A Strange and Stubborn Endurance

I, like everyone else, read the back cover and thought, “wow, this sounds right up my alley! What is there not to love about a queer historical fantasy with an arranged marriage trope.” However, two sentences in, and I knew right away that nope, this was not going to work. The author uses so many adjectives and adverbs in each sentence, it's dizzying. Not only that, but the attempt to sound ‘old timey' doesn't work here at all because 1) some of the words make no sense contextually, 2) the sentence structure is off putting for the most part, and 3) old literature doesn't even sound like this, not by any stretch of the imagination.

The offending opening lines in question:

“We'd scarcely entered Father's new lands when I realised how little I cared that I'd never inherit them. It was a genteel epiphany, as such things go...”

Let's dissect this a bit:
Epiphany: noun A moment of sudden revelation or insight.

The word used to enhance the noun:
Genteel: adj. Polite, refined, or respectable, often in an affected or ostentatious way.

A much better word to use that was forgone to sound (incorrectly) ‘old timey':
Gentle: adj. Moderate in action, effect, or degree; not harsh or severe.

Now, everyone, please tell me, is it truly a refined moment of revelation, or is it not more a soft revelation? Which one do you think makes more sense? Case in point.


Naturally, I didn't stop at the first few lines. No, I flipped around the book at random to see if maybe the first page was just an unfortunate editing slip-up. Alas, it was not an accidental slip-up. The whole book is like this, and as a self-respecting reader, there's no way I can stomach 544 pages of this kind of writing.

Consider these few choice examples I picked up during my flip through:

“...her head was freshly shaven enough to gleam beneath its stubble.”
Excuse me, but this is an oxymoron.

“Cae manfully resisted the urge to squirm away from the question...”
Manfully? Really? How does one resist in a manly way, exactly? Is the author playing synonym roulette here or something, because some alternative word choices in the dictionary are ‘ordinary' words like ‘bravely' and ‘courageously' (which still doesn't make sense in the context, but at least they are infinitely less painful to read than ‘manfully.')

“Being fifteen is four parts bravery to six parts foolishness...”
15 = 4+6... yes
insert confused Jackie Chan meme
Who talks like this? Do you know anyone who naturally comes up with this kind of response in a conversation?

Cae felt an obscure pang.
..... a what not? What, pray tell, is an obscure pang, exactly?


I could keep going, but I need a Tylenol at this point. Wherefore art thou so headache-inducing, dear novel?