The Veiled Flame by LR Eldr

Every once in a while I'll run full tilt into a review book that makes me ask myself what on earth I just read, and unfortunately this is one of those titles. Look, I'm one of those reviewers who'll read traditionally and self-published works with equal enjoyment, and in general my spidey senses don't often let me down when it comes to saying, "hey, I'll read this" – because I can usually tell if the cover is awful, ten to one the author hasn't bothered to spend money on an editor. Here, they didn't have a half bad cover, even if the typeface is one I'm heartily sick of seeing. EVERY self-published fantasy novel (and some trad-pubbed, too seems to have a wet one for this font. Author LR Eldr clearly blew their budget on the cover that they slapped on this rather unfortunate manuscript that wasn't ready for publication. Not by a long shot. In fact, I would compare it favourably to the immortal The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis. If you know, you know...

I've been agonising for weeks on how I'm going to explain The Veiled Flame to other people who might stumble upon this review, and I've come to the conclusion that I don't really have words. This document needs a developmental editor. And then a thorough bunch of copy editing. And line editing. And proofreading. The whole nine yards, and then some. That's possibly the kindest thing I can say. Beyond the crunchy (and not in a good way) dialogue and the random, inexplicably weird stuff that is weird ... And a story that reads like some sort of gothic psychedelia with rare bursts of half-all right prose, I persevered to the end much in the same way we sometimes rubberneck at a car crash. There really isn't a diplomatic way to express my horror that this manuscript ever saw publication in the first place. 

Generally, I sandwich my reviews, and try to find light and bubbles to lighten the negative, but here I was left utterly gobsmacked. Read this book at your own peril. Or turn it into a drinking game.