Bontrix

By: James Agee Jr.

Narrated by: Chris Rice

Length: 2 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Miles Ransom is starting his freshman year of college. Nothing is happening the way he imagined it would. He is surrounded by odd people, including his roommate and even one of his professors. There is a loud pounding noise coming from his dorm room wall, and a girl named Bontrix has caught his attention. When Miles learns a secret about himself, his life changes forever. He is a Gear Guide and the fate of two worlds rests with him and the strange cast of characters that he meets. This is an inventive steampunk adventure like no other. Explore the vast world of Wallash and encounter brilliant mechanical creatures alongside Miles and the crew. It's time to save the worlds!

©2015 James Agee Jr. (P)2016 James Agee Jr.

A (Hopefully) Constructive Critique

My girlfriend saw the author post on Reddit looking for feedback for his work and giving away some codes for them on Audible. Considering I got the book for free, I'm going to do my best to give some constructive feedback. This review is written as if to the author, as I'm assuming he'll read it at some point. I am also a writer, though I don't have anything on Audible, I do have a couple books on Amazon, so take my criticisms with whatever weight you'll give that accolade.

STORY SUMMARY (SPOILERS) - (?) indicates unsure of spelling
Nineteen-year-old Miles is headed off to college. His parents are sending him to the same one his parents went to as his grades are low and they're fitting the entire tuition bill. Upon moving in, he meets his new roommate Anso(?) who appears to be extremely anti-social and constantly fiddling with some sort of mechanical contraption. After a few days of awkward interaction and trying to get used to classes, Anso tells Miles that Anso's sister wants to meet him. Miles agrees and meets Bontrix. Bontrix attempts to explain a little about Wallash, an alternate world full of steampunk contraptions and bizarre people. After being understandably skeptic and confused, Miles attempts to leave their company. He is later wrapped up into going with them anyway and enters the world of Wallash. He learns that he is something called a Gear Guide, as are Bontrix, Anso, and their grandmother (and one of Miles' professors) Dr. Slanken(?). They help him get through the world of Wallash until they arrive at the home of the Gear Master. The Gear Master greets them and tells them very briefly about his plan to merge Wallash and Earth, at which point Bontrix gets pissed off and starts yelling at him. Miles and the rest then have to make a quick escape before the Gear Master can send people after them. Miles learns that the merger between the two worlds has a high likelihood of destroying one or both worlds. He also learns that his parents on Earth are not his real parents. They go to try to find the resistance to stop the Gear Master and, after a few scenes, Miles discovers a little about his family in a store called Ordinary & Ordinary. He learns that they are "no longer presumed to be among the living", but that their pocket watch is in the store's inventory. Pocketwatches, along with Gear Creatures, are apparently necessary for Gear Guides to operate. The charge for the pocketwatch is 1/4 a lifespan, which Dr. Slanken pays, killing her. Miles, Bontrix, and Anso continue on to find the revolution, join the plan to stop the merger, then immediately go enact that plan. The Gear Master is stopped, Miles is briefly sent back to Earth to speak to his parents who tell him that they were his real parents all along, then he decides to come back to Wallash to be with Bontrix before inter-planet/dimension travel is outlawed.

CRITIQUE
There was a lot of story crammed into not a lot of space here. I want to start with things that were good.
- Story concept was very creative. I don't read a lot of steampunk, but the story had me hooked and I wanted to know what was going to happen next, which is as best as you can hope for as a writer.
- Story was cohesive. Scenes flowed from one into another and Miles' voice stayed consistent throughout.

Now, however, I did notice a lot of things about the story that could use some refinement. For the critiques that might seem vague or unhelpful, I'll do my best to provide a specific example or explain what I mean. I use reader/listener interchangeably.
- The story is written in 1st Person Present tense (I go there, I say this, she yells, he punches me). This may be my own personal bias against 1st Person Present, but I find it to be an awkward tone. Especially when read aloud. There was the occasional 1st Person Past tense (I went there, I said this, she yelled, he punched me) which was used appropriately in the context of the story. My belief is that the entire story should have been written in 1st Person Past, or 3rd Person Past.
- The dialogue used by the characters is not really believable. Most of it is exposition heavy in a way that is not how real people talk. One example is when Miles gets trapped inside a picture of a pigeon-lover named Gregor who murdered some people, the cop who arrests him says something to the effect of "How could you not remember killing all those people? Now you're going to go to the asylum and get sedated with drugs until your trial. But we're still gonna keep you sane until that happens." It's giving too much information without letting it come naturally. It's very obvious that this is information that the author wants the reader to know without giving it in a way that feels natural to the story. This is not an isolated incident, either. Almost every character except Miles delivers some sort of over-expositional dialogue at some point in the story. Other bits of the dialogue were also very childish. A lot of the dialogue delivered by Bontrix came off as very childish, perhaps Middle School aged, rather than someone who was supposed to be around college. This wasn't just limited to Bontrix, however, another example was the blonde woman who was the assistant to the Gear Master. Most of her dialogue and insults seemed childish.
- The story is 2.5 hours by narration. Most people who listen to audiobooks might think that's a short period of time and they'd be right. The story has a lot crammed into it and doesn't spend a lot of time on those topics before it whisks off to the next. This leaves things feeling half-explained without any time to process them before the next new thing comes along. There were a lot of interesting and bizarre concepts approaching in Wallash that were assigned perhaps a line or two of dialogue or observation before they were completely dismissed never to be seen again. As a result, it was very difficult to get any true sense of the world of Wallash, as I never felt like I really understood anything about it other than that it was very bizarre without any logic to control it. This was a short story that could have used a lot more time to slow down, explain concepts and situations. Instead, it felt like a headlong rush. An important example of a scene that needed to slow down and last longer was the initial meeting with the Gear Master.
- Another thing that left me confused is setting. A lot of times, the setting would change very suddenly and I would be left to try to picture something that was described very briefly. For large periods of the beginning of Wallash, the characters are moving in darkness, which does increase tension to a point but also reduces how much I was drawn into the world when the only thing I'm being told to picture is darkness and clanking machinery. A little more time spent on setting the scene would go a long way in helping the reader stay grounded in the story.
- The progression of time was not very well established. The story started with him in college, talking about college. Then it jumped back to him moving into college and goes through the entire story in a single motion. I know at least one night was spent in Wallash, but other than that I have no idea how long they actually spent there. It could have been two days, it could have been a week. One way to fix this would be to include a timestamp at the beginning of chapters to let us know how long is supposed to have passed from the beginning of the last chapter. If you don't want to go through minutes/hours, you could at least do days.
- At times there seemed to be an inner monologue through which we were introduced to the world as well as thoughts of the main character, Miles. For the most part, this was okay, but for a good portion near the beginning, especially when they get into Wallash, it was confusing and a little disorienting how it would switch from one to another.
- Even after listening to the entire story, I'm still unclear on what a Gear Guide is/does. Perhaps this was explained and I simply missed it, but I just don't have a good grasp on why they're important. I think some of that boils down to the pacing, which I mentioned above. In addition, I also don't have a good idea of what the pocket watch or Gear Creatures/Dust is used for.
- The Gear Master is not only a 1 dimensional character, but also is extremely naive at the climax of the story. SPOILER ALERT: What basically happened was all these people who his previous interaction with just insulted him and tried to foil his plans came up to him and said "We can't stop you, so we'll help" and he just went "Okay, get on board." He really didn't have any reservations about allowing people who had very clearly disrespected him start working in his plan. As the main villain, he should have had more wherewithal than that. Furthermore, his motivation for the merger is flimsy at best. There was the potential for a much more complex reason given the history that he used to not want to rule, but it was reduced to a bland and basic desire that is told by someone else, giving him even less "screentime" than he deserves as the villain.
- There are two major stories in the book that each take up a full chapter. Granted, the chapters aren't very long, but the stories don't have a lot to do with the plot. The first is the Photograph where Miles briefly becomes the pigeon-lover people-murderer named Gregor. The second is the founding of Ordinary & Ordinary. Now, I don't have anything against these chapters as they are, they're fun and provide some insight into some of the things that can happen in this world, but the story is too short for them to really shine. If the pacing is slowed down a little, they're fine, but as it is they just feel unnecessary to the plot.
- The parent red herring. It's unnecessary and a little contrived. Instead of believing the possibility that his parents are from Wallash, after already seeing that people from Wallash can come to Earth, Miles instantly and wholeheartedly believes that his parents are not his real parents simply because one of the people he's just met says so. He doesn't fight back, he doesn't even question how they know, he just stares in shock and accepts it.

Lastly, I have the most important critique of all of them.
- Miles doesn't do anything to stop the bad guy. Throughout the entire story, Miles is along for the ride and is the medium through which we, the audience, get to experience the story. However, nowhere along the story does Miles do anything truly important. The story IS called Bontrix and not Miles, but if you removed Miles from the story then everything would play out exactly as it did. He provided no unique skills nor competent suggestions. He was the love interest for Bontrix. Miles is also a character that is very difficult to relate to because we know almost nothing about him. He doesn't have hobbies, he's kind of a dick in the first few chapters, he's not good at school. His personality is being confused, being homesick, and complimenting the way Bontrix looks. A very important question that needs to be asked and answered is "Why is Miles the voice for the story", and if the answer is "So the audience can get an explanation of what's going on" then that's just not good enough. There needs to be some reason as to why Miles is there in the first place, and if there isn't, then he needs to be removed and someone else needs to be made the voicebox of the story.

The next bit is about the Narration.
- The narrator is nothing special, for sure. He reads quickly and has little concept of dramatic timing. His dialogue is all delivered in the exact same way, no matter who is speaking, making lines that would otherwise sound fine sound horrible, and lines that need some work sound completely unbelievable. I don't think anyone could listen to the dialogue as delivered and say "Yeah, that sounds exactly like something a regular person would say." The narrator does different voices for the characters, but that's mostly just a change in pitch with no change in delivery. The line "Should I have you killed or thrown in the deepest dungeon?" should not be delivered the same as "You're going to the same college as me and your mom did, son." The narrator definitely has promise, he just needs to practice different deliveries and dramatic timing a lot more and stop reading everything the exact same way.

I tried to be as constructive as I could. Don't take it harshly just because there was a lot of feedback. At the end of the day, you're the author and you have the final say. I think if you take some of these suggestions, you'll improve your story a lot. Keep writing!

Great story and narration

Bontrix is a great adventure book set in a wonderful steampunk world. The character development is smooth, and the world naturally forms as you read on. The narration is perfect, clear and enveloping. This is a great story and my only want is for more content like this!

I'm not sure what it is...

This story has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the execution falls flat. I don't know if the terrible narration is why I didn't enjoy the story, or the way the book is written. The narrator uses terrible voices for each character. It's read really, really fast. There are some oddities in storytelling, such as a first person character saying things like "it was obvious I didn't understand." There were some redundancies in dialog that I found irritating. The premise is good. With appropriate character development and world building, this could be a really great epic fantasy. I hope the author goes back and tries to rework the dialog. It's probably closer to 2.5 stars than 3.

Fast, Fun Read

This story starts a little slow for me but it does introduce us to Miles rather well. The story is fun and adventurous, full of cool steampunk inventions. Chris Rice does a great job with the narration.

Disappointing

The story is not intended for adults.
Narration is far too rapid to enjoy the story.
Became annoyed with this audible and terminated with 13. Chapters remaining