Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

The Last Knotbinder by K.K. Ness. This was one good story! Set in a fantasy world, one nation served and worshipped dragons. Another nation had a group of magic users, Knotbinders, who were mostly just healers. A third nation was more focused on power and offensive magic. That third nation was hunting down all of the Knotbinders in the world to kill them off to strengthen their own magic.

The worldbuilding was wonderful. The characters were even better. It would have been a perfect story, if not for editing issues.

Some authors seem wary of the word "said". It's a fine word to use, it does its job, but I can understand when a writer worries about using it too much. Unfortunately Ness is one of those who fell back on "murmured". All too often, the characters murmured when it made no sense to do so. (I've read books with a lot worse murmur-abuse, but it was still noticeable in this one.) Most authors overuse only murmur, but Ness also overused "mutter", too.

There was a lot of redundant wording (like the same word used multiple times in a short paragraph).

There were a number of wrong word (misspellings that spellcheck wouldn't catch) and punctuation/grammar errors.

There were a bunch of basic wording errors like "The dagger felt was a comforting weight in his hand." and "Matteo swung again, embers shooting in every direction as he struck Craise in the shoulder and care."

This was such a good story. I wish it had had an editor, that really would have taken it to the next level.

Unfortunately it just came out this year, so book two is going to be a long ways away. Even with all those editing issues, I can't wait to read it.

DNF #114: Hunter's Moon by Sarah M. Awa. I love werewolf books, so I was hoping to enjoy this one, but it was way too much "college kids partying in the woods" and not much of anything else. DNFed it a few chapters in.

DNF #115: Feral King by Ginger Booth. Not a badly written book, but it was just another post-apocalyptic story, and those are so hard to be original with. I've read so many of them already.

In this one, Ebola got lose in New York City. Most people died, young people were least likely to die, so the story followed a group of teenagers. Ho hum. I've read that idea countless times already.