DNF: Island of Fog, Unicorn Rescue, Silverhair

[thistlechaser]

DNF #128: Island of Fog by Keith Robinson.
DNF #129: Unicorn Rescue by Keith Robinson.

A couple weeks ago, three authors sent out an email with two dozen or so of their books for free. These two books were the only ones that sounded interesting, so I accepted copies of them. If I had realized the same author wrote both, I probably would have picked just one to start with.

Surprisingly the writing wasn't bad at all, but I had the same issue with both books: They just didn't hook me, both seemed really flat. In Island of Fog, nothing much happened: Some families were living alone on an island, kids went to school, the island had fog all the time. In Unicorn Rescue, more stuff happened: A unicorn was being kidnapped by people from another world, a kid was trying to stop them. So it wasn't a matter of how much happened, it just wasn't very interesting either way.

Both books were written 10+ years ago and are the first books of long, long series (Island has 14 books so far), so I would assume the author has since improved.

DNF #130: Silverhair by Stephen Baxter. Even having read a bunch of other reviews of this book, I'm not sure how to write my own.

On one hand, even in just the 10% I read, I learned a number of things. It's so wonderful when that happens!

On the other hand... the "story" part of this book was just not good. There was a bunch of unbelievable stuff (apparently the mammoths had tales that went back to the first mammals ever, so the mammoths knew about life among the dinosaurs). I suspect the author would have been happier writing some kind of scientific paper instead of a fiction book. It's very very clear how much research he did about mammoths and that time period, but the story end of things just didn't at all work for me.

Comments

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

That's disappointing to hear about the Mammoth book. And you got to it before me! Sounds like one I read about dogs years ago- it was from the viewpoint of a sheep herding dog, and I was really enjoying it until got to the point where the dog was "sharing" memories from ancestors of all dogs, with other dogs. Some kind of telepathic ghost memory connection. It totally threw me out of the story. (I'm still going to try the mammoths, but I won't be surprised if I quit on it like you did).

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Too bad about the dog book! I'd love to read one about sheepdogs... just not with the whole ancestral memory thing.

Hopefully you'll like the mammoth book more than I did, but like you had said, the other reviews make me suspect you might not as well...

And you got to it before me!

I was waiting to get a copy of that last book in the Forever Fantasy Online, so I was picking books I suspect I might DNF; I didn't want to be in the middle of a long book once I got the final FFO one.