2013 book: Treecat Wars

[thistlechaser]

Treecat Wars by David Weber and Jane M. Lindskold.
(Book received for free for review from Baen Books.)

I love talking animal books, so I was excited to be offered Treecat Wars to review. There was no summary of the story, but the cover featured a cat and space(?), so I thought it would be a fun story.



Unfortunately I wasn't able to read the book, but two-thirds of the reasons why were unrelated to the writing or the story itself.

There was a technical issue with the ebook. By default, the text was too small for me to comfortably read, and when I increased it to the next font size, it was way way too big (two paragraphs per page big). I'm sure this issue will be corrected in the final version of the ebook, before it goes on sale in October, but that's little help now.

The second issue was that this was a book from the middle of a series. Googling, I found there were almost a dozen books before this one! Which explains the first 10% or so I got through: Situation after situation was mentioned, though no details were given -- it was a reminder for people who had read the previous books, not bringing new readers up to date (understandable, with so many earlier books). The events did seem interesting, one day I might read the whole series, but it made reading this book no fun.

The final reason was story related: Turns out this was a YA book, which was no problem at all, I love YA books, but the main character (a 15 year old girl), spent the whole time thinking about her ~true love~ and how she had to go where he was and couldn't be apart from him and woe she was getting the chance of a lifetime to get training in the job she wanted, but it would take her away from boyfriend so how could she take it? Mind you, I didn't get further than 10% in, so this could have changed further on, but that's the exact kind of story I don't like.

If you've read the previous books (and don't mind teenage girls in love), then this will probably be an enjoyable tale for you.

(I'm not counting Treecat Wars towards my 2013 total, since I didn't even come close to the halfway mark.)

Comments

[teslanomaly]

Holy cow. I can't imagine trying to dive into the middle of the WeberVerse. I love Dave Weber (and have in fact waded through most of that whole huge series) and Jane Lindskold and have no doubt they did a bang-up job but I would not want to read this book, now, with 10 years or so between me and my last read. I can't fathom that it's fully digestible without reading the world saga, period. (I'm also not a huge fan of spinoffs and short story collections, even in universes I love, so... meh.)

It gave me a giggle to see it on your review list though!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got the sense that there was a whole lot of history there, which would be great if I had been starting from the beginning. The middle? Not so much. (Heck, it's not even really the middle, it's somewhere near the way end.)

[changeling72.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm not sure I can cope with teenagers of any gender in love!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's not really something I'm interested in reading about.

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

I have so many books I could recommend that you *not* read. ;) If there are ones where the protagonist strains my patience, then you definitely wouldn't want to go anywhere near them. I'm pretty tolerant when it comes to teenage romance, but there is the occasional example of someone who even I want to grab and give a good shaking. So I happily offer my services as to some "what to avoid" type suggestions if you ever want them, though I suspect you'll never want for books that you'd actually want to read. ^^

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

You got me pegged. :D For a while I worried I disliked all romance storylines (which would be sad!), but then I remembered there were some I not just liked, but loved. The Sharing Knife series comes to mind.

though I suspect you'll never want for books that you'd actually want to read. ^^

Hopefully!