Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Well, including DNF books, I read 36 books last year. The year before I read 35, so... improvement I guess. It's been a couple years since I broke 50, so I think from this point forward I'm not going to say my journal is about the 50 book challenge anymore.

Since I'm no longer reasonably going to break 50, I'm going to stop counting the percent of unfinished books I read. That means my count will go down next year. 8 (almost 9: 895%) of my book count this year was from unfinished ones (6 last year).

I've been saying this for a couple years, but I really should delete games off my phone. Half my reading time goes to them, and they're such an artificial sense of accomplishment. Though they also help me fall asleep.

I know it's not a race or a competition, but reading 36 books in a year isn't something I can be proud of. I'm going to try to read more in 2022.

I'm almost done with a book series, then there will be four "real" books to post about. But just so I don't forget this one:

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

This is read #6 of this fic, and I love it just as much every time. You can read my other reviews of it in these posts.

My rule for including fanfics in my 50 book per year goal was that I had to read it completely and it has to be longer than multiple books. This fic is almost as long as the seven book HP series, so it counts.

The Horse in the Mirror by Lisa Maxwell. There was so much wrong with this book, usually I would have given up on it on page one. The first quarter of it was so badly written and edited. Periods missing. Capitalization on the first word of sentences missing. Spaces missing. And the author is apparently comma-phobic, because about 80% of the ones that should have been used never were. Almost every sentence had a grammar error in it.

Add onto that that the main character's name is "Is" and it became really challenging to read. "Is wondered if..." "Is looked out at..." "Is wasn't sure if..." It was such an awful name for a character (short for Isadora), even at the 50% point of the book I was still stumbling over if it was meant as her name or if it was the word "is".

Why did I keep reading it? Because wow, the author knew horses so well. All of her descriptions of them, how they behaved, how to handle them. Perfect!

The first half of the book was about Is training war horses for the government. She lived alone, they would drop off a young horse and then a couple years later pick up the trained ones. For reasons the author never explained (which happened way too often), Is decided to run off with the horse she was currently training.

With only a hand axe, small knife, and very limited supplies, she found a place in the woods and somehow in a short time built a barn for her horse with a loft over it for herself.

Then a random mystery man showed up on her proverbial doorstep. He was very sick, very injured. Somehow, with only her axe and knife, she created a tube to put down his throat so she could get water into him and a catheter so he wouldn't pee all over the place. She was in the middle of the woods. No real supplies. The author didn't mention once at all how she made those or what she made them from. Very frustrating... and very common in the story.

Eventually the man got better and the two rode off together. At about the halfway point of the book the story went from "young woman surviving on her own with her horse until a beautiful blond man showed up" (Clan of the Cave Bear, anyone?) to some kind of dystopian story about the French American Indians (that beautiful blond man's people -- they all spoke with French accents but seemed to live like a Native American tribe... but also practiced martial arts) fighting against the government. I got bored at that point.

While this book had so so so many issues, I actually somehow enjoyed the first half. I wish the author had gone into Is's background more instead of shifting to a dystopian story. DNF 51%

D6: Caverns and Creatures by Robert Bevan. As the title implies, this collection of stories was set in some tabletop, D&D-ish world. Unfortunately the characters knew that -- they knew they were in a game, they knew the rule books, they knew all the "meta" information about their world. Breaking the fourth wall like that never works for me. DNF 3%

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 51% + 3% = 54%
Previous abandoned book total: 713%
New total: 767% (seven books)

Minor Mage by T. Kingfisher. While on the surface this was a simple, cute story, it had a really nice heart to it that made me think.

Set in a world where every town has a wizard, Oliver's wizard master/teacher took him on too late, the wizard was already old and senile. So, unfortunately when he died, Oliver only knew three mostly useless spells. But Oliver, with help of his armadillo familiar, taught himself how to use herbs to do a lot of things that he should have been able to do with magic.

The town experiences a bad drought, and so a mob of townfolk send Oliver (a very young boy, 12 I believe), off to a distant mountain to bring back rain.

While all the magic stuff was interesting, what I found most enjoyable was Oliver as a person and how he dealt with the adults in his life turning on him like that. At every turn on his journey, adults (who should have helped such a young boy traveling alone) just made things worse. [The adults made things worse in an understandable, believable way, not "every single adult is awful because this is a YA book" way.]

The whole journey was fun, and the ending was wonderfully magical, but it was the human aspect of the story that really put the whole book over the top for me.

DNF

The Eye of the World: Book One of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. Amazon is making a show based on this book series, and since it's such a famous series, I figured I should read it. I knew nothing at all going into it, I started it blind.

First: A YA book takes me about 6 hours to read, an adult book 8. This book would have taken me 18 hours... Between the length and the writing style, it felt very very much like Game of Thrones to me. Every little detail of the world was described in such detail (like GoT spending 10 pages describing a meal), it really bogged things down.

The story seemed fine, if bland and unoriginal. Bunch of teenagers end up having to fight the evils of the world. I DNF'ed it at 10%, which when a book is this long was still four nights of reading, but the story still barely got into the plot at all.

I didn't hate it, but nothing about it hooked me. DNF 10%.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF book: 10%
Previous abandoned book total: 627%
New total: 637% (six books)

Alice's Farm: A Rabbit's Tale by Maryrose Wood. DNF 22%

I loved the first chapter of this book so much. The start of what I thought was a talking animals book. The rabbits were so perfectly rabbit-like! I loved it! Unfortunately then the book shifted to focus on the kid. A very young kid, too young to understand much of anything. (His father got a "golden parachute" at work, and the kid spent half the book searching for a physical parachute...) That might have been fun for a kid to read, but for adult me, not so much at all.

Then, to make matters worse, in the few chapters about the rabbits, they stopped being rabbit-like at all. Sigh. DNF 22%.

The Genius Plague by David Walton. The story was interesting (one of those giant mushrooms, the ones that cover miles underground, branches out and starts to take over animals and people), but the main character was so unrealistic and unlikeable, I couldn't keep reading. He got expelled from three colleges, but wanted to work for the NSA. The NSA requires a college degree, but because he was so special, they hired him anyway. Then he hacked their computer system, which should have gotten him tossed in prison, but he didn't even lose his job. Then, moments later, he had another encounter with their security people and ended up with "automatic weapons shoved in his face", and there was zero repercussions to that, too.

Plus the women characters were just... not realistic people. One woman HATED the main character for literally not one single reason, and yet she gave MC and his brother a ride around town, multiple stops, for no reason. Then the brother coughed blood in her face, and there wasn't even mention of a reaction from her at that (this being a book set in the modern world, hello HIV?).

The women were just props for this man who, no matter how much he fucked up everything, only succeeded at everything he wanted. DNF 22%, but I really should have stopped sooner.

West of January by Dave Duncan. First off, check out the original cover of this book.


I LOVED LOVED LOVED this book at first. There's no information, just a cold opening. It was such a guess as to what the heck was going on! The story started with a bunch of Neanderthal-ish tribes, herding animals. Lots of clues as to what really was going on were slowly offered to the reader. The first quarter or so of the book was really interesting, then as we got to learn more about the world and the various cultures in it, my interest was killed. There was nothing at all subtle about the world building (like in one culture, every single woman was super-obesely fat, in another, every single person was child-like), and the story was just so slow slow slow slow. I skimmed a few pages, looking for the next clue, then skimmed more... then thought about skimming a whole chapter when I decided I just didn't care about the story anymore. DNF 59%

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 22% + 22% +59% = 103%
Previous abandoned book total: 506%
New total: 609% (six books)

Minimum Wage Magic (DFZ Book 1) by Rachel Aaron
Part-Time Gods (DFZ Book 2) by Rachel Aaron
Night Shift Dragons (DFZ Book 3) by Rachel Aaron

I keep saying I don't like urban fantasy, then I read it and love it, so I really need to stop saying I don't like it.

The core of this trilogy is a relationship between a young woman and her father. Her father (a dragon) adopted her (a human), and the tension in their relationship is because of inter-species miscommunication. He calls her his treasure, and names her Opal -- a gem, most beloved of dragons. To him, that shows how much he values her. To her, it makes her feel owned, like an object instead of a person.

That would be interesting enough, but the trilogy's setting is what really made me unable to put these books down. Magic has returned to Earth, and about half of babies are born with magical power. Gods have returned as well, some old ones and some newly created by peoples' beliefs.

One of those gods is the DFZ (Detroit Free Zone) -- the city this whole trilogy is set in. The city's god is a new, young god. The DFZ (the city) is the richest, most free city on the planet. No longer a part of the US, "anything goes" there -- the DFZ's (the god's) only rule is freedom: Anyone is free to do anything.

In book 1, Opal meets Nik. The two become business partners and friend. In book 2, they both love each other, but neither wants to tell the other how they feel (the first thing in the book series I didn't like). By the halfway point in book 2, they sleep together (for pages and pages, I didn't need the details and skipped ahead until they were done). In book 3, they're "life isn't worth living without you" level of love. The relationship was the only part of the book I didn't like, I would rather they had stayed good friends, but I guess book readers like relationships.

I enjoyed this whole series so much. I stayed up late multiple nights to keep reading. The world was so interesting, I loved the magic systems, and even the minor characters were great.

One big heads up about the books though: More than 25% of the first two were advertisements for her other book series. I had an hour and a half of reading left in each, when the story ended and the advertisements started. That's utterly insane. The final book had "only" 13% as advertising. This was such a pain because I keep an eye on how much reading I have left, so I can be emotionally ready for the story to end.

With that heads up, I can strongly recommend this trilogy. I bought the second book before I had finished the first, and the third before I finished the second. I got a few other books by her to start next.

Prey: The Drovers by John D. Brown
Outlaws: The Drovers by John D. Brown

What fun books these were! The worldbuilding was pretty basic, but the plot was fun as hell and I loved all the characters.

Set in a fantasy world, a boy's family (already living on the edge of poverty) was driven into starvation when their sole cow died and their cheese-making pots were stolen. The boy sets out to find odd jobs to make money to help them, and happens into a job as a drover (cow herder).

That seems such a simple idea, and much of the books were just day-to-day life, but they were so interesting! The head drover who hired them taught them to fight (so they could better defend the herd), and he and the cook (the only two adult main characters) had some kind of interesting backstory that we only ever got glimpses of.

The whole story was such an adventure, it was so fun from beginning to end!

The only downside is that the author is only writing book three now, so it's going to be ages before it comes out. It's too easy to lose track of in-progress book series. :/ I hope I remember it exists once it gets published.

DNF

Rise of a Necromancer by Rosie Scott: Typical "bad self published" book. I only got as far into it as I did because it was so short. DNF 7%

Owlflight by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon: I tried so hard to like this book, but man I can't believe it was published. The first 22% of the book was characters thinking. There would be one simple sentence like "He kicked the stone down the road" and then 20 pages of the character thinking about things. Most of the first quarter of the book was not just characters thinking, it was almost exclusively one character thinking (there was just a couple pages where a second character was thinking). The whole book was so pointless. I only gave it way too much of a chance because it came highly recommended to me. DNF 66%

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 7% + 66% = 73%
Previous abandoned book total: 377%
New total: 450% (four books)

Dragon of Ash & Stars: The Autobiography of a Night Dragon by H. Leighton Dickson

This book seemed like two in one. The first 50% of it was very much like White Fang. In a world where dragons are both intelligent creatures and used as domestic animals by humans, wild dragon is caught as a baby and tamed to work for humans. The first 50% of the book follows his first three years of life, as he's sold from owner to owner, and through him we experience how cruel humans can be -- even kind owners were cruel without meaning to be, because they were part of the system using and abusing an intelligent species.

While it was so much like White Fang, I really loved the first half of the book. I snuck in as much reading time as I could -- I couldn't put it down.

The second half was like a completely different book. No longer a young dragon, the main character (who gets a new name with each owner), experiences life in the wild, goes back to humanity, then becomes free once more. Unfortunately there was way too much stuff that just happened to go perfectly right for him, allowing him to free many captive dragons and other not so believable things.

The second half of the book wasn't awful, but I considered DNFing a few times. It's odd and interesting how different the two halves were.

Did Not Finish

Rofolio's Scaly Circus by Jonathon Burgess. While the cover is nice, the humor in this book didn't work for me at all. Even just the little bit I read annoyed me more than amused me. DNF 5%

Ice Station Death by Gustavo Bondoni. This is one of those books I have no idea how it got onto my Kindle. Probably from that old offer Amazon used to do "pick one free book per month out of these four". Horror, set in the real world. The male characters were fine, but the female ones were... not. There were only three female characters. Two were twins, one of the twins had sex with men, the other commented on it to the rest of the crew. They were more minor characters though. The main female character was a raging bitch to everyone for no reason. When I got frustrated enough with that, I checked reviews on the book. Apparently she also goes insane. Which, since they're headed to Antarctica to stay there for six months, is an issue... I'm pretty sure they test people going there for mental stability. DNF 24%

Frozen: Heart of Dread by Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston. Amazon describes this book as "a futuristic Game of Thrones". This is another book I have zero idea how got on my Kindle, everything about the Amazon summary is a turn off to my reading tastes. Luckily I didn't like the writing at all so I never even got to the elements I wouldn't have liked. DNF 7%


Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 5% + 24% + 7% = 36%
Previous abandoned book total: 312%
New total: 348% (three books)

In Sheep's Clothing by Kevin Hensley. The whole time I was reading this book, I repeated "this is so weird" so many times. It was sort of like Animal Farm, where animals were a stand-in for people. The problem for me was that we never got a description of the animals. Most of them time, they seemed physically to be "pure" animals (not furry or anthropomorphic), but now and then they'd do something impossible for an animal with hooves to do (like take one test and pass the rest back to the row behind you, or taking out glasses and pouring drinks). The story wasn't subtle at all in its messages and morals, but it was really my inability to picture the characters that made me drop the book. It's kind of jarring when your mental image switches between a normal sheep, then one that is standing on two legs and using hands, then back to a normal sheep. DNF 33%

Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier. There was nothing wrong with this book. The writing was fine. It was edited well. The story was okay. The characters were okay if not memorable. For some reason, I just had no interest in the story or what would happen. Eventually I decided to move on to something else. DNF 62%

Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. I've tried three times to get into the Expanse TV show, and I've failed every time (apparently you have to reach ep 4 to get hooked, so eventually I'll try it one more time). Maybe the same held true for the book and you had to reach a certain point to get hooked, but if so, that point wasn't 3%. DNF 3%

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 33 + 62 + 3 = 98%
Previous abandoned book total: 184%
New total: 282% (two books)

I think I need to turn my "50 books per year" challenge into 30 or so... Blah.



When I saw the Netflix Shadow and Bone trailer, it looked so good! It also sort of pinged my memory as a book I had considered.



The reviews I had seen of the book were bad, so at the time I had passed it up. But it was going to be almost two weeks before the Netflix show dropped, so I decided to try the first book.

All those negative reviews were right. It was full of all the worst YA book tropes. The main character was a white bread-dull girl who JUST HAPPENED to have the most powerful magical powers in the history of her entire world. Yet she was so passive and boring and ugh. And yet, men loved her, so of course there was a whole stupid love triangle.

The worldbuilding and magic system were interesting, so I pushed through the whole stupid love triangle thing and made it to the end of the book. As a whole, it was at the very best, only okay. There was not one single character I liked, and it was just such a typical "bad YA" book.

I started marathoning a different show, so when the Shadow and Bones show dropped, I wasn't ready to watch it. Since the book series is supposed to get better as it goes on, I picked up the second book, Siege and Storm.

For the first time in the two books, there was a character who was interesting. I kept reading because of him, but about the halfway point I just couldn't put up with how boring the main character was (and yet so super special that the people of her world actually made her into a saint).

Life is too short for bad books. I decided to give up on the series and moved on to a new book. I am going to watch the Netflix series soon though! It's gotten quite good reviews.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 50 (estimated, was reading an omnibus)
Previous abandoned book total: 134%
New total: 184% (one book)