Teres

It's been...a month, to say the least.

SCSF: That was about what I thought, and this is good to hear!

...I keep forgetting that paces are actual forms of measurement. That does make a lot more sense.

And you have the luck that I actually bothered to look through the glossary to check the measurements; a casual reader might not realise this for the entire length of the book.

I don't want to say that Douglass is pro-violent traditions, but this doesn't make her look good. Then again, not a lot in this book paints her in a positive light, so...par for the course?

Indeed... I think it might be, in this case, that she threw all kinds of tropes about societies like the Avar together, no matter how well it works.

Which is a good sign that she's not ready to be a published author. There's nothing wrong with a self-indulgent story, but if you're going to put it out there for public consumption, at least make sure it's not something that's going to land itself on a sporker's plate.

I do note that after this trilogy, the quality of the books improves quite a bit, which makes me think she got to the actual story once she got all the self-indulgence out. That might indeed have been better off self-published or something, before she got to getting published professionally.

As for it "ending up on a sporker's plate"... that describes Epistler better than me! I do like tearing into some bad stuff, but I would not mind taking something better, either; I just have not got to it yet, and I think I will help myself to one of the better portions of The Serpent Bride to that end. In any case, I do not think "spork" adequately describes what I am doing now.

...shouldn't have opened my mouth. I knew that little bit of credit wasn't going to last! I'm starting to think anything positive in this book is too good to be true.

Anything positive in this trilogy, unfortunately.