Em's Reviews > Alchemised

DNF: This has the most egregious grammatical errors I have ever seen in a Del Ray, Random House published book. The prose structure is shockingly poor.

I can't finish this book. It's just far too difficult to get over the terrible, terrible grammar. In the first three chapters, there's maybe one actual sentence every ten lines or so. The misplaced modifiers are grotesque. This author has throats thinking. She has feet talking. Misplaced modifiers ruin writing. I cannot understand why this book wasn't edited and cleaned up. Writing is a professional art form. It's honestly offensive to me when hack jobs like this are published and hyped up, yet clearly the agent, the editor, and the author have made zero attempt to actually revise very basic errors most sixth graders could correct.

As the novel progresses, the grammar begins to stabilize a bit more. Unfortunately, this is largely due to the use of short, choppy sentences which "tell" a great deal instead of "showing." And the short repetition of simple sentences put me straight to sleep.

This rating is nothing to do with the premise or the story itself as I really couldn't even glean that thread through the mixed up, coagulation of words jumbled together with a period at the end. This rating is for the worst attempt at grammar and prose structure I have ever seen from a true publisher. If this had been independently published, then I might refrain from chiming in with a rating. But a book by Del Ray has had every advantage with multiple readers. What on earth were they thinking?

Is grammar necessary? I'm very aware that some people reading this review will be thinking to themselves, "but some sentence fragments are stylistic." True. But, stylistic grammar errors are always obviously intentional. An example of a book which varies sentence structure to near perfection and employs organic prose structure to show emotion instead of telling it is They Bloom At Night by Trang Thanh Tran. Tran is an author who has clearly mastered grammar, and so they know when and how to deliberately break the rules of grammar for emphasis without sacrificing meaning.

I'm certain that SenLinYu has talent, and they obviously have a plethora of ideas. Alchemised is over a thousand pages long, and no one can write that much without having lots to say. I just think their agent, editor and publisher failed them.