I have just finished reading the first installment of a series of several books. It's really one long adventure, but there are advantages of breaking up the story into installments. For one thing, if you split the story into, say, three chunks, and the same 20 readers read all three books, at least you can claim that you sold sixty books!
Anyway, the story is about a dragon, that can shape-shift into a girl. It's complicated; when she's in girl form, she can change just one arm into dragon limb form, and so on.
This first volume was really fun to read, but I had felt that it should take place in medieval times, wherever it is set, and (in my mind) it doesn't make sense for the people to say things like: "Okay." In any case, this first volume 'The Dragon's Squire' is fun to read. Modern English is nothing like medieval English; the dialog of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, for instance—which would have been very satisfying to read in Dragon's Squire—would be actually fake, scholastically.
It is so disconcerting to find that my expectations of dialog in fiction are in fact anachronistic. So I would be sad if the author (Jada Fisher) hated me for what looks like a big fat black mark against their book, and they would be justified. But read it; it is a well-written book. Lots of clichés, but that makes it easier to read.
Confession: I have written period fantasy stories, too. The dialog I wrote was a little stilted; it only avoided modern contractions, like 'won't', instead of 'would not' (or will not).
I'm also reading another stir: Starchild, by J Washburn. It's too much action for me; most of you guys would like it.
Kay
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