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Continued theme: Books with things with wings on the cover.
Machine of Death by assorted authors. This book took me about six days to read because I had zero drive to read it. But, since it was an anthology, I couldn't just DNF the whole thing, I had to try every story in it (30+ stories) because one might be good...
The idea for it was great. Every story was about a death machine: Stick your finger into it, it takes a drop of blood, and a moment later it spits out a slip of paper with your cause of death on it. No date for when you're going to die, just a word or two about the cause.
Unfortunately, the wording of the cause of death is unclear, tricky, or outright unhelpful. For example, a person goes to the hospital, but their cause of death is "Tests", so if the doctors run tests, they might kill her. But "Tests" could mean lots of things (school test, testing the temperature of your drink...). Even something seemingly clear like "Cancer" wouldn't help much (will you die of cancer at 20 or 100?).
There were 30+ stories in this book, but only the first three were good. (Same thing anthologies always do, put their best ones in first, then people keep reading hoping for more good ones...)
DNF #47: The Rarkyn's Familiar by Nikky Lee. Set in a fantasy world, a girl is attacked by a demon, and to the surprised of both her and the demon, the two end up blood bonded. The writing was okay, but as I neared the 50% point, I was still not interested in the story.
DNF #48: While the Storm Rages by Phil Earle. Set in WW2, a young boy was being sent to the country side with all the other kids in England to keep them safe. Might have been an okay story, but wow the mother just got crapped on endlessly by the father and son. She was the bad guy at every turn, had to do all the work, while her husband was basically a second kid in the family. (Other reviews mention that even children reading this book pick up on how poorly the mother comes off in it.)
DNF #49: Apocalypse Uploading by Elizabeth J. Rekab. A bunch of teenagers are teleported from around America into what turns out to be a video game. Not poorly written, but I've read that same story countless times and there was nothing in this one that made me want to read it again.
