The Great Tree of Avalon

[tahnan]

I recently came across The Great Tree of Avalon by T.A. Barron—-not the book itself, which (as of this writing) is not yet out, but an excerpt on the web. The prologue is available at http://www.tabarron.com/tab1/books/avalon/avalonselection.html, so I decided to read it and see how it looks.

I quickly decided the only way to deal with the pain was to tear it to shreds, line by line. I'm not posting that here, because it's too long even for a cut tag. But it's all up on the web at http://www.suberic.net/~tahnan/avalon.html.

Feel free to comment.

Comments

[drastic.livejournal.com]

I only got a few lines in, then stopped, not being brave enough to brave the castle quite yet.

Have you seen "The Eye of Argon"? It's the first thing that popped into my head.

[tablesaw]

Anyone else wondering if we could just cast this book aside and read about Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser?

That was actually my precise thought.

[lemurtanis.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite part of this tirade is the part where, in response to something or other, you wrote

Oh yes. Eagles are known around the world around for their reflexes.

This just cracked me up. I have no idea if it was on purpose or not, but I love it. :)

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Ooop, no, that was just a typo. I'm suddenly tempted to leave it...

[saxikath]

Oh dear. I read the excerpt yesterday when our mutual friend pointed it out to me, but your commentary makes it so much better. I've been sitting here on the couch, alone, laughing out loud!

[space-parasite.livejournal.com]

I am surprised to see from this bozo's bio that he's American; so far I've only seen the egregious overuse of sentence fragments in British books (where it drives me nuts, because even otherwise-good writers do it). I really hope this is just an isolated instance of the plague, and not a sign that by next year we'll be seeing twice as many periods per unit of text in every book.

[prog.livejournal.com]

YAY. (I couldn't get past the first sentence.)

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

That's so bad. I mean, that's just painfully bad. The commentary, however, is hysterical.