Sometimes, I read a book or see a movie/TV show and think, “I can do better than that!”
Bitter Seeds was no exception.
It’s about Nazi supermen in WW2, and it’s about warlocks using demons to help fight WW2 in England. I can believe that, easily.
Because I wrote something like that 4 years ago.
My book takes place exclusively in Nazi Germany, and stars my Mary Sue, Casey Donovan (known as Luther Waldemar in the SS). I wrote about supermen in the Waffen-SS, and how they would be utilized as the spearhead of any assault – and how Himmler couldn’t really control them and found a way to eliminate them one by one, in the attempt to develop his own superhuman group.
I used history, dates, places, things that could have happened, things that could have been done. I researched exhaustively. You should see all the books I have on the LSSAH (1st Waffen-SS Panzer division) and Das Reich (2nd SS Panzer Divsion) and Walkyrie (5th SS Panzer Division); the war in North Africa where all my characters except two were finally eliminated.
I stopped writing when the Russians invaded Berlin, because, really, after that, there was nothing left to do. I’m still undecided whether to have Luther fade into the sunset or get put on trial for his crimes. I wrote both endings.
Anyway, I listened to Bitter Seeds in a marathon of two days, and grew to hate the main character of Marsh who is superhuman even though he’s supposed to be “human”. He knows French, Spanish, German, and is a sensitive Englishman. Sensitive???? What???
The English, with a minimal amount of information, jump immediately to the right conclusions. Marsh thinks that the Germans bombed a certain city to kill his daughter. The man went off the deep end at that point and should have been taken off any more duty. But he still soldiered on, constantly pining for “Agnes, Agnes” every time he showed up in a scene.
The only one thing that they did “right” in my mind was summon the demon in the presence of Gretel, the seer. But then, wouldn’t Gretel have seen that and reported it? Why did she get captured, and then get loose? How did the Germans cross the lines so easily – and later the British?
The character of Will was interesting until I got to the part where he was jealous of Marsh and his wife Liv. This is such an obvious “twist” that I almost stopped listening. But I had an hour left, how much more torture could there be?
Luckily, not much. Half listening, I got the point where the Idolans (the Warlocks’ terms for demons) teleported them to the special farm where the German superhumans were being held. Um, what if they weren’t there? How did they know they were there? What if they were fighting out on the front, like they were supposed to be?
And the recruitment drive as a “traveling circus show” was priceless, being that there were only three of them left. The Germans also made assumptions too quickly, and we, as readers, were expected to believe them.
All in all, parts were well-written. Descriptions were detailed, something that I need to learn how to do better; but the story in general falls flat to my ears, probably because I was comparing it to what I wrote and thinking, “My guys wouldn’t have done that…”