Pazuzu Trilogy Readability Scores and Minimum Age Recommendation

As I’ve been curious about my writing’s readability, I’ve run some strictly layman readability tests.  The results of the tests indicate I’m hitting my targets.  Below are averaged scores from my trilogy and two other books.

Flesch - reading ease formula, 60 – 70 is acceptable
Range: 69.03 – 76, Average: 72.42    Score: Fairly Easy

Flesh-Kincaid - grade-level indicator
Range: 5.29 – 6.65, Average: 5.912    Score: Sixth Grade

FOG - complexity, lower number is better, 6 – 7 is ideal
Range: 6.7 – 8.7, Average: 7.46        Score: Fairly Easy

SMOG - grade-level indicator
Range: 6.09 – 7.89, Average: 7.46    Score: Eighth Grade

ARI - per word understandability, also grade-level indicator
Range: 4.41 – 5.56, Average: 5.03    score: Sixth Grade

Summary:

Based on the findings and the my familiarity with the contents of my books, I’d recommend the minimum age of the reader to be thirteen years old.

Other than the age restriction the books are rated to be just a little more difficult to understand than writing by Mark Twain.

Visit the Pazuzu Trilogy web page here.

Purchase Pazuzu Trilogy books here.

Synopsis for “Gaunt Rainbow” by Matthew Sawyer (warning: spoilers)

Gaunt Rainbow is set in a bleak dystopia twenty years after a pivotal event in the war between the Chosen caste and heathens; the destruction of the walled city called Capital.

Pamela, a young woman nicknamed “Rainbow”, is cursed to drain life from living beings so that she remains in perfect health. As a girl, a self-proclaimed messiah, a pubescent boy, cured her blindness. Pamela believes the boy also resurrected her after she died in a fire during Capital’s destruction. Her curse began after coming back to life. Pamela goes into the Shur desert to find him in hopes he’ll remove the curse.

The hunt is ended the day Pamela leaves the encampment. A sniper kills her. Eight years pass before Pamela is resurrected in the isolation of the desert. Her money and supplies are missing, despite the corpses and abandoned vehicles surrounding Pamela when she awoke. She goes to Gomorrah to restock her supplies.

Pamela meets her old friends, Tee and Ruth, and learns about a new city, called New Babel, the heathens are building from the spoils of the war with the Chosen. The city lays to the south, in the deep desert. It is rumored the messiah disappeared in the south.

Pamela accompanies Tee and a stranger, Dil Cortras, to New Babel until she is killed by a land mine. She recovers two months later when Dil brings dogs to fuel her regeneration. Dil reveals he knows about her curse and a demon wants to speak with her.

Two demons, Behemoth and Pazuzu, consult with Pamela. Behemoth wants to preserve the new gods that have come to the world, Pazuzu wants to use Pamela to drive them away. The demons, and their acolytes, habitually use lies and deceit until Pamela decides her fate.

New Excerpt from unpublished “Gaunt Rainbow” by Matthew Sawyer

Big black ravens hopped between the bodies and played games of ‘king of the hill’ on the mounds of corpses. The number of birds appeared to decrease closer to the cemetery. The winged ghouls had already sorted their pickings from the center and moved outward where meals were more ripe.

“I used to think the Living God wouldn’t permit a place like this to exist,” Tee opined to Pamela. He particularly protested the birds eating the dead. “But the heathens don’t care what happens to the dead beyond their clans.”

Visit the Pazuzu Trilogy web page here.

Purchase Pazuzu Trilogy books here.