Non Serviam: The Hypostasis of Plagiarism
Greetings! Gather together and let's discuss the plagiarism in Sfarda L. Gül's grimdark novel Non Serviam: The Hypostasis of Dissent Book I, which you can read here for free if you're brave enough.
Although clear differences exist, the concept and shape motif is the same for both Collins' pins and Sfar L. Gül's sigils.
First things first, the book is a pretentious disaster. This shouldn't be a huge problem if the author didn't pretend Non Serviam is the deepest novel ever written and the best book in the history of mankind. Does Non Serviam deserve to be dragged through mud solely for being a disastrous book? No, it doesn't. However, many problematic aspects need to be called out.
ILLEGIBLE MAP & TOLKIEN PLAGIARISM
Sfarda L. Gül includes a frankly useless world map in her Young Adult novel which shouldn't be there for several reasons:
- The plot develops in the city of Vencenza, nothing happens outside Vencenza. This renders the map invaluable. It feels like the author put it there to boast and brag about her 'worldbuilding skills' in an effort to show how she's an expert worldbuilder and can do it all.
- The map is cramped, illegible and saturated with useless details. Map reading becomes an impossible task with that overcomplicated font that overlaps with geographic icons. Moreover, the font and map are done in the same colour and there's no colour outline to separate text from iconography. A basic map design blog post would've taught Sfarda L. Gül that readability matters and how to preserve it. Be honest, take a look at the image below, how comfortably can you navigate that map??
- The map displays shameless Tolkien plagiarism.
Balinor??? Ithilwen?? That's straight up copied from Tolkien's Valinor and Ithilien. I'm sure if that abomination were slightly more readable, we would be able to spot more plagiarism.
The author goes around like a prideful peacock boasting about her rich worldbuilding but it's a gross mish mash of stuff she ripped off and this map is the first proof. The second proof is the 'conlang' which is not a conlang at all, but we'll talk about it another day.
Someone brought this up on Goodreads on a discussion opened by an user who felt the need to point out how problematic The Hypostasis of Dissent is. You can read the discussion here.
But it doesn't stop here.
HUNGER GAMES PLAGIARISM & MORE
Everyone knows the Hunger Games pins, right? Let me show you:
The Goodreads reviews also mention how Non Serviam is a rip off of other media. This specific review by Nina Ong describes The Hypostasis of Dissent book 1 as a Favole rip-off, Favole being an illustrated novel trilogy by Victoria Francés set in Venezia, with a redhead woman as the main character and a mysterious guy in a white flowy chemise as her love interest.
I'll leave it up to you to decide whether this book is copying previous authors ir not.
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