Words have meanings, and they matter

 So.

Bit of a rant here.

I'm still slogging my way through the novel I started in June, the one that promised me a lesbian love story in and around the epic fantasy novel.

And it's clear that yes, eventually there will be romance between the two female leads.

Though given the number 1 on the spine of the novel (which I somehow didn't notice until I was over 100 pages into the book) it may not get very far into said romance until a later book in the series.  (If so, I guess I'll miss out on it, 'cause it is not working out between us.)

This morning, I got to a passage exposing a secret of the sinister woman who (without specifically meaning to but also without caring in the least) ruined the girls' young lives.  Said woman always wears gloves, and did at one point move to take them off in a threatening way, but events prevented her from doing so.  Well, she finally took one off, and of course exposed a hand that was not human.

Well, duh.

But the way that hand is described?

In the paragraph where she takes the glove off, it's described as being "amphibious."

On the next page, it's described as "reptilian."

Those are two, completely different, mutually exclusive adjectives!!!

ARGH!!!!!!!

{pant, pant}

Okay, sorry.

I'm calm now.

But that really gets to me, because they're both powerfully evocative words, and they call up wildly different images!

Amphibious:  soft, smooth, moist, possibly slimy, porous, and without any kind of claws or nails.

Reptilian:  hard, scaly, dry (usually), typically with claws.

But this book wants it both ways.  How?!  How could that ever be possible?!?

Since the initial description says the hand has razor-sharp "talons" (which are a bird thing, not a reptile thing, unless you're talking dinosaurs), I'm guessing that "reptilian" was the word the author actually wanted, but I shouldn't have to guess that!

The editors on this book were really sleeping on the job, and I don't just mean the amphibious/reptilian gaffe.  I mean cases where two words or phrases were used when only one was wanted.  I don't recall where any of the passages were in the 356 pages I've slogged through so far, but I can give a very close approximation.  Things like "She turned to look at the girl young woman and smiled."  So, you know, cases where the author changed their mind about what word to use and forgot to delete the old one...and then somehow no one noticed.  (Goodness knows, I've done that myself, but I'm not a professionally published author!  And I typically notice that kind of mistake before posting something to AO3 or itch.io.)

And that happened more than once, along with other annoying little errors that wouldn't bug me so much if I was actually enjoying the book.

...sigh.

I shouldn't be complaining, of course.

It's a sprawling fantasy with two female leads, both strong in different ways, both determined to control their own lives, etc.  And they're in love with each other, which is great.

It's just...

...well, the prose is a lot.  So much more description than we really need.

Though I think what really soured me on it was when we caught up to one of the girls after their separation and learned that she was actually half-succubus.

I'm sorry, but I don't want a lesbian heroine who sleeps with men to drain them of their energy and turn them into her slaves.  That is just a no-go for me.  (Honestly, I'm not sure I'd want to read about a straight woman who did that, either.  Magical seduction is not cool all around, as it's decidedly borderline on the whole consent issue.)

Okay, I'm done now.

I just needed to vent.

(I won't be identifying the book, obviously, because that's pretty uncool, to post nasty things about a book and thus discourage people from reading it.)

EDIT:  I did eventually finish reading the novel.  And, as I had feared, the two heroines didn't get much more than a few kisses before they were separated again, and they were still separated at the end of the book.  But one of the final scenes.  OMG, talk about the editor falling down on the job!  One of those scenes literally referred to one of the heroines by the other heroine's name.  Seriously.  Any good will the last 75ish pages had given me (as the story finally started, you know, going somewhere) was blasted to smithereens with that one.