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Rating: 2 out of 5

Genre: Sci-Fi / Fantasy, YA, 

Reasons to love it: Fast paced action, Western mixed Fantasy

*I was given an ARC of this book by the author for an honest review.*

Oh goodness…

Well my friends, this could be the last self-published book that I review for an author. I don’t like being mean, and the truth can be awfully mean sometimes.

What?!?!? Did you actually think I’d be mean on purpose? How could you.

I did warn this specific author that I wasn’t into westerns. She promised that the western aspect was more of a setting. She wanted me to give it a chance. So I’m sure my low rating is partly due to the story being a lot more western than I could stomach. 

However...  the main issue with Graves for Drifters and Thieves is the same issue that I harp on for all of self-publishing… books are being published before they’re ready. Those rejections from agents, the months between, that’s the time writers use to hone their craft. To become better and better so that when someone finally takes the bait, their writing is superb. Self-publishing lets anyone who thinks they can write put a book out that sounds like a rough first draft, just minus the grammatical errors. And I’m sorry to say it, but Graves for Drifters and Thieves is no different. In my eyes, this book still needed three to four hard core revisions before the story was ready to see the light of day. 

Time for the long list of reasons - I really hate this part. Sorry for crushing anyone’s dreams here.

The easiest one to start with is a complaint that is more personal. The villain. We’re done with the black and white characters. The poor hero that’s doing bad only for the good of his family. The good of the community. And the villain is here to corrupt said hero, forcing them to perform these awful tasks. There’s nothing in the villain that makes him human. He’s just decided that being bad is more fun and he’s going to destroy anyone in his way. It’s too much for me. It’s too much in a world where psychology research is at our fingertips. We as writers can do better. 

Now onto the more technical stuff. 

I feel like I’ve read a different book from the other reviewers, because I didn’t see the great descriptions that everyone else did. All I saw was a laundry list of items described as super clean, colorful, or as literally as they could be. And when I say a list, I literally mean that they were listed out. Sometimes in the middle of a tense scene. They were never woven into the story to merge imagery and action into one dynamic scene. The descriptions forced me out of the story so I could receive this overly thought out image the author wanted me to picture. This ultimately creates a second problem, force feeding descriptions to a reader. It prevents the reader’s own imagination from creating the scene, which is important when wanting to suck readers into a story. 

The problem listed above is a great example of self-publishing gone wrong. Weaving description and story is the kind of writing achieved from well… writing a whole lot. And reading a whole lot. I don’t want to leave that out. Anyways, it’s a skill that’s achieved by the constant repetition of writing. Putting your first book out in the world just because you can, means that you never get to grow as a writer. 

Another problem directly related to publishing too early is flat dialogue. Dialogue should not be used to info dump, repeat information, sound pleasantries, or as a form of world building where you have the character explain the world. It’s supposed to bring tension. Be a way to connect the characters. Move the story forward. The dialogue in Graves for Drifters and Thieves did all of the wrong things and, on top of that, fell very flat. Oh man was it flat… to the point of cringe worthy at times. And the repetitive nature of the characters speaking and spelling out what the reader should be able to piece together on their own, made this a real struggle to get through. 

Which is a great segway to a blaring issue I think most writers should know about… telling versus showing. This book needs a lot of work with that as well. 

I’m starting to even hate myself at this point because I’m not done. 

Ugh. 

World building? Where art thou world building? The western aspect was very apparent. It was clear because it was to be expected. Desert. Horses. Gun fights. That was all fine and dandy. However, this book is marketed as a western fantasy story. The fantasy side of things left a lot to be desired. At times, I even forgot there was magic in general. It was sparse and thrown in without including a rule book as to how it all worked. It wasn’t used for some great twist at the end to shock the readers. The magic was in there enough to feel like it was supposed to be a part of the world. The mentions are there but then never brought up again. People can sing memories into the ground but we don’t get how there are different styles of people on the planet? I’m still trying to understand what was even going on. 

Lastly, well almost, the very last point is that the entire book lacked a rhythm or writing style. It was very boxy and jarring at times. But the real lastly... the romance was a nope on my part. It was obvious that we were going to get there in the end, but I’m not entirely sure the characters knew that. There was no spark between them. The emotions needed to make me believe it were missing. To the point that it just felt like it was there to be there because the author thinks the story needed a love plot line. 

What does this all mean? I think it means that I’m not getting called for book two. It also means that I’m going to refuse books like this. I can’t be the one to deliver the bad news anymore. I’m not an expert, but I have read enough books to know when something isn’t ready. 

In terms of the book… it was a real struggle to get through.

Happy Reading

Love Kait

Reading Challenge: 164/175