Not for me

Thirty Day Book Meme Day 25: Never finished it

There aren't many books that fall into this category, because I'm generally careful about what I read, and try to pick books I'm certain I'll like. So to answer this question, I went to my 'gave up' shelf in Goodreads. In the ten years or so since I've been using the site, I've only added four books to this shelf. I normally just use Goodreads as a reading log, and the star ratings I use to write yearly roundups of the best books I've read, but several in this 'gave up' shelf have brief reviews where I noted why the books didn't work for me. These are as follows:

Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness:

It is a rare occurrence that I fail to finish a book, but I realised that I was just reading this one out of a sense of duty. The preceding book in this series, A Discovery of Witches, had made me indescribably angry (for reasons that I will probably go into in a review on my blog), and I could tell from a chapter in that Shadow of the Night was more of the same. This series promises so much, and delivers so little, and strikes me as suffering from a desire on the part of the author to try to be too many things at once. It's historical fiction, but doesn't go into enough detail to satisfy historical fiction aficionados. It's a story about academia, but is filled with glaring inaccuracies about how academic life really functions (a surprising error, considering its author is a full-time academic herself). It's a paranormal fantasy story that suffers from poor world-building. And, most damning of all, it's as if Harkness wanted to write a paranormal romance, but was too uncomfortable to actually include any romance elements. I can't remember the last time I was so deeply disappointed in a series of books.

The Copper Promise by Jen Williams:

I didn't finish reading this book. The first 150 pages read like someone's D & D campaign, and I found all the characters two-dimensional, more like collections of tropes and swords-and-sorcery stereotypes than engaging human beings. It may pick up, but I decided not to waste any more of my time on it.

I feel as if I was a meaner reader back when I took the time to note on Goodreads why I gave up on particular books. These days I just move on.

( The other days )