Thread by @planefag

Very well. I shall read your book. Ladies and Gentlemen, let us gather 'round for a patented Fap Angel Review Thread.™

https://twitter.com/shadmbrooks/status/1755252862689661360

Ahrek is literally telling Cueseg "no brah, Taco Bell is SHIT. If you want real actual fucking home country cuisine you go to this place down on Main and Second with the huge Sombrero? And you'll think at first "wow lookit these white bois" but then they bring out the salsa and-"

"-you're like YOOOOOO and then you look up past the white boy that brought the food and you see this Mexican mofo in the kitchen looking over the counter and he's like YOOOOOOOOOOOOO DAS RITE BITCH YOU IN FLAVORTOWN NOW BOOYEA"

... I want you all to understand that you're looking at a drowning man with a quart of Vodka in him clinging to any debris he can find in the storm.

Do not fucking judge me.

... okay, FAIR

See, that wasn't bad at all. That's fine.

oh my god are we edging towards

ACTUAL

VULNERABILITY?

SOOOOO

SAAAAD

HE IS SO FUCKING SAD U GUIES

I can feel a few of my followers quivering rn, cries of "SHITLIB, SHITLIB" in their gullets

as a liberal myself, can we please get some better representatives

holy shit

we're ALMOST doing the thing but at the same time HE HAS BEEN SUCH a GOOD BOY

there isn't enough alcohol on earth for this shit rn

I don't have a reaction image worthy of this.

"Guilt" is now a debuff that costs him -1 Dexterity and -1 Strength

cha-cha real smooth now

fuck you

If you were to make up a lie, the lie you would tell at this juncture would be that you came across your father one night dangling from the rafters with a sketch of a girl that looked like you lying by his feet. And after you cut him down you spent half the night on suicide watch

And this heinous lie would really be describing how you felt about yourself, and would include details like, for instance, "if I'd known at the time what he'd tell me only a year before his death I probably would have let him dangle" with the poison being directed inward

If he was truly repentant, when he first saw her at the docks he probably would have gone quietly, and it would only have been Ahrek's intervention that kept him free. Or he would've provoked a fight and then insisted on engaging with an unspoken subconscious death wish

None of this shitbag's actions tell me he gives a fuck about what he's done. All we get is "I'M SO FUCKING SAD"

fuck you

VERY PROSE

SUCH WRITING

SO SKILL

Shad, I hope for your sake your children never, ever read this pile of rancid shit.

HA HA TEE-HEE SO FUNNI

fuck you and fuck the horse you rode in on

HE'S CHARGING TEN MOTHERFUCKING YEW-ESS DOLLARY-DOODILIES FOR THIS FUCKING STORY

FROM GOD'S MOUTH TO YOUR EARS BROTHER

https://twitter.com/StillMisanthro1/status/1759446932773122332

https://twitter.com/LoverofTang/status/1759442709897527806

oh yes, that excuses the rape victim's quick recovery and resort to throwing herself at men

it's all ok now

You know what pisses me off the most, is, there's actually a basis for this, in Ye Olden Social Mores. It's not a bad social/sexual construct to explore. But no 16 year old girl is going to start throwing herself at men mere DAYS after being gang-raped, and certainly-

-ISN'T GOING TO THROW HERSELF AT A PENNILESS ASSHOLE WHO HAS DEMONSTRATED LITERALLY NO POWERLESS IN BATTLE OR DISPLAYED ANYTHING APPROACHING WEALTH AND IS ALREADY KNOWN TO BE 1. PENNILESS AND 2. A PIRATE

FUCK YOU

FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU *FUCK YOU*

I am not OK rn

This is one of many points I want to talk about when this sad abortion is finally carried to term, and so I shall say -

- put a pin in this.

https://twitter.com/AthanasiusAg/status/1759472169027801511

https://twitter.com/Xpovsy/status/1759480989145817244

@johndrewmarkley He keeps missing the mark - not by a mile, but not by an inch, either - and it makes me wonder how he managed to find the ballpark, but then proceed to pitch so very badly.

Good afternoon.

Nobody ever growls or grimaces or frowns or scowls, they sneer. There's at least ten, maybe twenty sneers a chapter.

So now Lyrah is in the midst of a full-on PTSD breakdown because she's looking at the man who *repeatedly raped her* and she can see that his voice, his mannerisms, his *everything* are identical - only his age is different.

This next makes me want to destroy furniture

I'm exhausted past the ability to be constructive at this point. Just read this. Just fucking read this shit. Remember, this is a woman Daylen raped, repeatedly, some twenty years ago.

And then we jump straight to another letter-excerpt-under-chapter-title where he confesses to genociding a million of his OWN PEOPLE in a particular city with ship-born superweapons.

One million fucking people.

An entire city.

The person sneering this time isn't anyone in the book, fucking trust me on that.

Put a pin in this.

Oh but he's still guilty guys. We get told that his guilt feels lesser now, but he's still Very Guilty, and awkward around Lyrah. Good thing that it only took one apology for him to earn forgiveness and vindication that he can be A Good Man, huh?

This is VILE.

The total death toll of the first two atom bombings - from all causes; counting till four months after the bombings - is around 250,000. A quarter of a million.

But sci-fi writers have no sense of scale; and epic fantasy's no different.

https://twitter.com/poiThePoi/status/1759697353550782870

"I am so guilty about repeatedly raping her when she was just a child," Daylen says. Five minutes later it's "Okay, now back to putting that uppity bitch in her place."

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Daylen's a pure bastard.

This is a completely pointless sentence. While I get that Daylen is still not used to being seen as a boy, we could've just been told that: "Daylen was still unused to being seen as a boy." Instead of this long-winded repetition of SHIT WE ALREADY FUCKING KNOW

And now he's about to ask his onetime childhood rape victim if she has a son, and if he's evil, so he can go murder his own fucking son

again.

Because Mr. Mass Genocide The Turbo-Rapist only judges on GOOD OR EVIL, the dispassionate sword of JUSTICE!

This is *so fucked.*

Time to add another grenade to the box. Put a pin in this. And let this connect back to the *attempted* apprehension on the docks, where Lyrah was ready, willing and able to beat Daylen's ass till he was a grease spot on the wooden wharf.

Which never happened.

Had Lyrah done that - just fucking obliterated his ass, with Ahrek only stepping in to save his life after Daylen stupidly keeps trying to fight out of arrogance and pride, *despite* knowing he *absolutely* deserves it, *especially* from the person beating his sorry ass-

-it would've been the first time Daylen actually faced actual consequences, *actual* consequences for his past actions, that wasn't us just being informed of how brooding and tormented he was. A TANGIBLE punishment that actually sticks.

But even if Lyrah figures out his true identity and whales on him before the end of the book - we're 3/4ths the way through now. It's far too late to build any pathos. We, as readers, now absolutely loathe this foul-mouthed, arrogant, psychotic murdering bastard.

It's especially too late after he turned his OWN FUCKING SON INTO A MEAT POPSICLE, and his alleged misery of learning what he did after the fact is now tempered by his FULL WILLINGNESS TO DO IT AGAIN if they're not good little boys

The anime hair is just mondo stupid.

LMAO SO FUNNI ECKS-DEE

This man - who is effectively the love child of Napoleon and Nikolai Tesla combined with the fighting ability of Audie Murphy, doesn't have the ability to concoct even the simplest lie. He can't just say "I woke up to a life-or-death struggle, panicked, and started hacking."

And the problem is I can't tell if this is deliberate - if it's because Shad (the author) wants him to be an irredeemable proud prick, or because Shad simply doesn't have the wit to imagine how this character might lie his ass off in an interrogation room.

Here's the thing, though - we're at the 3/4ths mark of the book and Daylen hasn't changed one itty bitty tiny bit. Not his demeanor, not his arrogance, not his manner of speaking, not his rudeness, not his pride.

Put a pin in this.

Naturally, after being interrogated for the decockenings he committed in the last city, all charges are dropped promptly, for Reasons.™

No consequences for Daylen the Good Boy!

"It was great to see that law enforcement considered him to be on their side."

Presumably, Shad has the wit to have this be a setup for a fall; when someone comes to question him about his false identity (which he didn't arrive in time to alter) and Lyrah promptly beats him down

Just like the Pirate Son thing, this kind of thing is too obvious; outside of Gary Stu fanfiction this level of ass-patting is never put in except as a setup for a payoff later. And Shad *does* have the wit to do setup-payoff as we've seen; he just mangles the execution horridly.

And, as I said, we're now 3/4ths the way through the book, and even if a violent beatdown cometh, it'll probably be another "I'm sad" moment for Daylen, or just an empowerment/character development/girlbawss scene for Lyrah.

Daylen won't have to contend with *helpless fear.*

It won't be a role reversal, where Lyrah has HIM exactly where he had HER multiple times. He won't be altered, he won't be changed.

Or, if he is, it'll be the denouement of the entire story and one asswhipping will be enough to make him stop being a giant prick. night/day change

ominous.

https://twitter.com/Broken_Ente/status/1759705290595783016

Now he's experimenting with Lyrah using light magic powers. As has already been hinted at before, Daylen has an advantage over any other user in that he's more flexible; he can put all his power into enhancing this or that, whereas others have to specialize to do that.

Oh. He also has more raw power than any other light magic user.

Because why the fuck not? Why not make this character impossible to effectively challenge?

There's multiple reasons to make characters struggle. First, it lest us identify/emphasize with them. Life's a bitch, we ALL struggle. Secondly, the pressure reveals who they truly are; tearing away that socially constructed "face" and showing their true selves.

Third, readers love a competent hero - we LIKE people who are badass and resourceful, and dire challenges give them a chance to showcase their skill, courage and intellect.

Daylen has yet to meet a problem he can't just head-butt into a red paste.

You don't need to put "two" twice god dammit we don't have the memory span of a goldfish

BAH

Oh, so that's why they don't run around decocking people.

But that brings me right back to the Superman comparison - with his greater power, and given the explanations here, Daylen should be a few orders of magnitude more effective than any other knight.

He could do it alone!

"“We’re quite the potent combination.”

Lyrah glanced at him with a slight smile."

Awww look at that, she's gotten over her intense PTSD already and they're frieeeeeends

He did a LOT of genociding

"On the larger scale?" The prose continues to be a chore to digest.

Now Daylen is meeting with the Neo-TurboNazis and he reveals his identity and we get a Big Speech as he puts them in her place and condemns his prior actions and isn't he just the goodest fucking boy

And now the leader of the cell admitted they have a terrorist attack against the government already in motion (he was investigating their involvement in sex trafficking when he came knocking) and then she shouts "HEIL TURBOHITLER" before he punches her head off. Like asplode

You'll note that any description of swordplay is gone now. You know, the thing Shad has a popular youtube channel devoted to? The one thing his subject matter expertise could help him really make pop; the action scenes?

Now it's just "and then he killed everyone like Naruto"

See what I mean? See what I fucking mean?

His magical ability lets him track scent trails better than any bloodhound, so he's basically as powerful as the FBI looking up Persistent Stare data from a drone and having a full record of where anyone went in the last 48 hours. Or longer. Over far greater distances.

So it's already become "run to Place, Kill People, Get Next Clue-" how long will this detective arc even last? Lol. Lmao even. Hopefully it's over very fucking quick. Why are there so many pages left

At this point my brain is blocking it out.

https://twitter.com/Xpovsy/status/1759716137825120647

https://twitter.com/Broken_Ente/status/1759717322636276197

"Ahrek took a moment to answer. “I suspected you from the first time we met,” he said in a soft, defeated tone."

WELL NO SHIT, SHERLOCK

christ that drawn out path to this screamingly obvious conclusion was a chore to read, every goddamned time Ahrek was like "hmm gee"

But no, Ahrek had to check the records office first to figure it out. Lol. Lmao even. What a dipwad.

Ahrek is the Rebel Leader that took Daylen down. Lol. lmao.

oh and daylen killed his entire family.

but of course Ahrek isn't butchering him on the spot because uh God said so

Spoiler warning lmfao

THERE we go. finally. fucking finally.

except get a load of Daylen here. "I want to die, the burdens of my sins are so heavy - but I won't LET you kill me, even though I WANT you to!"

Y'know, Shakespeare could pull this off with MacBeth, but Shad, Shakespeare you fuckin ain't

I am not even trying to parse this fight scene.

so guilt. much sad. very regret

Naturally, after a lot of bullshit, Daylen wins!

Because of course he does.

So Ahrek just spilled the beans to Lyrah and she immediately has a PTSD breakdown followed by a flashback - well no, it's not a flashback really, just a recitation of Daylen's crimes against her and then her rallying and having her girlbaws moment of "I will kill that SOB."

So now Lyrah AND Ahrek are teaming up to whoop his ass... and he's still not on the ground in a pile yet.

"Punched it to."

This fucking prose

Please tell me this actually goes somewhere.

"This fight had suddenly become more trivial than he could express."

Now the neo-turbonazis had decided to do a colony drop on the capitol, using one of the bigger flying islands to just bulldoze through the five-layer darkstone shield net, but now the island's turned into a gigantic Shade monster and now Ahrek is in a *formal* duel with Daylen

Formal duels meaning neither can use their powers, including the massive ass-pull power-up Daylen just used to no-sell Lyrah AND Ahrek. Yeah. That's a thing that happened.

Put a pin in this.

Ahrek wins - but you know, only because Daylen let him by accepting the duel conditions - and then he has the fucking balls to drop a "YOU AND I ARE NOT SO DIFFERENT" line, because Ahrek is him back when he slew the former queen.

Except for the immediate child murder after.

And this talks Ahrek out of murdering the man who slew his entire fucking family. His wife, his children.

Then Daylen gives him a hug.

I'm not fucking joking.

Okay maybe the kamikazie island didn't turn into a monster? They were just cursing? I don't know because I just barely skipped through this entire section. Then Daylen does a Big Hero Sacrifice and dies but survives because of course and now everyone knows who he really is

He's decided to Answer For His Crimes but of course, as he reminds everyone, he's basically unstoppable anime superhero mans now and nobody can REALLY hold him if he doesn't want to be, so he's just humoring them all.

oh btw he has an entire war-fleet and an anime superweapon stashed away still, just in case he needs to overthrow the government because oh, idk, they're sillies that won't believe that Winter Is Coming. I'm sure this won't happen in book 2

So now they're planning to have a massive public show trial, then execute him so many times he needs multiple wills.

Ahrek has decided to use his Last Miracle (which costs him his life) to resurrect Daylen.

Daylen, the serial child rapist, serial child murderer + genocider.

No, the serial child rapist, serial child murder, genocider, murderer of Ahrek's entire family, wife and children included, and tyrant that Ahrek personally spent years leading a rebellion and eventually bitter war against.

Put a pin in that.

Incredible. They're now reading out a list of Daylen's crimes, so what was previously just chapter opening blurbs is now directly in the story.

They start out by putting his total death toll, military and civilian, at TWENTY-EIGHT FUCKING MILLION PEOPLE.

To put this into perspective, it falls right into the middle of the estimated death toll range of the Great Leap Forward.

I've tried to calculate where this places Daylen in regards Hitler (the standardized SI unit) but 6*106 is 636 and 6 to the power of 106 is a ludicrously massive number, leading me to seriously question the calibration of the Hitler.

I leave this exercise to you, readers.

I am now informed that the figure was a typo; and 1 Hitler is supposed to equal 6 million, confirming that the Hitler is egregiously poorly calculated. For starters, the true cost of the Holocaust alone was 12 million - Jews were not the only victims targeted.

This also leaves out civilian deaths from direct bombardment and secondary effects such as starvation, etc, the military death toll, and exactly how many ancillary deaths should be attributed directly to Hitler.

But for the sake of brevity, if we calibrate the Hitler as equal to 12 million deaths, then Daylen clocks in at approximately 2.3 Hitlers, putting his inflicted cost at $96,600,000,000,000.

Not adjusting for inflation.

However, this must be weighed against how very sad Daylen feels about it.

Astoundingly, Shad sees fit to name the *exact* number of victims Daylen raped - 427. No more, no less. Each victim raped multiple times - daily for about a month, according to the letter earlier. No word on how many he murdered with his own hands after they went catatonic.

I was going to comment, but I think this excerpt speaks for itself.

Lyrah then testifies that she was all of fourteen years old when Daylen had her abducted so he could rape her, daily, for a month.

POOR, POOR FUCKING DAYLEN

A lot of the charges were trumped up though, by those damned naughty UNIONS

And then, naturally, they sentence him to Atone Through Good Deeds, which was exactly what he was planning to do anyways.

So once again, after feeling VERY SUPER ULTRA TURBO GUILTY, he faces no real consequences or punishment at all.

POOOOOR POOOOOOOR BABY, POOOR DAYLEN, HE MAY AS WELL BE CARRYING A CROSS UP THE FUCKING HILL

I'm not even going to dignify the last few paragraphs with any coverage. This is the last line of the novel.

Now, lets go back to that box of pinned grenades and put some things together.

His horrific, ugly brutality is justified as being useful - as a *strength* that lets him "do what good men can't," and is further forgiven because it makes Daylen feel sad.

How the man who was brutally hacked apart felt is not mentioned at all.

Later, talking to Ahrek, Daylen defends himself by pointing out that he wasn't ~all~ bad. Why, after all, he made the airships run on time, didn't he?

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759297996192203034

Yet another time we're told - or Daylen thinks to himself - that his character is a good thing, because it allows him to do Necessary Tasks that good-hearted people cannot.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759339650131362239

Note a pattern here. Daylen has exactly two responses to his actions:

1. Feel sorry for himself and cry.
2. Assert that it's good he can do "necessary" things better men cannot do, implicitly saying that those actions were justified.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759341808977363123

https://twitter.com/AthanasiusAg/status/1759472169027801511

Now we get to Lyrah. One of his victims - a fourteen year old girl he repeatedly raped, brutalized, and humiliated. By rights - as someone TRAINED in the use of the light magic powers, unlike Daylen, who's new to them - she should've been able to tear him multiple new orifices.

She should, in fact, have been able to subject him to exactly what HE subjected HER to - *true helplessness.* *Terror.* The knowledge that he was powerless to stop the agonizing violation of his body; knowing he is entirely within her power, and that she is cruel and terrible.

Instead, he escapes her (with aid from a paladin who is acting directly on God's orders,) and even when he turns himself into the authorities, Shad takes pains to ensure it's entire Daylen's own idea. He's never at a disadvantage, and always in control.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759701942278713607

The story, in fact, bends over backwards to give him awesome new powers to *ensure* that he can't be forced to suffer as he made others suffer, even when two of his victims team up against him:

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759734767321334193

Lyrah - the woman he repeatedly raped - forgives him. Without him ever having once truly been forced to experience anything even remotely like what he did to her.

The only pain he feels is his own guilt. We're told he's Very Sad.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759741004297502862

So, going all the way back to that moment on the rooftop, we can see Daylen hasn't changed at ALL over the course of 500 pages. Nor can this be justified by viewpoint - the light, God, sent Ahrek to back him up. This is explicit divine intervention.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759704770527338945

Daylen is prideful, arrogant, sneering, (constantly), brutal, cruel, self-absorbed, smug bastard. We're TOLD, time and time again, that he's tormented by his personal guilt, but all we ever see him do is cry about it. Well, once he threw up then pouted in his room.

He explicitly only commits suicide because he knows he has days, maybe weeks to live and wishes to die on his own terms. His guilt - which so torments him - never once impacts his actual demeanor. He's polite to a woman in a foreign country when they show him hospitality...

... but that's the first and last time I can recall him not being a bastard. He puts two people in their place, showing them how little they know of swordplay, and is an arrogant, gladhanding bastard during both encounters.

It feels like he's indulging his own sense of superiority more than going out of his way to prevent the others from walking into danger. Especially because he acts this way with everyone at all times; being nasty, rude, and ugly to everyone he meets.

There's no semblance of contrition in his bearing or demeanor. He feels no real debt to the people in the world around him, no real inclination to be kind, and the only charity he gives comes easily as he's got more money than he knows what to do with. He doesn't really need it.

Moreover, he's so incredibly powerful that nobody can hope to defeat him, punish him, or hold him accountable. He can do whatever the fuck he wants, whenever the fuck he wants. Those who would make him do something have to talk him into it, they have to accept his power.

Do you know who Daylen reminds me of? This guy:

A former war criminal who committed horrific acts; rapes and murders uncountable. He sacrificed children. He *ate human flesh.*

And after all that, he claims to have seen the light and accepted Christ.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_B…

There's a video out there of this guy - or perhaps another former warlord-turned-preacher, I think there's another one - asking a man who's family he killed for forgiveness. And not humbly. You have to see it to believe it. The glad-handing smug arrogance of the murderer.

"I've accepted Jesus. Now forgive me for slaughtering your wife and children."

This is Daylen in a nutshell. Having committed horrific atrocities, the ONLY thing he's held to account by... is his own conscience. Not even God has punished him, or sent him dark trials.

We, the reader, as well as the people in the story's world, are supposed to believe that a man twisted enough to commit those unspeakable atrocities in the first place has a good enough soul that he can regret them strongly enough to feel misery equal to what he inflicted.

Somehow. Somehow, his soul can be twisted enough to commit those acts, but he can be saintly enough that *his own guilty conscience* is atonement enough.

His good deeds, service isn't compelled upon him by God, as at EVERY STEP he is answerable to no higher authority whatsoever. He does "good" deeds because he feels like it; and it's easy to conclude he does them for selfish reasons - to make himself feel better; lessen guilt.

So with God's tacit sanction, he can run around murdering people in horrific, barbaric ways, inflicting pain and agony, even MURDERING HIS OWN CHILD, and the only punishment comes from his own conscience.

Now remember - despite the repeated attempts of the story to lessen the weight of his crimes by implying he didn't know the truth of it all, it is made *explicit* that he raped children, then murdered them in cold blood.

So if you remember this: right after Daylen brutally murders someone; far exceeding self-defense in his deliberate infliction of agony, he reflects on a rooftop. Note the highlighted bits - and the last line in this excerpt.

His horrific, ugly brutality is justified as being useful - as a *strength* that lets him "do what good men can't," and is further forgiven because it makes Daylen feel sad. How the man who was brutally hacked apart felt is not mentioned at all.

Later, talking to Ahrek, Daylen defends himself by pointing out that he wasn't ~all~ bad. Why, after all, he made the airships run on time, didn't he?

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759297996192203034

Yet another time we're told - or Daylen thinks to himself - that his character is a good thing, because it allows him to do Necessary Tasks that good-hearted people cannot.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759339650131362239

Note a pattern here. Daylen has exactly two responses to his actions:
1. Feel sorry for himself and cry.
2. Assert that it's good he can do "necessary" things better men cannot do, implicitly saying that those actions were justified.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759341808977363123

https://twitter.com/AthanasiusAg/status/1759472169027801511

Now we get to Lyrah. One of his victims - a fourteen year old girl he repeatedly raped, brutalized, and humiliated. By rights - as someone TRAINED in the use of the light magic powers, unlike Daylen, who's new to them - she should've been able to tear him multiple new orifices.

She should, in fact, have been able to subject him to exactly what HE subjected HER to - *true helplessness.* *Terror.* The knowledge that he was powerless to stop the agonizing violation of his body; knowing he is entirely within her power, and that she is cruel and terrible.

Instead, he escapes her (with aid from a paladin who is acting directly on God's orders,) and even when he turns himself into the authorities, Shad takes pains to ensure it's entire Daylen's own idea. He's never at a disadvantage, and always in control.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759701942278713607

The story, in fact, bends over backwards to give him awesome new powers to *ensure* that he can't be forced to suffer as he made others suffer, even when two of his victims team up against him:

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759734767321334193

Lyrah - the woman he repeatedly raped - forgives him. Without him ever having once truly been forced to experience anything even remotely like what he did to her.

The only pain he feels is his own guilt. We're told he's Very Sad.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759741004297502862

So, going all the way back to that moment on the rooftop, we can see Daylen hasn't changed at ALL over the course of 500 pages. Nor can this be justified by viewpoint - the light, God, sent Ahrek to back him up. This is explicit divine intervention.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759704770527338945

Daylen is prideful, arrogant, sneering, (constantly), brutal, cruel, self-absorbed, smug bastard. We're TOLD, time and time again, that he's tormented by his personal guilt, but all we ever see him do is cry about it. Well, once he threw up then pouted in his room.

He explicitly only commits suicide because he knows he has days, maybe weeks to live and wishes to die on his own terms. His guilt - which so torments him - never once impacts his actual demeanor. He's polite to a woman in a foreign country when they show him hospitality...

... but that's the first and last time I can recall him not being a bastard. He puts two people in their place, showing them how little they know of swordplay, and is an arrogant, gladhanding bastard during both encounters.

It feels like he's indulging his own sense of superiority more than going out of his way to prevent the others from walking into danger. Especially because he acts this way with everyone at all times; being nasty, rude, and ugly to everyone he meets.

There's no semblance of contrition in his bearing or demeanor. He feels no real debt to the people in the world around him, no real inclination to be kind, and the only charity he gives comes easily as he's got more money than he knows what to do with. He doesn't really need it.

Moreover, he's so incredibly powerful that nobody can hope to defeat him, punish him, or hold him accountable. He can do whatever the fuck he wants, whenever the fuck he wants. Those who would make him do something have to talk him into it, they have to accept his power.

Do you know who Daylen reminds me of? This guy:

A former war criminal who committed horrific acts; rapes and murders uncountable. He sacrificed children. He *ate human flesh.* And after all that, he claims to have seen the light and accepted Christ.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_B…

There's a video out there of this guy - or perhaps another former warlord-turned-preacher, I think there's another one - asking a man who's family he killed for forgiveness. And not humbly. You have to see it to believe it. The glad-handing smug arrogance of the murderer.

"I've accepted Jesus. You must forgive me for slaughtering your wife and children."

This is Daylen in a nutshell. Having committed horrific atrocities, the ONLY thing he's held to account by... is his own conscience. Not even God has punished him, or sent him dark trials.

We, the reader, as well as the people in the story's world, are supposed to believe that a man twisted enough to commit those unspeakable atrocities in the first place has a good enough soul that he can regret them strongly enough to feel misery equal to what he inflicted.

Somehow. Somehow, his soul can be twisted enough to commit those acts, but he can be saintly enough that *his own guilty conscience* is atonement enough.

Not even his assigned good deeds test him, as he overcomes every challenge with ease and/or suffers no lasting consequence.

His good deeds, service isn't compelled upon him by God, as at EVERY STEP he is answerable to no higher authority whatsoever. He does "good" deeds because he feels like it; and it's easy to conclude he does them for selfish reasons - to make himself feel better; lessen guilt.

So with God's tacit sanction, he can run around murdering people in horrific, barbaric ways, inflicting pain and agony, even MURDERING HIS OWN CHILD, and the only punishment comes from his own conscience.

Now remember - despite the repeated attempts of the story to lessen the weight of his crimes by implying he didn't know the truth of it all, it is made *explicit* that he raped children, then murdered them in cold blood.

I reiterate - he would rape, humiliate and demean young girls until they went catatonic from PTDSD and shock, and when they were too damaged to be useful as a toy to him, he'd murder them *with his own hands.* But his conscience is sufficient punishment for any deeds he does.

A friend of mine on Discord said this a few days ago; the idea being a character deliberately designed to piss people off. This describes Daylen *perfectly.*

Now with all that in mind, I wish to return to this last "pin," where I talk about narrative, and the point of narrative: to "build a bridge between souls;" to assist people in truly understanding one another.

https://twitter.com/planefag/status/1759325292844163495

What Shad chose to do with his narrative was glorify, justify and lionize a child rapist and murderer. He built a world where even God decided that a child rapist and murderer was redeemed if he felt sorry enough for himself.

Nobody wants to get into the mind of a child rapist and murderer, a stick, twisted, cruel monster who can brutally torture someone to death, then after a good cry, tell themselves it was justified and the act itself was for the greater good.

So. Take all of that, above, and let's draw some conclusions:

1. Technical skill. First, both the prose and plot are a fucking mess. The prose is stilted, dull, and borderline incomprehensible when giving descriptions (what few we do get) or when trying to describe action scenes. Action scenes are either boring or flat-out unreadable.

2. Characterization is petri-dish shallow with most characters only having one real trait. Dialogue is mostly grating to read and leaves you wishing all involved would have their mouths sewn shut. It also makes egregious missteps with regards to character emotional states-

- such as women throwing themselves at men, repeatedly, shortly after being brutally gang-raped, with no apparent hesitation, or women displaying severe PTSD even two decades after the initial assault only to forgive their assailant within 48 hours of meeting them again.

3. The plot is a meandering mess; the story starts in the wrong place, the character has a vague reason for action which is frequently ignored and then completely dropped, and a tangible threat must be invented out of whole cloth to provide any threat for the climax/denouement.

4. The content: which, as discussed above, celebrates and lionizes a multiple child rapist and murderer who does absolutely nothing to atone for, nor earn, the forgiveness he's shown by all.

Nor can this be dismissed as an author sketching in a never-tangibly-glimpsed backstory with strokes too broad, as he MEETS one of his former victims face to face; a significant character with lots of screentime, and is even put on public trial where his crimes are *quantified.*

To wit, the content of this story is deeply offensive to everyone. Not just Christians. Not just Mormons, whom you represent in a very poor light by publishing this. But any decent person, of any faith, creed, or color, would be rightly repelled by this crass atrocity of a "book"

Furthermore, this book represents a crime against indie publishers. There's a thousand books this bad or worse on Amazon; probably more. But you have 1.7 million subscribers on Youtube and used that audience to promote this rancid trash far and wide.

Indie publishing is the only remaining option for new fiction authors anymore as tradpub has committed willing suicide. And it's extremely difficult for new authors to break in and make a career of it, as the ocean of horrid crud makes discovery a daunting chore for customers.

This comes from the total lack of gatekeepers - the one service tradpub used to deliver. And as deeply flawed as it was, it was at least better than nothing. Rehabilitating the reputation of indie pub; creating a future for new up and coming writers, requires making good work.

In short, by using your platform to widely promote this atrocity of a book, you've taken a big, smelly shit into the well from which both the next generation of fiction writers need to drink from. You have done fiction, esp. speculative fiction, a grave injury by doing this.

Mr. Shad M. Brooks, as this very lengthy thread documents, I have indeed read your book. Cover to cover. Under Fair Use I've used quotations to demonstrate I'm not lying about anything that you put into your story. And my conclusion is that you should be deeply ashamed.

@threadreaderapp unroll