Mindfire
Istar
So the other day I was at Barnes and Noble, browsing the fantasy section as I am wont to do, when I came across this book: The Undead Hordes of Kan-Gul
So already the title is either a complete and utter travesty or the most awesome thing ever, depending on your tastes. I'm still not sure, myself. The cover image is very striking. It has a schlock feel to it, but the best kind of schlock. Awesome schlock. A sorceress and a ninja (who's shirtless for some reason) facing off against an army of undead warriors in samurai armor. I'll hand it to the book, it does nothing small. Already it makes grand promises. And it features something I don't see too often in the fantasy section at B&N: non-white people! So of course I pick up the book and look at the back cover to see what it's all about, only to discover this rich goodness*.
Yeah. Not the best summary ever. I'm starting to side-eye this book now, but I figure I'll give it a chance. So I open the book, and as I look at the first page my eyes are drawn to a single word: "Murai". I immediately close the book, put it back on the shelf, and continue my browsing, never to look at it again. At least until I wrote this post. Why? Because with a single word, that book sent me a powerful message about what it really was. It was not, contrary to my expectations, a fun romp filled with the kind of self-aware cheesiness you might find in Guardians of the Galaxy or The Warrior's Way. Nope. It was all of the cheese with none of the self-awareness. Pure, unadulterated hackery. Hackery. Hackery. (Fun word, that is.) Hackery. The author's use of the invented word "Murai" to refer to what are obviously thinly-veiled counterparts to samurai is, frankly, insulting to my intelligence as a reader and offensive to me as a writer who attempts a modicum of creativity. I look at that word and I see laziness. But laziness mixed with a strange kind of pretentiousness. Like, he wanted a cool made up word for his not-samurai which are obviously samurai, but he didn't want to think very hard when he invented it. So he just chopped off the first two letters and called it a day. Of course, I was warned by the back cover, wasn't I? "Nehon"? Really? Really? Look, I'm not bashing the "change a few letters of an actual word/name" method of creating fantasy names because it can work (and I'd be a hypocrite to say otherwise). There are numerous examples of that. But when you do it you have to do it smartly, and in a way that immerses the reader rather than jerks them out of the story. You have to use the name in a way that supports the world you're creating. It requires effort and subtlety. And you generally shouldn't use a word that is so common and familiar that the trick is painfully obvious. Because when I read the word "Murai" all I can think is, "why did you even bother?" And then I laugh and decide not to read your book.
Is it fair for me to judge this book so harshly without reading it? Probably not. But I'm not making a point about the quality of the storytelling here. This is not a book review. (Although the only professional review of the book I could find, this one, isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.) Nor is it meant to be some kind of personal invective against the author; my snarkiness is only to convey the strength of my reaction and approximate my stream-of-consciousness thoughts in the moment. The true moral of the story is that even seemingly small choices, like the names you use, can affect the reader in a big way, like this one obviously affected me and colored my view of the entire book. And since we want to give the reader as few reasons to roll their eyes and stop reading as possible, it behooves us to give things like this careful consideration. Or at bare minimum, avoid presenting the reader with invented words that are transparently real words with letters missing. I admit I have been guilty of this mistake myself, as this "take a real name and maybe change a few letters" business was once my go-to method. I was a dumb high school kid and have since learned better. Those names ended up being placeholders until I thought of better ones. Here I must emphasize that the method isn't inherently bad or lazy. I still use it sometimes. But I think it works best when you do it in a way that's not immediately obvious. (Protip: as a general rule, the method seems to work better with people-names than place-names or thing-names. It's GRRM's bread and butter. The fact that you so rarely notice it is a testament to how good he is at using it.)
To compare apples to apples here, it's unlikely that anyone who doesn't speak Japanese will pick up on the fact that the name of my mountain-dwelling tribe, Yamano, is a corrupted Japanese construction that literally means "of the mountain". "Murai" doesn't have that same subtlety.
That's today's public service announcement. I'm done.
*The quotation I use here are actually from the book's Amazon page, as I couldn't find an actual copy of the book to refer to for the purposes of this post.
So already the title is either a complete and utter travesty or the most awesome thing ever, depending on your tastes. I'm still not sure, myself. The cover image is very striking. It has a schlock feel to it, but the best kind of schlock. Awesome schlock. A sorceress and a ninja (who's shirtless for some reason) facing off against an army of undead warriors in samurai armor. I'll hand it to the book, it does nothing small. Already it makes grand promises. And it features something I don't see too often in the fantasy section at B&N: non-white people! So of course I pick up the book and look at the back cover to see what it's all about, only to discover this rich goodness*.
Ninjas and zombies! Book 1 in a new series, the Shadow Warrior saga. A young ninja in a fantastic land of dreams and nightmares must face an army of zombies to save a beautiful sorceress. Book One in an exciting new series, the Shadow Warrior saga.
In the fog-enshrouded peaks of the island nation of Nehon, Ran, a newly-minted shadow warrior is set loose on a musha shugyo, a wandering quest, whereby he must travel alone and hone his skills. Journeying aboard a merchant vessel, Ran hears tales of a mysterious lord believed to have the dead for his servants.
Soon these tales prove all too real as Ran comes to the aid of Jysal, a beautiful sorceress, whose undeveloped power gives her the ability to heal a land -- or destroy it. But the Lord Kan-Gul also covets Jysal's power. And when Kan-Gul sends a army of the undead to take Jysal by force, Ran is faced with the ultimate warrior's choice: save himself, or face down a horde of enemies that cannot be killed for the simple reason that they are already dead!
Yeah. Not the best summary ever. I'm starting to side-eye this book now, but I figure I'll give it a chance. So I open the book, and as I look at the first page my eyes are drawn to a single word: "Murai". I immediately close the book, put it back on the shelf, and continue my browsing, never to look at it again. At least until I wrote this post. Why? Because with a single word, that book sent me a powerful message about what it really was. It was not, contrary to my expectations, a fun romp filled with the kind of self-aware cheesiness you might find in Guardians of the Galaxy or The Warrior's Way. Nope. It was all of the cheese with none of the self-awareness. Pure, unadulterated hackery. Hackery. Hackery. (Fun word, that is.) Hackery. The author's use of the invented word "Murai" to refer to what are obviously thinly-veiled counterparts to samurai is, frankly, insulting to my intelligence as a reader and offensive to me as a writer who attempts a modicum of creativity. I look at that word and I see laziness. But laziness mixed with a strange kind of pretentiousness. Like, he wanted a cool made up word for his not-samurai which are obviously samurai, but he didn't want to think very hard when he invented it. So he just chopped off the first two letters and called it a day. Of course, I was warned by the back cover, wasn't I? "Nehon"? Really? Really? Look, I'm not bashing the "change a few letters of an actual word/name" method of creating fantasy names because it can work (and I'd be a hypocrite to say otherwise). There are numerous examples of that. But when you do it you have to do it smartly, and in a way that immerses the reader rather than jerks them out of the story. You have to use the name in a way that supports the world you're creating. It requires effort and subtlety. And you generally shouldn't use a word that is so common and familiar that the trick is painfully obvious. Because when I read the word "Murai" all I can think is, "why did you even bother?" And then I laugh and decide not to read your book.
Is it fair for me to judge this book so harshly without reading it? Probably not. But I'm not making a point about the quality of the storytelling here. This is not a book review. (Although the only professional review of the book I could find, this one, isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.) Nor is it meant to be some kind of personal invective against the author; my snarkiness is only to convey the strength of my reaction and approximate my stream-of-consciousness thoughts in the moment. The true moral of the story is that even seemingly small choices, like the names you use, can affect the reader in a big way, like this one obviously affected me and colored my view of the entire book. And since we want to give the reader as few reasons to roll their eyes and stop reading as possible, it behooves us to give things like this careful consideration. Or at bare minimum, avoid presenting the reader with invented words that are transparently real words with letters missing. I admit I have been guilty of this mistake myself, as this "take a real name and maybe change a few letters" business was once my go-to method. I was a dumb high school kid and have since learned better. Those names ended up being placeholders until I thought of better ones. Here I must emphasize that the method isn't inherently bad or lazy. I still use it sometimes. But I think it works best when you do it in a way that's not immediately obvious. (Protip: as a general rule, the method seems to work better with people-names than place-names or thing-names. It's GRRM's bread and butter. The fact that you so rarely notice it is a testament to how good he is at using it.)
To compare apples to apples here, it's unlikely that anyone who doesn't speak Japanese will pick up on the fact that the name of my mountain-dwelling tribe, Yamano, is a corrupted Japanese construction that literally means "of the mountain". "Murai" doesn't have that same subtlety.
That's today's public service announcement. I'm done.
*The quotation I use here are actually from the book's Amazon page, as I couldn't find an actual copy of the book to refer to for the purposes of this post.
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