History is rewritten and you expect a clear storyline?

May These Leaden Battlegrounds Leave No Trace (light novel)

Nov 28, 2020 8:03 PM

Offline

Sep 2018

302

To date there are two reviews (of the first volume), both of which express displeasure with the story being somewhat disjoint, that there seems to be no logic to scene changes.

I'd say they did read the same novel I did..but entirely missed the significance of the underlying plot.

When you kill someone with the proper bullet, they are erased from history. Nothing they were involved with ever occurred.
The MC deliberately targets individuals who play a crucial role in events at the moment they are most vulnerable; when their victory has just been assured.

And you expect the next scene to make any sense based upon the events prior to his firing the bullet that erased them from existence?
Inconceivable!
Of course there will be an immense change in what is going on! The one time that didn't happen...the one erased turned out to be dancing to another's tune, someone who planned for them to be erased in the first place.

Now, it's possible that this isn't what they were grousing about.
Flashbacks don't always flow smoothly from the section just before them, depending upon whose flashback it is and how much new information is imparted.

Still and all, the central concept is such that there are going to be many instances where scenes change with no real warning and with no means of predicting what will come next; if you erase from reality a truly pivotal individual in a wartime environment, the change in what is occurring at that time will be large; the setting will change significantly.

How people behave and interact is driven by their shared and individual experiences; drastically change those, and they won't be the same people.

My criticism would be that the change following the final erasure in the first volume wasn't as large as it should have been.

Jul 28, 2021 6:37 PM

Squilon

Offline

Mar 2020

254

Weasalopes said:
To date there are two reviews (of the first volume), both of which express displeasure with the story being somewhat disjoint, that there seems to be no logic to scene changes.

I'd say they did read the same novel I did..but entirely missed the significance of the underlying plot.

When you kill someone with the proper bullet, they are erased from history. Nothing they were involved with ever occurred.
The MC deliberately targets individuals who play a crucial role in events at the moment they are most vulnerable; when their victory has just been assured.

And you expect the next scene to make any sense based upon the events prior to his firing the bullet that erased them from existence?
Inconceivable!
Of course there will be an immense change in what is going on! The one time that didn't happen...the one erased turned out to be dancing to another's tune, someone who planned for them to be erased in the first place.

Now, it's possible that this isn't what they were grousing about.
Flashbacks don't always flow smoothly from the section just before them, depending upon whose flashback it is and how much new information is imparted.

Still and all, the central concept is such that there are going to be many instances where scenes change with no real warning and with no means of predicting what will come next; if you erase from reality a truly pivotal individual in a wartime environment, the change in what is occurring at that time will be large; the setting will change significantly.

How people behave and interact is driven by their shared and individual experiences; drastically change those, and they won't be the same people.

My criticism would be that the change following the final erasure in the first volume wasn't as large as it should have been.

I'm guessing that my review is one of the ones that's being attacked in this post.

Just to clarify, I have absolutely no problem with time-travel or time shenanigans. Look at my top 10 list, you'll find more than one show where time isn't linear, or is messed with. The thing is, it's a difficult subject to write, and this novel isn't well written.

There are lots of books and shows where the past is changed, even in subtle ways that the characters don't understand, and the reader or viewer can still keep up with the story, even if they're confused and don't really know or understand what's going on. This case, however, is different. It's not convoluted, it's poorly paced and written. The characters and dialogue are bad, the scene changes and passage of time is nigh impenetrable.

Just wanted to make that clear. Messing with time doesn't make this a bad book, bad writing makes it a bad book.

Jul 28, 2021 8:28 PM

Weasalopes

Offline

Sep 2018

302

Squilon said:

I'm guessing that my review is one of the ones that's being attacked in this post.

Just to clarify, I have absolutely no problem with time-travel or time shenanigans. Look at my top 10 list, you'll find more than one show where time isn't linear, or is messed with. The thing is, it's a difficult subject to write, and this novel isn't well written.

There are lots of books and shows where the past is changed, even in subtle ways that the characters don't understand, and the reader or viewer can still keep up with the story, even if they're confused and don't really know or understand what's going on. This case, however, is different. It's not convoluted, it's poorly paced and written. The characters and dialogue are bad, the scene changes and passage of time is nigh impenetrable.

Just wanted to make that clear. Messing with time doesn't make this a bad book, bad writing makes it a bad book.

Given that it's eight months since I wrote the introductory post to this topic, my memory of the volume is somewhat dim.

Mind, it's even longer since the reviews were written...so that's true for all concerned.
Which makes detailed discussion difficult.

My recollection is that there are three individuals who show up within volume 1 who have the ability to completely erase people from reality. Those are the only individuals who have the potential for a steady progression of character throughout the story; everyone else keeps having their past completely rewritten, resulting in individuals with the same name but different life experiences, which would mean inconsistencies in their behavior after each erasure.

From that perspective, the side characters should be inconsistent in their portrayal.

For those with the tools to erase individuals from reality...reality keeps jumping around on them in really weird ways. It wouldn't take too long before that started impacting their sanity, I would think.

Since we're following the lives of those who are aware of the changes occurring, the scene changes should be sudden, and such that only after a grasp of just how everything changed would they make sense.

It's not just a single pivotal event being changed; it's everything which was ever impacted by the existence of the individual who was erased being changed; the 'pivotal event' may not even occur in the post-erasure reality.

The time-skipping...since reality keeps getting changed, I'd say the focus would be upon the interactions of those changing reality, especially once it becomes clear that some of them are in conflict, have antithetical end goals. So there would be various time loci of interest within a reality in intermittent flux.

I can't speak towards the dialogue at this late date.
Well, it clearly didn't stick in my mind as being particularly bad...but being 60 years old, I've read so much that my perspective on what's bad dialogue has probably become skewed.

Given the underlying premise, I'm not sure it's possible to produce something that would fall within the standard definitions of 'good writing', due to what of necessity should occur.

I will say that the readership for this novel and it's sequels, as in those who would enjoy it, is gonna be a lot smaller than for most works of fiction.
I don't know who I'd be recommending it to, honestly.
And that's coming from someone who enjoyed it to an extent; I haven't looked into whether the sequel(s) have been translated yet due to having enough other stuff to read that doesn't strain my mind the way this one did.

History is rewritten and you expect a clear storyline?

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