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The Hellfire Brats
Oliver Turner moves to St. Louis and quickly finds himself indebted to and employed by Sir Nightwatch.
Nightwatch is a small group solving all manner of cases involving magic and monsters from the shadows. Oliver finds himself under the watchful eye of Donald "Dodger" Rogers who was trained by Sir Nightwatch himself.
Together they compete with Eliza Alcius, an Arch Knight of The Celestial Order and her partner Basal Knight Amelia Petrochilos. Both groups fight for the protection of the weak but have very different methods but will have to work together if they are to stop a string of arsons threatening to throw St. Louis into chaos.
Nightwatch is a small group solving all manner of cases involving magic and monsters from the shadows. Oliver finds himself under the watchful eye of Donald "Dodger" Rogers who was trained by Sir Nightwatch himself.
Together they compete with Eliza Alcius, an Arch Knight of The Celestial Order and her partner Basal Knight Amelia Petrochilos. Both groups fight for the protection of the weak but have very different methods but will have to work together if they are to stop a string of arsons threatening to throw St. Louis into chaos.
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Published November 18, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 17, 2023
*Current review written upon request of Totally Not the Author*
My God, when I said that I lost interest and wound up dropping this early, that had been a decidedly merciful course of action. A critique which, I might add, is totally valid in and of itself. If a story fails to captivate and hold the interest of the audience, then that story has failed, and is ultimately worthy of one star.
But I digress, in the interest of transparency I'll lay it all out on the table. I only picked up this book because of the author's asinine statements regarding the complexity of prose. I found the novel lacking, dropped it, and was then badgered into writing a more detailed critique by someone who was totally not just a sockpuppet account of the author. Since prose was the major sticking point of my earlier not-review, I'll start there, since going into detail about this story's plot and characters is liable to give me an aneurism, and I'm uninsured, so fuck that.
The author has absolutely zero understanding of how to write. Oh, sure, he can cobble sentences together in such a way as to convey information to the reader, but only in the barest and most bland sense. I mean writing as an artform. He has no understanding of it whatsoever, no creativity, no heart, no soul, no humanity. He clearly doesn't read anything that isn't a comic book, because in terms of prose... there is no prose, it's just a bland relaying of information directly to the reader because he doesn't think like a writer, he thinks like someone too lazy to draw.
When it comes to describing characters he directly relays the statistics of the character in question. The protagonist, who must be an autistic savant because I have no idea how else he would know this precisely from a simple glance, remarks that the two female leads/blatant RWBY theft, are precisely five foot (x) inches multiple times, because I guess once just wasn't quite enough. It's the kind of lazy writing you see from bad literotica fiction that litters the internet, clearly written by someone who doesn't read much and doesn't understand that conveying the SENSE that your character is six feet tall is overall better than telling me their exact height in numeric.
His stance regarding 'complex' prose being that it's basically just the literary equivalent of modern art translates to 'I'll put absolutely zero effort into using words creatively or meaningfully to efficiently convey an idea or emotion, because it's hard and I can't sustain my interest in an actual piece of literary art.' Which smells like a fat stack of copium, like he's trying to justify not putting any effort into the prose, which might work in the wide open world of stupid fanfiction where people have zero understanding of taste and the works have no artistic merit whatsoever, but if you're transitioning into 'totally original do not steal' work, at least try.
A character is never 'Taller than oak tree' or has 'eyes like smoldering coal'. They are Six foot eight inches and have brown eyes. Nothing more. Because, of course, using creative descriptors or complex prose is STUPID and DUMB and possibly GAY! Just like those artists who paint in abstract, like these two vastly different forms of artistic expression are anything at all equivalent.
But hey, maybe there's merit to the worldbuilding right? Urban fantasies aren't exactly unique or creative, but they've got the inherent appeal of seeing magic intrude and supersede the mundanity of normal everyday life. You have to actually put effort into making sure these elements make sense, though, otherwise you end up with a BRITE situation, where it's just the modern day but there are also fantasy things around for some reason. Harry Potter hides the magical elements of its setting away in its own little pocket dimension, where wizards can have their dumb magic glowstick fights without mucking up the modern world in such a way as to necessitate massive overhauls to the real world to function.
The author opts for the laziest form of urban fantasy worldbuilding, which is something of a running theme with him, by basically not having any. Oh, sure, there are organizations and mages and magic out the wazoo, all taking place in a small slice of the Midwest, but none of it is given any concrete thought and almost all of it feels bizarrely stapled onto the real world in a way that feels slapdash and utterly incongruent. Reading through the whole book I got the feeling that these organizations and mages had no real effect on the modern world in which they live and just happen to be... there. 'Dodger' is like a top magic special agent but also apparently goes to a regular ass high school? Do you know why magical schools are such a common trope? Because it doesn't really make sense to have someone with abilities like that in the public schooling system unless said system is built entirely around housing individuals with said supernatural talents.
Apparently there are enough evil mages out in the world to justify the existence of characters like the absurdly named Mr. Nightwatch to make an organization dedicated to combating them and evil monsters... hilariously named after himself, but they just sort of recruit out of regular ass school.
And the naming conventions, my God, it's absurd. Using Oliver Twist as inspiration for your urban fantasy schlock is certainly... interesting, but I can't take it even remotely seriously. They feel like 1950s newspaper comic characters. You have 'Dodger' and 'Oliver Turner' sharing pagespace with Ruby Rune and Yang Lao Bing or whatever and it just feels like a bad fanfiction, which I'm sure this was at some point, before the author watched one too many Brandon Sanderson lectures and decided he wanted to be a famous fantasy author.
I've said it before but I'll keep saying it until my voice grows hoarse and my ears bleed, Sanderson has ruined an entire generation of aspiring writers with his magic systems. When I got to the scene where the characters walked around a baseball field and fucked around with their magic for what felt like hours the temptation to tap out of this book again reared its head and it took me weeks to pick it back up. Here's the deal with your magic systems... I don't care. I don't care how it works. I don't want to care. And you should not care either as the author. Explanation for what the rules are may be necessary because some kind of limitation can be a powerful narrative tool to add tension or stakes to your action or draw a reader in but it is A : Not the thing you should pour a bunch of effort into in your first book, and B : Absolute rock bottom on the list of priorities when it comes to writing and drawing in readers.
What do you need to do the latter? Solid characters, functional plot, cohesive worldbuilding (I.E. a setting that doesn't read like a fantasy word scramble.)
This book doesn't have those three things. Character work is practically nonexistent, they are there but only in the form of being hollow shells of what characters might be in another actual book. They're a laundry list of tropes and imagery that work in other things because there's depth beneath the surface, but outside of that? Nothing here.
One scene I can recall where it all just felt 'off' to me on a character writing front. Oliver, his dad, and Sir Nightwatch all cross paths for the firstish time when Nightwatch is fighting an evil mage in their backyard. A poorly written fight scene full of elaborate choreography but boring ass prose that doesn't sell any of it takes place and Oliver helps turn the tide by running up and punching the bad guy despite not having any real powers. Strike one, Oliver is a total wet blanket leading up to this, whining about school and shuffling his feet around anime girls and wondering if he's getting a tummy ache while being shown around a new fucking HIGH SCHOOL (he's not ten, fucking act a little mature dude) but in a conflict situation where fight or flight should be active he runs up and punches a dude with a literal monster face? Come on.
Then Nightwatch very predictably is like "Hmm you seem super important and powerful, like the protagonist or something. Why don't you join my organization that makes no sense and hone your latent magic powers?"
"Whoa!" Cries Oliver. "Just like in my heccin Marvelino movies!?"
"Yes!" Replies Nightwatch. "Now have some Reddit gold!"
Of course he has some history with Oliver's dad, who just sort of shrugs his shoulders and lets his son sign on to fight bad guys forever. As a new dad, lemme tell ya, if some fucking moron in a raincoat told me my son should join up with his association to make no money and go fight evil wizards for no real reason at the ripe of age of thirteen (or whatever age Oliver is) you can bet your ass I'd be dragging him back inside and telling that guy to never come back.
It just isn't real, there's no humanity here, the characters are just emulating a beat from other stories because the author treats writing fiction like a checklist of things to do to become a famous author rather than pouring any heart, or soul, or shit, logical thinking into what he's making.
And that's why the book is bad. An absence of soul, of humanity, of any kind of artistry whatsoever. Now, I love traditionally heroic pulp storytelling, stuff that was made to sell magazines and be disposable and easily consumed, but even the cheapest pulps have more study and understanding of the human condition than these sorts of'I watch nothing but Marvel and bad anime' self-published dorks put out. If you want to be an author, then learn to write books. If you want to make an anime, learn to draw. Don't write a book because you're too lazy to do that.
There's other stuff I could pick at but I've had enough punching down for one day.
THERE, now you have your more detailed review.
My God, when I said that I lost interest and wound up dropping this early, that had been a decidedly merciful course of action. A critique which, I might add, is totally valid in and of itself. If a story fails to captivate and hold the interest of the audience, then that story has failed, and is ultimately worthy of one star.
But I digress, in the interest of transparency I'll lay it all out on the table. I only picked up this book because of the author's asinine statements regarding the complexity of prose. I found the novel lacking, dropped it, and was then badgered into writing a more detailed critique by someone who was totally not just a sockpuppet account of the author. Since prose was the major sticking point of my earlier not-review, I'll start there, since going into detail about this story's plot and characters is liable to give me an aneurism, and I'm uninsured, so fuck that.
The author has absolutely zero understanding of how to write. Oh, sure, he can cobble sentences together in such a way as to convey information to the reader, but only in the barest and most bland sense. I mean writing as an artform. He has no understanding of it whatsoever, no creativity, no heart, no soul, no humanity. He clearly doesn't read anything that isn't a comic book, because in terms of prose... there is no prose, it's just a bland relaying of information directly to the reader because he doesn't think like a writer, he thinks like someone too lazy to draw.
When it comes to describing characters he directly relays the statistics of the character in question. The protagonist, who must be an autistic savant because I have no idea how else he would know this precisely from a simple glance, remarks that the two female leads/blatant RWBY theft, are precisely five foot (x) inches multiple times, because I guess once just wasn't quite enough. It's the kind of lazy writing you see from bad literotica fiction that litters the internet, clearly written by someone who doesn't read much and doesn't understand that conveying the SENSE that your character is six feet tall is overall better than telling me their exact height in numeric.
His stance regarding 'complex' prose being that it's basically just the literary equivalent of modern art translates to 'I'll put absolutely zero effort into using words creatively or meaningfully to efficiently convey an idea or emotion, because it's hard and I can't sustain my interest in an actual piece of literary art.' Which smells like a fat stack of copium, like he's trying to justify not putting any effort into the prose, which might work in the wide open world of stupid fanfiction where people have zero understanding of taste and the works have no artistic merit whatsoever, but if you're transitioning into 'totally original do not steal' work, at least try.
A character is never 'Taller than oak tree' or has 'eyes like smoldering coal'. They are Six foot eight inches and have brown eyes. Nothing more. Because, of course, using creative descriptors or complex prose is STUPID and DUMB and possibly GAY! Just like those artists who paint in abstract, like these two vastly different forms of artistic expression are anything at all equivalent.
But hey, maybe there's merit to the worldbuilding right? Urban fantasies aren't exactly unique or creative, but they've got the inherent appeal of seeing magic intrude and supersede the mundanity of normal everyday life. You have to actually put effort into making sure these elements make sense, though, otherwise you end up with a BRITE situation, where it's just the modern day but there are also fantasy things around for some reason. Harry Potter hides the magical elements of its setting away in its own little pocket dimension, where wizards can have their dumb magic glowstick fights without mucking up the modern world in such a way as to necessitate massive overhauls to the real world to function.
The author opts for the laziest form of urban fantasy worldbuilding, which is something of a running theme with him, by basically not having any. Oh, sure, there are organizations and mages and magic out the wazoo, all taking place in a small slice of the Midwest, but none of it is given any concrete thought and almost all of it feels bizarrely stapled onto the real world in a way that feels slapdash and utterly incongruent. Reading through the whole book I got the feeling that these organizations and mages had no real effect on the modern world in which they live and just happen to be... there. 'Dodger' is like a top magic special agent but also apparently goes to a regular ass high school? Do you know why magical schools are such a common trope? Because it doesn't really make sense to have someone with abilities like that in the public schooling system unless said system is built entirely around housing individuals with said supernatural talents.
Apparently there are enough evil mages out in the world to justify the existence of characters like the absurdly named Mr. Nightwatch to make an organization dedicated to combating them and evil monsters... hilariously named after himself, but they just sort of recruit out of regular ass school.
And the naming conventions, my God, it's absurd. Using Oliver Twist as inspiration for your urban fantasy schlock is certainly... interesting, but I can't take it even remotely seriously. They feel like 1950s newspaper comic characters. You have 'Dodger' and 'Oliver Turner' sharing pagespace with Ruby Rune and Yang Lao Bing or whatever and it just feels like a bad fanfiction, which I'm sure this was at some point, before the author watched one too many Brandon Sanderson lectures and decided he wanted to be a famous fantasy author.
I've said it before but I'll keep saying it until my voice grows hoarse and my ears bleed, Sanderson has ruined an entire generation of aspiring writers with his magic systems. When I got to the scene where the characters walked around a baseball field and fucked around with their magic for what felt like hours the temptation to tap out of this book again reared its head and it took me weeks to pick it back up. Here's the deal with your magic systems... I don't care. I don't care how it works. I don't want to care. And you should not care either as the author. Explanation for what the rules are may be necessary because some kind of limitation can be a powerful narrative tool to add tension or stakes to your action or draw a reader in but it is A : Not the thing you should pour a bunch of effort into in your first book, and B : Absolute rock bottom on the list of priorities when it comes to writing and drawing in readers.
What do you need to do the latter? Solid characters, functional plot, cohesive worldbuilding (I.E. a setting that doesn't read like a fantasy word scramble.)
This book doesn't have those three things. Character work is practically nonexistent, they are there but only in the form of being hollow shells of what characters might be in another actual book. They're a laundry list of tropes and imagery that work in other things because there's depth beneath the surface, but outside of that? Nothing here.
One scene I can recall where it all just felt 'off' to me on a character writing front. Oliver, his dad, and Sir Nightwatch all cross paths for the firstish time when Nightwatch is fighting an evil mage in their backyard. A poorly written fight scene full of elaborate choreography but boring ass prose that doesn't sell any of it takes place and Oliver helps turn the tide by running up and punching the bad guy despite not having any real powers. Strike one, Oliver is a total wet blanket leading up to this, whining about school and shuffling his feet around anime girls and wondering if he's getting a tummy ache while being shown around a new fucking HIGH SCHOOL (he's not ten, fucking act a little mature dude) but in a conflict situation where fight or flight should be active he runs up and punches a dude with a literal monster face? Come on.
Then Nightwatch very predictably is like "Hmm you seem super important and powerful, like the protagonist or something. Why don't you join my organization that makes no sense and hone your latent magic powers?"
"Whoa!" Cries Oliver. "Just like in my heccin Marvelino movies!?"
"Yes!" Replies Nightwatch. "Now have some Reddit gold!"
Of course he has some history with Oliver's dad, who just sort of shrugs his shoulders and lets his son sign on to fight bad guys forever. As a new dad, lemme tell ya, if some fucking moron in a raincoat told me my son should join up with his association to make no money and go fight evil wizards for no real reason at the ripe of age of thirteen (or whatever age Oliver is) you can bet your ass I'd be dragging him back inside and telling that guy to never come back.
It just isn't real, there's no humanity here, the characters are just emulating a beat from other stories because the author treats writing fiction like a checklist of things to do to become a famous author rather than pouring any heart, or soul, or shit, logical thinking into what he's making.
And that's why the book is bad. An absence of soul, of humanity, of any kind of artistry whatsoever. Now, I love traditionally heroic pulp storytelling, stuff that was made to sell magazines and be disposable and easily consumed, but even the cheapest pulps have more study and understanding of the human condition than these sorts of'I watch nothing but Marvel and bad anime' self-published dorks put out. If you want to be an author, then learn to write books. If you want to make an anime, learn to draw. Don't write a book because you're too lazy to do that.
There's other stuff I could pick at but I've had enough punching down for one day.
THERE, now you have your more detailed review.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 14, 2022
Borrowed this from a friend after they told me I needed to read it and it was a struggle to finish. From the weird descriptions of teenagers (why did it call one girl a bombshell?? What decade is it?) to the multitude of technical errors that should've been caught during editing, this is a completely derivative and unimpressive first novel. It reads as if the author consumed a lot of fantasy and anime and tried to recreate it without understanding any of the reasons why people enjoy it.
There's entire sections where the narrative breaks just so the author can flex his world building skills without really giving any reason as to why we as the readers should care. Also at one point the author describes one of the (few) black characters as walrus looking and that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Honestly, I'm not sure if this book is the result of the author being so excited to have a published work that they skipped through any editing or if they went through editing and their ego made them refuse to listen to any criticism but they could definitely benefit from a beginners writing workshop.
Edit: I thought I was done but I've got more to say. The narration is so poorly done. There are several times where the POV changes from third to first person for no reason. At one point in a single paragraph the entire scene changes. It's filled with run on sentences and sentence fragments that do nothing but muddy up the image the author is trying to paint. The characters feel 2D and uninteresting. If the author was trying to write an anime maybe they'd have more success but this was a collosal miss
There's entire sections where the narrative breaks just so the author can flex his world building skills without really giving any reason as to why we as the readers should care. Also at one point the author describes one of the (few) black characters as walrus looking and that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Honestly, I'm not sure if this book is the result of the author being so excited to have a published work that they skipped through any editing or if they went through editing and their ego made them refuse to listen to any criticism but they could definitely benefit from a beginners writing workshop.
Edit: I thought I was done but I've got more to say. The narration is so poorly done. There are several times where the POV changes from third to first person for no reason. At one point in a single paragraph the entire scene changes. It's filled with run on sentences and sentence fragments that do nothing but muddy up the image the author is trying to paint. The characters feel 2D and uninteresting. If the author was trying to write an anime maybe they'd have more success but this was a collosal miss
December 15, 2022
Really messy in places. Could definitely use another pass and can definitely tell this is a debut book. But the story and characters are engaging enough with a lot of little details that make me curious to see where he's going with it. It's also a short read and moves at a real fast pace so there may have been technical issues that I didn't notice.
I don't care about technical issues though, especially when it comes to Indy titles from new authors still trying to find their footing. The actual reason I had to knock a star off that rating is because the villain plot just....didn't connect for me. It felt more than a little tacked on in order to give the heroes someone to fight. It's cool that a city you don't see in books often is getting a spotlight and its neat that the main(?) character Oliver has to learn the ropes in order to help out. But I don't get what the titular Hellfire Brats had to gain from any of this. Hoping the next book has less fat and more personal stakes. I won't be so easy going if this becomes a trend with the series.
I don't care about technical issues though, especially when it comes to Indy titles from new authors still trying to find their footing. The actual reason I had to knock a star off that rating is because the villain plot just....didn't connect for me. It felt more than a little tacked on in order to give the heroes someone to fight. It's cool that a city you don't see in books often is getting a spotlight and its neat that the main(?) character Oliver has to learn the ropes in order to help out. But I don't get what the titular Hellfire Brats had to gain from any of this. Hoping the next book has less fat and more personal stakes. I won't be so easy going if this becomes a trend with the series.
January 3, 2023
Pretty good for an indy book
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