Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I read “Legend of the Arch Magus: The Expansion” by M. Sisa. I don’t know the author. I wasn’t asked to write this review. I wasn’t given a free copy of the book. Indeed, I paid full price for it. This is frankly a difficult review for me to write. There are both good and bad things about the book. Does the bad outweigh the good? Does the good outweigh the bad? It is difficult to say for certain. I don’t usually have to think this much before I write a review. It is usually clear whether a book is good or bad before I ever finish the book. This book was more difficult to evaluate. Let’s start with the good. The author had an interesting story to tell. He had a protagonist who was probably likeable. This involved an extremely powerful magician who died and was reincarnated into the body of an unlikeable, teenage aristocrat. The author placed a significant limitation on his protagonist. The body of the protagonist is incapable of channeling large amounts of magic in spite of the protagonist’s retained knowledge of how to perform high level magic. Unfortunately, I have read several recent novels that involved variations on the same central ideas. It seems likely to me that the author read some of these books although I clearly have no way of knowing this for certain. It is largely irrelevant whether or not the author independently invented the ideas or simply tried to put a new spin on something he had read. The book just lacked the fundamental originality necessary for a great book. I am also left wondering about the motivations of the protagonist. Did he have good motives for the things he was doing or was he simply trying to establish a power base? This is never made clear despite the fact that the book is largely told from the point of view of the protagonist. Of larger significance is the author’s apparent lack of expertise with the written English language. The author writes as if English is a second language in which he is not fully fluent. There are numerous instances in which the author used the wrong verb tense or mismatched verb tenses within a single sentence. He frequently used the incorrect forms of words such as when he used “constructions” to refer to structures that were in the process of being built. The words “in” and “on” were used interchangeably and incorrectly with distressing frequency. The problems went on and on. (Or maybe in and in.) Heck, the author even got the title of his book wrong. It should have been “Archmagus” or even “Arch-Magus” and not “Arch Magus”. The first two imply that the character is especially skilled in wisdom or magic while the term the author actually used implies that he is exceptionally knowledgeable about circles the use of the arch in architecture. At the end of the book, the author directs readers to some recently written material available for free on his website. The author warns “grammar Nazis” that the material on his website has not yet been fully proofread. Am I just being a grammar Nazi when I complain about the author’s poor writing skills? I don’t think so. I have read estimates that as much as eighty percent of face-to-face communication is non-verbal. People can interpret the speaker’s intent by context, tone of voice, facial expression, and body posture even when the speaker has clearly mis-spoken. If all else fails, they can simply ask for clarification. None of this is available in the written context. Rules of written grammar evolved in order to compensate for the lack of nonverbal cues. The author who fails to follow the rules of grammar unnecessarily injects confusion into his novel. This muddies the waters. It makes the book harder to follow and therefore harder to enjoy. There are, of course, several ways for an author to compensate for poor grammar skills. The use of writing groups, skilled beta readers, and professional editors are techniques that come readily to mind. The author should have used all of these before he ever offered this book for sale. In short, this book had the potential to be enjoyable. The author largely destroyed that potential when he decided to sell the book in its present condition. I recommend avoiding this book unless and until it has been professionally edited.