The problem with Acacia is a problem that a lot of genre fantasy has: it too often reads like the detailed notes of a Dungeons & Dragons' gamemaster about his campaign world rather than as a work of narrative fiction.
From Timothy Burke
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
I see the same problem in D&D published adventures. Don't tell me what's there in the prose (save that for the map), tell me what the party sees, hears and smells. And I wish I could slap any adventure writer that states what the history of a region is, but follows it up by "but this has all been forgotten through the years" without giving any means for the adventurers to find out this history.
Contra Nelson, I would have loved modern conventions on published adventures ten years ago when I had time to embellish upon them, but now I'm busy enough to prefer my canned ham to be highly processed to make my beer and pretzels sessions require as little work and thought as possible.
Well, fantasy has really, really devolved into a lot of Mary Sue writing, IMHO. A few writers have managed to not suffer from the bloat that the paperback marketers seem to want. I guess a 600 page PB only costs a tiny bit more than a 400 to produce given the small print runs these days when you take all the overhead into account (author's advance, editing, cover art, press setup, etc.).
A really funny look at the world of the "Generic Fanatsy Trilogy" is Diana Wynne Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland which skewers all the conventions of the genre in the form of a "guidebook" for visitors. She questions how everyone can survive when there is no obvious large scale agriculture going on, just a bunch of empty lands; notes that if there is a Map, you will end up visiting almost all of it; one of your companions will be a handsome, sad, and tragic Gay Mage; someone will have a Secret; despite no modern medicine, nobody gets pregnant unless they need to for a plot point; etc.
Probably out of print, but worth finding.
Well, that's only a problem if you don't like that sort of thing.
Why would you bother to read a pulp fantasy novel if that kind of writing is not what you are looking for?
It's like reading a bodice-ripper and complaining about the male protagonist's penis being described as "his sex."