry, but what is going on with the formatting?
“Bratton soundlessly pulled an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. “Bear?” He directed the question at their father.”
Sweet baby jesus. I learned to avoid this shit in High School. High School. Dialogue is a paragraph by itself. It doesn’t just pop into the middle of one. This is basic writing 101.
So it’s a pony. The rider is on the ground. Ilyenna, our protagonist, leaps forward to help the guy. And while I’m all for heroine actually doing stuff and while helping people is generally a good thing, the way this is phrased made me literally groan.
“But the healer in her couldn’t be denied.”
Of all the flowery, purple, nauseating prose. Really? “Couldn’t be denied”?
The dude isn’t wearing a coat. That’s a good detail, a good clue. It makes us wonder things. And he’s been shot with an arrow. According to the “clan belt” he’s wearing, Ilyenna identifies him as an “Argon.” (God, that name.) Also, what does the belt look like? She’s described the landscape, the temperature, Ilyenna’s riding skirts, etc. but we don’t get to know what about this belt identifies this dude as an Argon?
“Instantly, her mind went to the Argon clan, and her brother’s best friend, Rone.”
That’s… that’s some awkwardsauce writing right there. It’s like the book is just throwing words at me. This reads really juvenile. Like, teenager level, as in a teenager wrote it. And I know, I know, some teenagers actually can write well, but they are few and far as fuck between.
I think Ilyenna has a thing for Rone. And it’s presented in another jumble of hastily thrown together info-dumping.
Her brother “growls” a line of dialogue at her. Try doing that out loud. It sounds hella stupid.
The dude is still alive. Ilyenna and her family are from somewhere called “Shyle.” They wonder why Argon is there. Brother suggests “Raiders.”
And hold on, time out. There are people called raiders who sound a lot like Vikings. Father dearest says they don’t come that far inland, but still, these people would have grown up hearing stories about these guys. They’re dangerous, they’re killers. And yet Ilyenna ran off, unthinking, towards a wounded, possibly dead guy out in the wilds, who has been shot, in a place that has things called “Raiders”? Are you fucking kidding me? No one with a functional self-preservation instinct is going to do this.
I think our protagonist is an idiot.
Apparently, when Ilyenna bends over the wound, she “Listened to a sound like the gurgling of a gentle stream.”
Bullshit. Fluid-filled lungs don’t sound like a goddamn stream. It’s more of a rattle. Think of when you get a bad cough, you know that wheezing, rattling sound you make when you breathe? It’s like that. It’s not a goddamn stream in your goddamn lungs. YMAA.
(This book is driving me to swear. I apologize. It’s going to happen some more.)
Anyway, the arrow isn’t a Raider’s arrow. Father knows this. (So he’s seen them? So they did come that far inland? And Ilyenna still goes running off, by herself, towards Gurgle Chest? Such bullshit.)
The arrow isn’t a clan arrow (so… these are like countries, then?). Also, it can’t be, because the clans don’t fight each other. Word of God states so.
Gurgle Chest is dying. Ilyenna uses some kind of Xena pressure point voodoo to wake Gurgle Chest up.
He tells them that another clan attacked them.
That clan is called the Tyrans. No, seriously: Tyran. God, typing it, I keep adding a “t” at the end. Way to be subtle, Book.
Oh, and Ilyenna’s mom is dead. Ilyenna thinks it’s her fault. And I roll my eyes again because this is setting us up for some melodrama, isn’t it? “Oh, I did something stupid and my mother died as a result, oh angst!”
Gurgle Chest dies. The trio run off to warn their village.
This is on page five. Chapter one is ten pages and I have to call it quits here because reading this is making me want to drink. In five pages. What happened? The premise sounded so good! And then I open it and it’s this.
It might get better. It’s got nothing but positive reviews, so I am hoping to god it gets better. I haven’t read this thing, yet, so I don’t know. But here’s an end to part one because I need to stop before I hulk out on my poor laptop.