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Review Detail of Kasaix in Vampire: the Masquerade - Nirvana

Review detail

Kasaix
KasaixLv114yrKasaix

Okay so I am not really a good reviewer as I am just used to posting my thoughts into comments as they come to me. And here is little something about me before I start my review. I have finished bloodlines countless times before and I am also ST(story teller) of table top Vampire the Masquerade games. I have been hosting VtM for about 3 years now. I wouldn't call myself an expert on the lore but there is not much that I don't know either. Now here is the review. When I was reading the first part of the book, the part before the MC makes her way to LA, I felt like there wasn't enough development of her character. You tried to make us connect with her showing us her human side but for some reason I felt that it was kind of half-baked. I saw that the character had her motivation, goals and friends but I didn't feel that she had her own unique personality. In my mind in the interactions between her and Garrett the two kept overlapping with one another constantly. Their manners of speeches were too similar and when they are the only 2 ones speaking it feels like a Malkavian having a conversation with herself. To sum up either you should have let us spend more time with the MC as a human in order to better flesh out her personality or you should have just straight started from the murder if you wanted to start the main story more quickly. At the second part of the novel, the part after MC makes her way to L.A, everything is such a mishmash. We meet with all these people in this short amount of time. There are sabbath attacks, the name of the clans, new terms like ghouls, the six rules etc. There were too much exposition in too little of a time and the events are moving too fast. I know that this is a fanfic of Bloodlines so you are trying to stay true to source material as much as you could but screw that. Just drag things on, explain them to us clearly one by one as if we were idiots. Like when LaCroix is mentioning the 6 rules, tell us what they are don't just put them in an auxlary chapter. Or when Jake says **** Lasombras instead of saying aren't they another sabbath clan, try to explain the background of the clan like Lasombras? Aren't they the clan of evil vampires shrouded in darkness, only loyal to themselves and the cause that is sabbath etc. Also your character doesn't even need to voice these words he can just think about it. To sum up instead of rushing things drag things out and explain to us clearly. Also don't try to follow the events of the book too closely, instead make them more interesting and put your twist on it like instead of making 9 and Jake saving the MC from the sabbath let MC fight a battle on her own, make them escape or even make a whole arc about how the MC survived the night of her embrace when the city was under attack all on her own.

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Vampire: the Masquerade - Nirvana

Fiona_Singer

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Replies3

Fiona_Singer
Fiona_SingerAuthorFiona_Singer

Well with all due respect, in my opinion, the way you want me to tell the story really only works for a tabletop game where everyone actually takes part in playing so they will need to pay attention to the rules and make sense of them first, and won't find it boring or troublesome--because they are actual players, but for a novel it won't work. When reading novels everyone is only a bystander who reads through the events in texts, and if you spend too much time explaining things at one time, people will just walk away--because they are just bystanders and mere rules and background info don't matter to them like people who actually play the games. To take another example like A Song of Fire and Ice--for a novel series that is built on a completely fantasized world, George R. R. Martin clearly needs to provide lots of information on this world and his world background is known to be extremely complex, but he NEVER explains everything clearly everytime a new term comes up, instead, he hides and scatters info in the conversations, let the readers do a small deduction based the context to know what is going on, and only explains the smallest amount of necessities in the plainest way, and if he puts on his background settings in the way you want me to, nobody would ever want to read it or find it attractive, because it will simply be a heavy history book. It is the same way that Tolkin did the Lord of the Rings, too. I'm not saying that I can be compared to these masters, or my novel is exactly the same type as theirs, but at least I believe it's enough to prove that I should learn and follow their ways of story-telling, instead of the one you are suggesting. And if I may point out, though your reading process says you've finished C14, I don't think you really "read" the book, because if you do, you would at least notice that the MC did fight a very hard battle on her own afterwards and almost died in the process. If I dare to make this bald assumption, because you assume you know the game back and forward and deeply believe that the way you've been doing a tabletop game should be the right way even for a novel, despite the fact that these two are totally different things, you didn't take enough care to read through the text. So again with all due respect, I don't think this is a proper review, because a book review should at least judge the novel according to the standard of judging a novel, and this review doesn't. In fact if I may say so, I feel deeply hurt by these words--not because you criticizing me or I think you rated my book too low, for I've received lots of critiques like you can see from above and I didn't ever complain or hide them or delete them, and everytime I communicate with my reviewers very seriously and patiently, but this time I didn't feel like it's even a review.

Fiona_Singer
Fiona_SingerAuthorFiona_Singer

If you disagree with my opinion of your review you can post your ideas under here, but I won't further reply because I don't want this to become an argument where no one really cares about anything but winning the other (which is where online argument always ends up) , and if you post any other review that I deem to be a troll I will delete it--but I won't delete this one, and I will review your book back exactly in the way I've posted in my thread without any intention of depicating it for subjective reasons :D

Kasaix
KasaixLv11Kasaix

okay so let me make things clear. As I said at the start I don't normally review books I just comment down my thoughts and this review was exactly like that. After finishing reading all the chapters I just put down whatever I thought when I read your novel. Secondly I never claimed that my opinion was right or your opinion was wrong or because this novel is set in the world of a table top RPG it should follow the same rules what I said was simply put there were too much terminology not enough explanation. Third of all I the surviving the sabbath attack on her own was just a suggestion about a possible arc that you could use, I didn't claim that MC didn't have any fights or this books doesn't have any fights or etc. About the George R. R. Martin situation that depends on the perspective of the author. For example I personally prefer that the reader knows what the MC knows and doesn't know what he does not. But as I said before that is just personal preference. Lastly I must apologise if my review or whatever it is that I have written have hurt you. That was never the intention and they were just my honest opinions about it and that's about it. As you should be aware every person has their way of doing things and what I have written was just what I would have done if I were the one to be writing that novel and that's about it.

Fiona_Singer:Well with all due respect, in my opinion, the way you want me to tell the story really only works for a tabletop game where everyone actually takes part in playing so they will need to pay attention to the rules and make sense of them first, and won't find it boring or troublesome--because they are actual players, but for a novel it won't work. When reading novels everyone is only a bystander who reads through the events in texts, and if you spend too much time explaining things at one time, people will just walk away--because they are just bystanders and mere rules and background info don't matter to them like people who actually play the games. To take another example like A Song of Fire and Ice--for a novel series that is built on a completely fantasized world, George R. R. Martin clearly needs to provide lots of information on this world and his world background is known to be extremely complex, but he NEVER explains everything clearly everytime a new term comes up, instead, he hides and scatters info in the conversations, let the readers do a small deduction based the context to know what is going on, and only explains the smallest amount of necessities in the plainest way, and if he puts on his background settings in the way you want me to, nobody would ever want to read it or find it attractive, because it will simply be a heavy history book. It is the same way that Tolkin did the Lord of the Rings, too. I'm not saying that I can be compared to these masters, or my novel is exactly the same type as theirs, but at least I believe it's enough to prove that I should learn and follow their ways of story-telling, instead of the one you are suggesting. And if I may point out, though your reading process says you've finished C14, I don't think you really "read" the book, because if you do, you would at least notice that the MC did fight a very hard battle on her own afterwards and almost died in the process. If I dare to make this bald assumption, because you assume you know the game back and forward and deeply believe that the way you've been doing a tabletop game should be the right way even for a novel, despite the fact that these two are totally different things, you didn't take enough care to read through the text. So again with all due respect, I don't think this is a proper review, because a book review should at least judge the novel according to the standard of judging a novel, and this review doesn't. In fact if I may say so, I feel deeply hurt by these words--not because you criticizing me or I think you rated my book too low, for I've received lots of critiques like you can see from above and I didn't ever complain or hide them or delete them, and everytime I communicate with my reviewers very seriously and patiently, but this time I didn't feel like it's even a review.