2022 DNF books: Come Tumbling Down and Where the Drowned Girls Go

[thistlechaser]

Well this series certainly did go downhill...

22: Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children, 5) by Seanan McGuire. One of my favorite characters in this series is Jack, damaged twin to Jill. Went to a world called the Moors, came back a mad scientist. Unfortunately Jack didn't sound much like Jack in this book. And then Cora showed up. One of the other characters looked at her and said something like "She has such large curves, yet she's so delicate and she takes up a lot less space in a room than you would think". The theme of this series is "there's no one right way to be a girl", but clearly the author is telling us there is only one right way to be "fat".

I lost all patience for the book, and DNFed it at 25%. I would have dropped the series as a whole, but the one small spoiler I read made me think I would like the final book...

23: Where the Drowned Girls Go (Wayward Children, 7) by Seanan McGuire. Books 1-6 were all set in the same school: For kids who had gone through doors and wanted nothing more than to find a door to go back to that world they were sent to. But there's another kind of school: One for kids who hated their time on another world, who were damaged by it, who only wanted to forget. The spoiler I read had been that this book was set in one of those other schools.

I should have read more spoilers, because this was a Cora book. A couple pages in I realized that, checked Goodreads to make sure I was right, and DNFed it at 3%.

I was so very annoyed at this being a Cora book, I didn't even want to start a new book -- it made me not want to read at all.

I don't know if there will be more books coming out, but I'm done with this series.

Every Heart a Doorway: LOVED it.
Down Among the Sticks and Bones: LOVED it.
Beneath the Sugar Sky: Hated it.
In an Absent Dream: Didn't enjoy it.
Come Tumbling Down: Hated it.
Across the Green Grass Fields: LOVED it.
Where the Drowned Girls Go: Hated it.

Though my ratings of the books are balanced, so I suppose if a new one comes out, I should maybe check it out.

One thing that really bothers me is the price of these books. They're novellas, take about two hours to read. They cost $10.99 each. To compare to that, a new book by Stephen King costs $13, any of his older ones cost $9.99. King's newest book has 600+ pages, McGuire's under 200.

Comments

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

Eh, sounds disappointing. I will face the rest of the series with a grain of salt.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I'll be interested to hear which ones work for you! :)

[hamsterwoman]

Unfortunately Jack didn't sound much like Jack in this book

I also had this feeling -- the Jack I had loved in the first two books just didn't seem to be there anymore, except for maybe 1 or 2 quotes... instead there was Sumi (oh god so much Sumi) and more Cora. I don't understand why, after focusing the first 4-5 books on a new character each time, it is now apparently the Cora and Sumi show...

These books are novellas, so I can't fault them for being short, but I do really hate this habit of Tor's of pricing their novellas at $11. I'm just... not going to pay that for 200 pages, no matter how much I may love the author (except in those cases where I'm giving it to someone as a gift, in hard copy, which I have done). As a result, all of the Tor novellas I own are either Tor book club freebies or Hugo packet freebies, and the others I read as library books. Whereas if they were priced around $5 for the ebook, I *would* buy them -- I buy Lois McMaster Bujold's novellas at that price, quite happily.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Fully agreed on the price. I'd pay $5 for these, even for McGuire's next one if it wasn't a Cora one sounded good, but $11? Never.

I'm glad it wasn't just me who didn't think it sounded like Jack anymore. I wasn't sure if it was just because I was grumpy about the other characters.

Oh well, on to other books. At least the "DON'T WANT TO READ ANYMORE" feeling these last two gave me only lasted a night.