That said, these books are terrible. I don't want to list everything that irritated me but here is a list of lessons I learnt from them to improve my own writing.
1. A mystery, particularly a mysterious (or missing) identity is compelling. Once revealed, the story has reached its natural end. If the story is going to continue, the mystery MUST be replaced by something equally good if not better.
2. Never, ever, ever have a stunningly beautiful white blonde as your heroine, especially if she is good at everything and very nice. If you start off with an ugly heroine (and expound the lesson that beauty isn't skin-deep) you absolutely cannot then make her the most beautiful woman alive. It is stupendously irritating and offensive.
3. If you are going to mention dawn/sunset, do so for a reason. You don't have to mention it every single day. There could be a sun-simile drinking game attached to this trilogy.
4. Romantic male leads should not be stunningly beautiful and good at everything and should NOT have long, beautiful hair. It's just creepy.
5. Do not move from one discrete, densely described fantasy landscape to another. It's too much like World of Warcraft. I kept expecting the main character to slaughter a few boar and level.
6. Don't patronise 'comedy' characters.
7. Don't overindulge in the numinous. It isn't achingly out-of-reach if it crops up on every other page.
8. Make a distinction between the richness of a human court and the richness of Faery. They should feel different.
9. Don't have everyone falling in love with heroine. Everyone else would hate her. Especially other women.
10. Don't overdo the vocabulary. I like to look up words I don't know or want to check but with this series I ended up just underlining the vast numbers of specialist or grandiloquent (see what I did there) words for amusement. There are hundreds of them.
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