The major crimes as I now see them in Sons of the Bear God:
- The writing is bad. Technically bad. He repeats the character names over and over and over when there is dialogue, he uses incredibly obscure words willy nilly, and clichés at every corner.
- Long pointless scenes. What I assume are supposed to be character building scenes turn out to be very mundane chats where the protagonist just gets described as fiery or bristling a few times while being unreasonably surly.
- Confusing chronology and events without committing to it. A lot of weird stuff happens seemingly out of no where, which I'm all for and have been wrestling to keep in and even emphasise, but our old chum Mr. Page doesn't commit. He will spend a paragraph with some horribly pointless and patronising exposition and then BAM, werelion.
- Related to #3, Page insists on explaining all his magic in scientific terms, so everything ends up feeling like a Scooby-Doo episode. It wasn't magic it was just a weird mask!
- The action is so damn boring and unexpectedly odd. There is a fight with a bear, which goes on for some four or five pages. Paragraphs of bristly beards, rippling muscles and razor sharp claws and then WOOSH, snapped bear spine.
So there. These are things that have made my self inflicted job painful so far. Wish me luck as I lock myself in to Draft #2.