GIVING FANTASY FICTION A BAD NAME

more acurately, giving fantasy fiction the name it has. i'm reading cecilia dart-thornton's bitterbynde trilogy. i bought all three at book affair, so i am compelled to read the lot. and they are TERRIBLE. the writing is overwrought, the plots so... non-existent, the characters empty. every time i open a fantasy novel i HOPE that it's going to be good, because there's so much shit out there. but with this series it was not to be. yes, there are some interesting things going on - especially with the protagonist who, though free of personality, is the vehicle for some interesting exploration of identity. there are many things i am willing to forgive - i am used to reading bad fantasy. and yet... i ask myself why i am reading them (now onto the 3rd book, and they're getting slightly better). i think it's because they are so bad i can't look away. it's abject. it's like driving slowly past a car crash. i quote:

Birds uttered uneasy, sporadic sounds from the trees and the duck-pond far below. Their quacks and trills increased in porportion to the strength of the iron glow in the east, whose warm facade was smudged by the cloud floatlets as a smith's ruddy countenance is smirched by soot and ash. Above, the profound blue drained from the sky and the stars dissolved. ("The Ill-Made Mute", p36)

And when two characters first meet a third:

They emerged into the open and approached. The stranger did not move from his position. He smiled up at them, a dark smile that struck Imrhien like the note of a great bell. A dazzle ran straight through her like a silver needle [...] Lean and angular was his face, the features chiseled, high-boned. Beneath straight eyebrows his dark eyes seemed to burn with a cold fire, piercing. His jaw was strong and clean-shaven, although brushed with rough shadow. The hair, glossy black as a raven's wing, was swept carelessly back from his brow, the front locks pulled loosely back and knotted together behind his head and falling, bound, nearly to the waist. Unfastened - she imagined - it would be a cloud of soft darkness, a cascade of shadow. ("The Ill-Made Mute", p300 & 301)

he had in fact, wandered into this world from a mills & boon romance.

I POKE MY EYES OUT!

on the up-side, surely if this can get published, i can get published.