thistlechaser: (Book with cat: Scared)
I finished this book last night, before midnight, so it counts as part of last year.

Weregirl by C. D. Bel
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



This was an odd book, and it wasn't until I read the afterwards that I understood why.

The first 50% of the book was about a girl in a modern day, very poor town. Set in Michigan, some chemical company was dumping toxic stuff there, and it got into the water system, which made all the kids sick. (Sound familiar?)

The main character is a talented runner, a high school student. There were no werewolves at all in the first 50% of the book, no mention of them, no wolves, nothing. It's just about her. Which was fine! Learning about the high school track world was interesting, as were the main character and the other characters around her.

Then, about the 57% point, she got bitten by a wolf. "Chosen by the wolves to do something" she's told by a ~mystical Native American~. Still, I continued to enjoy the story. The werewolf part was interesting, the author handled it well.

Then the last third of the book changed. It suddenly became this big PLOT THING about the EEEVVVIIIILL company that had poisoned the town. See, the town sued the company that poisoned the water, but the company went bankrupt before it could pay anything out. Some other company bought the bankrupt company and paid off all its debts and way more. And no one in the story questioned why a company would do that.

So it turns out that new company was evil evil mcevil. It captured wolves and grew new human parts inside of them for transplant... Like the main character saw them cut open a wolf to take out a fully formed human nose.

It actually got worse from there, the company being so EVIL EVIL OH LOOK WE'LL KILL KIDS BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT PEOPLE THEY'RE JUST "A COLLECTION OF CELLS".

And then the ending... The company covered up everything the main character had seen, she brought the police there but in hours there was no evidence of anything at all there. And so the main characters just said "okay" and that's how the story ended! They said to each other "There are lots of bad companies in the world, they come and they go, this one will go too". AFTER THE COMPANY TRIED TO USE HER YOUNGER BROTHER FOR GENETIC EXPERIMENTS IN FRONT OF HER. "Ho hum. They'll go out of business eventually, so it's okay."

I loved the first two-thirds of the book so much, but the last third was awful. And then I found out why: In the afterwards, the author explained this book had actually been written by a committee. They brought a group of people into a room and came up with three story arcs (which explains why the last third was so different than the rest of the book). Then they brought in groups of teenagers to ask about what they like in their books, and added those elements as well, then one person wrote it all up, with the rest approving all the text.
thistlechaser: (Book with cat: rainbow)
Every year I do a summary of my year of reviews. This year had two big trends:

1) LitRPG. "Sucked into a video game" books, where a person gets trapped in a video game world. In the beginning of the year, I packed my Kindle with them. They seemed like the perfect books for me! Then as I kept reading them, I learned the truth: The vast, vast majority of them are awful. So so so amazingly badly written (major issues in the very first sentence of the book was the rule! Not the exception!), with awful, unrealistic characters and situations no one could believe as real.

2) I cannot count. Each year I make one or two errors in my running tally of books, but this year I made four. So luckily I more than reached the 50 book mark!

Anyway, on to the books!

Total books read. 50 books per year goal:

This was a challenging year. Phone games are such a waste of time, yet they endlessly call out to me... I lost so much reading time to them.

Abandoned books. How's this? The exact same number as last year!

As you can see, I used to never want to stop reading a book before I finished it, but life's too short to waste time on bad books.

And, as you can see, abandoning books I didn't like worked for me. The chart of how much I liked books I finished:



Just for fun, I made one of my abandoned books for 2017:

That's actually more positive than I would have guessed!

42 books I finished. Link to each review and a brief quote from each review. )

74 books I did not finish (total percent finished = 10 full books). Link to each review and a brief quote from each review. )

Small bookkeeping update: In the coming year, for abandoned books, I'm going to keep one grand total of percent finished instead of rolling over to a new book in the middle of the year. So for example, if I read 50% of one, 30% of another, and 35% of the next, instead of calling that "one book + 15% towards the next", I'll call it 115%. Then at the end of the year, I'll break it down into books/100% chunks. That should make my final count easier to do.
thistlechaser: (Book with cat: On stack)
Usually I post books in the order I read them, but I'm going to put the amusing one first. I almost got up out of bed last night just so I could post about it.

Lore Online: A Game Alive LitRPG Series by Trip Ellington
Rating: Hated (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I'm going to quote from the book. Everything between the ---- is quoted, bolding as it appears in the book. My quote starts in the middle of a story paragraph.

-----

If only I could afford a real gaming rig, he thought.

SHOULD MORE FUTURISTIC TECH BE THREADED THROUGH? Re: Still watching things on a screen, checking bank account online. iPhones, cellphone, landlord's curlers, grocery bags - perhaps more near-future options could be made up for those and more. definitely in need of revision here. the story is meant to take place 50-60 years from now, so a lot of this will need to be reworked. I've made a few changes myself, but please feel free to tweak as needed.

He looked down at his grey t-shirt and jeans...

-----

Back and forth notes between himself and some reader, in the middle of the published story! I laughed out loud for a good long time at that. That is a new one...

Stopped reading at 3%, though I did skim to see if there were more notes like that.

Dungeon Crawl by Skyler Grant
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Typical LitRPG. One day I'll delete the last LitRPG book off my kindle, and that will be a good day indeed. Stopped at 3%.

Dungeon Born by Dakota Krout
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



This was an odd story. In it a man is killed by a necromancer, and for some unexplained reason his soul was stuffed into a gem. Somehow the gem evolved into a dungeon core, and every dungeon core becomes a dungeon. So basically it was a story told about how a dungeon (as in D&D, something adventurers enter to kill monsters and find treasure) came to be.

An interesting idea, but wasn't very well written, so I gave up on it pretty fast (8%).

Captain's Kid by Liz Coley
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I liked this book. I liked the story, I liked the characters in it, I liked the writing... and yet I didn't want to read it. Every time I picked it up, within a page or two I started watching the clock. Why? I have no idea. Like I said, I was interested in the story and wanted to know what happened next. I liked the characters, and I believed them as real people. The writing itself was fine (or, as it was self-published, good).

The plot was about a kid whose mother was killed on a mission, and he and his father were about to go on that same mission. The two had never talked about losing her, each lost in their own grief. While that more personal plot was going on, there was a wider one about two different groups of warring geneteched humans on a new planet.

The "aliens" (very geneteched humans) were interesting, and I was interested in both of the plotlines. I have no idea at all why the book never clicked for me. I thought maybe it was me (too distracted by RL stuff?), but as soon as I finally gave up on this one (at 62%) and started a new book, I was lost in the new story.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in this books: 3% + 3% + 8% + 62% = 76%
Previous abandoned book total: 76%
New total: 76% + 76% = 152% (one book + 52% towards the next)

Currently reading: Weregirl. Will I reach 50 books by the end of the year? Which means either give up on this book after the 48% mark or finish this book? Stay tuned and find out!
thistlechaser: (Book with cat: Scared)
Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Never have I liked a story so much and yet skimmed so much of the book. In Dogs of War, humans decide that war was too costly, so they create "bioforms" -- things that start out as animals but are geneteched to become half-human soldiers. The story follows Rex, a dog bioform.

This book had two stories in it. The first was Rex's personal arc of going from what was basically an unthinking machine to a real person. And boy did I LOVE LOVE LOVE that story! Not only did he have to overcome his geneteching (which only wanted obedient slaves), he had to also overcome a dog's drives to make its master happy. I completely believed him as part dog, his feelings and thoughts and reactions seemed perfectly accurate.

The larger story didn't work for me as well, but perhaps only because I loved the more personal story so much more. While Rex was trying to grow and better himself, the whole world had to deal with what bioforms are -- not robots, bioforms could think and had feelings. And, while mentally limited, they could talk. What makes a person? Who deserves rights? Nations had to make a similar trip as Rex himself was making.

Rex's story was so great, I actually cried at the end. But all the chapters about humans and nations and all the legal battles? More often than not, I just skimmed those.

The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I'm starting to think that "old" books just don't work for me. When I mentioned that I hadn't read this book yet, multiple people recommended it to me. And, if I had been betting money, I would have bet this book would completely work for me. As a kid, 'toys coming to life' was probably my most common fantasy to play out.

And yet this story fell flat for me. Perhaps because it was British, perhaps because it was dated. All these old books always seem to lack something for me, something I can't define better than they're missing a spark -- they seem flat. Maybe it's just a difference in writing stiles across decades... I wish I knew.

While I suspect everyone knows what this story was about, in it a boy put a plastic indian into a cupboard, and through some unknown magic, it came to life. I didn't like the boy's character. The indian was a caricature. I didn't like the boy's best friend. And, perhaps worst of all, I didn't believe the parents as real people.

Maybe I was just expecting too much from a book for children... I stopped reading at 47%.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in this book: 47%
Previous abandoned book total: 29%
New total: 47% + 29% = %76
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 5)
Monster (Gone) by Michael Grant
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I finished this book a number of days ago, but it took me some time to work out my issues with it.

The Gone series (which ended a couple years back) was about a bunch of kids trapped in a dome. All the adults were ejected from the area, and slowly the kids gained superpowers, and soon enough the whole area went all Lord of the Flies-ish. As time passed, the kids went to war with each other, many died, tortured each other, dark stuff.

By the end of the series, we learned the cause of the dome and the superpowers: A meteorite hit the Earth, one carrying an alien virus.

In Monster, more and more of those meteorites started falling; what happened in the dome was now happening worldwide (other than the whole adults being tossed out part).

In the beginning, I loved the book. I had loved the Gone series so much, and it was good to get back to that world again. But as I read, I started having more and more issue...

The main character is a black lesbian woman. Another main character is a trans woman. Another main character had a ("cool") mental issue.

And the bad guy? White corporation man. A man who, after being thwarted a grand total of twice by women, decided he hated all women. He tended towards homophobia, too (called the lesbian character "lesbian" instead of her name).

Representation in media is good, but in this case it felt like the author was checking off boxes. Especially when the bad guy went from reasonable man to rabid woman-hater for really no reason at all...

I'll probably read more books if he continues the series, but this sure did leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Currently reading: Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 2)
Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I had intended to read Oathbringer next, but in his forward of that book, Brandon Sanderson said we should read this novella first, so I did.

Before I get to the review, let me say that paying $8 for an ebook novella is really annoying, especially when the hardcover version is only a dollar more.

I had loved the first two books in this series, so even the price didn't make me hesitate much before grabbing a copy of this. While it wasn't bad, I can't say it really hooked me or I enjoyed it much. In it a girl with world-canon "superpowers" is trying to live on the streets and find her place in life. I didn't really like her much as a character, and the whole story overall wasn't bad but just didn't do much for me.

In his afterward, Sanderson explained why it was important to read this novella before the third book, but I had remembered so little of the first two books that the reasoning was completely lost on me. (It was to explain why a character had changed between book 2 and 3, but until I read that afterward, I hadn't even realized he was a character from the previous books. See my review of Oathbringer below for more info.)

How to Be a Super Villain by Rachel and Michael Yu
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



This book was cute, but not at all what I expected. I read YA books all the time. I read juvenile books when I mistake them for YA ones. I think this one was even younger than juvenile though... Each page had a large picture on it (and they were very cute!), but so little text. I finished the whole book in maybe ten minutes or so.

As expected for a book for kids, the plot was very simple and silly (but cute). It didn't really work for me, but I was completely not the target audience.

Oathbringer: Book Three of the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Ah this book. I was looking forward to reading it so much. The issue is (or might be) that I read the first two books back when they were published so long ago, so I had completely forgotten not just the plot, but who the main characters were. I vaguely recognized some of the names, but nothing at all beyond that.

This book was long. I mean seriously long. YA books take me about 6 hours to read, adult books about 8 hours. This book was 31 hours long.

While I chalked it up to not remembering the first two books (and this third book reviewing nothing that had happened previously), I see it got a number of one star reviews on Amazon, so maybe it wasn't just that. My plan is to reread the first two books and then try this one again, but they're all so long... But I did enjoy the first two, so... maybe.

I stopped at the 4% point, but as long as this book was, that was still three nights of reading.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in this book: 4%
Previous abandoned book total: 25%
New total: 4% + 25% = %29
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 1)
Corpora Delicti (Administration book 9) by Manna Francis / [livejournal.com profile] mannazone
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I love this series so much. Set in the dystopian future in Europe, Val Toreth is a para-investigator (a state-sanctioned investigator and torturer). Keir Warrick is the head of a cutting-edge technology company. Somehow the two have been in a years-long relationship. To make it more complex, there's a BDSM part of relationship... when Toreth is a professional torturer and Warrick hates that with every fiber of his being.

Set post-attempted revolution, this book centers around one big case Toreth is working on. It takes him across Europe, and puts him in contact with many other government departments. (Rereading that, I suppose it sounds kind of dry, but like all para-investigators, Toreth is a sociopath, so it's really interesting to see how he functions in the world.)

This book series has been going on for many years, and I've loved it since the beginning. I only wish the books would be published faster! :) And it's even worse because the ebook version of the books are published months after the physical versions...

Hyper Connection: A Dangerous Game to Play by Luis Robles
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I reviewed this book a couple weeks back, but stopped at the 10% point because of the excessive number of typos and grammar issues. The same day I posted the review on Goodreads, the author messaged me to say there was an updated file that had been edited and offered to send it to me. Since the story had been interesting, I made an exception and said yes. (Usually my rule is that if you can't be bothered to edit your book, I can't be bothered to read it.)

Unfortunately I shouldn't have broken my rule. While many of the typos and grammar issues were corrected, the numerous story issues went unaddressed. The plot of the book was some Evil Company's new VR videogame was killing people, and the company would kill anyone to keep that information from getting out... Subtle killings? Nope. Things like "slowly" slitting the throat of a guy sitting with his therapist. The author actually said "slowly" slit his throat.

Add to that that around the 20% point of the book the typos and grammar issues were creeping back in, and I stopped reading at 25%.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in this book: 25% = 25%
Previous abandoned book total: 17%
New total: 25% + 17% = %42
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 5)
Ever felt hungry, but no idea what you wanted to eat? Walk into your kitchen full of food, and nothing in there is what you want? That's kind of how I feel about books at the moment. I'm looking for something, but I have no idea what. Unfortunately neither of these two books was it.

The Horse Dreamer (Equinox Cycle Book 1) by
Marc Secchia
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Set in the real world, current times. A girl who loves horses is in some kind of a car accident. There are hints and glimpses that a dragon might have been involved. The girl lost both legs at the knee, but in the first hours and days after learning that, continues to be nothing but perky and up-beat.

Based on reviews elsewhere, this story grew into a whole complicated thing with all sorts of mythical creatures. It didn't hook me at all though, and I stopped reading at the 7% point, when hours after waking up with no legs, the girl fell in love with the hot boy who pulled her from the wreck and brought her her bible he found at the accident site.

Soldier Boy by Keely Hutton
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Based on the cover alone (I downloaded it so long ago, I didn't remember it at all), I had thought maybe this would be a book about the American Revolution. Turns out it was about the Ugandan civil war, and the child soldiers used in it. POV alternated between two boys, one who was kidnapped and made into a soldier, the other who was rescued from that life.

This should have been a good match for my tastes, but since it was a YA book, it was too sanitized for me to enjoy. I'm not saying it was dishonest, it just didn't mention so many of the bad things that must have happened (like rape was never mentioned once). I stopped reading at the 39% point.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in these books: 7% + 39% = 46%
Previous abandoned book total: 71%
New total: 46% + 71% = 117% (One book + 17% towards next)
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 1)
One of my biggest book disappointments of the year is the LitRPG genre. It should be so completely perfect for me: Some variation on 'trapped in a videogame', complete with visible character sheets, stat points to spend, exp points, etc. Two of my great loves, rolled into one!

Unfortunately, almost without exception, every single one of those books I have tried was complete dreck. Worse than the worst self-published worst book. Typos in the very first paragraphs. Utterly awful self-insert main characters. Completely unbelievable situations. Nonstop male gamer fantasies.

Before I realized that fact about the genre, I had downloaded a bunch of them onto my Kindle. In an effort to get my unread book count down (currently 262!), I've been focusing on them.

Three LitRPG books tried, each as bad as expected. EverRealm, Ring of Promise, Game Over. Each of them full of typos, unrealistic story, etc. Stopped at the 2%, 4%, and 4% points respectively.



Partial book credits:
Point reached in these books: 2% + 4% + 4% = 10%
Previous abandoned book total: 61%
New total: 61% + 10% = 71%

And then I got to Game Runner. It was with the LitRPG books, and with this title I thought it was another one, but nope!

Game Runner by B.R. Collins
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Set in the future on an Earth made toxic by our own actions, Game Runner was about a boy (Rick) and the man who might be his father. While the vast majority of humanity had to live out in the open cities, in the toxic rain that could kill you, the lucky ones (the ones that worked for a big company), had more protection.

Rick's maybe-human maybe-father was one of the best game designers left alive, and so was able to gain a secure place for Rick and himself. Rick, having nothing else in life to do, becomes an outstanding player of that game.

Unlike so many other YA books, all the adult characters were nicely fleshed out, completely reasonable people, with thoughts, motives, and drives of their own. I also really liked that the book didn't answer a lot of questions.

Game Runner did another thing I loved: It showed how much time had passed by slight changes in the language. Like London was known as Undone and English was Inglish.

The one and only thing I didn't like was the ending. And I really, really did not like it, enough so that I'm not going to read the next book in the series. After being a reasonable kid most of the book (he made a lot of mistakes, yes, but duh, kid), Rick did a whole bunch of things that made just no sense to me, including having a big drive to escape the company's complex and go live out in the deadly rain. Yes kids want freedom, but he knew that going outside was a death sentence, and yet he destroyed so much to try to get to leave... (Book 2 is all about him being out in the city, so the story had to get him outside by hook or by crook.)

All in all I enjoyed the book a lot, I just wish the ending had been different.
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 3)
Deer Life by Ron Sexsmith
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



The beautiful cover was the best thing about this book. I loved the writing style (so lyrical! Which makes sense, since turns out the author is a famous Canadian musician), but the story itself didn't hold my interest at all.

Something of a fairy tale? It jumped between a couple different characters, and the worldbuilding was too slow. I gave up at 10%.

Little Warrior: Boy Patriot of Georgia (Patriot Kids of the American Revolution Series Book 2) by Geoff Baggett
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Since I'm currently so into Hamilton, it seemed like a good time to pick this book from my To Read pile.

It tells the story of a family moving from Virginia to Georgia, back in revolutionary times. While there was nothing wrong with it, it was only mildly interesting. The writing was pretty pedestrian and completely unchallenging. It was only when I sat down to write this review that I saw that it's not even a YA book, but a children's book. Target audience was kids age 9-10, which explains the writing.

While it was a fast read, it didn't hold my interest enough to finish it. Stopped at 45%.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in these books: 45% + 10% = 55%
Previous abandoned book total: 6%
New total: 55% + 6% = 61%
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 5)
Gray by Lou Cadle
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Much like Lou Cadle's later series (Dawn of Mammals, which I just finished), this book is about survival. In Gray, there's an Event. Something happens. Luckily a woman had been about to explore a cave, so when fire started falling from the sky, when all the land burned around her for days, she was able to survive by going deep into it.

When the world finally cooled enough for her to come out, everything was covered with ash -- gray. Almost everyone was dead. Almost all animals were dead. Everything was gone, burned to the ground. And she had to survive in that world alone.

One of the big differences between this series and Dawn of Mammals was that lack of other people. (And, you know, the lack of interesting prehistoric animals.) That was pretty significant, as without others to interact with, we were just in her head all the time. For me, that made for a much less interesting story.

This wasn't a bad book, I just didn't find it anywhere near as interesting as his other series, so I gave up on it at the 50% point.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in this book: 50%
Previous abandoned book total: 56%
New total: 50% + 56% = 106% [One book + 6% towards the next.]
thistlechaser: (Book with cat: hugging book)
Hell Pig, Killer Pack, Mammoth by Lou Cadle
Rating: Liked, Liked, Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



In book one, a park ranger (Hannah) lead a class of a dozen advance science students, their teacher, and another fossil expert into a canyon on a fossil hunt, and by chance they stumbled onto a rip in time that sent them into the distant past, into prehistoric times. Every month that rip opens again, which means that through the series, they also moved through time.

As I said in my review of one of the earlier books, the author is an expert on survival situations, and that completely showed. All through the series, their struggle to survive was completely realistic and believable. With every jump, the group needed to quickly learn their new environment, how to hunt in it, find water, build a shelter, and just stay alive. In some of the times (like the final book), the environment was nearly harsh enough to kill them right off the bat. In other books, giant predators could kill them just as quickly.

The last book, Mammoth, had them time-jumping to a more modern time, which you would think after their adventures in prehistoric times would be boring, but it completely was not. Somehow it was just as interesting as those much older times!

Sadly, the author said book 5 is the end of the series, though he might write in this world again in the future. Fingers crossed!

I completely loved not just this whole series, but the author's writing in general. I started his next series, Grey, as soon as I finished this one last night.

It's only now that I'm writing this review that I realized two things:

* Because of how short these books were, I thought they were YA. Nope! They are seriously short though, maybe 2-3 hours of reading each. (YA books usually take me about 4 hours, adult books 6-8.)
* These books were self-published! WOW. Not just were they all very well written, the editing in them was outstanding. I found maybe four errors in the whole series, which is at least as good as traditionally published books. This is especially impressive when you know that he wrote and published all five of these books in a single year.
thistlechaser: (Cat with book: Toy)
Terror Crane (Dawn of Mammals Book 2) by Lou Cadle
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I rarely do this, but I'm going to start with quotes from Amazon reviews of this book:

"Where to begin? Ok, bad kids, unbelievable dumb choices."

"Not as interesting as the first book, ... more juvenile. Definitely more depressing."

"This book had less useful information ... and more teenage angst. I would have preferred more action and less crying."

"its a slow read. needs more action and answers"


I loved the first book in this series, but this second one was pretty much the opposite of that.

First book, I wrote: What a completely fun and entertaining book this was!
This book: Ugh. No fun, no entertainment. No drama (of the good kind, too much teenage drama), no excitement.

First book, I wrote: And, because this was an advanced science class and not a typical group of high school kids, I enjoyed spending time with all the characters.
This book: I swear to god, I wish all of the characters got eaten by a prehistoric predator. The teens got whiny and did unrealistically stupid things. One of the two adult characters was just as bad.

There were only two high points to this book: It was a fast read (what a high point...), and I was certain the author was going to do something, but he didn't. I was impressed by that. Also, he let one of the adult characters make a big, serious mistake (The adult physically beat up one of the teenagers. The teen had been a monster the whole second book, a spoiled whiny brat, and another teen died to protect her. The adult snapped and physically beat her up until the others pulled her off the kid. ). ...so I guess that's three high points, not two.

Mostly because of that spoiler thing, I'm giving the third book, Hell Pig, a try. Thus far it's even more depressing than Terror Crane, but it has better Amazon reviews, so hopefully it will pick up.

I really like how all the covers match so far in the series.

thistlechaser: (Book with cat: hugging book)
Saber Tooth (Dawn of Mammals Book 1) by Lou Cadle
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



What a completely fun and entertaining book this was! Well-written, believable, exciting, and with a really fun idea.

The story started in current times, the real world. In it an advance science class of high school students is on a field trip to a national park, and during it they find a time rift. This was the only part of the book you had to just go along with: the fact that a time rift existed and that they all willingly went through it. But, if you can accept that, the rest of the story is outstanding.

The author is both a scientist and an expert on survival, and that comes through in this story. The kids and three adults are stuck in prehistoric times with only what's in their pockets. Little water, next to no food, no weapons, nothing to help them survive other than their brains. And, because this was an advanced science class and not a typical group of high school kids, I enjoyed spending time with all the characters.

As much fun as the story itself was, it was just as much fun reading about the world. His version of prehistoric times, from plants to animals to even changes in the stars, was completely believable -- I could tell he was an expert on this material.

This was book #1 of a series. There are four out now, and I have the next two on my Kindle already. I've started the next one, Terror Crane, already.
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 5)
One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Before I get into anything else about this book: How in the world does it have so many Amazon reviews? 2,867! Stephen King's most popular books rarely break 3,000, and a lot of his famous ones have a lot fewer (Salem's Lot has 1,587). Even if this is a case of paid reviews, that seems excessive!

Anyway, on to the book. I saw a review for it in Dogear Diary, and it sounded interesting so I grabbed a copy.

It's the fictional diary of a woman who took part in the American government's (fictional) program to marry off a thousand "white" (non-native) women to the Native Americans in hopes of "taming" the tribe. While the story was interesting, I had a number of issues with this book. I'm not even sure where to start listing them...

1) Rape. There was more rape happening than in Game of Thrones, and yet it had no impact on the characters. "Ho hum, I was raped every day for the last couple years or so. Hm, I wonder what's for breakfast?"

2) All too many of the characters were complete caricatures, including typed out accents.

About a third of the way into the book, already losing interest, I made the mistake of reading the Goodread reviews of it. The issues brought up there drove home the last straw for me, and I stopped reading at the 34% part. It wasn't awful, but I was only mildly curious about what was going to happen next, and the writing/characters were so unenjoyable that I decided to move on to some other book.

Hyper Connection: A Dangerous Game to Play by Luis Robles
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Another day, another (I assume) 'trapped in a VR video game' book. While I was more interested in this story than I was in One Thousand White Women, there were too many typos and grammar issues for me to continue reading. It's too bad, since I was curious about the story -- it seemed like it might go in some different direction than the usual 'trapped in a VR video game' books do. Oh well.

Stopped reading at 19%.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in these books: 34% + 19% = 53%
Previous abandoned book total: 3%
New total: 53% + 3% = 56%

Currently reading: Saber Tooth (Dawn of Mammals Book 1).
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 2)
Tess on the Road by Rachel Hartman
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



If I hadn't accepted this book for review, I would have stopped reading it the first night. But, hoping it would get better, I pressed on to a second night. I really wanted to stop at that point, but I forced myself to spend a third night reading it before finally giving up on it.

Every. Single. Character. In. This. Book. Was. Awful. From the main character (Tess) to everyone in family to everyone in the world around her, I didn't want to spend my reading time with any of them. Mean, ultra-religious, "fat" (how many times the characters were described as fat fat double chins triple chins, oh so fat fat fat FAT did I mention fat? The writing about them being overweight seemed mean outright at times). Even the main character's twin was so self-centered.

Add onto that and the plot was so slow and hard to believe (like the main character, after previously never having more than one or two drinks, for no reason drank to the point of being fall down drunk and nearly destroyed her family's life by telling their secrets). I had really wanted to like this book, and I gave it a lot more chance than I usually would, but it just completely did not work for me. Stopped at: 17%.

Demeron: A Horse's Tale by Guy Antibes
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Self-published. Set in the middle of a book series. I knew those two facts going in, but it was a story about a talking horse, so I thought I'd give it a chance. The writing was average (for a self-published book), but I didn't believe the horse character as a horse, and that's a deal breaker in a talking horse story. I stopped reading at the 5% point.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in these books: 17% + 5% = 22%
Previous abandoned book total: 81%
New total: 22% + 81% = 103% -- One full book and 3% towards the next book
thistlechaser: (Book with cat: hugging book)
The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Set in the near-ish future, in The Salt Line ticks have evolved to be deadly. I mean, "kill you in seconds" deadly. Oh you won't die that fast, but you will wish you would. If a tick bites you, the best case is that it will infect you with its eggs, and a couple days later the new ticks will burst out of you. Yep, that's the best case. If it's somewhere like your arm or leg, then you're especially lucky, since you might live. If it's near your organs or major blood stream (thus can get to your organs), you're as good as dead. And, if you survive the hatchings, you still have a high chance of getting a fatal disease spread by those same ticks. [Edit: Rereading this paragraph, it makes the book sound like a horror story. It is not. The ticks are a scary element, but they're really (mostly) just part of the setting of the story -- a constant threat, yes, but (rarely) in a graphic, horror movie-ish sort of way.]

So, because of the tick threat, people have retreated to cities, places that can be kept free of ticks. But some rich people get bored and want to see the old world, the places people used to be able to live before the tick problems, so a company formed to lead trips out into the wild. High price, high risk, but people still go. The story follows one of those groups.

It says something about the writing of this book that I hadn't even realized it was a dystopian story until about a third of the way in. It's a strong twist on it, and the dystopian-ness is really just background to the interaction of the characters.

As interesting as the world is, as big of a threat the ticks are, it's the characters that make the whole story work. They were all so interesting, and I loved getting to know them.

The only negative thing I have to say about the book is the very end of it didn't work for me -- I didn't believe what a couple of the characters did. (I believe it was to leave an opening for a second book.) Still, even with that, this book was completely worth reading.

Reading next: Tess of the Road, by Rachel Hartman (the same author who wrote the Seraphina books).
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 2)
The World Without Crows by Ben Lyle Bedard (
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I really don't like zombie books, so I'm not sure how I ended up with this one. Still, I had it, I liked the title, so I gave it a chance.

Though it's self-published, the writing in the first chapter was good. Finally! It's so rare for a self-published book to be good! ...and then I got to chapter two. I think all of the editing budget went into chapter one. The writing became like this:

His pack was heavy. He was tired walking, because his pack was so heavy. He took his heavy pack off. He set his pack down heavily. He was panting because his pack was so heavy.

On top of that, the main character was overweight and the author made sure to play it up at every moment. Phrases like his head being balanced on multiple chins, how many rolls of fat he had, how very fatty fat fat mcfat he was. That he waddled. That he jiggled.

Add those two elements and that it was about zombies, and I gave up on it at the 9% point.

Sword of Ice: And Other Tales of Valdemar (Valdemar Anthologies) by Mercedes Lackey (Editor)
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



While I don't remember much about the Valdemar series, I have fond memories of it. Beautiful white horses! With blue eyes! Psychic horses! So when I saw this anthology, I thought I'd give it a try.

Unlike the Elfquest anthology I read a couple books ago, this blast from the past collection of short stories didn't at all work for me. As I didn't remember anything about the world, it seemed only like generic fantasy to me. Add onto that, this ebook was just a fan-scanned version of a paperback, and the formatting made it really hard to read.

Stopped at 5% point.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in these books: 9% + 5% = 14%
Previous abandoned book total: 67%
New total: 14% + 67% = 81% towards the next book
thistlechaser: (Book with cat: On stack)
[I didn't think I'd have time to write these reviews today, so I didn't bring my Kindle with me. I'll have to fill in the exact percents I stopped in later.]

Camel Rider by Prue Mason
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Good YA/MG books are entertaining for readers of any age, but you can't fault one of them for not being enjoyable for adults, since we're not their target audience.

Camel Rider was set in a modern day, fictional city in the Middle East. The city gets bombed, and a western (Australian) boy escapes the city and wanders in the desert, nearly dying. At the same time, an Arabic boy sold into slavery makes a bad mistake and his owner leaves him out in the desert to die (which really had made no sense, the owner could have sold him and regained some money, but whatever). The two boys met, and at that point I stopped reading. Everything was too simple, the characters were black/white, and the story was too predictable. But, like I said, I wasn't the target audience. Perhaps young kids would enjoy this book.

Stopped at: 29%

Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I wanted to like this book. The first chapter killed it for me though. If you look up "information dump" in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of Downbelow Station. I felt like I was reading a really long encyclopedia entry about this universe. Eventually I gave up on the first chapter, skipped to the second so I could get to the story, but too much was happening that I didn't know about (duh) and eventually I just gave up on the book.

Stopped at: 3%

History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Talk about a case of the wrong book at the wrong time. Adam Silvera is the author who wrote both They Both Die at the End and More Happy Than Not. I put off reading this book for a while, because those other two had been so amazingly depressing and heavy, but apparently I didn't wait long enough. Like those first two books, this book was about death and true love (in that order). In this book, we learn right on the first page that a guy's boyfriend died, and the timeline changes by chapter, back and forth between the boyfriend being alive and dead. The living boy was also obsessive/compulsive, which added another layer of heaviness.

Adam Silvera writes two things amazingly well: 1) Relationships. In all three of his books, I completely, 100% believed his characters were in love. 2) Death (mourning). I swear to god, he can make me cry with just a few words. And combine those two elements together? It's emotional doom!

There was nothing wrong with this book. I did not stop reading because of the writing, the author, or anything else. I just cannot take another story of this kind so soon after finishing his other two books. (Luckily his next book is a fantasy. I really, really, hope it's lighter and doesn't kill off its main characters.)

Adam Silvera really is a great author, and I'm sure I'd recommend this book of his if I hadn't just read the other two. Unlike other books I stop reading, I'm not deleting his off my Kindle -- hopefully I'll be ready to finish reading it eventually. Stopped at: 17%

Partial book credits:
Point reached in these books: 29% + 3% + 17% = %49
Previous abandoned book total: 18%
New total: 49% + 18% = 67% towards the next book
thistlechaser: (Book with cat 5)
More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera
Rating: Okay Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Oh how it pains me to not give this book a 'loved'. More Happy Than Not is by the same author who wrote the last thing I read, They Both Die at the End. Based on reviews and ratings, this book was just as strong of an emotional impact for people, but for me... sadly I had so many issues with it.

Like They Both Die at the End, More Happy Than Not was set in our world, just with a small additional tech advance. In They Both Die, it was Death-Cast, the group that called you 24 hours before you die. In More Happy, it was the Leteo Institute, which could erase memories from your head. Drove while drunk and killed your wife and kid? Chance accident kill your twin, but you survived? If you were lucky enough and rich enough to visit the Leteo Institute, they could erase it from your memories.

The main character of this book was a boy (Aaron) from the slums. For the first 50% of the book, this was nothing but the story of an average teenage boy who had a girlfriend, a single mother, and was very poor. This was very very much not a book I would usually read -- "slice of live" stories about teenagers put me to sleep.

Then at the 53% point, something odd happened: "I know this: Part of me was playing straight for so long..." And I just stopped reading and went BUH? For the first half of the book, there were NO NO NO signs at all that this kid was gay. He has a girlfriend. He loves her. He thinks about her all the time. He never once, in the first 53% of the book, ever once had a gay thought. (The story was told in first person POV.)

From that 53% on, we kept getting odd sentences like that. Him talking about how he was gay. Then he started hating his girlfriend, the girl he had loved so much and thought was so wonderful. I had thought this was a case where the author makes the woman into a bitch as an excuse or a push for the male character to go gay, and I almost stopped reading multiple times.

But then I put pieces together... I started to suspect that the kid had been through the the Leteo Institute process. But how? It's so expensive, and the family is so poor that the two sons sleep in the living room in one bed... [End spoiler.] Turns out I had been right in my guess, though that still left lots of questions.

So I guess I just don't like unreliable narrators [End spoiler]. I'm not sure if it was just written poorly and I might like that in other cases, or if that's normal and I just don't like that happening. I feel like the author cheated -- the book radically changed at the 50% point (though it made sense that it did).

In addition to that issue, I really had no emotional connection to this book. It felt like everything was over the top and too reactionary, but it's a story about a teenager, so I suppose that fits.

This was Adam Silvera's first book, while They Both Die at the End was his third/latest one. I like the threads connecting both books (such as a fictional book series mentioned in both), and I'll probably read his second book next. I just wish I had liked this one more.

Disclaimer: I actually have about 5% of the book left to read, but I have time to post this review now, so here it is. If somehow the end radically changes my opinion of things, I'll update this post. Also, I read the next book, Dun Lady's Jess, before They Both Die, but after reading that wonderful book, I hadn't felt like writing about Jess.

[Edit: Turns out I had 10% left, and the ending was very, very good. Enough to bump my 'dislike' rating up to an 'okay'. It was satisfying and emotional. I just wish the first 90% had been shorter or more like the last 10%.]

Dun Lady's Jess by Doranna Durgin
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I read this book back in the 90s, when it was first published. I completely loved it, and it was high on my Favorite Books Ever list. When I spotted it in ebook format, I grabbed it.

Unfortunately, while there were some good parts of it, overall it didn't hold up. The story was about a horse that magically turned human. It opened set in a fantasy world, where a wizard found a portal to another world (ours). He hired his most trusted messenger to carry the details about how to cast the portal spell. Since some evil wizard was after the spell, he gave the messenger a necklace that would do Something if he was trapped and needed to escape. No details on what, just that it would do Something.

Of course the messenger got trapped and needed to use it. The Something turned out to be he and the horse he was riding got sent to Earth. For some reason, his horse got turned into a person (but he didn't get turned into a horse). For some reason, they both appeared on Earth in different places.

Even that far, my willingness to believe was being badly stretched. But then it got worse: Dun Lady's Jess, the horse-now-woman, was knocked out in the park. She was in a horse's tack, saddle on her back, bit in her mouth, all that. Naked. Knocked out. Two people find her. Do they call the cops? Do they call 911? Do they take her to a hospital?

No. They take her to their home.

I wanted to throw my Kindle across the room. A naked woman. Unconscious. In a horse's gear. And you don't call the cops? Seriously?

The story got even less believable from there. The author wrote one part well, I believed how the woman acted, as if she had really been a horse. But the rest of the story around that? Too many people acting way too unbelievable. I gave up at the 17% point.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in this: 17%
Previous abandoned book total: 1%
New total: 1% + 17% = 18% towards the next book

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