Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson.

Quick synopsis: Humans have found that alternate dimensions exist, so of course they start selling them.

Brief opinion: I loved the idea behind this story (less messy time traveling!), but the story itself alternated between annoying me and putting me to sleep.

Plot: A man wakes up in medieval England with no memories (traveling across dimensions can scramble your brain). He has to survive swords and magical spirits while trying to remember who he is.

Bad guys from the "real" Earth arrive, and main character remembers who he is (which turns out to be a bad thing -- he was such an unlikeable character).

Conflict builds until the literal gods step in and take sides in the war between the good guys and bad guys.

Writing/editing: Holy cow, the writing in this book was just not a match for me. It was supposed to be funny, but not one single joke in the entire book even mildly amused me -- they were so unfunny that they annoyed me.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: How can you read a story told in first person when you hate the main character? This was a short book, but it felt like I was reading it forever. I wish I had DNFed it.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ - Hated. This was nothing like Sanderson's usual books.

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DNF #33: Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1) by Craig Alanson. The reviews of this book were better than the book itself. "my statistical maths book was better" and "Male author who's never touched a woman before wishes the USA had a dick so he could destroy his throat with it" were among the more amusing lines from reviews.

Aliens invade and the US military will save us all. Way too jingoistic for my tastes.

DNF #34: Icebreaker by Lian Tanner. The writing didn't work for me and I didn't like any of the characters. DNFed early on.

DNF #35: Drive: An Expanse Short Story by James S. A. Corey. I keep trying to get into the Expanse universe (both TV show and book series) and I keep failing. I thought this short story might hook me, but (unsurprisingly) I was pretty lost without knowing any of the characters.

DNF #36: Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi. Bacigalupi writes amazingly good end of the world/environmental disaster stuff, but he got bored of that so tried his hand at fantasy. It's 99.9% historical fiction and .1% fantasy. None of the characters worked for me, so DNFed it pretty early on. I'll stick with Bacigalupi's more typical stories.