Month: May 2019

Chapter 7

Alister is distracting the chimera in a manner that just so happens to require Charlotte to take her clothes off. Probably we’ll see how Victorian her undergarments are at some point. For now, Alister is swearing poorly.

This is the most eternally damned thing I have ever done.

Trying to adapt swears from regular English, where they’re largely religious, to worlds with different religions or none at all can be tricky, but it’s not just that “eternally damned” doesn’t roll off the tongue very well. Translate that into regular Earth swears and look at it:

This is the most goddamned thing I have ever done.

Clearly, CJ Olsen is just continuing his tribute to Brandon Sandersen by imitating his inability to swear from Sandersen’s early career.

Continue reading “The Immortal Cure: I Guess We Care About Gregor Now” →

Chapter 5

It’s tomorrow and Charlotte is heading to the library to speak with Jonathon. Look at the way it’s framed, though:

Traumatized, Charlotte had decided that in the morning she would speak to the only person she thought could help.

Jonathon.

Now, I’ve read the back of the book and I know that Alister and Charlotte both get name dropped in capital letters and Jonathon is not even mentioned. Plus, in Jonathon’s previous appearance, he assumed that Charlotte was researching alchemy out of a desire to better understand and be closer to Harthum. What I’m saying here is that while it’s possible Jonathon is arranging to have her smuggled to safety, I’m not gonna be as shocked as the book wants me to be when he instead turns out to be evil. The whole “Jonathon is my only friend” thing not only gets dropped here, but emphasized again on the next page. There’s really only one place this could be going, dramatically. If Charlotte were all “is anyone in this city trustworthy? Is Jonathon in on it, too?!” then I’d actually be uncertain, ’cause that one could go either way.

“Do not be afraid Lady Lotte,” he interrupted with a reassuring smile. “This is a time to celebrate. The Lord Eternal has chosen you as his next consort. I knew he would!”

Charlotte straightened in shock as Jonathon kneeled in front of her and took her hand. “You have been blessed,” he said excitedly. “You have been chosen by the Hero of Eternity.” He looked into her eyes. “He deserves you,” he said with the same sickening smile Lindris had given her the day before. “You will make him so happy.”

…I am alone

At least it was more subtle than I thought. I was bracing myself for some stunning moment of betrayal where Jonathon does a Hans-from-Frozen sudden reveal that he was a villain all along.

Continue reading “The Immortal Cure: Escape From Megacity One” →

Chapter 4

Charlotte is getting all gussied up for her evening with Daddy Sauron. Servants are compressing her body into that universal symbol of Victorian oppression of women, the corset.

Charlotte let out her breath as the three servants standing behind her pulled the corset strings tight. Charlotte felt her rib cage squeeze together, her breasts forcibly spilling out the top. It was extremely uncomfortable and she could barely manage to take a breath.

I wonder sometimes if the reason the references to Charlottes breasts stand out to me is just because A) I had come relatively recently off of a story where it had been a noticeable problem not long before I picked up the Immortal Cure, making me unusually aware, and B) I’d written about it in that first post, which fixed the hyper-awareness in my mind. Definitely it’s a common criticism that books often bring up a woman’s breasts often enough to distract from the narrative, but corsets were actually designed to accentuate breasts (as well as minimize the waist), and it’s not CJ Olsen’s fault that corsets became the universal symbol for Victorian oppression.

Then paragraphs like this bail me out.

Charlotte turned to the side, then twisted to see the back. She had told herself that she would control the outcome of this meeting. She had to show Harthum that he did not own her. But now, standing in a gown likely hand-picked by Harthum himself, Charlotte’s confidence wavered. The dress was gorgeous and, despite the fact that it’s design drew attention to her breasts, Charlotte loved it.

Continue reading “The Immortal Cure: Dinner With Sauron” →

Chapter 2

Charlotte left the marketplace, spotting a trolley stopped on its rails taking on passengers. She hurried over, holding to the strap of her satchel, and stepped up into the cramped compartment, brushing past passengers who stood, holding onto leather handholds hanging from the roof. Men and women filled every crevice of the trolley and Charlotte had to shove her way past two arguing men. She finally spotted an empty seat near the center.

Funny enough, this is actually two separate paragraphs in the print version, but is a single paragraph in the Kindle version.

The main question here, though, is what is Sauron’s princess doing on public transit? It’s hopefully not an “I just love to mingle with the commonfolk” thing, considering the neighbor she ends up with:

A slumbering man in a worn, filthy suit lay beside her. He cradled a bottle of Dresht Rum in his arms as he slumped over the seat, snoring like a starved mist-hound.

And it’s not like this book can’t be judged by its cover. Dude tries to grope her later on, something that provokes no reaction at all from Charlotte, so apparently this Stalker that’s following her around either has a mandate to only intervene if Charlotte faces some kind of existential danger or else it’s just asleep at the wheel.

Continue reading “The Immortal Cure: Immortal Incest Sauron” →

Our author today is CJ Olsen, whose previous work on Amazon is almost entirely non-fiction stuff, which is almost entirely about the LDs church, because Utah. He sold me a copy of the book at the Salt Lake Comic Con, and since I have no idea if it’ll be any good, I figured it fit well into the whole “let’s find out how good this book is together” theme I have going on this blog. The book also came with a free bookmark, which, like, I didn’t realize people still did that. I thought we’d reached the point where the idea that free bookmarks aren’t really effective in advertising your book had reached total saturation. It’s right up there with “begging book stores to let you host a signing” on the list of cliche things authors do to feel more successful that don’t actually help. I guess I just read ebooks so often these days that it doesn’t come up.

I think if CJ Olsen ever reads these blog posts, he might regret selling me a book.

Prologue

That’s never a good sign.

People following these as they come out will be aware that this came out a couple of days late. I bring this up because the fact that this prologue has kind of a boring opener definitely isn’t the reason why it’s late. It’s late because my Sunday video was late, and my schedule slipped from there. But this book does have an opening line that could’ve used some more workshopping:

The cool morning breeze blew through a narrow canyon ruffling light green weeds protruding from the hillside.

Hold onto your hats, this book has light green weeds in it. I’m compelled to read on.

The first line of the second paragraph gets us to the part of the scene we care about:

A bulky airship rested anchored close to the canyon’s side, its slightly rusted, dull iron exterior a sharp contrast to the naturally formed rock to which it was tethered.

Nothing about this airship leaps out as particularly special among airships or anything, but there’s an audience for “this book has airships in it” in a way there is not for “this book has weeds in it.”

Continue reading “The Immortal Cure: Sauron’s Princess Saves A Cat” →