gave up

Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match by Sally Thorne

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Started: 9/23/23
Gave up: 9/24/23

Sometimes quirky takes on classic literature work for me, and sometimes they really don’t. This could have been cute – Victor Frankenstein has a scientist sister who can do everything he can do, but they’re a WEIRD family, so when she realizes she can’t find love the usual way, she decides to make her perfect man. Except she reanimates a real person, and then she gaslights him every time he starts to remember his actual family. So not cool. Maybe she realizes what she’s doing is wrong, tells him the truth, and he falls in love with her anyway? Or she lets him go (because what she’s doing is wrong) and her real love turns out to be someone she already knew? I’ll never know.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

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Started: 9/15/23
Gave up: 9/16/23

I have heard so much good about this book and this series, so I started the audiobook and quit almost immediately. Main character was TOO young/immature, all of the dialogue was too misogynistic, and maybe it gets better, but I don’t want to get through this to find out. Maybe I could deal with it better if I were reading it at my own pace instead of listening. Maybe someday I’ll try again.

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

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Started: 8/25/23
Gave up: 8/27/23

I wanted to like this, but it didn’t grab me enough to push through. A teenager who never really fit in finds out she’s part (or all? I don’t remember) alien, gets picked up by hopefully the good guys (aliens), rescues some other misfits, and I assume they save the universe, but I didn’t get that far.

The Iron Princess by Barbara Hambly

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Started: 8/3/23
Gave up: 8/10/23

Gave this one up after a week of getting bogged down in unlikeable characters and muddy plots. How does the magic work? I don’t know, I don’t care. The wizard is a bad guy? A good guy? He used to be a bad guy, but it was for good reasons and he has repented? I’m not sure, and I don’t care. The main character is a princess (or something) and she has a double life and has to sneak in and out of her castle when she wants to lead the resistance? Meh.

On the Steel Breeze by Alistair Reynolds

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Started: 6/28/23
Gave up: 6/29/23

I started the sequel to Blue Remembered Earth immediately after it ended, but I gave up on it the next day. The narrator was different (not the one I LOVED from the first one), there was a big time jump, and all of the characters were different. I just couldn’t get into it.

I realized just now, when I looked up the narrator, that it was Adjoa Andoh, who plays Lady Danbury in Bridgerton, and I LOVE her. But apparently not enough to enjoy this audiobook.

The Charmed List by Julie Abe

Started: 10/5/22
Gave up: 10/8/22

I read a Buzzfeed article about cozy fantasy books for the fall, and this sounded promising. Magic hidden in plain sight in Palo Alto, cute little romance. And sure, those things happen. But the characters are in high school, and I just cannot. I literally said, “Ugh, teenagers,” when I put this one down for good.

Docile by K.M. Szpara

Started: 10/1/22
Gave up: 10/5/22

I tried really hard to keep reading this book. I’ve read a lot about it, and it gets good reviews, and what the book is eventually saying is stuff I would want to say, but it starts out SUPER rape-y, and it sure feels like the victim is going to fall in love with the rapist, and the rapist is going to see the error of his ways, and gross gross gross. My understanding is that this is NOT how it goes, but I couldn’t get past the initial part. Not for me.

The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers

Started: 9/27/22
Gave up: 10/1/22

I have no idea how this book crossed my radar. I usually take better notes about that, and I’m annoyed that I messed up this time. Captain Bluebear falls into adventures, and I suppose each one is a life. Nothing much happens (adventures might not be the right word). It’s a series of vignettes, all fanciful, mildly amusing. Maybe good for bedtime reading. They remind me of The Phantom Tollbooth and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but without the morals, the lessons.

I got bored, lost interest. Might be nice to come back to if I’m looking for something without any suspense.

Velvet Was The Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Started: 9/24/22
Gave up: 9/27/22

I don’t remember what I thought this book was going to be about, but I certainly didn’t expect a bored and thoroughly unpleasant 30-something woman, a somewhat interesting young government thug, and a missing person who sounded like someone I would find pretentious and obnoxious. Not for me. Gave it up.

Oh, wait, I know. I was confusing it with Certain Dark Things, which I am still interested in reading.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

Started: 9/22/22
Gave up: 9/24/22

I have been wary of David Mitchell books. Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks sound so impenetrable, and that’s really not what I’m looking for in my fiction. So when Jo Walton wrote basically the same thing and then said that this book (and Utopia Avenue) are completely different and totally wonderful, I figured I would trust her. I HAVE to stop doing that. I started this book, and I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for 17th century Japanese and Dutch morality and hand-wringing and ugh with the overly gross descriptions. So I gave it up. I MIGHT still try Utopia Avenue when I get around to it.

The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu

Started: 9/18/22
Gave up: 9/22/22

Giving up two books in a row is never a good sign for my state of mind, but I think I’m justified here. I made it to 72% before I got tired of the drama between 22-year-olds. It started out cute, light, good immigrant family stuff, but at the point where I quit, stuff that had barely been hinted at in the first three quarters of the book was all of a sudden brought out and OH, here’s the obstacle our characters have to overcome, and ugh, I don’t care. Not a good setup.

Oona Out of Order by Margerita Montimore

Started: 9/17/22
Gave up: 9/18/22

The premise is interesting, and it got me through the first 90 pages, but no. Girl (on the eve of her 19th birthday) begins living her life out of order, meaning that her consciousness spends every year in her own body in a random year of her future life. So when she turns 21, maybe she jumps to her body when she’s 30. (I don’t know – I quit before that.)

I quit for two reasons. First, I don’t like the character, and I feel like that’s a failure of the writing, not of my imagination. She’s going through a lot, and I would like to feel sympathic and understanding when she’s bitchy to the people who are trying to help her, but even though the reader is ONLY in her head, there’s not enough to bring me to sympathy. Then again, she’s still a teenager when this begins, so maybe I should give her more slack, but THEN I feel like I shouldn’t have to put in this much effort. So I quit.