What I Read in 2014, Second Quarter: The Bookening

April

The Witch and the Gentleman by J.R. Rain

I got this ebook on sale at half price, but I'm really starting to regret having even paid that much

It's really more of a novella than even a novel, but I still only made it sixty percent through before finding my attention span wandering. I was sucked right in by the preview of the first two chapters. It starts out with a psychic woman working at a less-than-psychic hotline when a man calls asking about his daughter, who had been murdered. This grabbed my interest immediately,  but the story fizzles out after chapter three.

From there the main character does nothing but have conversations with people while they infodump on her. Yes, in every book there is a certain level of worldbuilding that needs to be done, but when that makes up 60% of the book so far I find myself going "Huuuuuungh!" People constantly show up out of nowhere, infodump, and then disappear again. I'm able to tolerate the Sex-and-the-City friend telling the main character to totally hook up with a guy (joking about him being a Florida Cabana boy, I kid you not), I'll even hold my eyes in place to keep them from rolling as a ghost infodumps about how the main character is a witch and that they are soulmate-BFFs, but the moment Gaia shows up I'm just all:

Nope.

I nearly stopped right there. I did sandwich something else in there, but that will be next.

I also felt like I was missing something. The main character continuously mentions previous things that have happened to her, to the point where I've had to stop and check several times that I am reading the first book and didn't accidentally throw myself into the middle of a series. Everything she mentions manages to sound far more interesting than the literary muck I'm wading through. Later, after finishing the novella, I learned it's a spin-off series. The trick to spin-off series is to write a whole story without making it necessary to read the original series. Unfortunately, the author failed.

Another reason that nearly made me slap the book shut (my Kindle makes a satisfying sound when I close the cover, much like a hardback) was one character's overuse of the word "dear."

"You're a witch, dear."
"Le gasp! I'm a witch?"
"Yes, dear."
"No wai!"
"Totes wai, dear."

Now imagine dear, literally at the end of every sentence of dialogue for the character, while she infodumps on the main character for an entire chapter. I'll admit, I have my own overuse of words, for Dusted I removed two thirds of the instances of the word "just."

"We just can't do that."
"Why not?"
"It's just impossible!"
"No wai!"
"Totes wai."

As I'm working on The Crystal Witch I've been taking notes of the words or phrases I find myself using too frequently (like "realized") and plan to edit them out later. If the author is indie and had to edit their own work, or is a fresh-faced forum poster, I'll make exceptions, but the author of The Witch and The Gentleman not only overuses the word, they recognize that they do. The main character points it out to the overuser, which tells me the author was entirely aware of the overuse.

But, despite all that, I continued on until the end of the story.

I really wish I hadn't.

Really lame spoilers after this point.

So, this character is being infodumped on left and right, wasn't there supposed be a murder and a plot and all that stuff?

...Oh yeah.

So the girl was murdered walking on her way home from school. The main character goes to the school hoping to find some leads, gets a bad vibe from one of the teachers, and talks to him. Here's an approximation of what she says to him.

"You know what I think? I think she got murdered on her way home from school."

Then she leaves the school and is in the parking lot on her way to her car when he tries to run her down. She uses some...magic...shield thingy to protect herself, the first actual bit of magic minus her psychic feelings and talking to ghosts, and he rams into it, flies out the windshield, and dies on the spot. Everyone is happy.

...Wait what?

Seriously, that's it for confrontation and an antagonist. All she had to do was mention the murder, not even accuse him, and he wigs out and tries to run her over. She also psychically sees a box buried under a tree "find the dog and you find your answer" was said twice. Once during a ghost infodump and again when she "sees" the box. Do we ever get to know what's in the box exactly? Or how it proves the teacher murdered the girl, or even why he did it? Nope. Instead the main character tells the police about it and the story ends before it gets to that point. She does that a couple times to the police which brings me to another point:

Why wasn't she a suspect?

She just "sees" things that relate to the murder and everyone just shrugs their shoulders and goes "she's psychic, alrighty then." Nevermind that this is a case that's been cold for 2 or 3 years. Not once do the police ever find it odd that a random woman just appears and starts finding clues and evidence about a cold case. The police should have been on her in an instant. Frankly, it would have been much more interesting if she had been evading the police as a wrongfully accused suspect while trying to solve the case.

Am I right, here?

Normally, if I read a crummy book at half price, I find consolation in the fact that I only paid half price. This book, however, I regretted even paying that much.

Other stuff

After (and during) The Witch and The Gentleman I got distracted reading other stuff, not books per se, but other things that might as well amount up to a book. This forum thread in particular (I rated 18+ for swearing, suggestive themes, crude humor, and nightmarish living conditions), it's chock full of stories that will make you laugh, wince, and clean your house, sometimes all at once. It's also massively long, as in you've been reading for hours and, when you look at the page you're on, you find you're on page 3...of 61. I promise you will never think of wheelchair repair the same way again (if you ever thought about it at all.)


Hammered by Melvin Nazarene

...Wow my kindle keyboard sucks.

What I was trying to say was Hammered by Kevin Hearne

After finally getting my hands on the third Iron Druid Chronicles book I devoured it. The series continues to get more awesome and I actually stayed up late one night to find out how it ends. Not much I can say about it since it's the third in a series, except that it's pretty epic with lots of God-slayings.

May

Origin by Jessica Khoury

Another example of Technology Girl and Tribal Boy, I read a bit of Origin while waiting at a grocery store. It interested me ever since it came out but, thanks to my horrible luck with new authors, I wasn't too interested in reading it. Luckily, I got it for only a couple of bucks on the Kindle.

First, it's rather unique in that the setting is the Amazon jungle, but it rollercoasters up and down between interesting and boring. Oddly, it's when Pia (the main character) is outside her confinement that my interest waned. During that time she would do nothing but wax poetic about how beautiful everything is. Her inner monologue was far too lengthy, and often felt like it was in the way of anything actually happening (I actually wonder if it was used to pad the story so that it could be sold as a book rather than just a novella).

While Pia is immortal, you never get to actually see it in action. What's worse, she actually needs rescued in one scene by her boy-candy.

The climax at the end is eye-rolling. She is forced into a situation where she is right next to the main antagonist character with an almost instant-killing serum injection, and she chooses to drop the syringe and run for it...twice. Yes, she gets recaptured and forced into the exact same scene a second time, except the second time is even worse because she's then rescued by a guy dual-wielding AK-47's.

No really.

Here's a picture of one:

The NSA is breaking down my door as we speak for threatening unarmed readers with a photograph.

I had to go back and reread it, because I saw "AK-47's" and assumed he'd shown up with a couple other guys. Nope. He's playing Rambo. I had to stop reading for a little while, as I'm pretty sure it's hard to read with a hand in my face.

How am I supposed to read now?

After a couple of minutes (a snack, a drink) to reassert logic, I continued.

Sadly, it didn't get much better from there.

Now, when I say Pia is immortal, I mean she is also indestructible. Nothing can slice her skin and, while she can feel pain, she is unkillable. However, the entire last quarter she is being rescued by others from falling victim to the Standard Female Grab Area. For someone immortal and indestructible, she is entirely helpless. I was nothing but disappointed and unhappy with the entire story.

Moms Who Drink and Swear: True Tales of Loving my Kids While Losing My Mind by Nicole Knepper

This one was actually pretty funny, and it's not often that I read non-fiction. Not much to say that isn't in the title itself.

June

A Shade of Vampire by Bella Forrest

I kept fighting with myself over this one. First, thanks to Fifty Shades of Gray I now avoid all books with the words "shade", "gray" and even the number fifty (it actually ruined the name of one working title to a story of mine: Grey Witch, thank you very much...) Along with the title is the author's name: Bella Forrest. Really? An author named Bella writing a story about a vampire? The combination of the two left me dry heaving for as long as it's been in the Top 100 of Amazon's ebook list.

Still, as time has gone on, it never left the Top 100, making me wonder if it was really as much of a cheap knockoff as what I initially thought. So I decided to give it a try, keeping a puke bucket handy the whole while.

It's not a knockoff, and I never heaved, but I didn't totally fall in love with the story either.

It's a typical "Girl in love with a vampire" story, but there are some parts that irked me. One is the ultra-modern tree houses that have electricity despite being on a totally isolated island. I understand solar panels, but this is never mentioned, and there's even an elevator for heaven's sake! Second, the main character is kidnapped by a vampire and is so ho-hum about their existence that you'd think she already knew they existed.

It's short, and I did find myself wondering what happens next, though not enough to consider investing myself in the rest of the story when I have so many other things to read that I'm pretty much guaranteed to enjoy such as...

Cold Days by Jim Butcher

Jim Butcher's Skin Game snuck up on me a little. I've had it preordered for a looooong time, so when I got an email saying it was being shipped I had a little happy moment. Before reading the latest Dresden I always reread the previous one so Cold Days it is. If you're a regular reader you already know about the whole November 2012 excitement for Cold Days, and then the Hulky disappointment of the missing pages. I have since gotten a replacement for my replacement, and then the ebook...meaning I've got 3.8 copies of Cold Days (ebook is one, complete copy is one, and each signed copy is 0.9 each.) After finishing Cold Days I launched right into Skin Game.