Shadowmancer (Paperback)

Taylor has said in interviews "I'm a philistine" and "I didn't have a plot ... I just kept writing and writing" - this is no Revelation. And how we now wish he hadn't!

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Where to start? From very early on into the story I realised what a struggle it would be to finish the story as it is so poorly written. Leaving aside the technicalities such as poorly constructed sentences which disjoin the narrative and fragment any atmospheric tension in the story, the characters and plot are very poorly developed. You get the feeling that GP Taylor reguritated this 'novel' as quickly as possible in order to cash in on the explosion in children's fantasy writing at the moment.
Little wonder that he had to orginally publish this book himself.

Characters are lacklustre, 2-dimensional and stereotypical. There is no individual character development let alone in the relationships between them. You end up feeling nothing for them and will be so bored to tears you'll be rooting for the villain to get on with it and kill them all as quickly as possible, so you can get on with shredding this travesty and never speaking of it again. We learn little about the character's backgrounds nor their motives for their actions and choices. Scenes which are supposedly meant to be loaded with emotional tension such as the heroine finding out her father was colluding with smugglers are then cheapened and almost embarrassing due to the lack of empathy and compassion the reader feels towards them.

The dialogue is jammed packed with cliches. So much so, you'll find yourself wincing out loud at the sear corniness of it. You'll find better lines in an episode of Eastenders than on the pages of this book.

New characters and magical items are introduced at random and then disappear and never heard of again, making you think "What was the point in that?" GP taylor tries to cram too much superficial glitz into one story without taking the time to get the basics right first. Magical items and creatures with fantastical names are introduced in just about every other chapter, but at the same time we are bored with the characters and have no real idea (or interest) in where the story is going. It is as if GP Taylor is trying to cram in the whole mythology of the worlds of Tolkien, Pullman or Rowling into a 300page book. It just cannot be done without casulties, and unfortunately the casulties in this case are the plot, characters and dialogue.

Overall a very poor effort.

Interesting side note: GP Taylor appeared on a recent BBC documentry 'Imagine' about children's literature. Of the many emminent authors who appeared on the show (amongst whom Phillip Pullman and Salman Rushdie) he was the only one who spoke disparagingly of his fellow authors; namely Rowling and Pullman. He had the audacity to compare his stale and stilted villain to the ones in the Harry Potter and Dark Material series, and seemed just as pompous and full of cliches as his writings. Still, it's not very often you see such a green-eyed vicar.

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What's wrong with it? Take your pick. The characters are shallow and uninspiring. There is no depth to them or even any real development. The prose is terrible; it really comes as no surprise that G.P. Taylor was forced to self-publish this book - after all the agency he paid to read it said it was the worst thing they had ever read. You'd better believe it, it really is that bad. Sentences are disjointed, descriptions hopelessly flat. Realism makes way for obvious political correctness. While it is admirable to include a black character, how many black people lived in Yorkshire in the time period that this book is set in? None.

There is no tension, no suspense. It quickly becomes a real struggle to care about the characters or the story, or even turn the page. The obvious Christian allegory is also irritating, simply in that it is far too obvious.

In short, this is a terrible book. Don't believe the hype, and more importantly don't waste your money.

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