Two DNF books: Bravelands (Broken Pride) and 'Salem's Lot

[thistlechaser]

DNF #135: Bravelands #1: Broken Pride by "Erin Hunter" (Gillian Philip).

Wow. I had to google to see who the real author was of this one and found quite a doozy.

Gillian Philip was formerly one of the authors writing under the name Erin Hunter. She is a self-proclaimed TERF and worked on the Survivors and Bravelands series until she was fired on June 26th, 2020 for abusive transphobic comments, mocking her fans on twitter, and general unprofessionalism.

Even before reading that, I had DNFed this book for being poorly written and having an unbelievable plot (lion cub's pride gets taken over by an evil lion, so he runs off and is raised by a troop of baboons).

Usually I feel bad about DNFing books, but in this case I don't at all!

Edit: Wow, and she doxxed a minor fan, too. Apparently the checkered flag is a TERF thing.

Edit 2: Oh god, she's crowdfunding a lawsuit to defend "a woman’s right to state biological facts without fear of losing her job." https://twitter.com/Gillian_Philip

DNF #136: 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King. Boy I tried with this book. I love King, and so I'm going back and reading the few books of his that I've missed.

I spent 6 or so hours reading, 260-something pages, 42% through the book. The only thing that has kept my interest was the setting (the story is set in the town right next door to the one my mother lives in! They share a border, and King mentions her town and the one right next to hers a lot. That's so much fun!).

All King books start slowly, but this one was really, really slow. People say once you get through the first 125 or so pages it takes off, but it never did for me.

Set in a typical King's Maine small town, a vampire odd European man moves into town. People start dying. Others start seeing those dead people return. Whatever could be happening?!

This book was published in 1975, which means a couple different things:

* It was dated in a really, really bad way. "Fag" was tossed around so much, racial slurs, and Every Single Character smoked cigarettes nonstop. I'm not at all blaming King, things were different that long ago, but it wasn't really enjoyable to read about. All the slurs came and went, but the cigarette smoking was nonstop and I was starting to feel like I was sitting in a room full of chain smokers while I read.
* I think the bigger issue how how well we all know King now. If you're in a town King is writing about, there are going to be vampires, ghosts, clowns in the sewer, or something like that. The characters had such a hard time believing that vampires could be there, which on one hand is reasonable, but on the other... they saw dead people with long teeth flying outside their windows. Bodies kept showing up with no blood.

This was supposedly one of King's scariest horror story, but I never even raised my eyebrows at anything in it. A scene 100 or so pages in supposedly gave people nightmares, but it didn't even make me blink.

Stephen King wrote this book almost 50 years ago. (How amazing is it he's been writing books for 50 years?) I might try another of his really old books I've missed, but I think otherwise I'll stick with his more recent ones. (Though I do want to read the Dark Tower series again...)

I really wish I could have enjoyed and finished this book.

Comments

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

I could go with a story about a lion cub raised by baboons- how mixed-up would that be, when he grew up and tried to interact with actual lions . . . But I totally believe you when you say it's badly written. All the other stuff I'd rather ignore because of course now knowing about it I'm completely uninterested in anything this author would write. (Sounds like it's not worth the time to read, anyway though).

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had that same reaction. "Well now I'm not going to read anything of hers (am I going to be missing out?)", but I checked her other books and they didn't look interesting at all. I read a lot of YA, but her stuff seems like the kind of YA marketed for teenage girls. I picked one of her books at random, the summary:

"Ruby and Jinn are sisters and the best of friends, the closest of allies. Jinn is vivacious and beautiful, and does everything she can to look after Ruby. Then no-good Nathan Baird turns up and Jinn changes, neglecting Ruby. What is happening to Jinn? And then Jinn goes missing, just like other local girls!"

I don't feel like I'm missing anything anymore, heh.

Yeah, the lion cub raised by baboons could be a good story, just not in her hands. The animals were too human and the characters were too stupid.