All Comments on 'Sam Ch. 04'

I gave this story a shot, thinking that the writing might improve but it really hasn't. I haven't read anything from this author before and I probably won't be in the future unless it improves drastically.

So, what did I think of the story? It was interesting enough but handled clumsily. It reminded me of the comic book 'Invincible' to a certain degree but that book handles character interaction well, this does not. The writing seems very 'immature' and the language seems a little stunted, as though the author has only been exposed to a very limited medium. The punctuation is very hit and miss and sentence structure is often awful. The author treats everything that they know of the story as being known by the reader, which causes a lot of confusion (at least it did with me) and the story skips around. For instance, there was mention of the airbags race (I'm assuming), 'The Prodons', by the 'Queen' and Sam recognised the word even though he'd never been told it, just that the alien he engaged with was called 'Atata' and he referred to the others as his 'poddle'. Also, what the hell's a 'frinkling'? Is it a child, a hostage, a prisoner, a clone or something else, it's never explained, The Queen just refers to twenty beings as 'Frinklings' and asserts that they are hers and they're described as being "...smaller versions of the female......buried up to their necks in the ground...".

Moving on, the 'hero' has been to at least four planets in as many chapters now and has 'helped' their denizens in just one location each time before leaving. Now that's one location per planet with a size (I'm assuming) comparable to Earth, so it just seems strange that there would only be trouble in a small location and everything's fine elsewhere. Also, Sam has been naked for the past chapter and a half and no one has mentioned a thing, and even before then he was flying around in space dressed for an office job but nothing is mentioned about it.

Everything just seems clumsy and as if the author wants to go from point A to point D in one chapter so just pushes all extraneous details aside so that he can build up his God-level Superman knock-off who doesn't want to hurt anyone, unless they "piss him off". If the writing was handled better I could deal with the story and it's many holes but as it is, this is just not good and in my opinion needs to go through a few more drafts before it should be published.

Unfortunately I happen to agree with WretchedMonkey that Pars writing has not improved, and this superhero/alien story is a noticeably more difficult read from a nice Genie story of his that I last read. I have heard that his Lost Empire series is pretty good ( my next reading stop ), so I am wondering if this guy has some (health) problem that has caused him to write recklessly fast and to not improve at all over the years. Still his offering are better than many if you are after some sci-fi/fantasy tales to astonish. TTFN

Why can't people just enjoy a great story without being so damned critical??!!