Just recently Wenworld: The World Inside the Crystal was featured and reviewed as a part of the seventh self-published fantasy blog-off. The first 20% of the book was reviewed by the judges at Fantasy Hive.
To summarize: It sucked.
Now, am I in any way surprised by the fact it didn’t make it to the quarter-finals? No. In fact, I told my family (Who were waiting patiently and excitedly) that it was going to get stomped. I told them this as soon as I found out that only the first 20% of the book is being read and judged. Truthfully, I never would’ve entered the competition at all if I knew that beforehand. I thought they were going to read the whole thing. Now that I look back, I should’ve known that wouldn’t be the case. These people are kind enough to read through SO many self-published works for free; I should’ve known they wouldn’t read all 125,000 words of Wenworld. I should’ve done more research into their process before diving in. I regret that a lot.
The thing is, I agree with all of their points about what they read. Actually, they were quite gentle with the critique. I also find the first section of the book to be quite poorly written. The reason I never went back and gave it a proper edit was purely sentimental. You see, the first chunk of this book was written at a different time than the rest. I was extremely ill in the hospital when I wrote the first 8 chapters on an old laptop. The rest of the book was written on the family computer at home while I was recovering and on the road to remission.
I cringe when I go back and look through the first chapters. The info-dumping is outrageous and the prose is very clunky. I just couldn’t bring myself to change the content I made when I was in the hospital. That was an important moment in my life, and I just wanted to keep that time ‘captured’ in some way. Looking back, I think that was a dumb decision and I’m an imbecile. But there is a small part of me that is glad the writing I did during that time is preserved. I only started writing Wenworld because it made me happy and got my mind off of how depressed I was when sick.
It does sadden me that the judges didn’t get to experience the whole book, as the quality of the prose and storytelling overall sharpen at around the tenth chapter. Like I said, had I known they were only reading up to roughly chapter seven, I never would’ve put Wenworld forward.
Is the book brilliant? No. But I think it’s a fun time and much, much better than the first 20% makes it seem. I hope the poor reviews don’t discourage others from riding it out beyond the first section.
Regardless of what happened, I’m glad for the experience. And I’m also glad I discovered a bunch of new self-published writers who have written some really cool stories I never would’ve found if not for SPFBO. That’s what it’s all about, I guess.