Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

J: Jed and the Junkyard War
K: Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans
L: Arnold Ethon And The Lions Of Tsavo

DNF #68: Jed and the Junkyard War by Steven Bohls. Dystopian MG book. Set in the future, the Earth is covered in junk. Literally. No ground can be seen, nothing grows, no rain, no land. Just piles of junk deeper than anyone can dig. Everything is made of junk, people wear junk, they eat what they find in the junk.

I struggled so hard with believing the worldbuilding in this book. I'm sure the author was trying to send a Very Important Message to his young readers, but I just couldn't believe it. DNF at 20%.

DNF #69: Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans by Isi Hendrix. Another fantasy book I really struggled with the worldbuilding on. Set on a completely fantasy world (not a version of Earth, not an AU Earth), Adia is a black girl living in a small, poor village in the swamp. She goes to the big city and all the white people have all the privilege and are simply awful to anyone who isn't white. This is a fantasy world. This is not Earth. It did not have Earth's history. How does this make sense?

In addition to that issue, the author was a big fan of telling instead of showing, and the book featured the most unrealistic kitten on the entire planet (this planet or Adia's). DNF at 25%.

DNF #70: Arnold Ethon And The Lions Of Tsavo by A. P Beswick. The writing was so clunky, the dialogue was so jarring to my ear, and the idea wasn't new at all (people bond to daemons spirit animals). I DNFed this one quickly.