Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

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.

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

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

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)

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%

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.

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.

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

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

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