Shadow's Daughter
I experienced a lot of flux in my enthusiasm level for this book. It starts out hitting hard on one of my pet peeves: made-up words. So many made-up words that the glossary at the end of the book is 8 pages long. So at first I hated it. Then I kinda started to dig the book when the parents of the protagonist didn’t immediately die and I made it past the halfway mark without her ever being sexually assaulted. By the end, I was back to really, really not enjoying it and I was annoyed that my expectations based on the first half of the book were dashed on the rocks of predictable plotting and a rushed ending.
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Flight to Thlassa Mey
I hate this book. That statement is too simple to really contain the depth of irritation I felt while ever so slowly slogging through the mockery that passes for dialog in Flight to Thlassa Mey. I read a lot of bad books but rarely do I feel this level of contempt for one of them. Even the most phoned-in me-too version of Rand Al’don’tsueme’s epic adventures at least has something that feels like the author took pride in it. Maybe it’s a secondary character, or some interesting detail in the setting, or just some clever wordplay. Flight to Thlassa Mey has nothing endearing. It’s a book so bad that I couldn’t bring myself to stop my 11 month old daughter from gleefully tearing off the covers.
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor. I’ve taken much delight in just saying the title of the book. Not so much saying it as announcing it. “Oh hey, what have you been up to? I’ve been reading Vazkor, Son of Vazkor!” with an appropriately grand gesture. It’s unfortunate that I haven’t been taking nearly as much pleasure in actually reading it. Luckily it was a short read. A short, very purple read. With a whole lot of rape.
