I’m reading The Briar King, by Gregory Keyes.  I’ve never read him before; it was a special offer for the Kindle ($0, trying to get you hooked) and so I picked it up.  It appears to be competent-enough swords and knights and monsters fantasy, but there’s one thing about it that’s driving me nuts: the names.

Picking good names in a fantasy is tough, I’ll admit, and few people have the patience (or skill) to do it Tolkien’s way.  Keyes’ way, at least in this book, is to take familiar words and tweak them just a little.  For example, we don’t get griffins, or gryphons, or what have you; we get “greffyns”.  There’s a fellow who’s clearly meant to be something like a highland Scot (in terms of social position, not language), a member of a clan, who’s name is Meq-something rather than Mac-something.  I noticed many similar examples yesterday, though I can’t bring to mind at the moment.

Now, if this book were set in a parallel universe, with almost the same history, I could buy this.  The language might have evolved slightly differently, and the choice of names could show how things are similar yet different.  But that’s not what’s going on here.  There’s clearly a link to our world, but it’s not a close link.  Mr. Meq-wossname isn’t a Scot in any meaningful way.

It seems sloppy, is all.