I was advised of the existence of this book by a brilliant reader who apparently felt that I haven’t suffered enough in my life. After spending the past few months in rehab due to the horrific liver damage I suffered from working my way through the Maradonia series, it’s time to fall back off the wagon.
It’s actually a little hard to find information about Ms. Alessandra, mostly because her website is down and her twitter is deleted and her tumblr is deleted. As best I can find from some Googling, she’s an 18-year-old self-published author whose book is for sale on approximately 400 websites, has dabbled in internet self-promotion, and doesn’t take criticism well:
So pretty much par for the course, really.
Also, her book cover is just awful.
We get started with her explaining that she uses different time units than we do. An Epoch is a day, and 9 Epochs make a Cycle, and 4 Cycles make an Apogee, and 15 Apogees make a Zapato, which is kinda like a year, which makes people a bit older than they actually are in the book. She explains that you can calculate it by multiplying ages by 1.4. Technically, it’s more like 1.48. So if the book tells us about a 13-year-old having sex, it’s not weird because actually they’re over 18 in Earth years.
Here’s a tip, Breeanna: there is really no reason why you need to invent a new calendar for your fantasy world. I understand the urge, you’re trying to create a new culture, and give your world depth, and those are commendable, but unless there is a specific plot reason, there is no reason to even mention how your characters measure time. If it makes you feel any better, remember that your story is (probably) being told in English and has therefore been translated into English. Otherwise, you’re just making the story more difficult to understand.
She explains that there are three moons in the sky, which should be brought up in-story rather than in the author’s note, and then she names all 15 months, which have names like Xanthippe, and Hippolyte, and Media, and Sapphira. I can tell I’m really going to enjoy this book.
Next, we get a prologue that doesn’t make any sense, and includes a few gems:
A prophecy, yet to be fulfilled by the lost innocence of a soul untamed, unknown, and underestimated by vulnerability (loc. 68)
…what?
In this story you will see that making judgments and rash decisions will lead you to sure demise (loc. 70)
Awesome. Author tracts.
(Incidentally, through this book she’ll be following George R.R. Martin-style of having each chapter titled with the character’s name and be from their point of view. Except it’s not a chapter at a time, it’s more like a page and a half. Let’s see if her writing is as good as Martin’s!)
We open with a chap named Jafar. Not making this up. Let me repeat that – Jafar:
Gotcha.
He’s riding through a city that disgusts him.
People lay on the sides of the streets like it was a marvelous inn in a fantastic city (loc. 74).
That doesn’t make any sense.
The horses need to be watered so he gets out of the carriage because this means that he has to walk the rest of the way, which also doesn’t make sense. But it’s so he can run into a beautiful fifteen year old girl which actually isn’t sketchy because in earth years she’s twenty-one.
A basket filled with gruesome half rotten fruits clutched in her arms. She wore a brown dress, long with a green trim obviously made by her own delicate, ladylike hands. She paused to curtsy, spilling the produce across the ground. I bent and picked up a single luscious green apple (loc. 80-82)
Okay. First of all, how do you know that she obviously made the dress herself? More importantly, you just got through telling us the basket is full of half-rotten fruits…and now suddenly there’s a luscious green apple in the bunch? That is in the same fucking paragraph!
Jafar lusts after her as he walks across the city, eventually arriving at his destination, where he pounds on the door “with malice” because he’s Evil or because he has the mental capacity to self-narrate how he pounds on doors. This is written in the first person, after all.
The doorman introduces him to the council as Prince Jafar, the Duke of the city, which is a little confusing. Jafar rolls into the room, which is undecorated except for paintings that tell the story of a warrior and a maiden. Jafar immediately pauses to spend an entire page narrating the story, because what any story needs in the first subchapter is to get pages of irrelevant history dumps in the middle of scenes.
Anyway. This story. The maiden Vandaline was stolen to the underworld by the god Hades. So the warrior Zefenous decided to go rescue her, and spent a year – sorry, “all the Apogees of an entire Zapato” – until he found the gate and killed the three-headed canine, and found where she was held captive, rocking an elegant black trimmed burgundy and fuchsia gown. I’m dead serious. We are in this douchey prince’s first person point of view, and when he thinks about the story of the warrior Zefenous and the maiden Vandaline, he remembers that she’s wearing a black trimmed burgundy and fuchsia gown.
…be right back, I need to refill my glass.
Okay. I’m back. Suffice to say, Martin this isn’t.
Anyway, Vandaline doesn’t want to go with him, because on the journey he’s lost himself and now he’s nothing but the Great God of Wine. Huh. Okay. That’s a rather odd twist ending. You’d think that they would have hinted about him having a drinking problem previously in the story, maybe started by being exposed to too much terrible literature, and that would sort’ve give the story some kind of Point to it.
Jafar gets up and explains to the city council that in exactly three Cycles the town is going to be demolished to make way for a military trading station, which, economically speaking doesn’t make sense. I guess it makes sense to take over the city and use it for a trading station, since then you have all the existing buildings and infrastructure along with the people to work in whatever capacity you like, whether it’s slave labor or support services. Jafar concludes that the council should not tell the townspeople, because everyone is going to die there. Then he leaves.
So, he’s evil. And also stupid. Why the fuck would you tell them that you’re going to kill them before you kill them and give them a chance to escape or mount a defense?
Our next chapter heading is The All Knowing. Maybe this is our narrator?
Harlow gets back home. She’s apparently our Heroine, and her name – Harlow Grimm – is one of them main reasons I decided to spork this. Names like that don’t grow on trees.
She is back from shopping, so ostensibly this is the fifteen year old beauty Jafar was just lusting over. There’s some nonsensical conversation with her mother and father, who ask if her fiancé, Darian Archer (yes) is coming over.
“When are you two going to marry, huh? I can’t be feeding you for the rest of your life,” Victor said crudely (loc. 140)
If Breeanna thinks this is what crudeness is she’s led a remarkably sheltered life.
Her mother shoos them out of the kitchen and they run out into the market square and play like children. Okay. Harlow is supposedly 20 at this point. She really should be married with a couple kids, and if this is the faux-medieval village I’m guessing it is, shouldn’t she be working to help support her family?
Back to Jafar, who is wandering around town searching for the girl. Eventually he hears singing from a tavern and sure enough, it’s her, singing like an angel. Afterwards, he heads backstage to see her and bumps into her father. Jafar cleverly (not my words) explains that he wants the girl’s hand in marriage. Her mother protests that Harlow is promised to another. Her father protests that she’s just 14 (20 and change). Jafar offers them 10,000 “Zarll” which seals the deal, after some “augered” which I think is a typo for argued? Proofreading, what is that?
Jafar explains that they’ll never see their daughter again and drags Harlow outside and throws her into the carriage and she screams for Darian to save her.
I was grabbed by the arm and spun around, readily feeling a firm punch in the face (loc. 191).
How do you readily feel a firm punch to the face?
This is not uncommon, incidentally. We’re only a few pages in and already there have been several dozen completely incorrect or missing words, along with numerous typos and grammatical errors. I find myself wishing for the technical competence and Oscar Wilde-like wordplay of Maradonia and the Seven Bridges.
There are far too many of these for me to point out each one, and to make it into a drinking game will only bring on alcohol poisoning.
Harlow punches him to the floor and then jumps on top of him and pins him, then smashes his head against the floor. Jafar explains that he saved her from the city’s demolishment because she is so beautiful and that he’s going to make her a queen.
“I don’t want to be a queen.” Blood pooled under my face.
Shock bubbled under my skin. “Then what do you want?” (loc. 216)
You don’t need to tell us about both the blood pooling and the shock bubbling in consecutive sentences, Breeanna. We get it. He’s shocked.
All she wants is Darian. She tells Jafar that he’s half the man Darian is, so Jafar slaps her across the face, and they don’t say anything for the rest of the two-day trip to his castle. Things haven’t improved so he has his butler, Jenkins, escort Harlow to his chambers. Yeah, Jenkins. Take a drink.
“Woman,” I muttered (loc. 237)
I think if you are trying to make a statement about the female gender as a whole it’s supposed to be “women”.
Jafar visits his father, who is reading a book, and greets him by shouting “Old man!” I am getting the vibe that Jafar doesn’t think much of his father. Jafar explains the situation and his father suggests letting someone a little wiser speak to Harlow, as she is probably scared and confused right now. Jafar agrees, and we learn that he has a bit of a drinking problem. Probably from being in this book.
Drinks: 38
Potatoman on 30 September 2013, 07:10 said:
YAY
I’ve been waiting for a sporking from you for so long, Rorschach!
And yeah, the cover art looks atrocious. The writing is at least somewhat coherent, although this:
Yes, I’ll go drink some juice now. I’ll come back when I’m drunk enough to understand that sentence. Will that ever happen? Who knows. Hopefully your liver won’t commit suicide by the middle of the book. I give you 80 pages before it decides to go on strike.
Lone Wolf on 30 September 2013, 07:43 said:
The Amazon review is entertaining:
http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B0086VH3XM/ref=cm_cr_dp_syn_footer?k=At%20First%20Glance&showViewpoints=1
Apparently, the storyline devolves to some really random and pretentious crap in the end.
Not sure if it’s fair to spork this… book, since the author had seemingly deleted herself from cyberspace and no longer does any self-promotion, as opposed to Gloria and Rummel (who also, as a professional historian really should write better time-travelling alternate-history then what he wrote).
Lone Wolf on 30 September 2013, 08:21 said:
Wait, she still updates her Facebook and Tumblr. They’re quite usual, though, nothing Tesch-quality entertaining.
Lone Wolf on 30 September 2013, 08:32 said:
Oh, and I like this, from her own description of the plot:
http://www2.xlibris.com/books/webimages/wd/112287/index.html
Harlow is suddenly kidnapped and is taken to the imperial city where her morality and character are tested in ridiculous inhuman ways.
Ridiculous, indeed.
Fireshark on 30 September 2013, 08:59 said:
Oh God, this thing.
Yeah, I had that thought too. However, I think it can be sporked fairly if we strictly ignore the author and focus on the text itself. Plus, the book itself is still for sale (I think?) so it’s not like she said “Nobody read this ever again.”
swenson on 30 September 2013, 09:45 said:
My dear Rorschach, allow me to point you in the direction of the Wayback Machine. I wanna see what she used to have up. :D
Submit that to the Lousy Book Covers Tumblr, please. I think it would fit in well.
Jafar [snort snicker] clearly finds half-rotten green apples to be luscious.
Should we start calling you Dionysus now?
Please let her be immediately killed by Team RWBY. (no I will not stop referencing RWBY, you can’t make me!)
What, an adult man? If she’s actually an expert in martial arts, you’d think this would be mentioned earlier.
What does that mean? Because it sounds incredibly gross.
Also, what are you using for your drink count? Same as from Maradonia? (but I confess I forget what you used then either)
Epke on 30 September 2013, 10:13 said:
This lady so has the diarrhoea of the mouth (sorry, Rorschach!). She’s essentially going “you guys, stop analysing my text, ok!? It hurts my feelings!”
So this Jafar guy finds a pretty girl who, with some refinement, would make a real queen? So she’s a diamond in the rough?
… Are there magical, feline-shaped caves in this story?
Asahel on 30 September 2013, 10:21 said:
As I recall, Tolkien did this for the Lord of the Rings stuff (what you suggested, not what Alessandra did). He gave dates according to the English calendar, but then put in the appendices how the Hobbit calendar “really” works. Plus:
Ok, think of the rough English translation of this. “All the months of an entire year.” Who talks like that? Honestly. Oh, and:
I could see that if someone were going for a “lawful evil” kind of thing. You know, I may do something as evil as level a town to make way for a military outpost, but not give the residents fair warning? What do you take me for? A bad guy? Of course, nothing else about this guy seems to indicate this sort of thing is his mentality, so, yeah, pretty out of place.
I can see this one will be quite interesting to follow. Best of luck to you.
Samantha on 30 September 2013, 10:45 said:
All the Apogees….
of an entire Zapato…?
Was she high when she created her fantasy world?
Potatoman on 30 September 2013, 10:56 said:
That would make a lot of sense. Hopefully that’s the case so I can stop attempting to OD on orange juice over here while I try and make sense of what the hell is going on. Maybe I’ll find the book one day and see how bad it truly is. Too bad there’s no copies here. But seriously… that cover art. My God.
Brendan Rizzo on 30 September 2013, 11:48 said:
Oh, wow. This is terrible. It’s as if every teenaged self-published author in the world is in a competition to see who can lower the bottom out from the barrel even further. I never thought that Halo, of all books, would look good by comparison to something.
As for the cover, is our Mary Sue heroine supposed to be bald? I must say, I never would’ve thought the author would be mature enough not to fixate on superficial standards of beauty, I guess.
(I must say, that was sarcasm.)
Zapato is Spanish for “shoe”. So the unit of time in this story is a shoe. A shoe. A shoe. A frickin’ shoe. What the hell?!
So if the author knows that pedophilia is bad, then why didn’t she just make all characters over 18 instead of making this ridiculous excuse?
I feel really sorry for the historical Ja’far ibn Yahya. He didn’t do anything to deserve having his name be forever associated with evil viziers and the like…
So he’s a Card-Carrying Villain? Typical.
Remember everyone, the T is silent.
Wow, that’s about as stupid a name for a love interest as Reginald Darcy.1
So lemme guess, after the Evil Prince Jafar™ kidnaps Miss Harlow, Pure as the Driven Snow,2 Darian will Storm the Castle to save his girlfriend and all that jazz, all whilst Miss Harlow slowly but inexorably falls for her kidnapper. Am I right?
1 If any of you have read any of my stories, yes, that was self-deprecation.
2 Hey, that rhymes!
TakuGifian on 30 September 2013, 12:01 said:
I distinctly remember re-writing the lyrics of Day-O (Banana Boat) to replace all instances of “day” with “epoch”. Completely threw off the rhythm.
Looking back, this book also sparked a debate on A-S about where to draw the line with sporks, in terms of the relevance (or lack) of the author’s age at publication, as a factor in determining whether something should or should not be sporked.
That argument got quite heated, but I still stand by every word I wrote. I look forward to the rest of this spork, Rorschach.
sanguine on 30 September 2013, 17:26 said:
Great spork. I find it nauseating how authors like this shamelessly misuse adverbs.
Asahel on 30 September 2013, 19:25 said:
Ok, everyone’s pointing out that Zapato is shoe in Spanish, so I’d like to go ahead and jump aboard and point out that Epoch is already used in geologic time for periods of tens of millions of years.
So, a day is as a dozen million years to Alessandra…
Does that make her like Ultra-God or something?
Apep on 30 September 2013, 20:16 said:
I think everyone’s latched on to the “Zapato” thing because, let’s face it, that’s the weirdest of all the time units. At least all the others conceivably have something to do with time. Plus, all the others have Greek roots, while that one… doesn’t.
Brendan Rizzo on 30 September 2013, 20:31 said:
Well, “epoch” doesn’t only mean that. It can also refer to the starting date of a calendar system. The Greek word simply means “stoppage”, and the other meanings came about because of the use of the word to refer to the stars’ highest point in the sky.
Pryotra on 30 September 2013, 22:00 said:
Oh boy, that cover just made me snerk almost as much as her plea for people to down vote all the meanie reviews that she gets.
As far as Jafar goes, in the original Arabian Nights, there were actually a lot of Jafars, most notably a pretty decent guy who happened to be a vizier, but…yeah… I think she just watched Disney and went ‘OH THAT’S AN EVIL NAME!’ Also, I notice that he’s got the Arabic name while the heroine and her little love interest have nice Europeanesque names.
Not as good as the Evil Empire, but I’ll take what I get.
Requiem on 30 September 2013, 22:04 said:
Glad to see Rorschach is back in action. I’m guessing this book will take up the time in between the Maradonia movie. I can’t say i’ve ever seen such a needless calender system implemented before.
Master Chief on 30 September 2013, 23:02 said:
Maradonia sucessor?
Dashery on 1 October 2013, 09:27 said:
I think that pink/red stuff behind her head might be her hair or something. I mean, her hands are kind of running through whatever it is.
Maybe she just plumb forgot that hair continues to the front of the head. Or maybe out heroin was trying to make a statement and shaved off the front.
shrugs
OrganicLead on 1 October 2013, 14:32 said:
Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a class 1 Escher Girl on this cover.
The rest of the story so far just seems really… generic so far, though I look forward to seeing it go into the bad territory.
Lone Wolf on 1 October 2013, 22:30 said:
According to the Amazon review, somewhere in the middle it stops being generic and becomes trippy.
Mingnon on 2 October 2013, 03:46 said:
Oh hey, was wondering where Rorschach had been.
But yeah, something tells me this is going to be one of those crummy break-the-heroine stories in sleazy fiction.
Epke on 2 October 2013, 06:23 said:
At first I thought it was her hair, but then I thought that maybe it’s a giant rose or something, because there are flowers around her. But it’s probably her hair, yeah.
So… why is it called “At First Glance”? Is it about judging people with one look, or…?
Licht on 9 October 2013, 14:25 said:
…Weeell… I got something good out if this.
The fruit-basket scene reminded me of how much I loved this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F5sPA5E27o
Tim on 16 November 2013, 06:27 said:
Not really, it would mean he’s a Prince by birth and a Duke by station. We do that over here, for example Prince Andrew is the Duke of York.