Interesting premise that bogs down in multiple voices. I like the idea of using books as a metaverse but the "writers" voices are a bit chaotic and seem to run together. It's hard to differentiate between some of them in between the various "book" chapters. The main villain is a bit two dimensional (pun intended) and his identity was, to me, apparent prior to the reveal. I did enjoy the mechanism of the adaptation of the "powers" of characters from universe to universe.

One Sentence Summary: It's an odd day when PI Joe Slade is rudely pulled from his book because characters from a fantasy book need his help to escape to the World Where Books Are Written to have a heart-to-heart with their author.

Overall

Lost on a Page is an ambitious novel about characters realizing they are characters and deciding to drop in on other books currently being written to take what they need to escape the fictional realm. At times, it delivers on the overarching story. At others, it's hard not to wince at. It is indeed a humorous novel, but lacked overall finesse and the ability to really be immersive in all of the genres it touched on. Still, the characters were fun and I loved that they took on lives of their own. Though I did not appreciate the semi-cliffhanger ending as I don't see this is part of a series.

Extended Thoughts

Detective Joe Slade is on the case, sneaking around in the dark, trying not to be caught by the bad guys. Everything's exactly as it should be. Until Ski Cap arrives, and tells him some rather unbelievable tidbits he refuses to believe. But that's not all! Imagine getting whacked on the head with a trash can and waking up in a library.

But it's not just any library. It's the World of Words, a library that actually exists within a fantasy book series still being written. There, Joe is introduced to Ellodrine, a wizard; Kribble, the dwarf; and Aelrûn, the elf. They've lost their protagonist to their antagonist, the Lord of the Void, and need a new protagonist who can help them get two items from other books in order to escape to the World Where Books Are Written to, well, get mad at their writer, I suppose.

With Joe on board, a fun and sometimes hilarious romp through historical romance, science fiction, and worse ensues. They singlehandedly change all the stories they jump into, creating chaos and blurred lines.

As well as make their authors, who get to read their characters leading their own lives, frantically try to make things right and prevent their protagonists from dying.

Lost on a Page is a really ambitious novel. It sounds like it'll be a lot of fun with jumps in and out of other books. But all these other books fell utterly flat to me. The characters, too, were set with the task of running away and creating their own lives and story lines, but can't seem to escape the archetypes they were written to be. It's a fun story of characters who become aware and long for more, but they're seriously trapped.

The problem with writing multiple stories within one story is that, when multiple genres are thrown in, there's an expectation that they feel authentic. I really wanted to read a piece of an historical romance or science fiction or fantasy novel and then watch how things go south as soon as Joe and his new friends jump on their pages. But all the different stories felt similarly lackluster. They lacked authenticity. I get that they're WIPs, but, maybe with the exception of one, none of them are the first in a series or standalone. I mean, nine books in to a series, I would think the author of it would be a little more polished! They all sound like first drafts of first, or close to first, novels. Other than stories and characters and the bits and pieces that definitively define a genre, they all kind of sounded the same.

The characters, too, lacked interest. I loved the idea of them struggling to free themselves from their stories, to be free to create and live their own lives. But they all were stuck in archetypes. The wizard's magic manifested in different ways in the different genres and she could not break out of the mold of being the know-it-all (mentor). The side characters were nothing more than side characters. The antagonist could only be beaten after something climatic. No matter how hard they struggled, they were still defined by the archetype they were written to be in the genre they were written for, and it was just kind of generally accepted. I did like how Joe tried to step out of it, worked hard to use his hardboiled PI mind, but, overall, it just wasn't enough.

Still, the characters were consistent and I adored Kribble, an overly enthusiastic and grizzled dwarf. I loved that many of them were able to take their own and new knowledge and shape it all into something useful to help drive the story forward. As frustrating as it was to see them stuck in the archetypes, they definitely owned them, so it was fun to read how they played on the archetypes and tropes. Though I do feel the novel relied on the archetypes and tropes a little too much.

What I did absolutely love, though, were the authors' interludes. Each work in progress has it's own author and most of them end up working together to try to untangle the stories and keep their characters alive. I loved how it progressed from one author thinking someone was sabotaging him to the small collection of authors being relatively helpless as their characters came to life to form their own crazy, genre-bending story. Their interactions felt crazy and authentic and it was hard to not be amused by them.

Lost on a Page is a wild adventure. I liked that it crossed several different genres and blended stories and characters together, but it could have been done with more polish and more attention to detail when it came to each genre. The characters helped hold it all together, but I was disappointed by the end. There's no indication there's another book, but it definitely feels like a duology, at least.

Overall, an interesting read, but perhaps a little too jumbled and a little too reliant on literary devices. Lost on a Page does deliver a humorous story, though, with characters trying hard to break the mold.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

This was such a roller coaster of a ride that started from page 1. There really isn’t a dull moment in this book between the action and humor among the characters. Because we’re traveling to so many different genres with these characters, there is plenty of different action to keep people interested. I really enjoyed hopping from one genre to another and seeing how the plot of each book played into the plot of the book we’re reading. Our characters are aware of plot structure and roles of different characters such as the protagonist and antagonist, and the many roles of side characters. So, when they go into these different stories, these characters have to determine how their role in their original story (protagonist, side character, etc.) is going to effect the plot of the new story they’re in. This is probably a confusing explanation but just know there are a lot literary references throughout the story, but they are written in spectacularly. But, no matter what genre these characters appear in, they are still their very comical selves and it makes for a hilarious story.

There are two different narratives: the one with our “fictional” characters and the one where the authors are trying to figure out what the heck is going on with their stories. This is another part of the humor aspect of this book that is done very well. Before some of the chapters we see email correspondences or chat messages between some of the authors involved. It’s hilarious seeing some of their reactions to the characters they created developing a mind of their own as well as them trying to fix this thing they’ve been dragged into. It definitely adds another level to the story and I really enjoyed the two different aspects.

I’ve mentioned the different genres our characters visit. Well, with each genre comes a different writing style that Sharp introduces into the story: Joe Slade’s story is told in first-person; “Nexus of Words” is told in third-person and is essentially the meeting hub for all our characters; “Ghost Nebula” is written with a lot of science-y words that seem to make sense in a futuristic setting; and, “The Marchioness’s Temptation” is told with very fluffy descriptions, etc. There is one other genre that is visited much later in the novel that is better left as a surprise, but it was my favorite one and the one that kept me turning the page the most. It definitely speaks to Sharp’s writing abilities to be able to transition smoothly into so many genres and writing styles in the expanse of a couple hundred pages.

The only problem I really had with this book was the lack of depth to the characters. And this may be because of the way the story is written, but I prefer having more depth to the characters because it makes me care about them more. I feel no connection with these characters and I’ll probably forget them pretty quickly even though I’ll remember the great story. I will have to reread Lost on a Page if Sharp comes out with a sequel to it. The story ended with a possibility of a second book and I really hope we get one because overall this was a really fun read.

Rating: Not for Me/Alright

Thank you to NetGalley and Black Rose Writing for the eARC of Lost on a Page in return for my honest opinions.

This book was a bit of a gamble. The premise is one that I think is really cool, but the execution just fell a bit flat for me. Essentially, the book follows a group of fantasy characters whose author created in his current WIP a library that has every book ever written or being written. This includes their own books. Realizing that they are actually fictional characters gives these characters self-realization and allows them freedom of decisions unencumbered by their author's wishes. Their desire is to escape from the world of books and to confront their author for everything that he has put them through. They enlist the help of a mystery detective and then set about collecting things that they need to escape the world of books from other books that are currently being written, causing chaos amongst the authors whose books and characters they hijack.

I thought that this premise was fantastic. It's a lot of fun; however, it is one that I think would take a lot to not come off as slightly cheesy. Something that I did really enjoy was that we get the correspondence of authors with each other and their editors as they are trying to figure out what is going on as their stories keep changing. Then they are teaming up against their characters and sometimes with their characters to make certain events come about. So those interludes were pretty fun.

I also think that these interludes allowed for some addressing of larger themes of what does it mean to be alive/human and what the value of life is. I would have liked for these ideas and conversations between the authors to be fleshed out more fully, but I do appreciate that they were touched on. It made it feel like there was a larger meaning to the story than just something fun and silly.

Honestly, I think that this story and concept would make a really interesting TV show. We don't really spend much time (if any) in the fantasy novel, but we have a bunch of fantasy characters, and we go through mystery, romance, sci-fi, and apocalyptic/horror genres. I think that if this were being done via film or television, it would have made for much more enjoyable interludes in each genre. Unfortunately, for me, the way that is written just came across as parodies of each genre. It felt very cheesy and almost like it was supposed to be a joke; however, there was no bigger punchline or reason for it to be a parody, which just made it awkward and hard to read for me personally.

The characters were very flat and two-dimensional. They were all very cliched archetypes of their genres, and they didn't have much personality that allowed me to connect to them. I also had a difficult time with the way the romance genre and heroine was portrayed. The authors of the fantasy, mystery, and sci-fi genres are all men and they all end up working together. The horror author never responds to their attempts to contact him, but he is a man. Then the romance author is portrayed as very aloof and snotty and does not join them or attempt to help them in any way. She is also the only female author. It's very small, but it did bother me. It didn't help that there were female protagonists and supporting characters in the stories within this book bc they were so flat.

Overall, this book was a miss for me, but the concept is still one that I am intrigued by and would 100% watch if it were turned into film/television. I think that if people were looking for something that is purely a silly nod to a bunch of different genre archetypes and tropes, this may be something that they would enjoy. I think it could especially appeal to a younger audience.

Lost on a Page releases July 1, 2021.

Lost on a Page
by David E. Sharp
Black Rose Writing

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read this fun book!
This book isn't like any book I have ever read before! The characters in the books become aware they are characters and want to find a way to get to the world where words are written. Some are angry for all they have been through under the hand of their author. It starts out just letters from an editor to an author and back. Some story. More letters. More authors.

Then the characters show up in a romance novel and break up the romance on accident. The romance author is mad and thinks the author of those characters hacked her computer!
The characters travel on looking for a device and end up in space! Now many authors are talking and and worried. One of the new characters is threatening an author! Then on to another book! Zombies! Lol!

It's a fun book with dry humor, lots of craziness, great dialogue, zany situations, and a unique plot! I found it quite entertaining!

Another in the metafictional genre pioneered by Jasper Fforde, and, like most metafiction (including Fforde's), it didn't wow me.

Especially early on, it was hard to shake the impression that the hack novels with flat characters and cliched settings were not satire, but reflected the author's actual level of ability to write. This was especially the case since there are a lot - really a lot - of basic copy editing issues. For example, the author frequently inserts a tag in the middle of a sentence of dialog, or between two sentences of dialog, but only rarely punctuates them correctly. The rule is that if the first section of dialog completes a sentence, there's a period after the "X said" tag and the new sentence starts with a capital, but if the sentence continues after the tag, there's a comma after "X said" and the second part of the sentence doesn't start with a capital. To give made-up examples: "That's what I wondered," said Joe. "How did she do that?" Or: "I've always wondered," said Joe, "how she did that."

What the author almost always does, though, is end the "X said" tag with a comma and start the next part of the dialog with a capital, which is wrong whether the second part is or is not a new sentence.

Other punctuation issues include misplaced commas (comma before the main verb, no comma before a term of address). Then there are the vocabulary issues: ally/alley, subsequent/prior, obligatorily/obligingly, rankled/wrinkled, amuck/amiss, illicit/elicit, hurtled/hurled, frontrunner/frontman, scuffle/scruff, immunity/impunity, dual/duel. The past perfect tense goes missing a few times as well. Besides these recurring issues, there were a few isolated errors with capitalization, apostrophe placement, hyphenation, use of the incorrect preposition in a phrase, and a comma splice.

I don't normally mention such issues in detail for books that I receive, as I did this one, via Netgalley, since they often have another edit to come before publication, but this has a publication date of 2018 on it, so I can only assume I have the published version.

The good news is that as the book went on, it did develop some suspense, and I did start to care about the characters succeeding, even though they didn't get any deeper. When your premise is that fictional characters from badly-written genre fiction have become real people, your writing really needs to make them feel more real, as if there's more to them than their stereotypes and their role in the plot; but I never felt that.

It did end up as a decent pulp plot with some exciting scenes and a satisfying conclusion, but for me it lacked depth, quality, and polish.

A wild and entertaining literary adventure, much as the title suggest, with characters hopping genres and, well, pages. This clever meta take on genre fiction was lots of fun.
It begins as a noir with a properly noir seasoned detective named Slade who discovers he’s actually a character in a series of mystery novels. Moreover, he isn’t alone. There are other characters, from other novels and genres and they’ve recently gained sentience and an ability to not only traverse the realm of fiction but also change their prewritten destinies.
They team up in opposition to the preformatted designs of their authors and creators, who resides in WWTBAW (World Where The Books Are Written) and also in opposition to their designated antagonists. The fight is fictional. The fight in real.
It’s Stranger than Fiction action driven and mad on genre. The characters go from bodice ripping romance to space opera to zombie survival thriller. All in the name of…ok, the plot may get slightly confusing, because there’s so much going on, in so many different dimensions. But it is linear for all its wild digressions and does (of course) follow all the classic genre standards.
It reminded me of the very excellent Gene Doucette’s Unfiction, which is a high compliment in my book. I loved the concept here. What reader hasn’t contemplated the fate of the characters they engage with and what is that fate wasn’t merely bound to the page but went way, way, way off page. Make your own adventure is no longer for readers only. And all the more fun for it. And yes, it’s busy and sort of frantic or manic at times, but well worth navigating.
The meta aspect is a delight too, the authors interaction as they figure out what’s going on, right down to the final concept of making this all a book is very clever and very well done. The quiet librarian ought to be proud of his creation, all that time surrounded by books has really paid off. Recommended. Tahnks Netgalley.