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Three books I abandoned, and one I didn't.
Mirage by James Follett
Rating: Hated (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
This book was in my To Read pile for so long, I had no idea what it was about when I started it. On top of that, the cover was really generic (I couldn't find a copy of it online to include here, but it was just a silhouette of a skyscraper), so no clues about the story there either. Usually I love going into a book completely blind like that, but this time it ended up slapping me in the face.
Turns out this book was about 9/11, though the "sides" were reversed -- America was the terrorist country, and we bombed "twin towers" in the Islam world.
I'll never know if that made for a good story or not (I only got 4% in), because my brain went NO NO NO as soon as I realized what it was about. My reading time is my time to relax and escape the world -- I do not want to read about terrorism. Okay, maybe terrorism in some supernatural or fantasy world would be okay, but I have less than no interest (negative interest!) in reading a realistic story about it.
The Dinosaur Knights by Victor Milán
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
Man, how could a book with a title like that and a cover like that be so boring? Long-winded, the dinosaurs were treated as horses and other animals, nothing special or interesting -- they got no more mention or description than a horse might in a story. In the short amount I read, there was no information on how dinosaurs even still existed (though I didn't read much, so maybe it was explained further in). Such a disappointment! (Edit: Apparently this was the second of a three book series. Oops!)
Love Sucks and Then You Die by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
By chance, I read another Michael Grant/Katherine Applegate book after abandoning one just a couple books back. The story was semi-okay, but when I was a third of the way in I checked the Amazon reviews, and they stated this book had all the issues I've previously mentioned about Grant/Applegate. From my review of the last one I abandoned:
Their books are listed very high in price ($7-$10 for an ebook), but they're very, very short. Adult fiction takes me 6-8 hours per book, YA 4 hours. Their books run 1-2 hours long, individual books never have an ending, and they are full of fluff to pad them out. So basically, they write an adult-length book, add a heaping helping of padding, cut it up into small chunks to sell as individual books, and end up getting $80-$100 for it.
Tom, Thom by K. M. Ferebee
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
click here for a larger version of the beautiful artwork on the cover!
What a wonderful story! Though not of a type I'd usually read, and I'd think I would have hated (about a Changling), it really worked, and was magical and perfectly lovely. In it a mother and her son were living alone on the edge of a forest, and one day the son has a scary encounter. He eventually gets free of it and runs home... only to find he's already there. His exact twin, something they eventually learn is a changling. But changlings always take the real child when they leave the copy behind, so why was the son not taken?
You can read the whole thing for free on tor.com.
Currently reading: Werewolves of Brooklyn by Brad Vance. M/M romance, werewolf story, with apparently deep historical ties. The writing is very rough, I'm not sure if I'll be finishing it or not.
Mirage by James Follett
Rating: Hated (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
This book was in my To Read pile for so long, I had no idea what it was about when I started it. On top of that, the cover was really generic (I couldn't find a copy of it online to include here, but it was just a silhouette of a skyscraper), so no clues about the story there either. Usually I love going into a book completely blind like that, but this time it ended up slapping me in the face.
Turns out this book was about 9/11, though the "sides" were reversed -- America was the terrorist country, and we bombed "twin towers" in the Islam world.
I'll never know if that made for a good story or not (I only got 4% in), because my brain went NO NO NO as soon as I realized what it was about. My reading time is my time to relax and escape the world -- I do not want to read about terrorism. Okay, maybe terrorism in some supernatural or fantasy world would be okay, but I have less than no interest (negative interest!) in reading a realistic story about it.
The Dinosaur Knights by Victor Milán
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
Man, how could a book with a title like that and a cover like that be so boring? Long-winded, the dinosaurs were treated as horses and other animals, nothing special or interesting -- they got no more mention or description than a horse might in a story. In the short amount I read, there was no information on how dinosaurs even still existed (though I didn't read much, so maybe it was explained further in). Such a disappointment! (Edit: Apparently this was the second of a three book series. Oops!)
Love Sucks and Then You Die by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
By chance, I read another Michael Grant/Katherine Applegate book after abandoning one just a couple books back. The story was semi-okay, but when I was a third of the way in I checked the Amazon reviews, and they stated this book had all the issues I've previously mentioned about Grant/Applegate. From my review of the last one I abandoned:
Their books are listed very high in price ($7-$10 for an ebook), but they're very, very short. Adult fiction takes me 6-8 hours per book, YA 4 hours. Their books run 1-2 hours long, individual books never have an ending, and they are full of fluff to pad them out. So basically, they write an adult-length book, add a heaping helping of padding, cut it up into small chunks to sell as individual books, and end up getting $80-$100 for it.
Tom, Thom by K. M. Ferebee
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
click here for a larger version of the beautiful artwork on the cover!
What a wonderful story! Though not of a type I'd usually read, and I'd think I would have hated (about a Changling), it really worked, and was magical and perfectly lovely. In it a mother and her son were living alone on the edge of a forest, and one day the son has a scary encounter. He eventually gets free of it and runs home... only to find he's already there. His exact twin, something they eventually learn is a changling. But changlings always take the real child when they leave the copy behind, so why was the son not taken?
You can read the whole thing for free on tor.com.
Currently reading: Werewolves of Brooklyn by Brad Vance. M/M romance, werewolf story, with apparently deep historical ties. The writing is very rough, I'm not sure if I'll be finishing it or not.
