Book #79 of 2023: Children of the Dawnland | DNF: The Dragon and the Stars, Cricket's Song, House of

Children of the Dawnland by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear.

Set in prehistoric times, a tribe of early-ish humans was trying to live their best life. Hunting, talking to spirits, having babies. A young girl could hear spirits better than anyone else, and so knew something really really bad was coming. (A huge meteor that would usher in a new ice age. The two authors are archaeologists and wanted to write about how scary and horrible this real event must have been to the humans of the time.)

While I mostly enjoyed this book, I read a lot of stories set in this same time period. This one wasn't the worst or the best. However the ending, after the meteor hit, was outstanding. Such a good, believable look at how horrible life was after he meteor hit. I wish I had saved the line, but there was a sentence about how a herd of animals was walking with its head down, their noses to the ground to try to follow the scent of the trail since their eyes had all been burnt out of their heads.

The Goodread reviews for this book are pretty harsh, but I don't think it was bad at all.

DNF #154: The Dragon and the Stars by various authors. Yet another book that I had read before, but it got back onto my Kindle after it had deleted all my books. I remembered LOVING the first story, so I reread that one and skipped the rest.

All the stories were set in China, and the first story was about the army using spirits to help it fight. It was a good story, but since I knew it already, it wasn't anywhere near as enjoyable as the first reading.

DNF #155: Cricket's Song by Michael A Hooten. Set in old Ireland (or an Ireland-ish fantasy world?), a young orphan boy learns to be a bard. Not a poorly written book, but the dialogue felt off to my ear and the story didn't hook me at all, so I DNFed it.

DNF #156: House of Tribes by Garry Kilworth. Told from a mouse's POV... I'm not sure more than that. The writing style just didn't work for me at all and I DNFed it pretty quickly. He's written a ton of books, so the issue is probably me and not him.