Somehow when you write your own book, you don’t have much time for reading but following (yeah, I know!) Facebook advert, I started to read the book called A War God’s Favourite.
It was on one of the android apps, the one that operates on a pay-per-view reading scheme, but the first few chapters were free, and I decided to give it a go. If you read it and love this book, skip the next part because I’m about to dissect the plot and point out what genuinely amazes and amuses me as a writer.
The first two chapters were genius. I mean, I love smut books (blood, gore, sex and fantasy type), and it hit all the right chords with me. In my naivety, I got excited and paid for the following 30 chapters a hefty price of £6. OK, I didn’t actually pay because I had accumulated enough Google Play points to have off for free, but it would still be that much if I paid.
Big mistake…
As much as I think the first two chapters were a perfect example of how to hook the reader on the book, what followed was like an instant, unsweetened coffee after drinking the finest cappuccino.
(spoiler alert) After being almost eaten by the giant dragon main protagonist instantly falls in love with a prince (the Stockholm syndrome at its finest) who, in fact, raped her because she didn’t consent to sex, which she enjoyed profusely despite repeatedly saying no. Not to mention being a virgin, she instantly enjoyed the quite brutal sexual activities and falling in love with a man who barely exchanged two words with her for the first 4 chapters but managed to kill 4 people. Oh, not to mention, she immediately gets pregnant.
The plot holes kept piling up as being taken as a slave from her home village at the age of 7. She already knew the finest medicine tricks of her tribe and advanced healing, and in a very patriarchal society, she instantly got acknowledged as the best doctor in the empire. What else? The emperor acts like an idiot and suddenly, in a completely politically bonkers move, dissolves the entire slavery system the empire economy is based upon. And everybody loves our ‘Mary Sue’ just like in Twilight. You got the gist, but…
To not be only negative. The sex scenes were good, they gave me some ideas, and Mark said he would pay for a subscription just for that reason 🤣. Call me old fashion, but as much as I love good adult settings, having a sex scene in EVERY chapter (literary, on the stairs, in the greenery on the top of the dragon while flying) with no contribution to the plot became a bit boring, and before I even got to tenth chapter, and I started scrolling past it. Especially that author didn’t add new or kinky stuff to the play, only changed location, but it was, in essence, the same slightly adapted missionary position.
So the lesson for me as a writer is to learn how to write opening chapters so well, and the lesson for me as a reader is that not all good premises are worth paying a hefty price for the book that is, in essence, like porn with lots of bed action and very little sense in between.