T. Novan

I've read this story before but it was the online, Xena-uber fan fiction version. I was young in my lesfic reading career and pretty easily impressed. I liked this story pretty well back then. I read it a second time a few years ago and liked it less. I still liked the humor and some of the situations the characters found themselves in and the relationships between the main and the most prominent secondary characters were fun and felt genuine.

It was only a few months ago, I think, when the newest edition was released for sale on Amazon and I was happy when I was able to grab a copy on a free day. I felt much less lucky as I got into the book and discovered it is absolutely riddled with typos, missing words, and other problems that should have been cleaned up before releasing it to the lesfic consumers. Setting aside all the standard old fan fic issues of head hopping, identifying characters by their eye or hair color or profession, not taking the time to run spell check or hire a proofreader before charging money for the book put me in a bad place while reading. If I had paid for it, I'd be really pissed and likely would have returned it for a refund.

I already know that most of my friends would still rate this a 4 or 5 star book simply because they'd read it before when fan fic was still going strong in the Xenaverse, and I wouldn't rate the free online version with only two stars. But this is supposed to be a professionally produced product that readers are paying for. Judging the book in that way, two stars, in my opinion, is fair.… (mere)

Definitely a blast from the past, but after 15 years of avoiding anything T Novan, I thought, 'why the hell not, I've got a few hours to kill?' I knew it was going to be formulaic, I knew it was going to be an uber-Xena fic, I knew it was going to be full of cliché. I wasn't wrong. A lot of things happened, but there was a decided lack of conflict, even the bits that did throw up the opportunity for proper conflict ended in a candy coated love fest that made me wish for a dentist. I was also confused by the constant head hopping and internal thoughts. Fine for a fan fic site, I've been guilty of it myself, but not fine for a published work. Having said that, this piece did raise a few laughs and a few smiles, but I feel the Madam President should have been a little more President and little less Mary Sue.
… (mere)