Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Tales from the Edge: Escalation: A Maelstrom's Edge Collection by various authors. I've long since given up on anthologies, so I wasn't sure how this one got onto my Kindle. Turns out one of the middle stories was by an author I used to love (Karin Lowachee), so that explains it.

Like most anthologies, they put the best ones first and last. The first story (by big name scifi author Alastair Reynolds) was fine. The second one was okay. Then the rest were a waste of time, until the last one.

All of the stories were set in the distant future, when mankind had spread across the galaxy. A disaster (the Maelstrom) happened, which ended all travel between worlds. Each story was set in the approach of the Maelstrom.

The story by Karin Lowachee? Didn't work for me at all. The first book she wrote was one of my favorite books ever, but I read the next four she put out and many short stories, and I haven't enjoyed any of them. I'm at the point of writing off the first one as a fluke.

Did Not Finish

So many DNF... Not listed here in order I read them.

14) Lion in the Wind by Steven Lake. The most immature writing in any book I've read in years. The summary sounds so good "Born of an idea ahead of its time, a cybernetic lion named Tgegani is thrown into a world on the verge of all out war. Tasked with protecting the Yigzan people, he and his pride must fight against the forces of darkness and save his people from both an ancient evil, and a madman bent on world domination.", but the writing was so so so bad.

15) A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham. So slow. Nothing had happened plot-wise after three nights of reading, so I checked Goodreads. Apparently nothing happens plot-wise in the entire book, so I gave it up.

16) Pax by Sara Pennypacker. I wanted to like this one (talking animal story!), but the writing was so odd and impossible for me to get into. I have no idea when it was set (maybe WW1?), and I didn't really like how the speech for the foxes was handled. I checked what Jeane over at Dog Ear Diary had thought (same things I had), then gave it up a third of the way through it.

17) No Less Days by Amanda G Stevens. This was probably the first time ever I almost abandoned a book without reading a single word of the story. I always read the front matter. This was put out by a Christian publisher. The stated goal was "Our mission is to inspire the world with the life-changing message of the Bible". Plus it had EIGHT PAGES of "praise for this book" quotes. And the author went on and on about God in the forward. But I decided to give it a try anyway. The story wasn't good, and quickly I grew bored, so I checked Goodreads. Apparently it got really, really religious quickly, so I gave up on it.

18) Winter Tide (The Innsmouth Legacy Book 1). A Cthulhu story. I have zero interest in Cthulhu stories, so why did I get this book? It was the oldest one on my Kindle, so I had to have picked it up years ago. If you're into Cthulhu stuff, maybe it would have been interesting, but it lost me pretty quickly.

19) The Last Empath of Doctsland by Leah Putz. It's been almost three weeks since I read this one, and I can't remember why I DNFed it. Oddly I have good memories of it... I made it to the 20% point, so it must not have been awful...

Looks like I'm down to 315 books on my Kindle, woo!