Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword by Tee Morris
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Here's an exercise.
Go and read a Damon Runyon short story. Something by Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler will probably do as well, but I know Runyon, so I say Runyon.
Now take a look at the preview of this book.
See the difference in the writing?
If you don't see the difference, you may enjoy this one.
Of course, it's a little unfair to compare anyone to those masters, but if someone is writing a hard-boiled detective story, even mashed up with an epic fantasy character, I'd like to think that they'd adopt some of the style. Swift, action-packed, vivid prose, with not a word wasted, and metaphors that leap off the page. Not dense, slow, overwritten, vague, and determined to drive every minor point thoroughly into the ground.
A little over halfway through, I couldn't take the style any more and stopped reading. The story wasn't anything out of the ordinary (given "fantasy dwarf as hardboiled detective", anyway), and was moving so slowly through the dense thickets of unremarkable imagery that I lost interest.
Plus the flappers were all curvy, and had long hair. Has the author ever looked at a picture of a flapper?
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