Books #16 Prey: The Drovers and #17: Outlaws: The Drovers | DNF: Owlflight, Rise of a Necromancer

[thistlechaser]

Prey: The Drovers by John D. Brown
Outlaws: The Drovers by John D. Brown

What fun books these were! The worldbuilding was pretty basic, but the plot was fun as hell and I loved all the characters.

Set in a fantasy world, a boy's family (already living on the edge of poverty) was driven into starvation when their sole cow died and their cheese-making pots were stolen. The boy sets out to find odd jobs to make money to help them, and happens into a job as a drover (cow herder).

That seems such a simple idea, and much of the books were just day-to-day life, but they were so interesting! The head drover who hired them taught them to fight (so they could better defend the herd), and he and the cook (the only two adult main characters) had some kind of interesting backstory that we only ever got glimpses of.

The whole story was such an adventure, it was so fun from beginning to end!

The only downside is that the author is only writing book three now, so it's going to be ages before it comes out. It's too easy to lose track of in-progress book series. :/ I hope I remember it exists once it gets published.

DNF

Rise of a Necromancer by Rosie Scott: Typical "bad self published" book. I only got as far into it as I did because it was so short. DNF 7%

Owlflight by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon: I tried so hard to like this book, but man I can't believe it was published. The first 22% of the book was characters thinking. There would be one simple sentence like "He kicked the stone down the road" and then 20 pages of the character thinking about things. Most of the first quarter of the book was not just characters thinking, it was almost exclusively one character thinking (there was just a couple pages where a second character was thinking). The whole book was so pointless. I only gave it way too much of a chance because it came highly recommended to me. DNF 66%

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 7% + 66% = 73%
Previous abandoned book total: 377%
New total: 450% (four books)

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

I stopped reading Eric Flint's "Ring of Fire" series because of a book like Owlflight.

A modern US town gets transported 400 years into the past in Germany. They have modern technology and history books, and can carry out great adventures.

Half a book was spent planning to hold a meeting, and how they would organize tables and such.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Man that sounds like such a fun idea for a book! Wish they hadn't wasted so much of it, like Owlflight. You'd think authors would know people wouldn't want to read about people just thinking or doing such mundane tasks.

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

Wait, does the Drovers series have dragons in it? I see one on the cover- are they a big part of the story? Might tempt me to give it a try.

Mercedes Lackey- I tried a few of her books years ago, not for me. She seems to be really popular- has published tons of books at least- but the ones I tried were just so dull. Too much explaning and telling me things instead of showing it through the story. Oh well.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

On my Kindle, the cover images are black and white, one inch tall by half-inch wide, so I can never see much of it while reading. When I posted the Drover cover here, I peered hard at it. "Odd, that looks like a dragon..." There was a monster in it, and it did have big leathery wings, but it was furry and I hadn't pictured it as dragon-like at all. I suspect they made it look like a dragon for a "cool" cover image? Or maybe it was supposed to be a furry dragon and I was just picturing it wrong. Either way, it was a tiny part of the story (mostly just a threat for a quarter of the book), not a main character at all. I think that will change in the third book... whenever that comes out.

By complete random chance, the current book I'm reading is Mercedes Lackey, too. (Or a third is her writing, she wrote the first of three novellas in it.) You hit the nail on the head, she seems really big on telling instead of showing. I loved her as a kid, I guess I just hadn't known better.