Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

(No idea why the images are different sizes... should be all the same.)

Traveler by Greg Weisman. I spent five or six years playing a lot of World of Warcraft. While I've long since moved on to other MMOs, I don't have any hard feelings for that game (nor any overly fond feelings).

Most books set in WoW are bad. They don't need to be well written -- a large portion of the playerbase will buy anything WoW. I heard Traveler was different: Not just good, but also a YA book. So I gave it a try.

While not perfect, it was quiet enjoyable. If you don't know WoW, I think it would work fine as just a generic fantasy book. If you do know WoW, it seems very true to the game (as much as I can remember eight years later).

The main character is brought to sea by the father who abandoned him and his family. The first third of the book is about the boy resenting his father and acting out (realistic for a young teen boy). Lots of battles happen, and the boy ends up shipwrecked with a girl from the ship. The two hated each other on board, and it takes a while for those feelings to change.

The story is one big adventure through the world WoW is set in. I think young readers would like it a lot. It's not the best thing an adult, non-WoW player might read, but it's really not bad at all.

I disliked how now and then the POV would jump into another character's head in the middle of a paragraph, but that wasn't too common. The illustrations in the book were wonderful -- so perfectly WoW's style and really skillfully draw. They added a lot to the story.

This is the first book of a trilogy, and the other two books are out now, but I'm not going to continue with the series -- I have too many other books to read to continue with something I didn't love.

Abandoned:

Power Play: Resistance by Rachel Haimowitz and Cat Grant. Many years ago, I think before I stared officially reviewing books, I was in love with a book series by these two authors. M/M stuff, RL sexual slavery fiction. I must have gotten this book soon after finishing the series. It sat on my Kindle for years, and finally I picked a random book to read and ended up starting it. If you're interested in M/M erotica, you might enjoy this book. I've long since grown beyond that though. No characterization = I have no interest in the story. DNF 10%

A Gray Life by Red Harvey. Another reviewer wrote "What a depressing novel. Pages after pages of dark, disturbing society which has apparently gone to hell in a hand basket. It felt like a train wreck." Six or seven years ago, I got a bunch of books like this. World ended, things fall apart, everyone is awful. Maybe I wanted to read that then, but I'm not into "everything is awful" now. DNF 6%

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 10 + 6 = 16%
Previous abandoned book total: 118%
New total: 134% (one book)