This is a quick look at a problem that I have with some stories. The problem is inappropriate bathos. Bathos is when a writer goes from a serious moment to a silly or stupid moment and vice versa. Quite a few works in Urban Fantasy tend to suffer from this, partially because of the Ur-Figure… Continue reading Bathos and Bad Writing: Mass Effect Andromeda and Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Updated on 6/4/2013. I wrote an article about not plagiarizing, which I thought was kind of commonsense advice. So now we're going to talk about branding and netiquette, which will ensure that other authors don't hate you and protect your work. First, obvious disclaimer: None of this is legal advice and should not be… Continue reading Branding and Author Netiquette
Prologue: I've covered several times on this website reasons why Amazon is terrible for authors. Tl;dr: Amazon can steal your money at any moment with no explanation why. As a result of this, many LitRPG authors are thinking of leaving the program, some already have. No one cares what I have to say on the… Continue reading Advice from Anthea Sharp on Going Wide (or leaving Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited)
There's a lot to enjoy about The Dark Profits Saga. The cast features a rich and diverse group that acts as counterpoints to each other. This is difficult in a book that a pretty large main cast, so whenever an author can pull it off, it's impressive and good to learn from. What's more impressive is… Continue reading Orconomics/The Dark Profits Saga is a GameLit Masterpiece
This is an update or an addendum to the post I made on the "Why Machine Learning Sucks" blog post. https://litrpgreviews.blog/2017/10/23/why-every-machine-learning-algorithm-sucks/ My central thesis is pretty simple: The problem with most of what we call "AI" or "Machine Learning" is not scientific in any sense. It's a million monkeys banging on a million keyboards until they… Continue reading The current state of AI
In several of my articles, I've mentioned the perils of putting the outside World in the game. Even though there are books which integrate both aspects well, there hasn't been a case where I could point my finger at something and say definitely, "This is where something is lacking because the author didn't talk about… Continue reading When to put the outside World in: Far Cry 5
Tl;dr: Four stars. Hits all the marks, but suffers from pacing issues and some bloat in areas that undercut the novel. Audio narration is on point, highly recommend listening to it. Long Review, Spoilers So, this is a review that isn't going to be so much about the book. It's going to be the elephant… Continue reading A Review of Dominion of Blades and doing social issues in fiction
Some quick reviews and updates for series I've been following. At a glance: Delvers 3: 5 stars. Viridian Gates 4: 4.5 stars, Ascend Online 3/2(?) 4.5 stars. I'd heartily recommend getting the books and their predecessors, they're all fantastic. These are all quick reviews since I've already done the main reviews of these books before,… Continue reading Short follow-up reviews: Delvers LLC 3, Viridian Gates 4, Ascend Online 3. Or 2. Because Canada
Note, the header image was used non-ironically on another website. Tl;dr: the Bechdel test comes up in discussions about women's roles. It is a useless test. It neither explains the role of women in the novel nor does anything to make the novel better, hence my ironic usage of the header image. For those unfamiliar… Continue reading The Bechdel test is stupid
So, real talk here. I've been in several book writing groups and some of the advice is good, most of it is bad. This is a distillation of the advice that's good from the advice that's bad. So, here's some book writing advice from someone who hasn't written a book, take it with a grain… Continue reading Writing advice for newbs
GameLit reviews 