The Book of Gold and Crimson: A review

So I found a suggestion/prompt in one of the writing magazines to look forward to when your current project was complete, then write a scathing review (and, contrastingly, a glowing one, to.) I tried it, and found my negative review to be so amusing that I thought I'd share it. So if/when I actually let people read it and you see real reviews that look like this, you can remember that the author already saw it coming.

Fans of trite slash fiction rejoice, for now a breakthrough author has found an “original” twist, combining clichéd epic fantasy with gay torture porn to create some mutant hybrid that somehow manages to be as engaging as neither. We're given Caliborn, a whiny and personality-free smuggler whose solution to every problem is to run away contrasted with Zakai, a doormat Gary Stu who spends most of his childhood (and half the book) in homosexual escapades, broken by the monologues of—oh yes—his violent alternate personality. While these kind of plots might work for shoujo anime, they fall decidedly flat when the attempt is to write fiction with any kind of literary depth or appeal. With a plot as coherent as runny oatmeal and a cast of cardboard characters that we're stuck with for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds) of pages, the only thing one can treasure in The Book of Gold and Crimson is the book's utter lack of description. Trust me, you're better off not seeing what's going on.