I think I've found my breaking point!!! I've read books that changed my view point forever, I've read some that should be used as toliet paper (cough 50 shades cough). If I don't like the book, I just put it down and grab another BUT now I've finally found something I actively HATE in a book. I'm not sure if this is a recent thing but some of the newer books I've read were lifted whole sale from others. I'm not saying they have similarities or whatever I'm saying the author lifted the whole thing from another book and added some fluff to it!!!! The most obvious one I've read like was one that copied dungeon born and added some yuri to it. Well.. it was the most obvious, I'm currently reading a book that people kept raving about in the forum and goodread has nothing but 5 stars review off... and it's nothing but a plagiarised copy/past of the mirror world series!!! Well part one is anyway, it wasn't just lifted from that book, the auther didn't even bother changing anything like the profession, gender or build. In fact a lot of his "mansplaining" is actually a rant regarding some of the mechanics of mirror world!!! This actually makes me angry, I thought there were laws against this! To make it worse it's the copycat book that's getting all the praise and recommendations while mirror world remains obscure Tell me, is there anything that actively gets on your nerve in a book? I mean what could turn it from hero to zero in the blink of an eye for you?
Sorry, just had to get that out of my system. The more I read the angrier I got. EDIT The Dungeon Born copy cat is titled ancient Ruins. to be fair this one was called out in almost every review of the book on goodread. not so much on amazon. The Mirror world copy cat is titled The weirdest Noob. has yet to receive one single review with less then 5 stars much less get called out!
That sucks. Are you sure the author isn't using a pseudonym and republishing a cleaned up version? I haven't read it, so I don't know, but definitely review that haha. What I hate... Is a great start to a series, I mean I am in 100% because the premise is f'n awesome. Only to have the author completely butcher their world building and story line because it had no clear direction. I keep telling myself it'll get better, and it never does. Until one or two books later I just drop it and feel pissed off haha.
You should name the book you're talking about. Lifting a story us not cool, and I get so frustrated with obviously bad books getting heaps of praise. You asked what can make a book go from hero to zero and my first thought was a book called The Warded Man by Peter Brett (also apparently known as The Painted Man). This book started off wonderfully, but at about the 2/3rd point there is a rape scene that comes completely out of the blue. The character is a strong female lead who has consistently shown how smart and capable she is, but she's raped violently and her character is just destroyed. Afterwards in literally the next chapter, it's like she has forgotten everything and she's trying to hook up with with the main character. That book went from an A to an F instantly for me.
haha I've fallen in that trap a few times, you read the first chapter or two and it hooks you. Then you discover that the rest is just down hill ^^; Oh I plan to review it, I'm forcing myself to at least get over point 60% of the book before that though, it's unfair to give someone a bad review if you haven't read most of it (I'd say all but some books are just a chore to finish... also I don't have it!) By the way the book is (the weirdest noob) I don't think it's the same author, this one has an immature air to it while mirror world was more grounded. P.S. sorry, I should have mentioned the titles. I tend to get blind sighted when I rant!!!
ok, that's really bad, it's annoying when there are plot inconsistencies like that, I get that re-writes are part of the process so sometimes things get left over but wouldn't proof readers / editor / beta readers / anyone? catch the big ones?
I hate a book that starts badly. I hate a writer who can't be bothered to correct misspellings in their Amazon blurb. I really hate when someone asks "is this good" and I go no, and some White Knight has to chime in with the, "Oh, keep reading, it gets better". SCREW THAT. It's like I'm given a bowl of foul smelling GLOP, and I taste it, and scream, "It tastes like CRAP" "Oh, when you get to half the bowl, it tastes less like a regurgitated bovine defecation and starts to taste good!" That's when I just look up backhoe rentals rates and decide it's too expensive to rent one, and I'm just too damn lazy to want to dig a hole.
I was a fan of the show Banshee until they killed off a female character in the absolute worst way possible after building her up. Having her go through all this character development just to have her die in exactly the same way as she would have if she'd never taken control of her life; helpless and whimpering. Pissed me off and I honestly didn't think it was the sort of show that could phase me because it was rather over the top. Just having the character take literally any action on her own just before the end would have changed that dynamic, and instead they pissed it all away to give the protagonist a revenge arc.
In Ramon's LitRPG podcast reviews he tells people to skip non-litrpg portions of litrpg books... if you've got to jump around to get to good bits, the story could probably use a ding to its overall rating. Not a travel guide with directions on how to avoid the ghetto or which parts of the city park feature glory-holes in 24 hour bathrooms near emergency rooms where its safe to shoot up.
I don't think the "it gets better" crowd really counts as white knighting. It's pretty legitimate to say that in cases where books get better as they pick up steam. Sometimes they're only slow because they're world building, or introducing conflicts via interlude style hints, or the author just hasn't hit their stride yet. If I hadn't gritted my teeth and suffered through a few books, I'd never have discovered some gems that I ended up really, really liking. Like the Alexis Carew novels - the first half (or more) of the first book in the series was an absolute mind numbing tedious chore that I had to slog through, before the author finished with universe building and picked up steam. I'm now a superfan of the series and not only have it a review on Amazon, but I also five starred it - which is INCREDIBLY rare as I normally use a 2-4 star rating system. That said, yeah. The weirdest noob is terrible and makes me wish the practice of book burning could be reinstated and expanded to include the author. Plagiarizing little shitegoblin. (Not-so) funny story, but I actually knew stephenie Meyer before she was the author that everyone with a modicum of good taste loves to hate. I was visiting my friend George who worked swing shift at my local 7-11, and I bet him a large slushee that I could get the phone number of the next woman who walked in the store. So a few minutes later, a woman walked in the store and I walked up to her and said, "oh wow, Tracy, is that you?! It's been AGES! We should catch up sometime - what's your new number?" And sure enough, I had Stephenie's digits. We stayed friends for about a year until I moved again, but had I known then what a literary plague she would unleash on the world - not only because Twilight is a creepy rape fantasy with glitterpires, but also in the shape of a poorly veiled Twilight fanfic called 50 squares of used toilet paper, I'd have done everyone a service and preemptively put her out of our misery. But yeah, I think I could probably write a 147 page book about how 50 shades is terrible and EL James should be promoted to the poster child for post-natal abortion legalization.
I will have to relook at Mirror World. I have read both, and I really wanted to like Mirror World and read the first two. I found myself hoping the potential of the book would come about. In the end, I just thought it was boring. I hoped it would become more action packed. While Noob has some similarities I don't find it to be a copy and past, and there are a lot of LitRPG that use similar themes. I found the Noob books more interesting and more action packed. Not to say that there were not tons of annoying things in the Noob book, there were
The Noob book copy pastes from multiple sources. Mirror World, AlterWorld, Way of the Shaman, and Realm of Arkon among others. It goes beyond being just derivative to the borderline of outright plagiarism. I also got sick to death of practically every other sentence being noob this, noob that, noob's yer uncle. That happened right around page 10, give or take, but since I'd already paid my nickel, I read the whole thing. Waste of time and money, that.
lol, yes, ok....It was incredibly annoying. I mean, how much of a Noob can you possibly be. And the way it went on and on for chapters about simple game mechanics and terms that, guess what, the whole target audience already knows about.
Target audience yes, not the entire audience. I have had people ask me to put in a glossary at the end of my books for terms like: Mob, Tank, Aggro, etc.
A glossary is the best solution. Especially in eBook format where you can add footnotes that hyperlink between the glossary and the page you're introducing a new term on.
What do I hate in books? Fangs. Seriously you are trying to read a book and whent you open it it turns out to be a mimic trying to eat you for lunch
I asked my wife to hand me a gun. "What for?" she asked "To kill mimics," I replied. She laughed, I laughed, my book laughed, I shot the book, it was a good time.
I'm guilty of doing that actually, though some books are slow starters (ascend online for example, starts boring but about an hour in takes off and I enjoyed it to the end) some are the other way around, they hook you with the sampler and after you buy the book it's just horrid!!! Villains rule is one like that so I was shocked with all the positive reviews it had. that book was fun up to chapter 3 only!!! I was the other way around, I loved how mirror world focused on something other then hacking and slashing, book three is him caving to fan pressure and taking the swords and shield path, made him less unique and more of the same litrpg... Noob however annoyed me from page one... I've already paid for it though and since I fully intent to call him out in a review I'm going to soldier through this muck!!! seriously @CheshirePhoenix is right, the book practically plagiarizes others! I'm still at part one so it's lifted from mirror world here, I'll see if there is more later... at least ancient ruins TRIED to own dungeon born and weave a story about it. noob never did!
Eh, I actually quite enjoyed both the Ancient Dreams trilogy and the Divine Dungeon books (waiting impatiently for book 3!). I don't really see the plagiarism there, other than the part where they're both dungeon dives written from the dungeon's point of view. Ancient Dreams diverges from that pretty quickly and branches into more of a bog standard fantasy story. There's far more differences than similarities though. It'd be like trying to compare Way of the Shaman and The Land and saying that either of them is ripping off the other because they both center around a game people are playing. Edit to add: also you've got it a bit backwards @Kidlike101 - Ancient Ruins was published a full five months before Dungeon Born.
I agree with the first statement, the first part is a reversed dungeon born (he made the dungeon female and the gem red instead of blue) it was more like the author was already working on a Yuri novel and happened across the divine dungeon series. thought "COOL!" and tried to work it in. Sadly I only liked the first part of the book, after that it just fell apart for me. he actually mentioned it in his book "Dungeons are devious beings that lure adventures in with the promise of loot and gold just to try and kill them to get their life energy" There is only one book where that happens, one and only one lol, no were else (so far anyway) is there a dungeon's point of view that matches this, even the other books with a dungeon core don't use that logic. after that it's like the first part didn't even happen and the author's work comes in. It's why I said he made it his own and it's more like fan fic with Yuri in it then an actual book. more then half the reviews in good read actually point that out so I know it's not just me ^^;
