2017 books: Iron Edge, Dominion Over All

[thistlechaser]

Iron Edge by P.S. Power
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



First off, "P.S. Power" is about the most unsubtle pseudonym ever.

The idea behind this story was quite interesting. A man is pulled back and forth between our world and a fantasy world. In our world he's an Iraq War vet, in the other world, he's in training to become the bestest fighter ever.

I really didn't like the tone of the book (felt very pro war/pro military/macho... P.S. Power.). The writing was also really quite poor. Then I read the author's About Me section on Goodreads and that explained it: He writes a book or two PER MONTH.

Abandoned at 10% in.

Dominion Over All by W. Bradford Swift
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Dominion Over All had quite a nice idea, too. A boy meets a magical talking cat and has to go on a quest for her. From Amazon's summary, the quest: "He must represent the Animal Kingdom before the United Nations' Conference on Global Warming."

Unfortunately the writing was very, very simplistic. Even for a story about a magical cat, it wasn't very believable. I checked others' reviews, and they said the same. I gave up on it at the 16% point.

---

Usually in my book count for the year I give myself one book credit for all my abandoned books. However, as I had 74 abandoned books last year, I think I'm selling myself short. Maybe I should keep a running count on percent finished on abandoned books and add it to the count that way... (I'd like to track page count instead, but the vast majority of my ebooks don't offer a real page count.)

So let's try that! Abandoned books so far: Count to a Trillion (12%), Iron Edge (10%), and Dominion Over All (16%) gives me a total of 38% so far.

I'm a little skittish about crossposting my less than positive reviews to Goodreads, since it seems authors are more active there... I've been just rating and not reviewing most of the ones I don't like.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

The negative reviews are most useful for saving me money, so please feel free to keep posting them here.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I'll happily keep posting them here!

[hamsterwoman]

Tallying up the percent read for the DNF books seems like a very fair way to give yourself credit! And I would guess it would tally up to more than just counting the DNF books you get over 50% in (and will probably keep you from reading just a little more of books you dislike to get to the 50% mark, heh)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

You're so right. I've lost count of how many times I pushed to hit the 50% mark. I think this is going to be a change for the good!

[tedwords.livejournal.com]

Who in the world can write a book or two per month? I wonder how much he makes off all that effort.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine how he writes that much. There was another (really, really bad) author who claimed something similar -- a couple books a month. I suppose they just get as many books as they can out there and hope they get a couple sales off them.

[tedwords.livejournal.com]

I don't feel so bad taking a few years to complete my latest, after reading this!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Not at all! The quality will show through, I'm sure!