Yesterday I finished The Baker's Boy by J.V. Jones.It was not a good book.I would not go so far as to say it was a horrible book (a description I reserve for 1-star ratings and the majority of fanfiction), but it is a bad book. It suffers from a number of major problems, ranging from technical writing issues to poor story decisions, any one of which could perhaps be forgiven on its own if the rest of the book was strong enough to support it, but it isn't. It does not surprise me that this is the author's first book, nor that (as the story goes) it was found in the slush pile. What surprises me is that it ever made it OUT of the slush pile. I -am- going to track down the rest of this series to read it. This is for two reasons: I am the kind of person who is compelled to finish a story once I start, and this book has kind of a Train Wreck in reverse feeling for me. I want to see if it gets better (and it does, a little).So. Let's start with grammar.I began wincing on the first page. Here we are introduced to foul deeds done by dastardly villains, and also to the author's strange relationship with pro- and proper nouns. Here's what I mean: "The deed is done, master." Lusk barely had a second to notice the glint of the long-knife, and only a fraction of that second to realize what it meant. Baralis sliced Lusk's body open with one forceful but elegant stroke, cleaving from the throat to the groin. Baralis shuddered as the body fell to the floor with a dull thud. He held his hand up to his face where he detected a sticky wetness: Lusk's blood. On impulse he drew his finger to his lips and tasted. It was like an old friend, coppery, salty and still warm.He turned away from the now lifeless body and noticed his robes were covered in Lusk's blood...First of all, it's crude writing to begin a sentence with the same word twice in a row, especially a proper noun (unless you are doing it deliberately in order to make a point, in which case you should use at least three sentences, and even then be careful about it). I can almost see the author's dilemma: "But if I use a pronoun there, then I'll just have the same problem with the next sentence!" This is easy to fix - use the name again as the beginning of the third sentence. It's also very distracting that 'Lusk' is used so often, and especially that 'Lusk's blood' is used twice in quick succession. Give us more descriptors! What this person is is much more important than who he is. He is named FIVE TIMES on the first page, and never appears in the book again. Is he a spy? A servant? Does he have weaselly features? Before I get too distracted going on in this vein, let's talk about the author's habit of throwing phrases together in a paragraph and expecting commas to just tie them neatly together: He turned away from the now lifeless body and noticed his robes were covered in Lusk's blood; it was not a random spraying, the blood formed a scarlet arc against the gray. A crescent moon. Baralis smiled, it was a good omen-a crescent moon marked new beginnings, new births, new opportunities-the very currency he would deal in this night.Oooo-kay. What we have here in the first sentence are three distinct and complete phrases that could stand along by themselves, but are connected by punctuation. The first two a linked with a semicolon - this is fine, as this is one of the functions a semicolon can serve. Semicolons are Advanced Punctuation, so it is then surprising to find a comma given a job too big for it. Commas are not used to connect independent clauses, they are used for lists or dependent clauses. You can fix this by putting a period where the comma is, or by moving the semicolon to the comma and putting a period there. And then it happens again in the next big sentence! I might be able to live with this kind of thing if it were an isolated incident, but it happens All. The. Time.Alright, on to content.Let's play a little game called "Where's the plot going?" After reading the summary provided on the back of the book, I was expecting our two main characters to flee the castle and the book would be about their journey and pursuit by the Big Bad. Nope. They do get out of the castle, eventually, after two chapters and a prologue of backstory (none of which give you easy clues that they are time-skipping), but they are almost immediately split up. And then they get captured again and dragged back to the castle. And then they kind of wander around the castle a bit being prisoners/escaping, and then they finally leave again and the book ends, randomly, with them in the middle of nowhere a little less than halfway to their destination, which they first set out for in chapter 3. This isn't the plot taking a nice little meander before it gets serious, this is the plot stalling - kicking and screaming and dragging its heels before going off to the next book to sulk. "I just wanted you to get to know the characters!" it whines, when that would take you one chapter at the most because......the characters are incredibly one-dimensional. You could use a handful of words to describe their defining character traits and motivations at the beginning of the book and rest comfortable, knowing that these first impressions will not change. There's not a lot of variation either: on the "greedy" side we have the gluttonous, power-hungry, and stupid varieties, while "naive" comes in the poor-little-rich-girl and actually-poor-with-mysterious-powers flavors. Guess which are the good guys and which are the bad guys? Our one exception is the Knight With A Guilty Past (which is foreshadowed so much that by the time the flashback at the end of the book tells you what he's guilty about it's not a surprise), who is one of the few characters with a little depth because by the end of the book you're not sure if he's still a good guy. The main characters develop too, a little, and while they're kind of starting to fall in love with each other by the end, neither of them are dwelling on it a lot because they have other stuff to worry about, which is refreshing because... ...there is way too much talk of sex. About of third of the way through I was positive this book had been written by a 15-year-old boy. Nope. The author is female - J. V. is short for Julie Victoria - and in fact, this is one of the reasons I wanted to read this book. Women are still underrepresented in the industry, so I should support them by reading their books! Plus, maybe I'll get a more balanced/feminist-aware view of a fantasy world! Nope. There are exactly three kinds of conversations between characters in this book: political (I'm talking with you to further my dastardly goals/about the political situation), normal (What should we do next?), and sexual (I want to have sex with __/__ is having sex with __/I'm having sex with __/should totally have sex with __/etc.). That last category takes up fully 50% of the conversations in the book. It's really annoying. There's even a couple of minor characters whose entire purpose in the book is to pop up randomly and mention what another character is doing - after they talk about their imaginary sexual knowledge in the most crude way possible. And of all the female characters in the book (not counting characters who only get one line or show up in flashbacks), one is a prostitute, one gets raped in the prologue, one runs a gang of prostitutes, two want to have sex with main characters, and one (the main character) is almost raped and almost forced to become a prostitute. The only female character in the book not portrayed in a negative sexual way is old and oppressed because of her gender. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that the girl main character is INEXPLICABLY attracted to the Big Bad, who is a rapist, a pedophile, and a Creepy Dude. I really want to find out later in the series that this attraction is caused by a spell he cast on her as a child. There is evidence to support this.So. Bad book. Why am I still going to read the series? I want to see if it has a good ending.
http://osgabookreviews.wordpress.com/...I went into this knowing that it was the first book in a trilogy, and that it would be mostly setup for the other two books in the series. I went into this knowing that it was very standard, crunchy granola fantasy. A coming of age story with a pretty girl met by chance on the road, stereotypical villains, a coming of age type quest, stuff like that. But... Come on. Nothing happened in this book! And when I say nothing, I mean nothing. Nothing was resolved in the end, and for that matter, I never really even figured out what there was to be resolved. All of the hurdles in this book were such trivial matters.. I never discovered any overarching story line, nothing bigger and badder out there that would come crashing into the story to help tie it together. I still kept holding out hope as I turned each page.. But it never happened.So obviously this was a pretty big disappointment. I didn't hate it, but I think "meh" is as good as it gets when it comes to finding a word to describe it. And that sucks! I really wanted a crunchy granola standard sort of fantasy. It's been a long time since I read anything like that, I was hoping that reading it would feel sort of like coming home. And I guess it did.. If by "home" you mean some place super boring where nothing ever happens and there is a lot of sex and groping and slutty chicks.That's another thing.. The women in this book. With the exception of Melli and the Queen, every other woman was weirdly loose with granting access to what was under their petticoats. All the men needed to do was ask if the woman fancied a tumble, and it was a done deal. And holy gold digger, apparently every woman has a price in these books. It was sort of insulting... And really not expected, seeing as though it's written by a female author. I don't know.. Maybe I'll read the next in the series, in hopes that I can squeeze something out of the time I've already invested into this.. But I need a break first. I'll read something that's actually good and well thought out, something with.. I don't know, a plot maybe? Yeah, a plot, that's the ticket! When I'm ready for some more potential pain, maybe I'll come back and try this series out again. Maybe.
What do You think about The Baker's Boy (1997)?
Having read four of the Sword of Shadows books (still being written), I saw this complete trilogy at a used book store and picked them up. This is an earlier work of J.V. Jones and you can see here style emerging as well as some 'early work' issues. In a nutshell, this is an enjoyable read. It isn't a book that I couldn't put down, but it was one I enjoyed picking back up again.Some specifics.... I found it really funny that Jones was clearly trying to set up the classic fantasy journey in the first book, but the protagonists kept journeying back and forth over the same road. A characteristic of Jones' style is clearly present here. Her story-lines and the secondary characters tend to just kind of float around the story and end up not being relevant at the end. There is one particular story-line that really doesn't come into play in book 2 that ends up being resolved in the epilogue of book 3 in a highly unsatisfying manner. It was central to the prophecy that drives the story and then just kind of gets left out there.All in all a pleasant fantasy read for me in spite of the shortcoming listed above.
—Rich Taylor
I read The Baker's Boy back in 1997 when it was fairly new. Besides Imajica by Clive Barker and The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King, this is the first true fantasy book I ever read. As a matter of fact, it was an early scene that pulled me in, one that was reminiscent of Barker with its viciousness and blunt imagery. This book had everything that I had loved about The Eyes of the Dragon and Imajica, but with a more fully realized world of its own. This is the book that got me hooked on fantasy, period-- a gateway book.Looking back, I can see now that this book is a very formulaic fantasy, filled with many of the genre's stereotypes and tropes, and not very original. The story is one we've all read or seen before, and is, as such, predictable.But the writing... J.V. Jones is a great writer. She was able to take this simple story and fill it with characters I could relate to, that I cared about. The characters are the book's saving grace. I can still recall them well to this day, 16 years on. Jack, Melliandra, Baralis, Tavalisk, and on and on. I would definitely recommend this book, this series, to anyone new to the genre, or as an introduction to it, especially for teen readers. A perfect introduction to the genre.JV went on to write another series after this one, the first volume of which is called A Cavern of Black Ice. It is absolutely excellent. This time her characters are in a story and setting every bit as compelling as they are. Miss Jones is a writer to look out for. I have always thought very highly of her. She was friendly enough to return my email many years ago and was very gracious and humble. Sometimes, those you look up to aren't a disappointment, after all.So check this one out. If you like it, be sure to get the two sequels as well. Happy reading.
—Aaron Singleton
It would be tempting to dismiss this one as formula fantasy. Just the title itself alludes to the notion that this is going to be one of those "assistant pig keeper" types. You know, the type of fantasy novel that we've all read where an unknown orphan boy turns out to be the world's greatest sorcerer or heir to the kingdom...or both. And I will admit that this first novel by J.V. Jones has some of those tendencies. There is a young orphaned lad who works in the bakery and there is definitely something special about him. And there is a beautiful girl who also happens to be the daughter of the richest lord in the kingdom that shares a grand adventure with the baker's boy. Even that age old magical device where names have power is in here. Never tell somebody your whole name for fear they will then hold magical power over you.But that's where such comparison's end. The author has the gift of storytelling. This is not just the story of the baker's boy and the beautiful girl. It is also the story of a young knight trying to prove himself and find himself at the same time. And there are a handful of other prominent characters as well, each with their own motives and agendas. Their stories are told through their eyes as the author rotates the POV among all of them. Together, their individual stories form a nice fabric and I enjoyed living it with them. There are certainly some stereotypes of fantasy scattered throughout but the author's writing still drew me in and I was happy to escape into this world. Note: there is some mild sexual titillation in this novel, mostly of the older men leering at young female attributes variety. But nothing "on screen" as it were.For a first novel, this is impressive work and I will happily pursue the rest of this trilogy as well as her more recent novels.
—Benjamin Thomas
