It's easy for me to forget about the importance of the "showing not telling" rule in writing, until I read a book in which the author excessively "tells". In this brief introduction we are not only introduced to our protagonist, Micheal Kingman, but the first several pages are consumed by a somewhat confusing burst of explanation about the world and vague discussion about how the narrator ended up in the situation that he was. The author goes back and forth between telling too much and not enough. He drops words such as "The Raven" and "The Forgotten" without giving us any sort of context with how these things fit into the world, which usually isn't a problem for me but the odd pacing of the prologue thew me off. I thought Michael's internal monologue should have been less, and the description of the trial should have been more.
I also just didn't much like the writing style. It felt stilted and juvenile, the dialogue lacking originality or inspiration. Perhaps the novel improves as it moves forward, but I wasn't motivated to read further beyond this excerpt.
I also just didn't much like the writing style. It felt stilted and juvenile, the dialogue lacking originality or inspiration. Perhaps the novel improves as it moves forward, but I wasn't motivated to read further beyond this excerpt.