Keeper Martin’s Tale

 

There’s an objective difference between good writing and bad writing.

Bad writers can still have fans. It’s only the truly exceptional who can achieve true unreadability. Most published writing is merely mediocre, still possessing the ability to string words together successfully enough to maintain a fan base. However, regardless of how popular a bad writer may be, there will always be a sizable group of critics there to tear apart their prose, examine their characterization, and point out that despite currently residing upon the New York Times bestseller list, their novels are poorly written drivel. When someone is an objectively bad writer but the vast majority of Amazon reviews are proclaiming them to be the American Tolkien, it looks a little suspicious. In fact, if a writer is bad enough, it logically follows that something has to be going on with the reviews, because it’s simply impossible for that percentage of readers to actually like the books.

Robert Stanek is a bad writer.

But he’s not just ordinarily bad. Not Christopher Paolini bad. Not Stephenie Meyer bad. Not even Robert Newcomb bad. No, this is surpassing Eye of Argon-bad. This is spectacularly bad, spiritually bad, grammatically, morally, ecumenically bad. This is the kind of badness that Ed Wood can only dream of, brought on by the potent combination of a gigantic ego and a truly stunning lack of talent.

Just to clarify, for curious readers – this book is the exact same, a virtual carbon copy, as The Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches and The Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches II. This is the ‘adult’ version of the story (available on Amazon!), which means that Stanek split the story in half and released them again in ‘children’s’ versions. That, and different chapter titles, are the only real changes. The text itself is identical.

  9 Responses to “Keeper Martin’s Tale”

  1. Managed to get a copy of this PoS without paying Stanek a dime, AND without using illegal means. If anyone would like to get into this thing as a whole, let me know.

  2. I would really like to.

  3. Send me an email to marionnette.freeman@gmail.com and please write what format you would like it in.

  4. Oooh! I’d love to get in on this too, if the offer’s still open! :O

  5. Yes! As said, ANYONE who wants this, email me at marionnette.freeman@gmail.com with the format you’d like the e-book in!

  6. u’ve read it, right? is it really that bad? and if it is, how?

  7. Uuugh where do I start? You know how some people can speed-read? Like they read a whole 400 page book in one sitting? I can do that with most books (I usually do not, as I like to savour a good story). Not with Stanek. I have to read a paragraph, re-read it and then go and read again slowly, to try and understand what the point of that paragraph was and how it relates to the rest of the book.
    And no. I still did not finish this book. It is physically painful to read. Fifty Shades of Grey was not this bad. Breaking Dawn did not put me off this much. This. Is just. Bad.

  8. You should review The Three Body Problem… and its army of sock puppet reviews on Amazin

  9. This whole series is giving me bad flashbacks to the time when I was 15 and thought that making my writing incomprehensible meant it was deep. I’m just glad my parents didn’t rush off and vanity-publish any of it, or I might be getting mocked alongside Tesch and Stanek now. 🙁