Review: "Medea, Queen of Witches" (by Dr Phil Matyszak)

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RathDarkblade

Moderator
City Watch
Mar 24, 2015
17,065
3,400
48
Melbourne, Victoria
#1
So ... earlier today I finished reading Medea: Queen of Witches (An Unauthorized Biography by Phil Matyszak. :)

Dr Matyszak (or Maty to his readers) studied Roman history at Oxford and has a DPhil (Doctor of Philosophy) from St John's College, Oxford, so he knows his stuff. I also have many of his previous books, and I know that he has a clear, concise writing style, and manages to hone in on the points he wishes to make, without confusing or overwhelming the reader. So, I was looking forward to reading this book. :)

I was especially looking forward to it because I read Maty's previous "Unathorized Biography", called Hercules: the First Superhero, in which Dr Matyszak -- using archaeological, literary and other sources -- draws together the life story of the mythical Hercules and how he affected other classical Greek heroes and kingdoms. I enjoyed it very much, and recommend it highly.

The Medea book, however, is a mixed bag. The story that Maty draws together is highly lucid and entertaining; 5 stars. Unfortunately, Dr Matyszak is let down by poor editing -- i.e. poor punctuation and superfluous words (e.g. one sentence repeats the word "be", as in "be be"). If this was an isolated example I'd be prepared to overlook it, but this sort of thing repeats through the book.

There's another spelling mistake that caught my eye; Dr Matyszak refers to the ancient Greek kingdom of Troezen, now a small town in the northeastern Peloponnese, Greece -- but in antiquity, it was the birthplace of the Greek hero Theseus, who killed the Minotaur of Crete. The first mention of this place is spelled correctly, but the rest of the book spells it "Trozen" (rhyming with "Frozen"), which was surprising and then irritating.

So, clearly Maty's editors let him down this time (which is strange, because I have never seen this in his books). But again, the overall story is excellent and very well-written, as usual. I recommend it and give it 4.5/5 stars, with half-a-star taken off because of the poor editing. (Sorry, Maty!)
 
Likes: Tonyblack

RathDarkblade

Moderator
City Watch
Mar 24, 2015
17,065
3,400
48
Melbourne, Victoria
#3
Hmm ... well, I must say I'm surprised at this publishing house, since they published one of his previous books and there were no errors like this in it. (If there were any, I didn't see them ... and since I've been writing for so long, I've trained myself to watch out for errors like this). ;)

It could've been the proof-reader, true. I've no idea if a book is proofed only once or multiple times -- some are, explicitly to avoid errors like this.
 

=Tamar

Lieutenant
May 20, 2012
12,789
2,900
#5
Proofreaders are not the same as copyeditors. As I understand it, a proofreader should have queried the variant forms of Troezen, but a copyeditor would have researched the name and made corrections. I think the copyeditor would also have been responsible for catching the repeated "be".
 

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