Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

DNF #83: Naive Hope by Mike Hood. This story was so weird. The main character is a "social outcast", 16 year old boy. He has no use for other people around him, yet he's way smarter than all of them, not just in intelligence but in critical thinking. Apparently the story goes on to be an "end of the world" thing, and he's the one who stops it.

Also there's a seven year old gay boy whose mother cannot raise him because, to quote the author, she "would be a great parent for a straight kid, but she is in over her head" because the boy is gay.

There was some kind of political message in the subtext of all this, and I really did not like it at all.

DNF #84: Toothless by J.P. Moore. It made me so sad to DNF this one. I first read it in 2011 (before I started reviewing books, so the post about it isn't review-y), and I had loved it so much I never deleted it from my Kindle because I wanted it to always be available. Finally, twelve years later, I tried it again.

The book is sort of an alternate universe story. Set in 1180 Britain-ish area, an evil force is marching across Europe. Everyone who gets killed fighting it is raised into a zombie (sort of, not really, but as an undead thing) to then join the side of evil.

Martin is a templar, fighting for the church, and when he falls in battle to the evil army, he's raised as Toothless (a "zombie" missing his lower jaw). I really enjoyed reading about his life in the evil army, as he struggled to "live" and to try to remember what his life had been like before.

Unfortunately, while the first third of the book was good, it was hard to get lost in it because of technical issues with the book. My interest wandered in the second third of the story (Toothless leaves the evil army and find a psychic little girl to travel with), so I checked reviews and saw that the final third was the least popular and less to my tastes, so sadly I stopped reading.

Sometimes it's better not to reread books and just keep your happy memories of them.

DNF #85: Amy by TM Edwards. Kind of funny to have two zombie books in a row, since nowadays I avoid zombie stories. This "book" was really short, only 40 pages or so, but it was so poorly written that I didn't even want to push to finish it.

The story followed a very young girl as the zombie apocalypse started. She didn't seem at all realistic as a young girl, and none of the adult characters seemed real either.

DNF #86: Wielder's Prize by Elle Cardy. Such a beautiful cover, I wish the story had matched.

In it a 16 year old girl is working on a ship as a cabin boy, pretending to be male. Which, right there, I have giant issues with. A 16 year old girl would have a challenging time passing for male in a group of men, let alone on a small ship. And to add to that, her father physically abused her (hit her in the face every couple days) to try to hide her beauty...

Then for some reason the captain sent "him" to a whorehouse, where the madam forces "him" to take a bath in front of her.

Just not the book for me.

The problem with recommending books is how to do so without spoiling.

A related problem is how to write more than "I really liked it, I really, really liked it. You should read it because I really liked it. Did I mention I really, really liked it?"

The book's cover is a bit big, so I'll link it. That's Toothless who, as you can see, lives up to his name. He's also a zombie, though I'd use that label unwillingly and only for lack of a better term. Take everything you know about zombies and toss it out the window. Ha ha! Now when the zombies attack you'll be unprepared! He was dead, he's now "alive". That's all he shares with zombies.

If you're a WoW player, then I can better describe him. He's a death knight. I've said it before, and now that I've finished the book, I still think that. It's a much, much, much better label for him than "zombie".

The world the book takes place in is an interesting mix of RL things. Druids (the traditional ones, not from any MMO). Templar knights/the Crusades. A small helping of supernatural stuff (can I say that when the book is about zombies?). Plus some really nice spiritual stuff.

My timing was bad for reading the book's ending. I finished it right before leaving for work this morning. I would have totally cried over it, except I couldn't because I had to go to work! So I did that thing where you read a couple words, then look away and think of other things, then read a few more... (If you read the ebook version, the percent count is off! I was at 99%, so I hadn't expected that I reached the ending. There is no 100%!)

Need further recommendation? This is one of those books where I didn't want to keep reading because I didn't want it to end. How messed up is that! I loved it, I wanted to read it all NOW NOW NOW, but I had to go slow so it wouldn't be gone and finished forever.

The Amazon link is Toothless, by J.P. Moore. The Toothless page on his website is here. He has a podcast of the entire book up, so you can get a preview if you want. (Edit: Or listen to the whole thing. He has a really nice voice!) The ebook is really cheap through Amazon ($4.99), so hey, great book, discount price! Buy it today!