Morning crankies.

Okay. So, due to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, I didn't get a whole lot of reading done this weekend. But I did start The Alchemy of Forever, and unfortunately, I was almost immediately irritated.

You tell me: Legit Complaints, or Morning Crankies?

Exhibit the first:

Cyrus easily pulls a vial out of his pocket:

"People are always looking for magic, when the natural world holds true miracles," he says, pulling a small glass vial from his pocket. (4)

And then, a little later in the same scene, that self-same vial—that he already actually opened and used—has mysteriously migrated to a location that requires literal bodice-ripping:

In a haze, I see him rip open his tunic and pull out a small vial. (7)

Exhibit the second:

In the Prologue, Cyrus explains the deal with the potion, and we see it in action as he uses it on the heroine so she can cheat death by stealing someone else's body:

"It is an elixir," he explains hurriedly. "My father and I created it during the Black Death. He fell ill, and we used this to save him. The body you know—he was not born into it."

I feel a tug as something in my throat burns. "I am on fire!"

"It's the silver cord that binds your soul to your body," he says urgently, "and this potion is unraveling it. You'll soon be free." (7-8)

And then, in the Book Proper—about twenty pages later—all of that gets trotted out all over again. The term 'Incarnate' is new, but not the rest of it:

Cyrus, the son of an alchemist, had learned how to make the elixir that unbinds the silver cord that anchors the soul to the body. He wears a vial of it around his neck at all times. It only takes a few drops to turn a mortal being into one of us: an Incarnate, a soul untethered from a specific body, who can live forever by stealing others' lives. (30)

The second issue made me wonder if possibly the Prologue was tacked on after the rest of the book was written. Regardless, repetition like that makes me crazy.

So, what say you? Am I being massively nitpicky? Probably. Even so, I know there have to be other people out there who are bothered by stuff like this, too. Are you one of them?

Comments

[Chrissy]

My vote's for Legitimate Complaints. At best, that writing is awkward.
But I had a bad day, and my crank is off hunting the suburbs for small crunchy things that squeak.

[Diana Peterfreund]

I say cranky, but then again, as a writer I'd rather annoy the rare careful reader than confuse the majority of them, who usually have to read things a few times for it to sink in.