Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Animorphs #47: The Resistance. Half of this book was about Jake's grandfather fighting in the Civil War, with no logical reason at all why the reader was seeing it. The other half of the book was even worse (about the Hork-Bajir aliens and some Star Trek fans who acted like no humans in the world would). I gave one star on my first reading in 2019, DNF this time.

Animorphs #48: The Return. My least favorite part of the series's plot is the "gods" (aliens so advanced they may as well be gods). This book was about them, and even worse brought David back, which ruined his whole trilogy. I gave one star on my first reading in 2019, DNF this time.

Animorphs #49: The Diversion. Tobias, the boy trapped as a hawk, has a whole complex backstory. Much of it is not believable (his father is one of the Andalite aliens, the blue deer-like aliens with four eyes), but the part about his mother abandoning him is more grounded. This book reunited him with her and started the "get the parents out of danger" subplot of the book's finale. I gave it only two stars in 2019, but I really enjoyed it this time. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½

Animorphs #50: The Ultimate. Most of this book was so good. With the war really ramping up (somehow there are only four books left in the series!) the Animorphs (finally) realize they need more than the six of them to fight millions of Yeerks. They decide the only ones they can really trust are very disabled kids: Kids with bodies the Yeerks would never want. The ending didn't work for me, but the rest of the story was great. I gave it only three stars in 2019, but I really enjoyed it this time. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½

Derelict: An audiodrama (like an audiobook only as a podcast), and much longer than the average audiobook, so I'm counting it as a book for the year.

In season 1 ("Fathom"), a door in the deepest part of the ocean has been found. A massive door. A corporation has built a lab/base at the bottom of the ocean to study the door. And open it... Which, of course, lets out something that should never have been released.

In season 2 ("Derelict"), seven years later, set in space, a massive derelict ship is in orbit around a star. That same corporation sends a team there to investigate. Or do they?

I loved the story, the voice acting was outstanding, the only issue was that the audio mixing was too often way off. It was so hard to hear the dialogue through all the sound effects. Still very worth listening to! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ -- One star off for the dialogue issue.

The Bee-ginning (The Bee Dungeon #1) by Icalos.

Quick synopsis: Set in a fantasy world, a beekeeper is killed and reborn as a "tower lord" (or dungeon master). Basically he has to build a dungeon from scratch using mana/his mind/magic. Also he has lots of bee friend.

Brief opinion: I appreciate how LitRPG has matured to the point where we could get a book like this. I remember the early days when it was just male fantasy stuff, women only existed for sex (or as the villain if she's ugly), etc.

This was a very nice, calm, cute story. Sort of like cozy LitRPG (two genres that really shouldn't work together but in this case do.)

Plot: When his village is attacked, Belissar is saved by a bee. He awakens as a "dungeon core" (Dungeon Core is a subgenre of LitRPG, basically a dungeon is an extension of one person). He has to build the dungeon from the ground up, picking the type of rooms, features of it, etc. Think the Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley kinds of games.

Most of the dungeon was just Belissar and his bees developing the dungeon and occasionally fighting off a threat.

Editing: Not perfect, but for self-published LitRPG it was good.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: First off, I hated his name. Belissar. Bee-lissar. The book leaned in to puns, which I found neither amusing nor clever. Each chapter had a pun as a title: "Curiosi-Bee", "POBee" (POV), "Shocking Bee-vent!", "Diploma-Bee", etc. At least, other than the main character's name, it was kept to chapter titles.

While I totally accept that the bees wouldn't have actual names, the naming system used by them was really annoying. One bee/character is named "The First Queen of the Second Spawner's First Dynasty, first of her line".

As for things I liked, generally I liked the whole book other than those two minor things. The story was nice, low stakes, and the dungeon building was relaxing in the same way Animal Crossing/Stardew Valley are. The main character was nice, the bees were friendly, everything was just nice and calm and relaxing.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Liked. I had no question at all as to moving on to book two.

DNF #49: The Bears and the Bees by Icalos. I ruined this book for myself. Generally I don't look at reviews until I'm done, but this book seemed slower than the first so I checked a couple reviews to see if others agreed. One review ranted about how often the main character said "Um". I thought that was odd, since I didn't remember him ever saying it. Turns out somehow it just was part of his dialogue to me, my brain never really noticed it. But once I was looking for them... Belissar used at least one "Um" every time he spoke. If a chunk of dialogue has two sentences in it there might be two or more "Um"s. I couldn't stop seeing them to the point where I couldn't even focus on the story anymore, so DNF at 10%. Maybe I'll pick up this book again in the future, once I've forgotten about the Um use.

The Lost Kingdom by Matthew J. Kirby.

Quick synopsis: An alternative history story set in the American territories before the US existed. A group of philosophers and scientists (and a son of one of them) head into the wilds on a one-of-a-kind airship in search of a rumored army that they hope will help them (England) against the French.

Brief opinion: I really enjoyed most of it! Unfortunately the parts I didn't like marred the parts I did.

Plot: Billy Bartram, his father, and a group of scientists and philosophers use the world's only airship to head into the wilds of not-yet-America. They travel from "state to state" (territory to territory, like the Ohio Territory) in search of a Welsh kingdom. Rumor had it (and real life myths describe) that a Welsh king brought a group of his people to North America long before Columbus arrived. The English hope to use the Welsh army against the French.

A lot of the story was about traveling and searching (which is fine, it was all interesting), but a big subplot was about Billy and his father. Billy started out seeing his father as a hero, but as the story went on he learned how extremely flawed (and racist) his father was.

The conclusion of the story involves a big battle, a bear-wolf (mythical massive predator that somehow followed the airship across multiple territories), and bad injuries that brought the story's mythical elements into the forefront.

Editing: Perfect.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I LOVED the idea of this story. I've never read alternate history stuff before, but I really liked this example of it. The description of the American territories was so interesting! And best of all, all of the character voices felt perfect for that period of time. (The two kid characters were extremely respectful of the adults, what a breath of fresh air!)

As to what I didn't like... well. All the stuff from myth, which I won't list to avoid spoilers, but one of them shaped the entire end of the story. Also the bear-wolf was at first interesting until it somehow just kept appearing whenever the story needed tension. I'm not sure how I feel about there being herds of mastodons roaming around.

The size of the crew became an issue at the end of the story. One of them played an important role, but I couldn't remember which of the men it was.

While Billy was a complete, believable character, Jane (the other child) was the opposite. She had nearly no characterization and could have easily been dropped from the story without changing much. I wish she had been as fleshed out as Billy was.

Kirby has a degree in history and loves to research for his stories. That was very much in evidence in this one, which I really enjoyed. After the story ended he included a section describing the sources for everything from his book and how his story differed from real history.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Liked. Without the mythological elements, this would have been a five star for me.

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DNF #47: How to Free a Jinn by Raidah Shah Idil. "It's not you, book, it's me." Well written, the character (a Muslim girl who moved from Australia to Malaysia) was interesting, and I don't think I ever read a story set in Malaysia before... all of it was good, it just didn't work for me.

Insyirah's family was happily living in Australia, but her grandmother's failing health prompted the family to move back to Malaysia. Insyirah, who has at least anxiety if not something more, is settling into her new school surprisingly well, when she starts seeing ghosts.

I'm not sure why this didn't work for me. All the pieces were there, I just had no drive to keep reading.

DNF #48: Clara Poole and the Long Way Round by Taylor Tyng. Almost from the first page, this book didn't work for me. The main character didn't feel real, the humor put my teeth on edge, and (perhaps unfairly to let this impact my reading) I really disliked the About the Author section. Use that section to tell me about you, author, not to market your book.

Anyway. In it a young girl has no issues with putting herself into danger and takes off on a plastic lawn chair held aloft by some party balloons. I checked other reviews to see where the story was going and decided to just DNF it.

Wolf 359 (podcast) by Gabriel Urbina. (While this is a podcast, it's basically an audiobook. Since it's more than twice as long as the average audiobook, I'm counting it as a book for the year.)

Quick synopsis: Doug Eiffel, the most stupid, annoying man on Earth in the universe is sent to work on a space station orbiting the Wolf 359 star. Many things go bad. Doug makes them even worse.

Brief opinion: I liked the story, the setting, the whole idea of this story, but I have never hated a character as much as I did Doug. I was indifferent to most of the other characters other than one (who died, so...). It's hard to love a story when you hate or are indifferent to all of the characters.

Plot: On an old, run down space station, a small crew (three people + an AI) are tasked with searching for alien life.

Season 1: Mostly just Doug being a stupid asshole. He literally (LITERALLY) repeatedly risked the lives of everyone on the station just so he can avoid doing work. Seriously. Not even just once! He couldn't say a word without including some stupid pop reference. He was disrespectful to everyone and, to quote the old Community show, he was "compulsively defiant".

Seasons 2-4: The story started rolling here, while season 1 was mostly just about the characters. Season 1 was a "comedy" (completely, utterly unfunny, I was not even mildly amused once in the whole season) but in seasons 2-4 the show became a sci-fi/horror story.

Various things happened: While listening for alien transmissions, Doug picked up a broadcast of classical music. The mad doctor went madder. The AI glitches endlessly. A woman returns from the dead. Then the big evil bad corporation arrives and tries to kill them all.

Editing: The sound editing could have used some work, but the podcast is about 10 years old so that's understandable. Sometimes the dialogue was hard to hear when there were a lot of sound effects.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I really, really liked the idea of this story. Horror in outer space! Aliens! A doctor with very questionable morals (and a wonderful Russian accent)! But man, how do you enjoy a story when you DETEST the main character? My hatred for Doug only grew as the story went on, my opinion of him never changed.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay? I guess? I listened to the whole thing, I mostly enjoyed it, but I want to stab Doug over and over and never hear another word from him ever again. And he was the main character/narrator so...

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Mother Earth Father Sky (Ivory Carver #1) by Sue Harrison.

Quick synopsis: Set in prehistoric times in the Bering Sea, a young woman tries to survive after her village is destroyed by raiders.

Brief opinion: Holy cow, this was so good! I loved it from first page to last! While it did share a number of plot beats with Clan of the Cave Bear, the setting and main character were completely different -- it felt like its own, unique story.

Plot: Chagak, a girl who only just is becoming a woman, is saved from being massacred with the rest of her village because she just happened to be out gathering when it happened. She returns to find everyone dead, all of their homes burned.

She ends up finding a beach where an old man, Shuganan, is living alone. He carves very realistic people and animals, and most people think the little figures hold power; he himself thinks they all have a spirit/soul in them. At first Chagak doesn't trust Shuganan (how can she trust anyone?) but over time their trust, and then love, grows. They come to consider each other as family.

Eventually a man from that tribe of raiders finds them and things go very, very, very bad for the two of them. It's a living nightmare for them. Chagak is raped and, we later learn, becomes pregnant from it.

Once the situation with that man is behind them the two try to recover.

The story splits at this point and starts following another character: A man trying to find a new home for what's left of his tribe (a giant wave wiped out his village). He finds that beach and the second half of the book explores how impossible it is for Chagak to trust another man ever again. Other things happen, like a big fight and hunting and such, but the story mostly focused on the people.

Editing: I believe this was a scan of a physical book. It was really good for a scan, but about a quarter of the book had no space between sections, so you'd be reading about one character and then the next paragraph would be about the other character. Other than that, everything was good.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I loved everything about this story. Chagak and all the other characters felt so real. Her reactions were so believable (and painful to read). Nothing in the story was rushed -- even at the end she was still struggling to trust anyone.

The only thing I didn't like was that a character I really liked died, but it was completely reasonable to have happened and fit the story. It would have been unbelievable for him to have lived.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved! On to book 2!

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DNF #43: The Legend of Black Jack by A.R. Witham. This is one of those rare books that annoyed me right off the bat. Something about the writing style rubbed me the wrong way; it came off as so arrogant somehow. It felt like it wasn't written for me. And that became quickly proven true. The author used the worst, most annoying trope: Of course the bad woman had to be fat. Let's describe her rolls of fat and her awful diet and how fatty fat fat she is, because of course fat people are bad. DNF early on, and yet still not soon enough.

Working my way through the oldest books on my Kindle. Sometimes it seems like they fall to the bottom of my TBR pile for a reason...

Firstborn by Brandon Sanderson.

Quick synopsis: A story (novella) of a younger brother in his older brother's shadow and lots of space battles.

Brief opinion: Apparently this was Sanderson's first ever published work. Other than the ending, it wasn't bad. Nothing special but not bad. But I actually said "That's it? That's how it ended?!" out loud when I reached the end.

Plot: Dennison's older brother is a military genius, the best commander in an entire empire, the best strategist in generations. And Dennison is the opposite.

Growing up in his older brother's shadow, he never has a chance to succeed, never is judged for himself.

But when the two face each other on the battlefield, of course Dennison comes out on top

Editing: Other than one editing issue, it was good.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: The two brothers were too black/white for me. Also I would have rather their relationship had been explored more instead of the space battles.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay. I need a "meh" rating instead of okay. The story was fine, not good, not bad.


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DNF #36: Adaptation by Malinda Lo. I've never been suspicious of a book before. Right from the beginning I had the odd feeling that this book was going to take a left turn and become something completely different than it was in the beginning. And I was right.

The story started in the most interesting way: One day flocks of birds throw themselves into airplane engines. Planes keep crashing one after another. That would have been an interesting story, but instead it's just setup for a YA love triangle story. Not my thing at all. DNF about a quarter of the way into the book.

DNF #37: The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst. This was one of those annoying kind of book: Not bad enough to DNF it, but I wasn't enjoying it at all. Usually I force myself to keep reading, but this time I just dropped it.

Set in a magical world (one with elemental spirits all over the place), a teenage girl wants to get into the magical academy. The worldbuilding was fine, the writing was fine, but I feel like I've read that setup hundreds of times already and neither the story nor the characters hooked me. DNF at 12%.

DNF #38: City of Shards by Steve Rodgers. This book turned me off right away for what was perhaps a petty reason: It started with so many pages of timeline, going back thousands of years. That's kind of like starting with a glossary of in-story terms or a list of characters. If the information is important, give it to me as part of the story!

Anyway, checking the other reviews, it looks like it wouldn't work for me at all, so DNFed it pretty early on.

DNF #39: Dome by Bryan A. Young. Extremely stilted dialogue and teenagers texting with near-perfect grammar, while ironically the editing in the book itself was awful. Typical self-published book. DNFed early on.

DNF #40: Emma and the Banderwigh by Matthew S. Cox. This book should have worked for me, it should have been perfect for me. I have no idea why I couldn't connect with it. The writing was great, the story and worldbuilding were perfect matches for me, and the characters were all good. But somehow the story never held my attention, every time I picked it up my attention wandered and I had no drive to read it.

Set in a fantasy world, Emma is told fairytales by her grandmother, but it turns out those stories are real. Monsters are real. Magic is real. And the monsters are after Emma's family... DNF at 48%.

The post title got cut off, but it amused me to read two books in a row with the same title format:

The Second Chance of Darius Logan
The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry

The boys' names even have the same number of syllables in them!

The Second Chance of Darius Logan by David F. Walker.

Quick synopsis: Darius's family is killed in the worst attack that ever happened to America (an attack by an alien force). Without any support, he ends up on the streets. Then ends up arrested. He's given a chance to turn his life around in a program that puts him to work as part of a team that supports superheroes.

Brief opinion: Though the ending didn't work for me, this was still the best book I've read all year. (And for those reading this on GR, this is book #83 of the year so far.) Unfortunately the story's end didn't work for me at all, but it was 100% a me-problem. It fit the story perfectly and the average reader probably loved it.

Plot: Set on an Earth where superheroes, "metahumans" (humans with extra powers or monster-like mutations), and aliens exist, Darius Logan is living on the street. His family was killed in The Attack (basically aliens and robots destroyed part of New York), and how in the world is a pre-teen boy supposed to survive on his own? For a while he's passed through a number of foster care homes (which are nearly worse than living on the street), but eventually he ages out of that and just has to try to survive by eating out of the trash and doing his best to avoid the giant, literally man-eating rats.

Due to a poor decision, he's left holding the bag (heh, again literally) when friends commit a crime, and he is arrested. This would be his third strike, and even though he's still a minor (17), he'll be going to prison for a long time.

He's picked to take part in a program that aims to turn people with a criminal past (including supervillains) around. Everything seems to be going well, except the head of security hates him for some unknown reason. Like goes out of his way to harass, beat him, and tries to make his life miserable hates him.

Darius is doing outstandingly well in the program. He's making friends, a (found) family, and he's promoted at his job. But he's never stopped having nightmares about The Attack, and then it happens again...

In the end: Darius doesn't just become a superhero, he becomes something even stronger. He bonds with an alien and that makes him stronger than even the strongest superhero. It's not even close, he's stronger than a bunch of superheroes put together and he saves the day.

Editing: Nearly perfect! Better than even other traditionally published books. There was just one error (that happened four times). For some reason there was a space before a period at the end of a sentence (three times) and once before an exclamation point. Weird that it happened four times, I wonder if it was an ebook formatting thing?

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: First off, I loved (LOVED LOVED LOVED LOVED) nearly everything about this book:

The author did what I love best: He trusted his readers. Even though this is a YA book, he didn't explain every little thing. For example, he name dropped in-story wars but never explained what they were, which made the story feel so real! If you mentioned World War II in a story, you wouldn't then go on to explain what it was about.

I love it when YA books have things that adult readers would catch but young readers would miss. For example, this rather chilling mention of how Darius would get raped if he went to prison:

A Bit like you--you'd have been chewed up and spit out. They'd turn you out and pass you around, trading you for a pack of cigarettes.

On a lighter note, the superhero names were so much fun and so believable! Stixx and Stone (husband and wife team), Billygoat Gruff (that one tickled me!), ... aw, my Kindle seems to have not saved my note with other names I liked.

All in all, the world was so realistic and believable. I loved (nearly) all of the characters! We weren't supposed to like the head of security and he's the only one I didn't like.

On that note, the author did (yet another!) thing I love in YA books: He didn't make the adult characters useless. Too many YA books make adults nothing but road bumps in the main character's plot. I liked the adult characters even better than I did Darius. (I'd LOVE a story about reformed Otto!) They all were full characters with their own history and stories going on.

On the "what I didn't like" note, one small one: The story had a URL in it, and I really wish it had worked! ...okay, now that I think of it, its contents wouldn't have been at all appropriate for a YA aged reader, and I wouldn't have wanted to watch it myself (it was videos of a kidnapped superhero being tortured to death), so I have no idea why at the time I was disappointed it didn't work.

And, as mentioned, the one big thing I didn't like: The ending. I loved it when Darius was just a normal person in a world full of superheroes. I always would rather read a "normal person" over an overly powerful one, let alone the strongest one on the planet. BUT. The ending was perfect for a superhero story. As I said, totally a me-problem.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved! Even with the ending, I loved this story so much. It seemed like there was room for another book, I hope the author continues the series! Or another book, another book would be fine too. (Alas he seems to mostly write comic books and graphic novels.)

And thus concludes one of the longest reviews I've written in quite a while.

DNF #34: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry by Ransom Riggs. This book didn't work for me for a number of reasons, but most of them were me-problems.

1) Maybe I've been reading too much MG, but the character felt way too old to be the main character in a YA book. 19, getting ready for college, not just driving a car but able to repair it. Google says 19 is acceptable, though 16-18 is the usual age range for YA.

2) It felt like the 19 year old was way too old to be finding a magical doorway into another world. Which is STUPID of me. Why couldn't an adult find one? An elderly person finding one would make for a great story! I have no idea why it felt so wrong in this case.

3) I didn't like the main character at all (to put it mildly). Sure he has a rough life, but I was not at all enjoying reading about him.

4) As I've said in previous reviews, I'm really not interested in reading about "real people in the real world". As of the 21% point of this book, that's all this was. Kid goes to high school, has a horrible father, had a best friend... just not what I'm interested in reading about.

Unboxing Libby by Steph Cherrywell.

Quick synopsis: What seems like a story about human-sized robot/AI dolls to keep kids company turns into something much darker and more serious (though young readers could easily miss that).

Brief opinion: Based on the cover and title, I avoided this book for so long. "Why did I get a copy of it? Why is it on my Kindle? This doesn't seem like something I'd read!" I was so wrong. Well written, surprisingly dark and serious, to me I see it more as a story about slavery and personhood than about dolls for kids.

Plot: Set in the far future, humans are just starting to get Mars ready for masses of humans to arrive. Many communities (towns) are being built, tons of buildings. But how do they test it all to make sure it's working and ready for humans? Use some unsold "dolls" to live in the towns a while and make sure nothing goes wrong. (One of the characters said something like "better they die than a human does.")

These dolls come in a handful of models. Libby dolls are stereotypical girls (very social, happy, outgoing, love pink, and their clothing is just a little too tight). Wendys are smart (to understate it, they're genius). Robins are sporty. Noras are into all kinds of art. And there are a couple other types. So each community will end up with a bunch of Libbys, Wendys, etc and so they give themselves and each other nicknames -- you can't call five girls all Libby without there being confusion.

At what point does a robot become a person? As the story goes on, the dolls (and action figures -- there are boy robots as well) become more and more like people. They're still restricted by some rules of their programming, but they're no longer just a Libby or a Roxanne or a Nora. Plus of course they look just like humans do.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the plot tackles the issue of them becoming people, of wanting to live instead of just being destroyed when they no longer have a use to the humans.

Editing: Perfect. I didn't spot one error. (Though I got lost in the story, that always risks me missing an issue.)

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: It's not often I think about a book once I finish it (I'm too eager to jump into the next one). This one has really stuck with me. The girls (robots) were such realistic characters, and so what happens to robots on Earth (and now Mars) is all the more disturbing. How could people "kill" them so easily? How could they not be seen as people?

And related to that: How could you buy people? And just destroy them when the child gets too old for them? It's so convenient to see them as not-people.

I'm not sure what the author intended the message to be, but it struck me as a story about slavery. The author is nonbinary, so I'm betting it's also about that, about being seen as a person even when you're different.

Even after I finished the book, I'm still surprised that I liked it so much. I'm going to look at the author's other books and see if there's another I'd like to try.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved. Five stars, no notes. Loved this book.


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DNF #30: This Used To Be About Dungeons by Alexander Wales. I almost always go into a book completely blind. My Kindle usually has about 400 unread books on it, so by the time I get to one I've usually completely forgotten what it's about. In the case of this book, I spoiled that by reading reviews.

One reviewer said the author is rational, so this story is like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (a series I loved enough that I've read it a few times now). It is nothing like it.

Another reviewer said every character is neurodivergent, which I then kept looking for instead of just going with the story.

Anyway. This is yet another Cozy book that hasn't worked for me. I think the genre just isn't for me. The story didn't hook me and I hated the main character (and didn't like any minor ones), so DNF at 16%.

In non-book blog news, I got the 3,000+ tags I used on LJ down to 57. Especially with no function on DW to search your blog (at least not without a paid account) the loss of all the tags is going to hurt, but hey at least my blog shouldn't vanish. ...hopefully...

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New Horizons (Beneath the Dragoneye Moons #8) by Selkie Myth.

Quick synopsis: What do you do when your character is immortal and one of the strongest people on the planet? Reset things somehow. In this case, Elaine insults a fae by mistake and gets tossed 20,000 years into the future...

Brief opinion: It's kind of funny:
I loved Dungeon Crawler Carl, a litRPG book series, but book #8 killed all positive feelings I had for it.
I loved the Dragoneye Moons books, a litRPG book series, but book #8 killed all positive feelings I had for it.

Plot: 20,000 years in the future, Elaine is still immortal in a world of mortals, but somewhat less "strongest person on the planet".

In this future world, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry School of Sorcery and Spellcraft exists and though is expensive and exclusive, Elaine gets in for free.

The biggest plot point in this book and at least the next few books is that she gets a girlfriend. The first half of the book is, to quote another reviewer, "expositional waterboarding". Unending minutia about what she learns in class (when the character reads a book, the author adds page after page of it into the story). The second half is even worse: Elaine gets a girlfriend and they do little but hang off each other, make out, and think about how sexy the other is.

Oh, and Snape is apparently a professor. He even said the whole "bottle fame, brew glory" quote...

And for some reason, after seven books of normal magic, now suddenly they need wands. Of course we learn the wood type and exact length of Eline's...

Editing: The one thing I can't criticize is the editing. After starting out god awful, each book improved. This book was actually nearly free of errors and issues.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: After really enjoying the previous seven books, I can't name one thing I liked about this book.

What didn't I like? Everything. By moving 20,000 years in the future all the good things from the previous books were gone. I have zero interest in hundreds of pages of two people lusting after each other. And have I mentioned Temu-Hogwarts? The author wasn't even subtle about what the school was.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ - Hated. I nearly DNFed this book so often, and I really should have. As the next book continues to be all school/lusting, and the book after that continues the lusting for each other, I guess this is the end of the series for me.

I had to VPN outside the US to access LJ, though some people in the US can still reach it. For me and others it's been down at least a week. If LJ stays down I'll move here:

https://thistlechaser.dreamwidth.org/

At least the backup there is "only" a year old. Sigh.

Funny I have an old "lj sucks" tag.

The Next Passage (Animorphs, Alternamorphs #2) by K.A. Applegate.

Quick synopsis: The second choose your own adventure Animorphs book. It's just too bad you can't choose an original story.

Brief opinion: Can a book series plagiarize itself? Not only did this book use the direct plot from two previous books, it used exact chunks of text.

Plot: Take the plot from the David trilogy and add whatever book the Howler aliens were from and you have this plot. Seriously. That's all the plot this book has.

Editing: The usual: Not great, not awful. Multiple scanning errors. At least one actual editing issue.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I liked nothing at all about this book. It has "you" in the role of David from that trilogy, and you think/act like just like he does (and in one branch you actually die the same way he does). You mostly follow that plot, other than when you end up in the Howlers book plot. What a complete waste.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ - Hated. There was nothing redeeming about this book. The first CYA book was bad but at least fun, this one wasn't even fun. I read all the story branches, but it felt like a chore.

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Oathbound Healer by Selkie Myth.

Quick synopsis: If you can wade through the endless typos, editing issues, and the most unprofessional writing on the planet, you'll find an enjoyable LitRPG story that avoids all the usual issues of that genre.

Brief opinion: Holy crap, this book had the worst editing of perhaps any of the thousands of books I've read in my life. So endlessly bad in so very many ways... yet I still enjoyed the story enough to finish the book and pick up the next one.

Plot: A 20 year old woman on Earth dies, meets a god, and ends up reborn on a planet that uses D&D-ish stats, classes, etc. (It's LitRPG, you never question the setup.)

She's reborn as a baby, and the story picks up when she's eight years old. The death of a friend prompts her to take a healing class. From there she escapes an arranged marriage and joins up with a group of Rangers (Rangers are sort of half adventurers, half cops).

Editing: I do not believe that Selkie Myth knows the meaning of the word editing. So bad, so unprofessional. I saved so many examples. Just a few:

So many exclamation points: "A typo!!" (seriously, that was a line of dialogue), "DUH mages had mana!!", "ride a bloody (mini) T-Rex!!!!"

Kindle notes don't preserve character formatting, but the use of italics was just as bad as the exclamation point issue. Like: I FINALLY saw what I had to do and now I just had to DO IT!!!

Such casual writing: "misc. plants", dialogue: "we'll work on finishing your armor, k?" 6th, 7th, "I can't wa-" *GURGLEGURGLEGURGLE*, "literally twice as long as the normal person, thankyouverymuch".

There was no reason for her to hold back anym- (the chapter ended there, the word not even completed)

The sections have a small graphic between them, but they're annoyingly off-centered.

On top of all those issues was the usual bad editing: Tons of misspelled or otherwise incorrect words, missing/incorrect punctuation, sentence fragments, everything.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Since I covered the editing issues, the only other big issue was the naming system. Why did everyone on this alien planet have a Roman name? Not only that, but stupid ones. Like the doctor was named Medicus -- none of them even slightly subtle at all.

Apparently this book started out on Royal Road, which explains why the editing got slightly better by the end of the book. It was still unacceptably poorly edited (not edited at all), but it wasn't as bad as the earliest chapters.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: Editing would get one star/hated, story would get four stars/liked, so sort of averaging it to: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay

Somehow there are 17 more books in the series (all of them published in the last six years). I'm going to try the next one and see how it is.

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DNF #27: Magic Has No Borders: A Young Adult Fantasy Anthology Reimagining South Asian Legends and Epics by various. I HATED the first story (a goddess who has reincarnated 3,000 times used slang like "hella", and the rest of the writing was so so so bad. Stereotypical teenage romance stuff.) so I DNFed it. The writing in the second story was better, but the plot didn't interest me at all. The third one didn't work for me either, so instead of forcing myself to continue and try every story, I DNFed the whole thing. One day all the anthologies will be off my Kindle. One day...

DNF #27: To Turn the Tide by S.M. Stirling. While this story seemed like it would work for me (end of the world, a professor and his graduate students go back in time to Rome), it really really did not. The main character (who was not just a professor, but he had been a member of the special forces) was too perfect. But more than that, this book seemed to exist more for the author to show off how much he knew about Rome than the story. Talk about getting bogged down in facts! DNFed pretty early on.