Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

(Edit: I have no idea why my cover sizes are not the same anymore, it has to be something Livejournal is doing. I use height="207" width="120" in my IMG tags, so they should all be the same...)


66 - Terradox by Craig A. Falconer. After an evening of reading and not enjoying it, I checked Goodreads to see if I should DNF it. The plot seemed like it very much should have work for me (spaceship crashes on an empty planet, the five people need to somehow survive), so I stuck with it to nearly the halfway point. The author endlessly info dumped (I skipped So Many Pages of information about this or that) and instead of being a story about surviving on the planet, it was building up all sorts of political mysteries I couldn't care less about. Wish I had DNFed it after that first night of reading.

67 - The Maze in the Heart of the Castle by Dorothy Gilman. The main character was 16 years old, but he came off as half that age. The writing didn't work for me (a Goodreads reviewer described it as "an Arthurian tone", so maybe that was it), and the plot didn't hook me (the assumedly 16 year old boy's parents died and a wizard sent him on a quest to try to find the answer to why good people die). I DNFed it after one evening of reading.

68 - Black Magic - Shadow of the Pack book 1 by Nicole Austen. The very worst possible "talking animals" book ever. The wolf characters might as well have been humans, nothing would have changed at all. Worse yet, the author used all the old/wrong idea about wolves (the rest of the pack were basically slaves to the alpha male).

69 - Aya of the Firecats by Gunhild Jensen. The title listed on Amazon is "Aya and the Firecats: The Journey Begins *** Top 10 Book ***" which is kind of telling. I didn't get far enough to get much of the plot, but apparently the country was protected by giant, magical cats (firecats) and the main character (Aya) wanted to bond to one. Seems like a story I'd like, but the writing wasn't good and the characters seemed to have little characterization at all.

70 - Adventurers Wanted: Slathbog's Gold by M.L. Forman. After so many DNFs, I checked Goodreads sooner than I usually would on this one. The story (an "average boy" just happens to fall into becoming an adventurer) didn't hold my interest and there were an annoying number of grammar/editing issues, so I popped over to Goodreads. Sounds like it's going to get extremely worse if I continue (main character instantly becomes perfect at a bunch of new skills, never fails at anything, never has any negative consequences), so DNFing it now.