Vincent Darlage’s Reviews > Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes: Sword. Sorcery. Sizzle. > Status Update

“The Demon’d Mirror of Rivilis the Damned” by David C. Smith was a joy to read. The difference between his story and the previous two are night and day. Smith knows how to write a sword & sorcery story.

"A Day in Irighaya." Yeah, this story sucked. It was bad. No likeable characters, no hint of sword & sorcery. I guess it’s happening in Uzbekistan, but they have clockwork horses and giant Kaiju-sized gods that walk around fighting each other? There was no plot, just random events happening.

Wow. Two pages in. So many names. And so many of them starting or using the letter Q. Too many amateur authors use names with Qs or Xs, thinking them exotic, but then they overdo it. In two pages, we have the Qaidam Marshes, Qi Miao, Qurjaqus... not to mention the J's and Z's in abundance. Too many names in two pages. Shit.

Finished "Rifts in Nature" by SL Huang. I didn't care for the story at all. There was nothing to hook me. The main character was unlikeable and had no discernable value to the story until the end. The romance was okay, I guess, but I just didn't care for Dorial at all. And Jason, named after Jason and the Argonauts, seemed out of place as a name. Took me four sittings to get through 39 pages. It was dull.

Started "Rifts in Nature," but paused because it had WAY too much whining.