It all started well over a decade ago, when I was still young and an aspiring writer full of hopes, dreams and most importantly the knowledge that the stories I wrote were really good. So when I saw that a published fantasy author was giving feedback to beginning writers, I figured I’d show him the incredible work I was working on. I had written many chapters of different stories and whenever I looked back at older stories I realized how much I’d grown since. With that much growth from the starting point, I knew that what I wrote was great. Mister Sullivan was so kind to look at my draft and he was… not impressed. The structure was bad, the characters were uninteresting, the story went nowhere for the first few pages and even the layout was riddled with issues that made it hard to read. To be honest with you, he was quite harsh. For a little while I just figured he was a stuck-up writer who didn’t know what he was talking about.
Of course, that wasn’t the case, and I do apologize for the clickbait in the title. I realized a long time ago that all of the feedback that mr. Sullivan gave to me was not only very accurate, but also very helpful. I did not realize it at the time of course, but looking back on old work and thinking it is bad definitely means you still have growth ahead of you. Else you would look back on stories from a little while ago and still think they’re good. I feel like I have gotten much closer to that stage now. Since I first got that e-mail – which I’ve saved all these years out of spite, by the way – I have gone through many ups and downs. I took long breaks from writing – not due to the feedback but because of other unrelated reasons – and then got back into it. I took a creative writing class, I studied language and I read many more books to broaden my horizon. I’d like to think I’ve finally reached a point where my writing is decent.
So that brings us to today. It’s 2025. One of my new year’s resolutions for last year was to read my books and I did just that. (I also wanted to learn how to cook, but 50% ain’t bad right?) Among the books I read in 2024 were the Riyria Revelations, a trilogy of books written by Michael J. Sullivan. I’ve had these books on my shelf for a while now, but for some reason I kept putting them back instead of reading them. I figured now was as good a time as ever. And I’ll be honest with you, I quite enjoyed the books. There are things I didn’t like, but there’s no point in nitpicking and being petty about it. The characters are appealing and the story is quite good. My personal favorites are Wyatt, Myron and of course Nimbus. But there are also some things I wanted to highlight. There will be spoilers ahead, so keep that in mind if you are planning to read these books in the near future.
I do think that the first half of book one is not all that interesting. The conclusion of the arc is nice, but having read all three books, the last arc after Modina properly assumes the throne is by far my favorite part of the story. It’s where the plot with the elves, the long standing treaty and the true intentions of the mages that have been working behind the scenes get revealed. I love me some deep lore in stories and some of my favorite stories have some incredible worldbuilding. There are many things I wanted to know about how the treaty worked exactly. Now I assume a lot of these questions are answered in the other books that have been written since, which – from what I read on Wikipedia – are mostly prequels to this trilogy. Unfortunately I have such a large pile of books in my backlog that I think I’ll leave this series at just the trilogy, since it is a satisfying ending. I suppose it’s more of a problem of mine that I am always so interested in the things that happen after the big finale of a story, knowing how things continue and if the hard earned peace stays that way or if the kingdom collapses shortly after. But that probably doesn’t make for the most interesting stories, so I’ll always be left wondering.
So yeah, to make a long story short, I finally read the books of someone who told me my writing sucked and I begrudgingly admit that he was right in his assessment and his writing is pretty good as well. One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve been writing and posting on my blog is that it’s much easier to get positive feedback than negative feedback. I’m not really advertising this blog at all, so the only people that are reading it are people who I know in real life or people who get here and enjoy what they find. So constructive criticism can be hard to come by. I know that my writing is far from perfect so when someone tells you very honestly that you need to step up your game, that’s more valuable than you might think. Well then, I think that’s all I have to say on this topic. Go read the Riyria revelations, they’re pretty good. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 