Comments on: Father’s Day

By: thduggie

thduggie — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 04:33:31 +0000

In reply to Linda Wightman. I've added it to your blog, with slight modifications. With sequels a possibility, I'll keep the book a little longer...

By: Linda Wightman

Linda Wightman — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:14:53 +0000

I’ve temporarily opened comments again on my review, and would greatly appreciate your copying this there. When the spam for a post gets overly overwhelming, I get mad and pull the plug.

So far I’ve found that each book in the series has gotten better. Reading sequels is a possibility….

By: Linda Wightman

Linda Wightman — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 11:56:16 +0000

In reply to thduggie. I've temporarily opened comments again on my review, and would greatly appreciate your copying this there. When the spam for a post gets overly overwhelming, I get mad and pull the plug.

By: thduggie

thduggie — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 20:17:23 +0000

Looks like comments on Linda’s review are closed, or I would have written there. I have finished – finished quickly for a father of two little ones – a testament to the engaging plot, and some of my comments align well with Linda’s. I agree that the description of female characters is overdone: in one case, a character comes upon “probably the most beautiful woman he had seen up close in the flesh,” which apparently was 15 lines too short a description for Lawhead. Maybe he’s thinking that we should be as derailed as the male character, but that kind of writing jars my sensibilities (and I don’t mind beautiful female characters). On the other hand, perhaps we need the description to know that this was, indeed, a very beautiful woman, for previously the same character had stepped “into the most dazzling and unusual landscape [he] had ever seen.” This landscape turns out to be a sunny fishing village with a three masted schooner at dock and a definite re-enactment feel to it, which makes me think this character needed to get out more. I would have thought how he got there would have been far more unusual than the landscape itself. I’ve already mentioned the gaijin flub; there were also some German language oddities. Enough of these, and the reading pleasure diminishes, simply because my internal fact-checker turns on.
Still, a fun read, though I wish people who wrote trilogies wrote such that the single tomes could stand alone. I appreciate the need for a cliffhanger, but here, after 400 pages, despite a few fights and pursuits little seems to have happens, and it all ends with characters AWOL, a deus ex machina of sorts, no comeuppance, and the sense that even death isn’t the final word. (That’s great news at Easter, but not so much in a suspense story.) To top it off, the epilogue introduces yet two more characters – again, I understand the need to get readers coming back for the sequel, but I feel manipulated by such an ending, feel my trust in the author broken.
That said, I’ll keep it around, in case I get to read sequels…

By: thduggie

thduggie — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 19:56:36 +0000

In reply to joyful. Yes, it's the same manuscript. I'll be happy to send it your way once I've reworked it.

By: thduggie

thduggie — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 19:55:53 +0000

In reply to Linda Wightman. Yes, I can and will come for the people. I think the beer may even be cheaper here, at 3.70 a bottle.

By: joyful

joyful — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 12:35:10 +0000

I’d love to see what your manuscript looks like after the input from the workshop. Is this the same one we looked at before?

By: Linda Wightman

Linda Wightman — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:14:18 +0000

It’s a good thing he has other reasons to come to the U.S. 🙂

By: dstb

dstb — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:54:23 +0000

Sounds like a great day! I think it benefits all parents to have these little mini-vacations and it is nice that you and Janet accommodate each other this way.

I guess now you don’t have to come all the way to CT to get Scottish beer!

Sarah