Serpent Game

By SeanScruffy

This review will include spoilers.

A sci-fi adventure that's a mixture of The Dark Tower series, Cowboy Bebop, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Serpent Game is a sweeping epoch that isn't afraid to be bold and creative. This story is very faithful to the science fiction genre with its advanced tech, alien creatures, galactic wars, and magic. It is very reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop as it follows a bounty hunter's journey through a fractured post-apocalyptic Earth ruled by mafias that resemble the syndicates that Spike was caught between as a vagabond.

What makes the premise especially unique is its opening. Gyrone Irensho starts out...dead. Killed in a previous job. Because he contains a power called "The Silent Death," he is brought back to life to defeat an unspeakable evil by using this magic that he barely understands himself. My favorite part of the plot (and his character) is that instead of doing what he was brought back to do, he falls in love with Eve, a princess with a firecracker personality who tries to be a badass but oftentimes ends up being the "damsel in distress." He embarks on quite a different adventure while a growing darkness continues to threaten pretty much all of existence. At the end of the story, Gyrone suffers from his negligence and is captured by the enemy, having failed his mission to stave the growing antagonistic force.

I really love it when characters suffer because of the bad decisions they make. It's always frustrating when a character seems to get away with everything (which is the very definition of a Mary Sue). The fact that Gyrone's selfish pursuits get him in trouble at the end of the story was incredibly satisfying for me as a reader. But I really like the conflict of this too because the reader doesn't want Gyrone to be a pawn in another man's game and at times, wants him to run away with his lover and leave all of this for the factions to deal with. Gyrone didn't ask to be brought back to life to fix other people's problems, so why should he? It was also fun to draw more similarities between Gyrone and Spike here because Eve is a lot like Julia. The theme of Serpent Game for me was "love is more important than duty. Even though pursuing love can result in terrible consequences, it's still worth fighting for." For such an intense story featuring hardened warriors and extreme violence, I thought that its overall message was quite sweet.

As much as this draft has to offer its audience in its current state, it isn't ready for publication yet. It isn't ready for publication on a self-publishing platform and it's certainly not ready to query. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just means that I found this project to be largely unfinished...and quite frankly, a giant mess. Oftentimes as authors, our early drafts are messy and they are supposed to be that way. There seems to be a necessary phase in the writing process where an author must tell themselves the story before rewriting it in a way that can be communicated to a reader, and Serpent Game is very much in that early phase. Sometimes it doesn't matter if a draft is in its first or twentieth rewrite, if it's a rough draft, then it's...still a rough draft. That doesn't mean it will be later, it just means that it could use a few more rewrites before it's re-released on KDP or anywhere for that matter. This is the frustrating game that we must play as authors and you aren't alone in this.

This is the part of the essay where I have to prove why I think that Serpent Game is a mess and could use another draft or two. This is also the part of the review where I may very well ruin what's been a great friendship for two years or so. I could sugarcoat it and tell you that I enjoyed reading Serpent Game or I can be honest about how I felt about it, and I don't think the first will be too helpful. So I guess all this to say...it's been really really nice knowing you and I'll expect to see you standing outside my window burning my book in a dumpster fire to claim your (rightfully earned) revenge.

I think the primary issue is that this multi-POV design doesn't work. Almost every single chapter introduces a new character or several new characters, but the chapters fail to give the reader any remote idea about who these new characters are, what they want, and what they are even doing. At times, they didn't seem to have anything to do with the story at all...and at times, I had no idea what the story even was. Each chapter was very episodic: focusing on a different set of characters in a new location. If there was an overarching storyline, I was unable to figure it out, and I couldn't understand how these characters fit into that storyline.

Having to remember all of these characters without understanding what they were trying to do or why they were trying to do it made the book feel very unfocused. There's the potential for a great story here: Gyrone avoiding duty to be with Eve, but Serpent Game is hardly about that...out of the entire book, the main character is only present for maybe 20% of the book. And during that 20%,  he's fighting a "monster of the week" and the reader isn't really sure why. The other 80% is about a massive cast of characters with no clear backstories and no clear motivations doing seemingly random things for absolutely no good reason at all.

I was never able to pin down just one conflict. I wasn't sure what the factions were, why they were fighting one another, and what they were trying to do. Every time I finished a chapter I felt as if I were thrust into a brand new story. Because the book was so unfocused, by the time I got to the climax, I had no idea who these major players were: Arrok, Tao, General Gore, Mystic...here are these characters that you, the author, want the reader to care deeply for as we watch them get wrapped up in this massive battle and yet, I found myself scratching my head and turning back through the book to figure out "who this General Gore guy is?"

The truth is, the reader doesn't care about this massive cast of characters or their perspectives. But the reader does care about Gyrone. His story is why I purchased the book: he sounds awesome. A hitman is brought back from the dead to complete one more job and yet, he doesn't do it because he fell in love which is a fantastic idea for a story. But then the actual book ditches its strongest asset to throw a mess of half-developed ideas, characters, and fight scenes at the reader in rapid-fire succession. This story feels like it bit off more than it could chew and reads more like a list of ideas rather than an actual book. I believe that rewriting it (and doing this would truly mean starting over) from just Gyrone's POV would be an immense improvement. There is so much content in this book that doesn't need to be there. General Gore, the Anubians, the Spiritmother, the toymaker, Kazak, Arrik...let them be players in this massive and complex world that Gyrone has to navigate rather than characters with individual POVs that would require a series three times as long as The Wheel of Time to flesh out all the way. Bring Gyrone's story to the forefront with a focused theme, motivation, and a very clear plotline. Let Gyrone and Eve be the main characters as they are supposed to be. That's the kind of focus that Serpent Game needs.

Another big issue that Serpent Game has is its world-building, which while present, isn't communicated well to the reader. I was shocked to learn that this story takes place on post-apocalyptic Earth 1,000 years in the future because I was not able to pick that up from the actual story whatsoever. The factions, the location, the Anubians, the magic system, and the antagonist, none of these essential elements were clear. The book is written assuming that the reader already knows the exposition and continues on without providing any clarity. I'm not saying that you have to pander to readers and blatantly tell them the who what when where and why as if they're children, but refusing to provide any sort of exposition because it makes a story seem more "sci-fi" and "creative" hurts the project rather than helps it.

The elusive, airy, purple prose doesn't help with this either. I feel as if you approached every sentence and asked yourself "what's the most obscure and overly complicated way possible I can put this idea into a sentence." Almost every single sentence takes advantage of improper word usage, figurative language, or a simile/comparison that's so obscure that that result is just very awkward...this is where I am conflicted because I don't want to judge someone's writing style harshly. A person's writing style is personal, and too much criticism can easily kill a creative spark that has the potential to become a phenomenal, out-of-the-box approach to language. But at the same time, sacrificing clarity for creativity results in a writing style that, rather than coming off as novel, feels arrogant and condescending. It's as if the author is saying "if you don't understand my lofty prose then your reading comprehension isn't strong enough and your confusion is your own fault." Now I seriously doubt that was your intention, but it still reads that way. I found that the prose tries way too hard to be unconventional and this approach simply backfires–and unfortunately, I've found Guardium's prose to be the exact same. Along with the branching storyline and cast of characters, this writing style only contributes to Serpent Game's two biggest pitfalls: a lack of clarity and a lack of focus

Ronald Spatz once said in the Alaska Quarterly Review that "I have read some fiction, more in the past modern or experimental vein, where confusion and lack of clarity are deliberate (or where I've been told they're deliberate) but I'm often a little suspicious in such cases unless I can see some immediate powerful or provocative effect that makes me forget my confusion." I do think that Serpent Game tries to be elusive and confusing on purpose in an effort to be creative and it sacrifices what could be a very "powerful or provocative effect" on the reader. While creative writing is largely artistic, there's a certain technical aspect of it that's required to make your content successful...and Serpent Game is missing that technical aspect. Arthur Plotnik does a great job of teaching the balance between technical and creative writing in Spunk and Bite, arguing that "one of the holiest mantras of creative writing is, favor the concrete over the abstract, the particular over the general." I've written that on an index card and kept it close by because it's something that I am working on in my own fiction and it's a principle that I very much agree with. I think that, once Serpent Game receives the technical revisions that it deserves, it'll finally become the sci-fi epic it was intended to be.

Now, I've been on the other side of a review like this before and I know how awful it feels to learn that your story needs work...a lot of work. But I have enjoyed reconstructing and rewriting my story every single time, and every time I've started over and written a new draft, I've come closer to the final, sparkling version. The good news is that you're in the company of a bunch of authors who are going through the same excruciating process, drafting and rewriting and receiving feedback and starting over and drafting and rewriting and then editing again...forever and ever until finally, you get something that's finished enough. A lot of good comes out of keeping faith in the writing process. I think that Serpent Game is going to get there someday and the fact that it isn't there right now is okay. And I also think that if you want to leave this debut behind and focus on other projects, that's okay too...we all have to start somewhere.

I don't want you to walk away feeling like Serpent Game is a hot piece of garbage because that's not what I'm saying. Ultimately, I want the message of this review to be "really good work so far, but it's just not finished yet." There was a general tone to the story that I did really enjoy and I do think that it has the potential to be a very impressive and exciting work of fiction, but it simply needs to be reworked several times. I don't believe you are anywhere close to being done with this story, and what you said about "editing it one more time before leaving it for good" concerns me because I don't think once is going to be enough. Realistically I think it's going to take three. A massive rewrite that counts as a first draft, a second rewrite to take it out of the "new first draft," and then the third rewrite for good measure...and then edits. That's the writing process, unfortunately...and Serpent Game deserves this level of effort. But only if you want to. This draft already reads as if it's "tired" and the ending especially reads like you just didn't care about it anymore. That's called going "cold" on a manuscript. If you're still "cold" on this manuscript when returning to it after Guardium, then just let it be.

And then there's the issue of, well, me as a reviewer. Perhaps you've read more hard sci-fi than I have and I am not your "ideal reader." Despite the fact that I write science fiction, I'm truly passionate about American literature (like Steinbeck, Gardner, and Hemingway) and could very well not be the kind of person for whom Serpent Game is intended. I don't doubt that you've received some positive reception from readers who do love science fiction that's very obscure and "up to the reader's interpretation." I do believe that you will serve these readers better by revising. Making your work more accessible will broaden your audience and increase your chances of success. Whatever you decide to do just know that I will still support you and your work, and I will always be here if you want some company while we reopen our document files and write "chapter one" again.

See you, space cowboy