Going to just be straight up and say that I had high expectations for Eleventh Cycle based on the first glowing reviews that rolled in at the start of the year, and unfortunately, I can’t say I agree with the hype 100%. 

I got that book on my Kindle on its publishing date, long before I even knew I was going to be involved in SPFBO this year. Eleventh Cycle is one of those obvious ones for me. Dark fantasy like doom metal. Gritty, crawling, and raw. But I guess it is true that the camp is divided on this one. You either love it, or you don’t. I had a long, hard think about why I didn’t love this book. Especially when I should have. 

Yes, there is a ton of worldbuilding in Eleventh Cycle. It’s quite impressive. But eventually, it all came down to delivery. 

I don’t mind slow-burn books but if we’re doing slow-burn, I want to find an anchor within the story quite quickly. Perhaps it was the multiple POVs that made me feel like I was being pulled into too many directions at once, with too many different bits of information, and not having that anchor to root for made the story lose grip on me. Eleventh Cycle has too much of everything, for me. The focus gets diluted. The purpose and ambitions get too widespread. Personally, I love the focus to remain within narrower boundaries, with only so many dramatic main character arcs at a time. But, perhaps, the ambitious spread of the world and people in it, is what makes this debut a standout for others. A point for the main characters, however, they are all very different from each other and have a very solid and distinct role to play. 

There are infodumps in the world of fiction that are sometimes so well masked, you don’t even realize you’ve read pages of filling and ‘should know’. Then there are infodumps that outright panic me. There were a few times in Eleventh Cycle where I found myself thinking, hey, this is lots of info, do I need to remember all this detail for the next 700 pages? Is this going to be super important when things start to shake down? All the Cycles and Seeds and little snippets of history… That’s going to be tough! Then, I tried reaaaallllyyy hard to read that info and it turned into an academic exercise and I think I made it worse, because suddenly, I didn’t focus on the story anymore, or the characters. Instead, I was trying to justify why I had just pretty much tried to memorize 2 pages of something that hadn’t come up for the next 3-4 chapters, all the while these 3-4 chapters were dishing out more info. And, if I do not click with the prose then it feels like a non-Euclidean adventure that I’m afraid I am not equipped to handle. Look, English is not my first language, so maybe take this with a pinch of salt, but I do feel like some editing to smooth down the corners of the story could have helped it flow with a smoother pace and have a more pinpoint focus. 

I worry about this sometimes, but I don’t mind violence and graphic scenes in fiction. I don’t get sick to my stomach, I don’t squeeze my eyes shut at the horrors, and I don’t pull faces when something questionable happens on the pages – because it’s fiction. I have a firm line between what is fiction and what is real. A book is an author’s creative freedom. A work of fiction is also something that typically cannot be designed by a committee… WE are not writing a book. The author is. On their own. And they can do whatever the hell they wish in their fictional world, with their fictional characters, because this is how they see the story play out, how they want the story to go. And as readers, we either click or we don’t. WE don’t have to agree with the author’s creative choices. It’s not a requirement when we crack open a book. So, the point being, the elements of violence and scenes of graphic nature were not my issue *as such*… I think what jarred me was the timing of some events. It wasn’t even that I felt discomfort. Discomfort is a valid feeling that stories can make the reader feel. It was more… confusion? Why now? Why like this? And again, I think it was all down to the prose and style of delivery. For example, there are sex scenes that can feel cringey because the characters themselves feel the cringe. But then there are scenes of sexual nature that feel cringey because of how they’re written. For probably the first time ever I felt like some things happened only for the shock factor purpose, to put the grim in grimdark, and that took away from the natural flow of the story for me. 

Overall, I think it could have been good. I mean, many readers say it *is* good. Yes, the elements of gritty, crawling, and raw are there. I just wish I could say I enjoyed the prose that delivered those elements, but this time I have to put up my hands in defeat and say, sorry, I’m not quite meeting Eleventh Cycle eye to eye. Lastly, I am glad this book ended up in Paul’s batch, I don’t think I could have dealt with cutting this book in the elimination round because the hype for the book exists and I am but a small voice in the opposite camp.