Bryce's Blog

A while back, but still fairly recently, I was browsing Smashwords for a quick and free read. That is when I came across the title that I will be going over today. The title being reviewed today is The Necromancer’s Great Adventure by Mortimer Jackson.

What is it about? Sebastian Grimm is a man who helps people, living or dead. One day, he uses the power of necromancy to talk to a woman who had supposedly died due to suicide. However, she reveals that did not take her own life, but somebody else did. This motivates him to find out the truth and bring the responsible party to justice.

What did you like about the work? It was an enjoyable read, but that is all that I find good about the work. Enjoyable stories are good things to come by.

What did you not like about the work? Boy oh boy, there is definitely a lot of things that are not so great about the story. The grammar was not too bad, but the work was inconsistent. At one point, I could not visualize anything, and at another, I could visualize a lot. Yes, stories are supposed to rotate between show and tell, but there were things that I thought were important to describe in detail. A writer must know when something needs detailed descriptions and when something does not. I suffer from this problem too, but it is not the same way as this author. My flaw in this would be vast amount of detail that seems to slow down the story. Second, the author makes a huge mistake that is ever present on WattPad, which is the fact that we never hear the woman state her name, the author reveals it it in a way that is just horrible. When introducing a character, the audience needs to have a better introduction than say, “Oh, by the way, her name is Jessica.” That is the feeling I get because Sebastian never asked the woman for her name. In addition to not giving characters a proper introduction, there is at least one instance of confusion. Sebastian is with a colleague at a restaurant and requests his help in finding out what happened to the woman introduced at the beginning. The thing that gets confusing is when the waiter comes around, the colleague orders something and Sebastian does not. The colleague tries to get Sebastian to order something, but fails to do so. The confusing part about this is that the narrator says that Sebastian knew when his partner was lying. It was not the colleague that refused to order, but Sebastian himself. This is a consistency issue. While many authors suffer from this, the readers do not usually experience this error in a well edited or well proofread manuscript. Inconsistencies like these can create new questions for readers, much in the same way that the dubbed version of Detective Conan episode 49, No Immunity for the Diplomat Part 2 (labeled as episode 50 by FUNimation). In that episode, Heiji Hattori revealed the code names of the men in black, when the Japanese version never revealed how Shinichi Kudo found out the names of the men in black. There are probably more, but that is what what this work down greatly. Inconsistency was the main flaw of this title and led to confusion at parts of the story.

While the story was decent, its flaws were so bad that it would be close enough to not even earn status as recommended. I highly suggest staying away from this title, but feel free to read it if you want.

What is your opinion on this review? Do you disagree or agree with my view on the story? Feel free to comment.