Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Book theme: "Books with things with wings on the cover" is finished. I can't decide if I should do another one or just pick randomly for a while.

Tales from the Cobra Wars by assorted authors. I almost never reread books. I have too many new ones I want to read, but I made an exception for this one.

When I first read it ten years ago (almost on the nose, May 25th, 2013), I accepted it for review because when I had been a teenager, I was so very into G.I. Joe, I thought it would be a fun read.

Ten years later, through a twist of fate, I'm back into G.I. Joe again. I've put a couple hundred hours into writing and editing the G.I. Joe Wikipedia. I've bought too many figures and art commissions. I've read about half the G.I. Joe fanfic on AO3 (or tried to, it's all so bad, so very very bad).

Because of the lack of good fanfic, I thought I'd try this book again. I wanted to see if I'd like it more now that I'm more familiar with the canon.

My first time reading it, in my review I had said "five of the seven stories were a bad match for me, nothing but action, but the last two stories were great". Those five stories were still a really, really, really bad match for me. Nothing but action, action, fighting, action (but hey, fitting for G.I. Joe, so who am I to complain).

The other two stories were pretty good:

Speed Trap, by Duane Swierczynski. The best, fastest driver in the world (and Joe member) loses his car and so has to hijack a Prius from a woman and her autistic son. The three go on a high speed chase across the US southwest.

Message in a Bottle, by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow. I had LOVED this story the first time I read it, but unfortunately, even 10 years later, I remembered it really well and knew the twist at the end. It was still a good story, but it suffered for me remembering it too well.

DNF #50: The Sum of All Men by David Farland. My rule is that if there's a grammar issue on the first page of a book, I drop it. This one had an error in the first sentence of the book (missing period), and the next sentence had three errors in it.

DNF #51: Forestborn by Elayne Audrey Becker. In a world where magic beings live among humans, a bird-shapeshifter is a spy for a king. The writing was fine, but the plot was too slow for me to get into.