The Last Vhalgenn

It's a short book - a novella. But even for that length, it's pretty weak. It ranges from worldbuilding problems (really? in all the generations of this custom, there have never been any rules laid down for what the Vhalgenn does when their royal marries?) to things like - one character throws a

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fit, for an entire (short) chapter, about how dangerous it is to cross this horrible desert! Next chapter, first paragraph, approximately "When we got out of the desert we were pretty tired and parched". Excuse me? Why bother with throwing a fit over it, if that's all you're going to write? Waste of time. Then there's the fact that the basic story is "She stole my man, I hate her" from two sides - with the man in question carefully and in detail described as extremely handsome, never trained to control his impulses, and a congenital philanderer. Honestly, I'd be happy to give him away. The author says she started this story at 18 - I can believe that, a teenager might think it was a good romance. But now (she says) she's over 60 - and she apparently never revisited the story to flesh it out and make the characters more than sketches. A soldier who can be fooled by lamb's-blood pouches? A soldier, by the way, who gets called out of the front lines and then goes wandering off in another direction, without a thought for the comrades she's abandoning. It's a mildly interesting sketch of a story, that might be written into something good. I wish she had, rather than publishing this. And apparently it was a finalist for an award...doesn't make me impressed with said award or its granters. Not worth reading, for me. Received from the author via AuthorXPro.

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