2021 books: The Horse in the Mirror, D6: Caverns and Creatures

[thistlechaser]

The Horse in the Mirror by Lisa Maxwell. There was so much wrong with this book, usually I would have given up on it on page one. The first quarter of it was so badly written and edited. Periods missing. Capitalization on the first word of sentences missing. Spaces missing. And the author is apparently comma-phobic, because about 80% of the ones that should have been used never were. Almost every sentence had a grammar error in it.

Add onto that that the main character's name is "Is" and it became really challenging to read. "Is wondered if..." "Is looked out at..." "Is wasn't sure if..." It was such an awful name for a character (short for Isadora), even at the 50% point of the book I was still stumbling over if it was meant as her name or if it was the word "is".

Why did I keep reading it? Because wow, the author knew horses so well. All of her descriptions of them, how they behaved, how to handle them. Perfect!

The first half of the book was about Is training war horses for the government. She lived alone, they would drop off a young horse and then a couple years later pick up the trained ones. For reasons the author never explained (which happened way too often), Is decided to run off with the horse she was currently training.

With only a hand axe, small knife, and very limited supplies, she found a place in the woods and somehow in a short time built a barn for her horse with a loft over it for herself.

Then a random mystery man showed up on her proverbial doorstep. He was very sick, very injured. Somehow, with only her axe and knife, she created a tube to put down his throat so she could get water into him and a catheter so he wouldn't pee all over the place. She was in the middle of the woods. No real supplies. The author didn't mention once at all how she made those or what she made them from. Very frustrating... and very common in the story.

Eventually the man got better and the two rode off together. At about the halfway point of the book the story went from "young woman surviving on her own with her horse until a beautiful blond man showed up" (Clan of the Cave Bear, anyone?) to some kind of dystopian story about the French American Indians (that beautiful blond man's people -- they all spoke with French accents but seemed to live like a Native American tribe... but also practiced martial arts) fighting against the government. I got bored at that point.

While this book had so so so many issues, I actually somehow enjoyed the first half. I wish the author had gone into Is's background more instead of shifting to a dystopian story. DNF 51%

D6: Caverns and Creatures by Robert Bevan. As the title implies, this collection of stories was set in some tabletop, D&D-ish world. Unfortunately the characters knew that -- they knew they were in a game, they knew the rule books, they knew all the "meta" information about their world. Breaking the fourth wall like that never works for me. DNF 3%

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 51% + 3% = 54%
Previous abandoned book total: 713%
New total: 767% (seven books)

Comments

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

Oh dear. The horse one sounded really good- until it just didn't. I don't think I'm tempted.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, based on other reviews, it went downhill after the halfway point. The "Mirror" was an AI computer system — the world had computers (the main character just never encountered one). So, in a world that has AI, their highest battle technology was war horses. They had no cars, no trucks, nothing but horses and wagons to get around.

So odd.

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

Um, that doesn't- make any — sense? Maybe there's an explanation near the end of the book, but doesn't sound like it's worth wading through to get to it!