My second bad review
One of my readers said he did not like THE GOLDEN AGE, and will not be buying the second book, PHOENIX EXULTANT.
The anonymous review posted on Amazon.com read, in part, “The main character Phaethon goes from one dissapointment and failed challenge to the next with little or no redemption throught the entire book, culminating with Phaethon loosing everything and utterly hopeless.”
The gentle reader here is anticipating slightly. Phaethon has farther to fall, and more too loose before he hits rock-bottom somewhere around Chapter 23.
He continues: “Come-on J.C.Wright, whats the deal? Isn’t life bad enough?”
Bad? The story describes life in a near-utopia. Nothing happens to Phaethon he does not bring on himself, either through his vices, or, perhaps, through his virtues.
“Do you really think readers want to read about an underachieving loser who screws his whole life up and loses all hope of redemption?”
With all due respect, underachievement is not exactly what Phaethon’s problem is. In fact, the opposite: he is such an over-achiever that paradise itself does not content him.
As to whether or not his life is screwed up, or being screwed perfectly in the place where one last screw is needed according to an unseen blueprint, only those readers patient enough to endure till volume III will discover the truth, catastrophic or glorious, whichever it may be.
And “Hopeless”? However much hope the gentle reader here has lost in the writer, the main character is not portrayed as loosing any hope in his dream: a small setback (like loosing everything in life he holds dear) will not deter or annoy a man like Phaethon.
“I say don’t waste your money on The Golden Age unless you are into depressing stories about underdogs getting their high hopes smashed again and again. Maybe the sequel would be more upbeat, but I will never know; I for one do not put my ‘faith on’ Mr. Wright redeeming the dissapointment I feel after reading his book, so I will spend my money elsewhere.”
I am regret that I lost the sale and the good will of one of my patrons.
I do not wish to give away the ending, but I do wish that gentle readers could some how be told that the first third of a trilogy is simply not meant to contain a entire tale. Whether the story ends happily or tragically, it simply cannot end happily, because it cannot end, at the intermission between Act I and Act II.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
