My Scathing Review of The Wolf of Oren-yaro

I am taking ARC requests for this novel right now, in case you missed that post. This novel is going to be out on January 29, 2018, so you have plenty of time to read, rate and review, and tell your friends to pre-order so they, too, can laugh at the absurdity of my work.

And if you’re not convinced yet, here’s my scathing review of The Wolf of Oren-yaro (yes, I think I’m going to be doing this for all my novels! It’s oddly cathartic…)

Without further adieu…

Review of The Wolf of Oren-yaro

Somewhere along the road, Villoso got the idea that people actually want to know more about the world she created in The Agartes Epilogues and decided to try her hand at a brand new novel, with a (somewhat) completely new cast and a new POV.

Enter The Wolf of Oren-yaro, Book 1 of the aptly named “Annals of the Bitch Queen.” Why aptly named? Because the name character is, frankly, a bitch. On the first paragraph alone, she proudly proclaims that she “killed a man and made my husband leave…” all on the same night.

Villoso had turned a complete 180, and substituted the blinding, confusing subtletly in her The Agartes Epilogues series in place of heavy-handedness. Way to improve on your writing there, Villoso.

For pages and pages and pages, we are treated to Villoso’s trademark melodramatic narrative coming from a certain Queen Talyien aren dar Orenar. A character with such a mouthful for a name is going to have–predictably for a Villoso novel–barrels of issues. She was “raised a princess,” but claims she isn’t “pampered.” She is lonely. She has Daddy issues. And husband issues. Moaning about the latter takes up a good half, if not 3/4s, of the novel. Everything about this character revolves around her husband. Once again, Villoso proves that she is unable to write strong heroines by presenting us with Talyien, quite probably one of the most inconsistent characters I’ve ever had the misfortune of reading about. If she is so strong, why does she spend so much time moaning about love and regret and her dickwad of a husband? Why doesn’t she just seize the throne for herself? Cersei Lannister didn’t go whining about half a book about Robert Barratheon’s lack of love. No, she seized power and did things and killed everyone. BURN THEM ALL TO THE GROUND.

But not Talyien. Oddly enough for a child of a mass murderer, and despite her own sordid reputation, she seems unwilling to solve her problems with bloodshed. Oh, she kills the occasional bandit or two, before lapsing into another long soliloquy about her past and her husband and the nature of love and the universe and everything. It gets tiresome and repetitive. KILL THINGS, TALYIEN. SEIZE THE DAY. WHAT KIND OF A BLOODY RULER ARE YOU?

Villoso is clearly setting up for a larger story here, as confusing threads on various factions emerge. A variety of characters are introduced, one even duller than the next.  They’re all so normal. There is a con-artist/street mongrel character, Khine, a.k.a. Aladdin. There’s the madman with lots of power who wants more power. There’s a bunch of shady characters, government officials, seamstresses, tutors, etc. And of course we have Talyien’s husband, Rayyel, who has the personality of a sponge. These characters all seem to prefer to talk about shit than stab things, which makes for a very dull “epic fantasy novel.” As I’ve mentioned before, I think Villoso needs to vastly rethink the genre she’s chosen to write in. What is this “character-driven” drivel? You just made that genre up, didn’t you?

I am told that this is actually going to be a double trilogy (as opposed to a six-book series). The first three books (including this one) is supposed to be told from Talyien’s point of view, while the second trilogy is going to be a multi-POV trilogy dealing with some sort of war because clearly Talyien is going to fuck everything up like Villoso’s characters tend to do. I can only imagine how excruciating the next few books are going to be. Please, Villoso, for the love of God, just stop…just…