I usually end up reading each book in just a few days, often continuing into night and extending bedtime by half-an-hour just to see what happens on the next page, and the next, and so on. So, they are not boring.

And yet, every so often I find myself being thrown out of the immersion-in-disbelief, caught out by the writing. For example, he almost always includes some sort of romance as a sub-plot, usually a romance in difficulty caused by long absences, such as a naval officer on patrol would experience. These sub-plots are almost always superfluous and add nothing.

The main difficulty I have with them is the voice that Fullerton uses. The voice I hear is set in the 50s or earlier, perhaps the 40s. I grew up in the 70s and no-one talks like his love-struck characters. For example, "You know, old girl, I think you should come with mater and me." Well, perhaps that is an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

Editing your novel is hard work. You've invested time and emotional energy into the words and you are reluctant to take things out. I work on the principal that a word must add something important; if it's superfluous, take it out. So with sub-plots.

This may be unfair to Fullerton, but I get the feeling that he is writing a character relationship novel set in a dramatic war. I'd much rather he wrote dramatic war novels with the occasional character relationship.

Another example where I am thrown out of the moment is the physical text. Fullerton uses italics to denote emphasis, and he uses them a lot. I remember reading one of his earlier texts where almost every paragraph had at least one or two words in italics. For example, "You know, old girl, I think you should come with mater and me."

I find the italics less of a problem. He writes in that chopped British upper-class way and sometimes the italics are useful for emphasis since explanatory words are often missing from his characters' speech. He does use them too often for my liking though. I remember a great author saying that you can tell if something is good writing by the characters' speech: no need for adverbs from the author, and the speech drives the plot.

Summary. This will probably come across as a whinge at Fullerton's style, but it's not. It just reflects the occasional frustration. I'll continue to read his books and no doubt will find that I can't put them down once started, as always. He does write great plots and terrific adventures. They would be superlative novels if he could fix his characterisations and their voices.

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