thistlechaser (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thistlechaser) wrote2013-05-03 05:17 pm
thistlechaser) wrote2013-05-03 05:17 pm
Entry tags:
The worst book in the history of bad books.
Okay, the subject line might be an exaggeration. A slight one. But Zoo (The Enclosure Chronicles) by Tara Elizabeth is one of the worst books I've read in years. It should surprise no one that it's self-published. I'm usually careful to check for that before buying books, but this time somehow I forgot.
I won't spend much time on her grammar. She has no idea how semicolons work. Sentences like amusingly fitting one:
And; how could they be worse than this one?
The writing was so bad, every page or so I had to reread sentences, trying to figure out what she was trying to say.
Every few pages, she seemed to pick adjectives or adverbs totally at random. I sat there, scratching my head, wondering if she knew what the word she just used meant. Like: "Poignantly he squatted down to wash the mud off his feet." (Not a quote, because I forgot to mark it, but "poignantly" was indeed used incorrectly in this way.)
Her writing was so unprofessional I was embarrassed for the author. " f**k " appeared in the book. With the asterisks.
The dialogue was so painfully bad and unrealistic. In the story, a teenage girl gets kidnapped and stuck in a holding area with another girl. Her life is over. She's ranting to the other girl:
"...My parents were paying for a kick ass trip to Paris. I was going to move away and go to college. These clothes are awful. I don't have any shoes. I have to sleep on the ground. And how am I going to lose my virginity now?"
And yet, after that, she spends the rest of the book screaming at a boy to stay away from her, calling him a stalker because he stays close to her (they're being kept in the same small room...), yet based on nothing but the boy being asleep when he's first put into the room, she calls him "cute" and "charming". Somehow she finds him charming. When he did nothing more than stay asleep.
The father hears the news about the daughter's "death" (the girl seems dead to those left behind). This is the telephone conversation. About his daughter's death. (Phil is a cop.)
"Oh, hey Phil. Accident? Where? You're there now . . . Is she okay?" he asks. "Dead at the scene. What hospital did they take her to? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks." He swallows hard and places the phone back in the cradle.
Supposedly the father loved the daughter, she was his reason for living...
What teenager talks like this? She's lusting after a captive in another cage. He probably won't even meet me, since he's got a gorgeous brunette waiting to be impregnated by him.
The author was amazingly lazy, and as I mentioned, unprofessional. She wrote "youtube" for the name of the site, lower cased and, for who knows what reason, in italics. You just need to go to the site to see the proper capitalization for the name! (Edit: I started second guessing myself on this one, so I checked Google. No where did I find reference saying a website name should be in italics, and even if it should be, it sure as heck should be capitalized correctly.)
The author has a title for every chapter. One was " :) ". There is no texting in the book. The kids have no tech at all, all they do is talk. I wanted to drive my head through a wall at that point. Are you so damned lazy you can't figure out some words you want to use as a title?
Compared to things mentioned above, errors like this seem mild. Quoting again: I enjoyed our time together. She made me laugh. I enjoyed our time together.
And the basic logic errors! Keep in mind, the author is a woman. (I assume. It's by Tara Elizabeth.)
Day one: A boy and a girl have sex. (Day and a half, technically. And evening and the next day.)
Day two: Girl is certain she's pregnant.
Day three: There's medical confirmation she's pregnant.
All this, and I'm less than a quarter way through the book. I was reading it because it was so bad that it went around the bend and became amusing, but it's just so god-awful bad. I don't even have words. (Maybe I should just put " >:( " here.)
At least I paid only $3 for it? It kills me that the Amazon page has 20 five-star ratings. Of 30 total! Six four-star and two three-star ratings! Only two one-star, mine included. I put mine up only yesterday, and it already has been down-voted.
>:(
I won't spend much time on her grammar. She has no idea how semicolons work. Sentences like amusingly fitting one:
And; how could they be worse than this one?
The writing was so bad, every page or so I had to reread sentences, trying to figure out what she was trying to say.
Every few pages, she seemed to pick adjectives or adverbs totally at random. I sat there, scratching my head, wondering if she knew what the word she just used meant. Like: "Poignantly he squatted down to wash the mud off his feet." (Not a quote, because I forgot to mark it, but "poignantly" was indeed used incorrectly in this way.)
Her writing was so unprofessional I was embarrassed for the author. " f**k " appeared in the book. With the asterisks.
The dialogue was so painfully bad and unrealistic. In the story, a teenage girl gets kidnapped and stuck in a holding area with another girl. Her life is over. She's ranting to the other girl:
"...My parents were paying for a kick ass trip to Paris. I was going to move away and go to college. These clothes are awful. I don't have any shoes. I have to sleep on the ground. And how am I going to lose my virginity now?"
And yet, after that, she spends the rest of the book screaming at a boy to stay away from her, calling him a stalker because he stays close to her (they're being kept in the same small room...), yet based on nothing but the boy being asleep when he's first put into the room, she calls him "cute" and "charming". Somehow she finds him charming. When he did nothing more than stay asleep.
The father hears the news about the daughter's "death" (the girl seems dead to those left behind). This is the telephone conversation. About his daughter's death. (Phil is a cop.)
"Oh, hey Phil. Accident? Where? You're there now . . . Is she okay?" he asks. "Dead at the scene. What hospital did they take her to? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks." He swallows hard and places the phone back in the cradle.
Supposedly the father loved the daughter, she was his reason for living...
What teenager talks like this? She's lusting after a captive in another cage. He probably won't even meet me, since he's got a gorgeous brunette waiting to be impregnated by him.
The author was amazingly lazy, and as I mentioned, unprofessional. She wrote "youtube" for the name of the site, lower cased and, for who knows what reason, in italics. You just need to go to the site to see the proper capitalization for the name! (Edit: I started second guessing myself on this one, so I checked Google. No where did I find reference saying a website name should be in italics, and even if it should be, it sure as heck should be capitalized correctly.)
The author has a title for every chapter. One was " :) ". There is no texting in the book. The kids have no tech at all, all they do is talk. I wanted to drive my head through a wall at that point. Are you so damned lazy you can't figure out some words you want to use as a title?
Compared to things mentioned above, errors like this seem mild. Quoting again: I enjoyed our time together. She made me laugh. I enjoyed our time together.
And the basic logic errors! Keep in mind, the author is a woman. (I assume. It's by Tara Elizabeth.)
Day one: A boy and a girl have sex. (Day and a half, technically. And evening and the next day.)
Day two: Girl is certain she's pregnant.
Day three: There's medical confirmation she's pregnant.
All this, and I'm less than a quarter way through the book. I was reading it because it was so bad that it went around the bend and became amusing, but it's just so god-awful bad. I don't even have words. (Maybe I should just put " >:( " here.)
At least I paid only $3 for it? It kills me that the Amazon page has 20 five-star ratings. Of 30 total! Six four-star and two three-star ratings! Only two one-star, mine included. I put mine up only yesterday, and it already has been down-voted.
>:(