I think it is safe to assume that the emailer was very, very far from what Umberto Eco would describe as my ideal reader.
I was waiting for YEARS to read the next piece of the arts of dark and light series just for it to start with a bloody rape scene. A truly dark and horrific scenario with no heroism or morals what so ever. In true George Rape Rape Martin fashion.
It just disgusts me and It ruined the series for me.
Of course this dark stuff was never left out in your series, but this sledgehammer version of it with no real context, in such a lazy fashion with no true fight and such lame plot justification to force a naked rape to happen.
I stopped as soon as I realised what you were doing and I won’t read it anymore. I waited so long in anticipation and was looking forward for the continuation of one of the only epic fantasy stories I was into.
Fuck you Vox
Sometimes readers understand what an author is doing. Sometimes they don’t. Obviously, this reader’s opinion is as valid as that of any other reader and I don’t take any offense at his reaction, but I will point out that he quite clearly did not realize what I was doing there on any level. Nor is it even remotely correct to characterize the ASOS prologue as having been written without context, in a “lazy fashion”, or with “lame plot justification”. To the contrary, it is there for several very good reasons, among which is the stakes involved. It’s the precise opposite of what George RR Martin does.
If you don’t understand that foreign invasions are horrific things, with catastrophic consequences for women and children as well as for the brave soldiers on the front lines, or if you simply prefer your heroic tales to be a bit more delicate and antiseptic, that’s perfectly fine. But then, I’m not the writer for you. Unlike both Tolkien and Martin, I paint with a full palette of colors, and that palette includes black.
I don’t wallow in it, but neither do I shy away from it, as anyone who has read either Midnight’s War or The Last Closet will know.