gave up

Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen

Leave a Comment

Started: 8/19/19
Gave up: 8/23/19

Time travel story that’s a little heavy-handed on the SF aspect.  I like hard SF, and I like time travel, but there’s something about the way we’re being told about the time travel bureau that feels amateurish.  The plot device for it could work, but it’s too clinical, I think.  Too much telling, not enough showing, maybe.  And the fact that the guy is in trouble for something he a) couldn’t control, and b) CAN’T REMEMBER seems really crappy.  Not finishing!

When You Read This by Mary Adkins

Leave a Comment

Started: 4/18/19
Gave up: 4/18/19

I couldn’t get into this one.  It’s the story of a woman who died told via the emails of the people who knew her (and one person who didn’t know her but started working for her boss after she died).  It might be depressing, it might be uplifting, I think it’s supposed to be funny, but I didn’t stick around to find out for sure.  I wasn’t learning enough about the characters to care, and the intern really bugged me.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

Leave a Comment

Started: 4/7/19
Gave up: 4/7/19

This is hard to admit, but I gave up on Dandelion Wine.  I love Ray Bradbury, but I couldn’t read this.  It’s an ode to small-town life before the Great Depression.  Remember when boys were boys and men were men and small towns were great and aren’t little brothers wonderful and gosh, summer lasts forever, and MAYBE if there had been a plot!

Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh

Leave a Comment

Started: 2/18/19
Gave up: 2/22/19

I couldn’t get into this story.  It started with so much exposition, and when we finally got into some characters’ heads, I was relieved and then disappointed.  It’s slow-moving, and the depiction of an alien race (native to a planet humans settled on) strikes me as vaguely racist, so it’s unpleasant to read.  Add to that the abundance of unnecessary commas and I had to walk away.

The Iron Dragon’s Daughter by Michael Swanwick

Leave a Comment

Started: 2/5/19
Gave up: 2/7/19

This could have been (and might be, to a different reader) an interesting story about belonging and ownership of self and taking action to control your life, but it felt like several stories all muddled together.  It starts in a factory with child labor, but it leaves there quickly (and abruptly), with no sign any of that will be revisited.  Then it switches to a school, with great details about tiny things that appear to have nothing to do with the plot (but they’re neat).  In both settings so far, there are off-hand crude comments involving sexualizing young girls that I found really disturbing.  We’re following one main character, but I have no idea what she’s going to do or even what she wants to do.  I gave it up.

Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix

Leave a Comment

Started: 2/4/19
Gave up: 2/7/19

This is a horror story set in a store that is identical to Ikea, but isn’t Ikea.  The premise is kind of funny, but the novelty wears off quickly.  And then the story got actually scary (or scary enough), so I stopped reading it at night, and then I found I didn’t care enough to pick it back up during the day.  No ringing endorsement here.

Song Against Shadow by Anne E.G. Nydam

Leave a Comment

Started: 1/31/19
Gave up: 1/31/19

I picked this one because the author will be at the convention I’m going to in a couple of weeks, but I gave up on it almost immediately.  The writing was stilted, formal, and boring, and the characters are all high-elf types with ridiculous names, and I am SO not in the mood.  Hard pass.

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

Leave a Comment

Started: 1/23/19
Gave up: 1/25/19

This is the first book in the Craft Sequence.  I wanted to like it, but I couldn’t get into the story.  I didn’t find the characters particularly interesting, and the pacing was odd, so I wasn’t feeling involved.  I gave up after a couple of days of avoidance.

Fledgling by Octavia Butler

Leave a Comment

Started: 12/11/18
Gave up: 12/12/18

I have loved (or really liked) everything I’ve read by Octavia Butler, so it pains me to say I gave up on this book.  SF vampires = all good, but the main character presents as an 11-year-old.  I don’t care that she’s actually in her 50s or whatever (because vampires) – that makes the sex icky and weird.  I tried to get past that and kept reading, but then it turned into all exposition, all the time, and I couldn’t care enough to get to the plot.

The Black Company by Glen Cook

Leave a Comment

Started: 10/11/18
Gave Up: 10/13/18

I’d been looking forward to reading this – grimdark fantasy series with a mercenary army – but the writing style was impossible.  I wasn’t getting any information about the characters, the action scenes were muddled.  I couldn’t tell what was happening, who it was happening to, or why I should care.  Good reasons to give up reading it.

Stone Cold Bastards by Jake Bible

Leave a Comment

Started: 10/10/18
Gave Up: 10/11/18

This sounded like fun – the gates of Hell open, demons possess most humans, and the only ones saved are those who make it to cathedrals which are being guarded by the gargoyles who came to life.  I couldn’t get into it.  The characters didn’t grab me and the dialogue was annoying.

Zeroboxer by Fonda Lee

Leave a Comment

Started: 9/15/18
Gave up: 9/15/18

Started and gave up on the same day.  I just wasn’t interested. The characters didn’t feel real, their actions didn’t make sense (for real people), and the plot didn’t get going before I quit.  I’ve heard really good things about a different book by this author.  Maybe I can get it from the library.  It would be interesting to know if her style changed (improved) or if she’s just not for me.

The Punch Escrow by Tal M. Klein

Leave a Comment

Started: 9/12/18
Gave up: 9/15/18

The premise is interesting, but the explanations were mind-numbing.  Most books explain the necessary future tech within the plot of the book, but here, we’re getting some of it that way and some of it in footnotes.  Usually, I love footnotes in novels, but that’s because usually, footnotes in novels are amusing.  These were dry.  So dry.  And filled with information that explained stuff characters mentioned but did not appear to be relevant to the actual story.  This is bad worldbuilding.  Pass.  I’m just annoyed it took me three days to give it up.

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

Leave a Comment

Started: 8/16/18
Gave up: 8/17/18

Interesting premise: Victorian missionaries travel to the lands of the Fae to try to convert them to Christianity.  Our protagonist’s brother never returned, so she heads there to try to find him.  And then nothing happens.  For a long time.  So I gave up.

Space Opera by Catherynne Valente

Leave a Comment

Started: 8/12/18
Gave up: 8/13/18

I was so ready to love this book and then I didn’t.  It was written in the Hitchhiker’s Guide style (which I knew going in – that was part of the appeal), but it was too deliberately and obviously and painfully done that way, and it wasn’t fun to read.  I gave up.

After On by Rob Reid

Leave a Comment

Started: 5/29/18
Gave up: 5/29/18

The writing drove me crazy and I gave up within a couple of hours.  At 7% in, the narrator had mentioned a dozen times how dude’s wife’s research is critical to his business and his health, but she barely rates her own name (always X’s wife). That and the exclamation points are too much. I quit.