Kevin's Watch

Did Esslemont not have an editor *at all* for this book???

I'm on p. 204 and I am just about ready to heave this virtual book across the virtual room. Between the countless missed commas (interspersed with properly-punctuated paragraphs -- it's like somebody went eeny-meenie-meinie-moe to decide which sentences to fix) and needless sentence fragments, I was already getting frustrated. And then earlier today, I ran across this misplaced modifer.

On p. 202, Esslemont wrote:"More like wolves," the oldest of the squad had warned, a hairy and very dirty fellow in tattered leathers everyone called Bone.

So okay, the guy's leather armor is called Bone, but what's *his* name?

But that's not all!

On the very next page, in the middle of a battle, Esslemont wrote:Blades struck his hauberk of leather hardened with mail and iron lozenges but he ignored the blows....

Why the Hood is that clunky descriptive phrase dropped into the middle of a battle scene, fer cryin' out loud?? The guy's going berserk, and Esslemont feels the need to stop the action to describe his armor? Really???

I waited months for this book. Then I paid $10 for the Nook version. To find this many errors and this sloppy of an editing job -- well, it's disheartening, that's all.

Y'know, I never noticed any of that.

Must check my book.

--A

I've noticed it on the Kindle version, but its not just Esselmont , Eriksons stories were affected as well.

Yeah, I'm not exaclty surprised by the new that Esselmont isn't a great writer.

I'm not, either. I'm just surprised this stuff didn't get caught in the editing process. The commas could be a conversion-to-ebook issue, altho with a new book they should have a Word doc to work from -- it shouldn't require sending the hard copy to India to be rekeyed or anything. But the other stuff is just plain clunky writing. An editor should have caught it.

And I'll admit, it's my professional-writer side that's seething. There's a bias in the publishing industry against indie authors because supposedly so much of what's self-pubbed is crap. So on one front I'm fighting that perception, and then I pick up this traditionally-published-and-supposedly-professionally-vetted book for pleasure reading and find it riddled with errors. Arrgh.

I've been noticing a lot more of this kind of thing. I blame spellcheck. I don't think editors or proofreaders actually do it any more. The program points out spelling errors, and they just fix those. "Done!"

There's bad editing for every book nowadays, even the ones that sell well.

I've been noticing it a lot more in my ebooks. I just thought it was a conversion issue. The one I'm reading at the moment, a psych text from a prominent many-times published author, is riddled with punctuation errors, incorrect letters, words split in half or separate words thrown together. I just thought it was an ebook problem and rationalized it with the lower price I'm paying for them.

As for clunky and inappropriate descriptions, yeah, the bug me too!

aliantha wrote:...supposedly so much of what's self-pubbed is crap...

To be fair, a lot of it probably is.

--A

Well, yeah. A lot of people saw "free publishing at Amazon!" and figured they could pull out any old thing -- including public domain works -- and release them under their own name and make a killing.

And there are folks out there who could use an editor.... But there's a surprising amount of good stuff, too.

The stigma of vanity publishing is set to persist for some time I fear.

--A

Yeah, I know. I won't harp on why it's misguided, tho. At least, not in this thread.

Well, double-posting because I finished it.

The Moranth/Seguleh battle did a lot to redeem the book for me. I wasn't as annoyed with his Kruppe as the story went on -- altho I can't remember Erikson's Kruppe *ever* speaking in 1st person, but maybe I'm just misremembering.

Was there an explanation for why Tayschrenn and Kiska showed up in Darujhistan sealed in black clay? That just came out of nowhere for me.

Why? Or how?

Why was

Spoiler

to replace K'rul

.

How they got there, I'm not sure we're told. By magic I suppose.

--A