Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

DNF #190: Tantamount by Thomas R. Radford.
DNF #191: A Tale of Two Ghosts by by Sarah Riad.

Both of these books get the same review: How can a book that credits an editor have so many writing issues? Is the editor not that good? Is the editor fictional?

I made it to 1% of Tantamount before the issues became too frequent. Mostly it was pronoun confusion, like:

Mark stood in a crowd of people, staring at her. It was as if they reached out for her.

It sounded like he meant the crowd, but he meant his eyes were (somehow) reaching out for her.

A Tale of Two Ghosts I made it to the 4% point, but that was just because there was so much front matter. The author (and her editor?) had no idea how to use commas...

DNF #192: Dauntless Dungeon: A New Tale (Legends of Rhespira Book 1) by Devan Johnson.

This book was even more poorly written than the first two. A furry story, I didn't get more than two pages into it. It ignored way too many rules of English writing... like starting a sentence with an upper case letter.

DNF #193: Coldmaker by Daniel A. Cohen. I actually made it to the 25% point of this book! After the previous three, it was nice to have one that was professionally written.

Unfortunately, while the writing was good, the story just didn't work for me at all. I didn't believe the worldbuilding, which kept me from believing the story at all.

Set in a dystopian world where the sun was too strong and life was barely holding on (any standing water, for example rivers, boiled), there were two races of people: One noble and the other slaves. The slaves were so over the top abused, it was completely ridiculous. Like the slaves have to work most of their waking hours in the sun, and yet get only two "rations" of water a day, water they drink while standing in front of the overseer.

The world didn't make sense in general, too. "Cold" fell from the sky in three forms (Shivers, Wisps, and something else I don't remember). Was it snow? Was it ice? Magic? Crystals? It was somehow used as money in this brutal-sun world, and yet it never melted.

I tried to stick it out, but the abuse of the slaves was just too over the top and completely unbelievable. Somehow the slaves (humans) survived on the harsh world with a tiny bit of water and a couple figs. Every day.

DNF #194: Bewere the Night by various authors. I had tried reading this one a few years ago, but technical issues with my Kindle meant the book was on it again. An anthology about were-animals, but same as when I tried to read it in 2018, only the first story had worked for me. I skipped or skimmed the rest.

Wolfsong (Green Creek, #1) by T.J. Klune.

I knew I had read this book before, but I could remember nothing of it, so I figured it was many years ago.

I started reading it and loved it.

I knew this book was the first of four books, and since I didn't have the other three, I figured it was many many years ago that I read it.

I resisted looking at my review though because I was loving it so much I didn't want spoilers.

Then about 20% in my enjoyment vanished. And it kept getting worse.

By 35% or so I wanted to DNF it, but I checked Goodreads to see what they had said and saw my own review there:

Somewhere around the 33% mark I wanted to stop reading, but I had liked the beginning so much I forced myself to keep going. At the 60% or so mark I started skimming more than reading, so I decided to give up on it. DNF 64%

I've never had a book that went from "most perfect thing ever" to "yawn" so fast before.

When had I written that review? 2022. And somehow didn't remember a single thing about the book.

This time I forced myself to finish it, but it really, really, really was not the book for me. Romance (there was a sex scene that seemed to last an entire chapter. So Many Pages.), the writing style was just not for me, and it was all so drawn out and redundant.

Original review here, if you care to see more about the plot and such.

DNF #185: Wolfsong (Moonrise book #1) by Ignatz Dovidāns. More of a prologue than an actual book. It only introduced the characters, there seemed to be no real plot connecting them. Felt like the author was going for a Game of Thrones thing: Cast of characters spread across the world, nothing similar between them, no idea where or who they were in relation to each other..

Nothing about it hooked me, so DNF.

In searching for the other Wolfsong's review, I found that I had tried reading this Wolfsong before, too (also in 2022). It was the one with this horrible review:



DNF #186: The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer. I've read hundreds of books, and I think the main character in this one was the most annoying one I ever read.

Set in the future, a woman is lost on one of the moons of Jupiter, so her brother trains to go rescue her. He's the son of the woman who owns the biggest company in the world, he's been trained to take it over. He's the first ranked astronaut in the entire world. He knows what the mission to find his sister will take (months of travel alone in a spaceship).

And yet he WHINED AND WHINED AND WHINED from the first moment on the ship about how lonely he was and how horny he was. But GUESS WHAT! Lucky for him a super sexy guy JUST HAPPENED to be on the ship with him!

Somehow this has 9,362 five star reviews on Goodreads. Apparently there are some good twists in the story, but I just could not put up with the main character long enough to get to them.

DNF #187: The Blameless by E.S. Christison. While this wasn't that bad of a story, the issue was the characters. The villain was mustache-twisting bad. I didn't believe his actions or some of the other characters'.

Set in a fantasy world, a princess's whole family is assassinated in a night. She's rescued by a group of heroes called The Blameless -- people with magical powers given to them by the gods.

The story wasn't original enough for me to want to stick with it through those issues.

DNF #182: The Blood Jaguar by Michael H. Payne.

Long ago I hadn't known how to tell a good self-published book from a bad one, so I ended up with ones like this. Look at the cover. The quality of the writing matches the cover's quality. Here's a larger version of it in its glorious details: Here.

The plot, such as it is, is that three "furries" (anthromorphic animals) have to go on a quest. The main character is a "drug addict" (a bobcat, named Bobcat, who rolls in too much catnip). Some of the furries have names, some are named what the are. There seemed to be no reason for one or the other. (Since this was written by someone who is part of the furry community for that community, I was assuming he named some characters after people in their community.)

The only other things that this author wrote were My Little Pony fanfics. How do I know that? They're listed in his Goodreads profile. Not that fanfic belongs on Goodreads, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

DNF #183: Dead Scared by Ivan Blake.

The first chapter is set in an institution for troubled kids. We meet the main character and his demon friend(?). One or the other rips the ear and the side of a kid's face off and then threw it across the room. I didn't get any further than that.

The first chapter wasn't badly written, but there was too much gore for me, so I checked the Goodreads reviews. Apparently the writing goes downhill fast and the gore continues on, so I'm tapping out.

Funny thing from Goodreads though. He wrote a total of four books: three gory horror books and "102 Reasons to Believe in Jesus and To Serve Him Only".

DNF #184: The Girl who Sang with Whales (Islesong Book 1) by Marc Secchia.

See the series name there? Islesong? That's really important. The worldbuilding of this story included sticking -song on everything. Daysong, nightsong, moonsong, oceansong, whatever. For no reason at all.

The characters had names that were quite a mouthful. (The main character's name was Zhialeiana.)

According to other reviews, there's not much plot, the book is just about enjoying the characters and the worldbuilding. Since the worldbuilding annoyed me greatly and I didn't care about the characters, I decided to not stick it out further than a few chapters.

The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth 3) by N. K. Jemisin.

It's been a long time since I've had such a hard time sitting down and making myself write a review of a book. I finished this one two days ago (and started rereading the first book of this trilogy), but I just kept putting off my review of it.

Positives: It was better than book 2.

Negatives: ...a whole list of them, sadly.

[Edit: Turns out this was a formatting issue in the ebook, this is not how it really is!] One of the biggest issues I had with this book was what I guess you could call its style. Everything was broken down so that most pages (maybe 80% of them) had between one word and two brief paragraphs of text on them. So a conversation would go something like:

Page 1: Jon stopped walking. "I need to talk to you about something, David."
Page 2: "What?"
Page 3: Jon's breath caught before he spoke. "Maggie is sick."
Page 4: Sick?
Page 5: Sick?
Page 6: "Sick?"
Page 7: "Yeah, it's bad."
Page 8: David looked away. "How bad?"
Page 9: "Very."

For the first 20% or so I was frowning every time I read. That would be a powerful tool if it had been used here and there, not through the entire book. By the halfway point I was resigned to it, though it never stopped annoying me.

Now, for plot things, good and bad.

Things I liked:

- Castrima (both in the geode and traveling)

- Schaffa worked better for me in book 3 than in 2, but I still didn't like him much in either, when he had been my favorite character in book 1. Amusingly, the reader of the audiobook apparently gave him a Scottish accent! I can't even imagine that.

- The worldbuilding continued to be great, though in book 3 a lot of it seemed to drag (sadly). Everything around Corepoint was just so slow.

- Hoa/reason for second person POV. While I liked this, I feel like the timeline is still muddy in my head and I'm not sure if I'm understanding it all right. I should read the second and third books again as well (I didn't delete them off my Kindle as I usually do when I finish a book), but I doubt I will.

- It was weird and interesting (and believable) how quickly cannibalism was accepted (again -- Season of Teeth, ugh!).

- I really liked that the first time Essun and Lerna had sex that it was "just okay", nothing special. That made it feel really realistic.

- Minor thing, but I loved how Schaffa called Nassun "little one". (But man, there's just way too much Schaffa/Nassun slash out there! It was exceedingly clear that she considered him her father.)

Things I didn't like:

- This is a minor thing, but I had a visceral reaction to Nassun (an 11 year old girl) needing to wipe (adult man) Schaffa's butt while he was in a coma. It was realistic, but it was my first NO SHE IS A CHILD, STOP THAT reaction in the book. Which is really weird, with how many bad things happened to children. Hell, the whole trilogy could be titled Bad Things Constantly Happen To Children.

- The magic stuff. It seemed unnecessary. I liked orogeny as the only form of "magic".

- I didn't for a minute buy that Nassun would destroy the whole world by choice.

- So... Father Earth really was an intelligent being. That certainly is a choice. I would have put money on him not being real. (It really did not work for me, it's the point where the trilogy lost me.)

- The whole ending. It made sense, it wrapped everything up, but there were no surprises and I could have guessed it all (other than the reason for the second person POV).



While the first two books were flawlessly edited, I believe there were two mistakes in this one:

One character said: "No, you've just withheld the truth so much it's the same fucking thing!" That was my first time seeing "fucking", I believe. I think it should have been "rusting".

The second one was late in the book, after Essun had lost one arm:

You stagger a few feet away and then clap hands over yourself,

Hm, though now I know why second person was used through the trilogy, I guess that might not be a mistake. At the time I was reading, it seemed like she should have written "clapped hands (hand) over", because that fit the style of her thoughts, but they weren't hers, so I guess that's not the issue I thought it was.

One thing that bugged me about all three books was that the last 10% of each book was just advertising for her other books. That's a whole lot of non-story page count in each book! Also it was annoying that the appendix was the same in all three books.

Am I happy I read the trilogy? That's kind of a moot question: As good as book 1 was, even if I had somehow time traveled and told myself to stop after 1, I wouldn't have listened to myself. Couldn't have listened to myself. Book 1 was just that good.

Book 2 I struggled greatly with. Book 3 had a good story though with a lot of issues. I actually went to AO3 yesterday to look for some "fix it" fics that might be a better note to end on. (But the majority of ones I saw were mature/erotic, so I gave up instead of wading through them to find plotty ones.)

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth 1) by N. K. Jemisin.

Only once before in all my years of reviewing books have I done a "keyboard smash" review.

*&^%$**(9RYFNJDAKLFNQ OH MY GOD THIS BOOK ^&^(^&(^(%$$R*^FGGVKKJKJ IT'S SO GOOD EVERYONE IN THE WORLD SHOULD READ IT FJ3-1URDN431803*&*&*^&^( OH MY GOD

I'm deeply embarrassed about the one review I did that in, so I won't do it again now.

Even though I really really want to.

Even though the book deserves it.

Quoting another review:

This book is beautiful, this book is smart, this book is oh so heartbreaking, and this book is a masterpiece. This is one of those books that make you feel absolutely guilty for giving out five stars to other books.

Plot: Set on either a fantasy world or on Earth way in the future (it feels really fantasy-ish, but Father Earth is a god, so it's hard to tell which), to say the planet is geologically active would be the understatement of the century. It has nonstop earthquakes and volcanos pop up all too often.

Luckily a form of magic exists. "Orogeny" allows the few people with that power to control stone/earth/lava, so they can sort of somewhat keep the ground stable enough to live on.

This book has a number of themes, one of the big ones being power. When only a few people have the ability to use Orogeny, the non-magical majority is able to keep them basically as slaves: They find* children with the power, take them in, and abuse the hell out of them to make sure they never question being controlled by others. (*Long ago those in power made it seem like Orogeny is a curse, that people with it are evil and will kill everyone around them, so even a child's parents eagerly turns the kid in. And if for some reason a parent won't, the power is hard to keep secret, so a neighbor or friend will do it.)

I know that doesn't talk about the plot much, but wow, every single element I could talk about is spoilery. (The moment I finished this book, I wanted to start right over. Knowing all the twists and what was really happening means I would pick up on what really was happening earlier on.)

This is a "science fantasy" book (fantasy with so much believable science basis that fiction-science just oozes out of its pores, the author did SO MUCH background work on the worldbuilding).

One thing I don't think I've ever talked about in my reviews is representation. This might be the first book I ever read where everything felt natural. There was a trans character, and not once did I ever feel like the character was included just to be inclusive. The characters were every color from near albino to midnight black, and it felt perfectly natural. There were bi characters, there was a polyamorous relationship that was just so completely outstanding.

Everything about this book was wonderful. I couldn't put it down. Yesterday was Thanksgiving and the choice between reading and cooking was a hard one.

There's one thing I feel so guilty about. The author is N.K. Jemisin, and I spent the entire book thinking a white man wrote it, but she's a black woman. I'm usually good at picking up the author's gender from the writing, but I was so completely off base, and it made me really question myself.

If my review hasn't convinced you, go read the Goodread reviews. It has 129,240 five star reviews!

Now I just have to decide if I want to reread this book or continue on to book two. (This is a trilogy, thankfully all three books have been published already.)

First off: My darned Kindle alphabetized my books without asking me (SIGH), so I lost track of books I DNF or finished. The three DNF ones listed in this post might be from a while ago.

Once There Was by Kiyash Monsef.

Once was, once wasn't.

That's the Farsi version of "Once upon a time". "Yeki bood, yeki nabood" Once was, once wasn't. It really works better than "Once upon a time", since "Once upon a time" implies it actually had happened, while "Once was, once wasn't" leaves it more open.

This was quite the wonderful book, if a little confusing as to who the audience was. The main character was 15, so that should make this a YA book, but on Amazon it's listed as a children's book, and it's published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (which publishes books for children), and yet it took me eight hours to read (adult book length). The oddest thing was that this felt like an adult book, that young readers would miss the best parts...

Plot, main: The main character, Marjan, seemed like just a normal teacher. She had friends at school, her father had a small veterinarian practice, her mother died of cancer when she was young. But because of a chance encounter with a unicorn many, many, many generations ago, her family all have a special magical power: They can understand mythical animals by touching them (feel if they have pain, feel their moods).

Marjan didn't know about that power though, didn't even know mythical animals existed in the world, until her father was murdered. Then she slowly met various ones. Small ones (like gnomes), evil ones (manticore), and complicated ones (unicorn). Her world became extremely complex, with different people trying to gain control of the mythical creatures and the power they represented.

Plots, sub: I loved the subplots even more than the main. This book was such a realistic look at what grief does to a person. Marjan's mother died many years ago, and that broke her father and he never recovered.

Also the "Who Done It" subplot of who murdered her father was just wonderfully handled. I picked up clues along the way, guessed right, but then dismissed my guess, but in the end my guess had been right and the author handled the misdirection in the most delightful way.

I really, really like the author's writing. I have so many passages and descriptions saved. For example:

Glenn looked somewhere between forty and forgotten. He was round from every angle, a man made of droopy circles. He had boredom in the way old dogs have arthritis.

and

He struck me as the kind of person who only knew one way to be, and if he'd ever known another, it had been beaten out of him years ago.

and describing an elevator:

The doors slid slowly together, like a priest bringing his palms to touch in prayer.

The very best parts of the book were that the author wrote a tale about each creature before the main character met them. The tale could have been set in any time period, forever long ago, to more current times.

I wish the title of this book had been Once Was, Once Wasn't, it would have fit it a lot better. I'm guessing Once There Was is more marketable though.

I'm so sad this is the author's first (and only) book, I'd love to read more by him.

DNF #176: Shadow of the Werewolf by Magnus Hansen. I'm not sure how long ago I tried to read this one, but I don't remember anything about it. I had this quote saved though: "A large serving girl with troubled eyes clopped over", so I'm sure I didn't like the writing of this book at all.

DNF #177: Patriotic Mouse: Boston Tea Party by Philip Horender. I had to DNF this book for technical issues. The author made the text fixed, I couldn't resize it with my kindle, and it was just microscopic. "Hard" words were in bold so you could look them up in a glossary in the back, which I'm guessing is why the font size was fixed. I had to DNF it just a page or two in, I just couldn't read it.

DNF #178: Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Even if I hadn't known that Paolini had written this as a teenager, I would have easily guessed. I have a hard time believing some people have called this the best fantasy book ever written. It read more like edgy teenage fanfic, which is nearly what it was. (Apparently Paolini copied a ton of themes and characters from other books.)

DNF #173: Savage World by Jennifer Slusher and Linda Thackeray. That "cover" image is the one that is on Amazon, and it's too amusing for me to find an accurate cover elsewhere. Screenshot of the Amazon page.

The fact that the image on Amazon is incorrect is so fitting (assuming it's the authors' doing and not Amazon's). This self-published book had story potential in it, but the writing was so very unprofessional and it really, really needed an editor so badly. I stuck with the book until the 62% point because I kept hoping the story would turn out to be better than all the issues. Spoiler: It didn't.

Plot: Set a century in the future (and yet the characters made so many references to current shows and movies), for plot reasons something hit the sun and it was going to explode in a month. Then it exploded a week early. (Don't think about this too hard, you have to just go with it to get to the story.)

In what felt really, really like Battlestar Galactica, there was a ragtag group of spaceships (military, transport, all sorts of random ones, just like in BSG) that left the solar system to find a new planet to settle. A few months later they found it.

I was hoping the story would take off at this point (the new planet was interesting, I'll give the authors that), but the writing/editing was just too rough for me to stick with.

The authors liked to use all caps and abused punctuation so badly.

"All caps???" character one asked.
"YES!!!" replied character two.
"And too much punctuation?"
"YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" he yelled.

I can't even count the times strings of punctuation were used (!!!!!!!!!!!) and all caps was abused so much as well. On top of that, one or both authors had zero understanding of how commas are used, which lead to amusing sentences like this:

Flashing her companion, a smile she had no clue struck Tom Merrick deaf, dumb and stupid, she tapped her headset.

I'm really, really suspicious this was just a Battlestar Galactica fanfic with the serial numbers filed off. The second in command guy was even an alcoholic and drinking on the ship when he shouldn't have been.

DNF #174: An Apprentice to Elves (Iskryne 3) by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette. Apparently I had read and loved the first two books in this series (about men who bond with wolves), but wow this third book did not work for me. In the first couple pages, barely getting out of the prologue, we encounter these names:

Viradechtis
Brokkolfr
Franangfordthreat
Wolfheododmenn
Svartalfar
Aettrynalfar
Iskryne
Yttrium

I assume the first two books must have had names like that, but my brain just couldn't cope with it and I DNFed it barely into chapter one.

DNF #175: Maelstrom by Ajdin K. Denic. What an awful typical self-published litRPG book this was. It started out with the main character angry about being "hassled" at work, so he punches his boss in the face and quits. Zero consequences for that assault. Then he meets:

"A woman so beautiful, mere words couldn't describe her"

"A long black dress hugged her body as if the universe had wanted everyone to know it had been created just for her being."

"Violet eyes stared holes into his very soul."

And of course she sleeps with him hours after meeting him, because he's such a catch?

99.999% of LitRPG books are nothing but male fantasy. I thought I had culled them all off my Kindle, but I guess I had missed this one.

Confessions of a Former Teen Superhero by by Keith Hartman.

I was ready to say "It's not you, book, it's me" about this one... until the cliffhanger.

Set in Los Angeles, superheroes are a dime a dozen, but most are "B list" ones: Ones with weak or silly powers. However the main character, Josh/Kid Quasar, is a Superman-like superhero. Top of the A list superheroes.

Which is all well and good, but he can't get a boyfriend because he's always flying off to save Australia or an entire city or something. Boo hoo hoo. The entire book, from the first page to the last, was all about him wanting a boyfriend and/or having sex with random guys.

The one single thing I liked about this story was the "relationship" between Kid Quasar and Dr. Nightmare (his nemesis, an adult man). They had been fighting each other for so many years, they weren't friends (Dr. Nightmare was really trying to kill Kid Quasar), but there was an odd almost mentorship between them. I wish the story had been about that instead of boo hoo hoo I'm going to die alone and never have a boyfriend even though I'm the most powerful superhero on the planet and everyone thinks I'm sexy.

Even with the whole book was him whining/moping around that he can't have a boyfriend, I was really ready to say this was a good enough book though, that I'm just not the target audience for it. (It's self published, but it's well written and pretty well edited. Good on the author!) Until the end.

The cliffhanger... So unacceptable. Kid Quasar "dies" (but this is book 1 of 5, so of course he's not really dead). The story ends with Kid (who lost his powers temporarily) falling 40 stories and crashing into pavement, hearing his own bones break.

Then comes 20 or so pages advertising the author's other books. The end.

Luckily this book was super-short. The shortest YA books usually take me about four hours to read, this one was under three hours. Still, I really should have just DNFed it.

Edit: Neither the title nor the cover make sense at all with the story. Another annoying thing about the whole book.

What Goes Up by Katie Kennedy. I loved this book so much! Or at least the first 80% or so. Early on in the story I had that "Wow I'm so lucky to be reading this!" feeling. I finished the whole book in less than a day.

Set in the current US (or maybe near future), scientists have proven the Multiverse Theory is real (that there are an uncountable other number of dimensions, each with a slightly different Earth). And so a new branch of NASA is created to be ready to deal with arrivals from another dimension (assumedly some of the Earths are more advanced than ours).

Most of the book was getting to know the main characters and following them through the "first contact" training. I loved it so much! The characters were so interesting and the situation/worldbuilding was wonderful.

The last 20% or so of the book didn't work for me, though I'm probably the minority. The "worst case" happens and the main characters have to deal with arrivals from another Earth. It was all action/adventure, but unfortunately I didn't believe a lot of it. (For example, the main characters jumped from one airplane to another while they were in flight. Jump out the open door of one, into the open door of another. The wind would have whipped them away!)

Tiny other complaint: I don't think the title or the cover art fit the story. It was quite serious, but the book's cover makes it look silly.

Even though the ending didn't work for me, I still really loved this book. Unfortunately the author has only written one other thing, and as soon as I finished this one, I got a copy of it.

DNF #171: Copycat by Colin Dann. While reading this book, I thought it was extremely dated. The dialogue (cats talking) sounded like a 1930s black and white British movie. Eventually I had to flip to the copyright page to see when it had been published. 2014!

The book followed a pair of cats living in a London park. The humans of the city decided there were too many strays, so hired animal control people to round them up.

The cats didn't really act like cats (instead acted like a human nuclear family) and wow the dialogue couldn't sound less cat-like to me.

I'm pretty sure I tried to read something else by this author and had the same reaction to it. I think his style is just not for me.

DNF #172: Storm Born by Amy Braun. Even when a book seems like it's not a good match for me, I'm giving it more of a chance than usual since I'm reading so much more this year. I'm going to run out of books!

In this one, every 100 years a "Centennial Storm" hits the entire world. Rich people and people who win a lottery can go to underground shelters, but everyone else has to ride it out as best they can.

The worldbuilding was really, really unbelievable. The main character (Ava) was so uninteresting and hard to root for. Eventually I went to Goodreads to see what others think, and apparently it all gets a lot worse, including instant-love between Ava and a mysterious handsome man.

Rat Trap (Rat & Jeff #2) by Michael J. Daley.

I read the first book in 2016 (review here), but apparently I didn't remember the book at all, since I had written "The book was very very light and somewhat cute. The rat character is the only reason I finished it, however she wasn't enough to make me want to read any further books in this series."

One of my biggest complaints about the first book was:

The captain got no characterization than "fat and useless," he only showed up in the story when conflict was needed. Every time he showed up, the author made sure to mention how fat and useless he was. The fat comments got really, really old.

And even without remembering that about the first book, it really struck me as odd in this book as well: Every time the captain showed up, the one and only description he got was that he was fat. Fat. Really fat. Big and fat. He couldn't move well because he was fat. FAT! This book was traditionally published, it had an editor, how did no one comment on that across the two books?

The plot: Picking up soon after book 1, Rat was still on the space station with a boy named Jeff. She wanted to get back to Earth so she could experience sunshine for the first time and see what grass/trees/life on a planet was like. There was an "evil" (malfunctioning) robot trying to kill her and a mad scientist wanted to recapture her.

My feeling about the first book ("very very light and somewhat cute") was the same about this one. It was okay. The characters were mostly very flat and one-dimensional. While I fully believed the rat as a "real" rat (she was a science experiment, so she was basically "uplifted" -- smarter than humans, but she still felt like a real rat), I can't really recommend these two books. This one wasn't awful, it sadly just wasn't anything special either.

...okay, that's odd. Goodreads had a link to the author's website, so I followed that to see if maybe I could find a clue as to if he had issues with overweight people or not. There's not a single thing on his website about writing or books anymore, it's only about his massage therapy practice. I guess he's given up on writing.