A few responses in detail:

The “misplaced modifier”.
“a few others” would never be taken to refer to “father” in this sentence – it obviously refers back to “bow”. The sense is very clear the way it’s written, and I’m struggling to see how your advice would come up with anything better.
Similarly with the Mayor’s daughter example. I don’t think you can necessarily say that a phrase has to refer to another phrase just because it’s next to it – sentences have to be interpreted sometimes, and in this case, since the writer clearly isn’t assuming that I, the reader, am a Mayor’s daughter, there’s no ambiguity.

The bow and arrows. “a meaning lost in the distance…” Good grief, how short do you think my attention span is?

“The last tribute…” The point is, as you surely realise, if the author had used “his” or “her” she would have to choose one, and thereby assign a gender. This would add a meaning that clearly isn’t needed or appropriate. Using “their” to get round the problem is very common, and actually I don’t fully approve of it myself, but what else do you do? And anyway, the preceding sentences presumably were about the tributes – plural, so it’s not difficult to associate “their” back to them, as a group.

“Mother…sister.” Personally I think “was” is better. It certainly reads better than “were” would. More lively. If she’s thinking of the two people individually, in that her attention moves from one to another rather than imagining them as a pair, then “was” is definitely better at conveying the meaning if not strictly better grammar.

“Between” and “among”. Your pedantry is leading you astray here. “Between” is correct if you’re only ever linking pairs of objects, which is what the author is doing in both these examples. Your advice would completely wreck both of them. Did you try reading them to yourself, using “among” instead of “between”? They sound awful that way!

As to the commas, which was what originally brought me here – I’ll just say that I’m not convinced. OK, the “honor…people” example is a bad sentence, and I agree with your correction of it – but I wouldn’t describe it as “comma overload”, I just think it’s a mistake. Or trying to be “stream of consciousness”, or something. (Sorry, I don’t know this author’s work at all so I’m not really qualified to criticise properly). And the second example – I agree that the comma is wrong and a colon would be better, but again, I would argue that wrong use of a comma (where it should be something else) isn’t the same as comma overload, which is just too many commas. You don’t give any examples of where a comma should simply be removed, so I’ve nothing to reply to about that.

Right, I think that’s enough disagreeableness for one post! I’ll just say – thanks for an interesting blog, which I did seriously enjoy reading, even if I didn’t agree with it.

I, for one, don’t find the commentary pedantic at all. I haven’t read the books, but if those passages cited above are prevalent, I don’t think I could find enjoyment in reading them!

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Mongolian_Death_Worm/70170576?trkid=1889703

I’ll watch it and let you know.