Greg Keyes needed to torch his thesaurus, and who ever told him such a thing existed needs to be drug out into the street and shot.

“But oh ye blogger, why would thou, an English major, deny the beauty that synonyms dost bestow upon the worn, weary, and drear language?”

Because, ye ingrates– synonyms are only replacements. They don’t make worn, wear, drear language any better. They just make it ridiculous. Like putting Alexander McQueen or Prada on a scarecrow. Or a cow. And I mean a literal cow, not the denigrating derivative sometimes used to refer to fat people.

Yeah, I know, I’m insensitive.

To prove my point, here is a passage from J. R. R– wait, do I really need to tell you who that is and what he wrote? I would find that patronizing.

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

Words more than two syllables: 1. Count it. One. And it’s “destroyer.” There’s elegance to that, rhythm… music. It’s grand, and wonderful. Beautiful. But uncomplicated, unpretentious.

Now an outtake from The Briar King:

“At that moment, Wilhilm reappeared, with a stoneware platter of cheese, a pitcher of mead, and mazers for each of them. It suddenly occured to Stephen that he was hungry, and when he bit into the pungent, almost buttery cheese, he amended that to ravenous. The mead was sweat and tasted of cloves.”

Uh. Spork. I need a spork so I can dig my eyeballs out with it.

Derivative spellings of common Earth names are lame. Respelling Lucas to Lucoth does not make it cool. It makes it lame. Virginia Dare spelled as Virgenya is also lame. Don’t insult the intelligence of your readers like that. William, Willhelm, whatever– Wilhilm? What the– even if you wanted a special name, there’s too many letters that look alike for your readers to get the sound and feel of it without painfully sounding it out.

There’s a basic rule to good writing– use strong nouns and verbs. Prepositions typically function as adjectives or adverbs, and this book uses them to pieces. Dead horse, much? Of cheese, of mead, of them, of cloves– that is the sign of a writer trying entirely way too hard. “Of” does not make you sound cultured, historical, whatever– it’s pomposity.

Also, Keyes uses adjectives on top of the prepositions. Adjectives on top of adjectives. No strong descriptions, no rhythm or music to his selections… just piecemealed synonyms plucked out of a bloody thesaurus.

Also, the narrator’s voice– I would have understood if the narrator was a pompous ass. Or if one of the main character’s voice was a prick– but Locuth, the man who barely serves any purpose at all and in my opinion could have easily been completely obliterated without any detriment done to the plot at all – described a man’s voice as “cultured and sibilant.”

Sibilant? Really? The backwater village’s local idiot used the word sibilant?

Insert eye-roll here: ________________