I bought a traditionally published book from the Waterstones in town. Cute cover, cartoon space scene. Unfortunately whilst it is an easy read, I do not feel compelled to care about the characters. I thought initially it was a symptom of the first-person narrative, which can often be too heavy-handed with exposition and telling-not-showing feelings.

But it’s deeper than that. I can pick up bits where I am sure the editor trimmed away something interesting, or the writer chose not to be interesting. It’s sad because the book right now (I am on page 56) feels quite flat. And I think it’s partly due to how formulaic it is.

It is structured thusly.

• protagonist mentions her job, her brother, and her cat

• protagonist tells the reader indirectly there are EVIL CAPITALISM PROBLEMS in the universe, which feels a bit heavy-handed at the time but is later remedied by it having some actual relevance to the story (this was good even if it didn’t suit my tastes)

• protagonist then tells us how she feels about things

• protagonist hears a movement in an ancient building, cool brother dismisses it, and you guessed it, bad aliens are there

• bad guys have epic brain melting weaponry but do not use it and are instead compelled to talk about space cat

• space cat is fine (good)

• protagonist talks some more about feelings

• protagonist talks about how her brother might feel about her feelings

• bad guys steal a thing

• protagonist says she feels sad they stole the thing

• protagonist says she feels angry her brother didn’t listen

• protagonist mentions feelings, goes to her room, has different feelings which are listed off in order of importance

• random musings on sadness

I won’t say what the book is because I am not a book reviewer (I’ve reviewed plays, radio shows, and other things before, but books feel too close to home and I am leaving the reviewing behind to focus on creating anyway) and also because I think many of its issues are endemic to trad writing as a whole - that is that many stories are ‘polished’ but in a way which removes their intrigue. Stuff feels formulaic. It read like a Scooby Doo episode. I knew what was going to happen next because of how many similar structures there are in the popular tradpub space. That said, it was cute, and not in a bad way. It worked.

There were one or two passages which irritated me because it’s meant to be set 1000 years from now and the slang is incredibly trapped in 2018 lingo that I felt I was reading a wattpad first draft at times.

The premise is fun, and that’s dragging me through the prose right now. I want to see how the author does it. So I am now interested in the book as a writer, and not as a reader.