I’ve blogged before about authors who write fiction in the first person past tense but clearly have no idea of in which situation or at what point in time their narrator resides while telling the story. This is one of the problems with David Tallerman’s 2012 novel Giant Thief. But what made me quit reading it was another problem: Tallerman forgetting who his narrator is entirely.
The book is set in a vaguely European world with giants and magic and a material culture apparently on the High Medieval tech level, just before the invention of fire arms. Yet the narrator’s voice marks him as a suspiciously modern fellow. And lo and behold, on p. 168 he describes how he makes his way stealthily down a dry stream bed, commenting that “It seemed at times like some surreal game”.
Really, Mr. Tallerman? Your Medieval fantasy thief uses a concept invented by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1903 and popularised by French writers and painters in the 1920s?