Review: The Accidental Sorcerer by K.E. Mills

Funny, witty, exciting and original are the words that come to mind when I think about this book. The Accidental Sorcerer is the first book in the Rogue Agent series, written by K.E. Mills, which is a pseudonym of Karen Miller. The book is about a bad wizard who goes through an event that changes him and the change makes him very dangerous.

Source: google images

     "What can be imagined, can be created." 
                                         - Lional 
  The Accidental Sorcerer. K.E Mills.Chapter fifteen, page 260, Published by Orbit. 

When I started the book, I was quite surprised to discover that the story took place in a modern world. I have mostly read fantasy set in medieval like settings, so this was something new for me. While I really enjoyed the book, I felt their was a lacking of worldbuilding. I have absolutely no clue how modern the society is, nor what the exact limitations of magic are. Because of the latter, I have questioned quite a few things in the book. The author's writing style is very fluent and engaging, a real pleasure to read. The characters are memorable and they feel very real, which I find very important. My favourite character was Reg. I love her sarcasm and her witty comments.

I never had the feeling that the book was slow, but the actually plot only starts to reveal itself at the middle of the book or, perhaps even beyond it. The first part of the book seems to have the sole purpose to be funny and introducing the main character, Gerald. While the humour is often good, sometimes there was just too much of it. The second half of the book is more action packed. There was a very interesting plot-twist that I had not expected at all. It was not a great book, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I will most likely read the other books in the series as well, because I am curious about Gerald's fate and I would not mind reading more about Reg!

Thus I give the book a 3/5 stars.

 

Writing Courses.

There are a bunch of writing courses out there, both for academic and creative writing. I myself have done an academic writing course because it was part of the curriculum and another one will follow the coming year or the year after that. I found this course very useful, because I had absolutely no clue how I was supposed to write a descent academic paper. Now I know what the rules are, or maybe guidelines is a better word, I am able to produce a descent piece of academic writing.

While I believe that academic writing courses can be useful, I frown upon the creative writing courses. I am talking about fiction writing, seeing that I have absolutely no experience with scripts or whatsoever. Creative writing does not have rules or guidelines, so how can you teach them to someone? Learning to write something good, is in my eyes a slow, hard process that requires a lot of practise. Everyone decides for themselves what good creative writing is. Thus it seems very hard for a teacher to decided what good writing is. What is also impossible to teach, is the writing voice. Every writer has his own writing voice and it is not something that it taught. In order to find your own writing voice, you have to undertake a journey. Lauren Sapala has written an interesting blog about finding your writing voice. You can find it here. I will not say that there is nothing to learn from such a course. I am sure that whoever teaches the course knows what he or she is doing and will be able to provide the aspiring authors with some useful tips. I do not think I will use that way to improve my writing.

My teachers are the books I love. I always ask myself why I liked certain books so much and use them as a guideline for my own writing. Blogs are also very useful tools to find some tips and tricks about writing. What I like a lot, are forums. You have a lot of people together who discuss writing, so if you have a question, the chances that you receive different answers are quite high. On youtube you can find whole writing courses. I watched a major part from one of them and I have to admit that I have not learnt a lot from it. Another way to improve your writing is to become a member of a writing group. Such groups gather together a couple times a month/a year and critique each other's writing. I would love to be in such a group but unfortunately there barely are any groups where I live and an online writing group does not seem as fun.

There are a lot of different ways to improve your writing, so before deciding to take a course, I would advice you to wonder if it is the best method out there for you.

Some useful links:
Fantasy writing blog and forum
Creative writing forum
Writing course taught by Brandon Sanderson
Writing excuses: writing tips podcast