Review: Worlds of Eternity

Worlds of Eternity by Aaron Hillsbery
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

The authors never use one short sentence when three long sentences will do, and it quickly became tedious to read. Here's an example:

"A faint vibration came from Michael's pocket. It was his phone, demanding attention. Mindful of the person seated next to him, he kept his elbow close to his body as he struggled to extract the device. After considerable effort, he finally succeeded. Straightening himself, his eyes fell on the screen, revealing a new message."

Or you could just say, "Michael's phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out - with some difficulty because of the crowded tram - and saw a message from his sister." That's 25 words in two sentences, and it conveys slightly more information than the 54 words in five sentences above.

A lot of those long sentences involve an introductory participle (like the last sentence quoted above), and occasionally those participles dangle, referring to something other than the grammatical subject of the sentence. There are also a few issues with tense (missing past perfect, mingling of past and present), the usual excess commas between adjectives, and some odd or incorrect use of vocabulary, like "she glanced the woman" instead of "she glimpsed" or "she glanced at". It's well within the normal range of errors, probably better than average, but that tedious, long-winded prose means there's not much plot per thousand words, and slows the pace to a crawl even in the action scenes. I only got 5% of the way through, so I can't say much about characterization, worldbuilding, or plot; it moved so slowly I hadn't seen much of any of those yet, just wordy narration of the mundane and obvious.

I received a pre-release version from Netgalley for review, and some of the minor issues may be fixed before publication.

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