Addressing a recent "review".

It's been a few days since it was posted, and I know that it's generally considered a little bit of a taboo for authors to respond directly to a bad review, but in this particular case, there are some extenuating circumstances that I think warrant a response.

First, I want to make it clear that I fully understand that "The Stobrimore Chronicles" series is not for everyone, and that any time a book is presented to the public, it is inevitable that there will be some readers that don't like it. But this particular instance is not your average review. It's a condescending hit job, bordering on a personal attack, for reasons entirely unknown to me. Instead of being an honest critique, good or bad, it read more like a hostile, sarcastic, and condescending rant filled with deliberate misrepresention and mockery. That's why I feel the need to address it.

The person who posted the review (an individual I will not name here) and I had been corresponding on X for several months prior to the posting of the review. The interactions were all friendly. I even made a book trailer for this individual, at my own expense, for the story that they're writing on their substack site. They liked the trailer so much that they decided to bump "The Stobrimore Chronicles - The Beginning" up to near the top of their review list.

It was right around the time that this individual started reading the book (I'm assuming, as opposed to simply skimming it for "ammo" or possibly using AI to summarize it), that a potential red flag popped up. I noticed that they took a small exerpt from the book, posted a screenshot of it on their X page, and used it to make fun of the characters by misrepresenting what was actually occuring in the scene. This individual said that they did it as "a joke" to have with their friends, some of whom contributed their own condescending comments in response. The "joke" was regarding the lesser dragons in the novel, as this individual has near constantly posted "jokes" about how much they hate dragons. I spoke to the individual privately and they apologized for the "joke" and said that they would delete the post. I probably should have seen the writing on the wall at that point, as that is not the kind of behavior one should expect from someone who claims to be a professional book reviewer, because posting such "jokes" about a book you've agreed to review are anything but professional.

I was later contacted privately, with this individual asking for my email address so they could send questions for a Q and A, as had sometimes been done with other reviews. I provided the email address. I never received an email from them, and only about a day later, I noticed that the so-called "review" had been posted to both Amazon and Goodreads. The "review" contained a number of things that I'd like to address here.

I'll ignore the fact that this individual decided to post multiple spoilers (though poorly described and snarky) with no heads up made to potential readers. That's something any professional reviewer should know not to do. But moving on...

That brings me to the "characters" section of the "review", and I'll try to address a number of these claims. (And unlike the reviewer, here is where I will note that the following may contain a few minor spoilers, beyond the ones the "reviewer" spread all throughout the "review", so if you wish to simply ignore the review and decide for yourself by reading, feel free to stop reading this now.)

The reviewer referrs to Jack as "Mr. Perfect" and claims that Jack is presented that way. That seems to tell me that this individual wasn't reading particularly closely, because Jack is not perfect. He repeatedly gets it wrong, is sometimes self-destructive and is dealing with elements of PTSD from his time in the military (something which is compounded and carries on through the subsequent books in the series). In regard to his powers, for much of the story he has virtually no control over them, which makes him far from perfect. In regard to the death of his parents, it becomes fairly clear that this "reviewer" has somehow forgotten that "The Stobrimore Chronicles - The Beginning" is only the first book in a trilogy arc and an ongoing series (which is evidenced by the fact that this individual never even mentioned the fact that it is the first book in a trilogy, which is something they knew before reviewing it), so not all questions are going to be answered in the introductory story. It's called "The Beginning" for a reason. Why this individual appears to have a problem with a main protagonist in a fantasy story being kind and courageous is a mystery. Jack isn't an anti-hero character, nor is he a re-imagining of some "misunderstood" villain character being presented in a sympathetic light. He's a hero character. But he's hardly perfect.

In regard to Lia, I'm not quite sure what this individual was expecting, because there are a number of things that this "reviewer" presents as negatives that I find quite odd.

1. "She's beautiful, yet humble".

   I'm not sure if the "reviewer" expects all attractive characters to be vain or narcissitic or what, but those generally aren't traits one finds in a protagonist character.

2. "Gentle, yet fierce in battle"

   Again, I'm not sure why this is being portrayed as a bad thing. I don't know if this individual expected her to be a violent brute or what, but Lia is both the crown princess of Vedyria and the Commander of the Vedyrian Army, which are two roles that require one to be able to be both diplomatic and highly capable in combat. She's not one-dimensional.

   I don't even know what this individual means when they claim that Lia comes off as being "programmed to speak and act a certain way", so I'm unsure as to how to even address that. Lia is a complex character, not a singular simplistic trait in a dress, which makes me wonder how much of the book that this reviewer actually read.

Moving on to this "reviewer's" misrepresentation of the king and queen, within the context of the story, the purpose of the summoning to the castle is in regard to Jack's contributions to the war efforts, and contary to what the "reviewer" seems to think, is as of that point, unaware of the romantic relationship that had developed between Jack and Lia. That is made pretty clear in the story leading up to that point, so how this "reviewer" missed that is beyond me. The king wanting to see a demonstration of the powers and capabilities of the new individual who has already used those powers to assist the Vedyrian Army in the centuries-long war seems like something anyone with common sense would want to do, so it hardly makes King Daven a "nitwit". He wants to see how mich of a military asset Jack can be. It's one of the reasons why Jack is eventually appointed the role he is given by the time that he and Lia return to the battlefront. So attempting to portray that as "The king would rather see magic tricks instead" is not just a gross misrepresentation, but an intentionally condescending and wholly reductive one that is not even remotely accurate to anyone who is actually paying even the slightest bit of attention the story. All of that being the case, this individual's expectation that the king would take Jack aside and give him some "rules for dating my daughter" speech, when as I said, he was not aware of their relationship at that point, tells me that the "reviewer" clearly didn't read those chapters particularly closely.

The only character that this reviewer seems to have paid more than passing attention to is Crescia. Though I did find it odd that the reviewer referred to Crescia as "Her Highness's personal attendant" and not "Lia's personal attendent" given that nowhere else in the "review" is Lia referred to as "Her Highness", which once again makes me wonder how much of the book the reviewer actually read and how much was either skimmed or summarized by AI.

Moving onto the next section of the "review"...

The "reviewer" claims that the "magic world and magic creatures don't feel all that magic". There is an apparent expectation for the elves in the book to be "ethereal". For some stories, that may work. But these stories are about a vast kingdom of elves who have been in a centuries-long war, so there really isn't much time for them to be all glowy and mysterious, floating around in fine flowing silk robes and speaking in riddles and profound metaphors. They're people, not creatures.

And moving on to the lesser dragons. They're called lesser dragons for a reason. The "reviewer" refers to them as "horses with wings". Yeah. That's the point. The lesser dragons are animals that are used as a method of aerial transportation. They have their own personalities, as all animals do, but they are animals. I'm not sure what the "reviewer" was expecting here, but apparently rideable flying dragons are "too ordinary" to them. And they apparently feel the same way about the greater and lesser goblins, the giant trolls, the draphnir and all of the other creatures in the story. I don't know where this individual lives, but if rideable dragons, goblins, trolls, dark elves, Demonborne, necromancers and draphnir are "too ordinary", it must be a heck of a place to live.

Which brings me to their final character bashing. The Emperor and the Dark Army. Yes, the enemy is called the Dark Army. They consist of countless races and creatures that have been conquered and turned into Demonborne soldiers to fight for The Emperor over the course of countless centuries, with the ultimate goal of conquering the world and ridding all of the "lesser beings" of magic (and they've existed far longer than just the time the Vedyrians have been at war with them. It just became a formal war with Vedyria once they started invading Vedyrian territories), so they're not some singular force from a foreign kingdom. Again, much of this is pretty clearly spelled out in the story, and even more details are revealed in the subsequent stories of what is clearly known as the "Dark Army Wars Trilogy arc", so the condescending "(I'm not kidding)" that the individual put in their "review" is not a revelation of some secret.

The final part of the "review" contains a snarky comment, mentions part of a pre-battle speech given by one of the supporting characters, followed by another snarky comment. And that's it. With that, it became blatantly clear that the "reviewer" wasn't paying much attention to the actual story in the book or writing an actual review, and was instead just looking to cherry pick elements that they didn't like, deliberately misrepresent the characters and the storyline, and operate under the mistaken belief that being critical in a professional book review means being snarky, condescending, patronizing, hostile, and prioritizing "zingers" over substance.

Again, as I said in the beginning of this post, I get that negative reviews come with the territory and that everyone has an opinion, and I'm fine with constructive criticism in a negative review, but this wasn't that. This "review" was little more than immature targeted negativity filled with so many inaccuracies as to make it completely unreliable as far as a so-called "professional" book review.

So if you come across the "review", take it for what it actually is. To paraphrase MacBeth:

"It is a tale told by a "reviewer", full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."