Rob J. Hayes

The Colour of Vengeance

Sarah Escorsa

💀 DNF at 41%.

This book is not revoltingly bad, it’s just that:

① It bored the fish out of me. 
So yawn and stuff.

② I couldn’t care less about any of the characters.
It turns out that my favorite characters from The Heresy Within (among which the potentially yummy Thanquil Darkheart) are not in this instalment (it seems they’re the MCs for book 3, I hate my life and stuff). So who are we stuck with here? The most unlikable, distasteful, unfriendly, disagreeable characters in the cast. Yay. I have nothing against Slightly Unbalanced Protagonists with Deliciously Fished Up Morals (SUPwDFUM™) as a rule—there are quite a few of them currently being held residing in my High Security Harem, after all—but I draw the line at tacky nastiness. Especially if it serves no bloody purpose at all and adds nothing either to the plot or to the characters’ development. Said character development is virtually non-existent, by the way, which might possibly be one of the reasons why I didn’t think this book was Slightly Very Good (SVG™). Call me weird and stuff, but I don’t find reading about vulgar, one-dimensional thugs particularly fascinating. 



You got that right. Whatever “that” is.

There are two secondary characters I would have liked to learn more about, and who might have enticed me to continue reading, but they weren’t scrumptiously titillating enough (I mean, I can’t even remember who they were and what they were called, which should tell you something and stuff), so I didn’t. Ha.

③  Henry. 
Yes, our resident damsel in little distress has a man’s name. Which I wouldn’t mind if she was a teensy little bit NOT obnoxious. But she is, so I do. What I mind even more (and ever so slightly pisses me off) is that her having a man’s name is part of a pathetic ploy to make her a badass by giving her the attributes of masculinity. Masculinized name + masculanized body + masculanized behavior = wheee, we have a female badass in man’s clothing! 



Newsflash, authors everywhere! Making your female character look and act like the vilest of men (complete with OTT homicidal maniac attitude, most distastefully offensive speech and boorish-aggressive as fish manners) won’t magically turn her into a badass! No it won’t! It will just turn her into a vulgarly crude, murderous bitch with psychopathic tendencies! And will not endear her to your readers! No it won’t! Now you better sit down, authors everywhere, because what follows is probably going to shock the shrimp out of you: it is actually possible to create strong, empowered female characters who are super feminine, sexy as fish, hot as hell, and yet manage to kick ass. I kid you not. Really, I don’t. Just ask Lady. Or Caitlin. Pretty sure they’d love to explain it to you. And if you’re lucky, they might even a) sever a few of your limbs, b) rip your throat out or c) sever a few of your limbs and rip your throat out. Just to make sure you get the point and stuff. They’re wonderfully helpful like that.

④ The Wilds lingo of Doom and Oblivion.
  “Anders had grown up around people speaking the Wilds' drawl. He'd lived around it for somewhere close to all of his life and, if need be, he could speak it himself, not that he ever would by choice. Sometimes, however, it grated on him and the constant use of double negatives made his teeth hurt.”
Sometimes? Only sometimes? Bloody shrimping hell, Anders, I have no idea how you survived this long hearing these stinking people talk! I barely made it to the 41% mark of this book alive! Okay, I get that having dialogues reflect the local dialect/accent/language peculiarities/whatever can add a certain I don’t know what the fish je ne sais quoi to the narrative, but you know something is kinda sorta wrong and that you kinda sorta overdid it when your readers start developing unsightly red blotches all over their outrageously sexy exoskeletons and their pincers, suddenly desperate for fresh human blood, start clicking in a most ferocious manner. Just sayin’ and stuff.

➽ Nefarious Last Words (NLW™): this book has a 4.08-star average rating. Oops, looks like everyone but me read it wrong right. How positively shocking indeed. 



· Book 1: The Heresy Within ★★★



[Pre-review nonsense]

Because yawn + bleh + meh =

>

➽ Full review to come and stuff.

Beaten, battered, and damned near broken with a bounty on his head so large he’s tempted to turn himself in, the Black Thorn finds himself on trial for the crime of being him. Despite the impending probability of death he has but one thought on his mind; taking revenge against the Arbiter who took his eye. In order to carry out his vengeance Thorn must first escape Sarth and recruit a new crew, each one with their own designs on revenge. See why Fantasy Book Critic says, "Rob J. Hayes is the next fantastic Brit addition to the field of dark, gritty fantasy and another Indie gem after last year's Anthony Ryan."

The Colour of Vengeance

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