2014 book: Nightshade City
Nightshade City by Hilary Wagner
Rating: 2/disliked (1-5/hated-loved)
I sure do wish I had my 'this book sucks' icon. Not that this book sucked, but I'm really tired of books that are just barely on the far side of 'okay' -- not bad enough to hate (and then perhaps be amusingly bad), but just unskillfully written, boring story, flat characters.
Nightshade City was about a group of intelligent, long-living rats (sound familiar?) who are revolting against the evil (fat, ugly) rat in charge, and escaping to make a new city. All the characters were so black/white and stereotypical: The evil rat was ugly, his second in command (a torturer) was deformed. All the good rats were beautiful/uniquely colored/had uniquely colored eyes.
The writing was just not good. Not the most awful thing ever, but something a high school student might produce.
I got about 25% through the book before giving up. Life's too short for meh books.
As I'm really frustrated about this string of meh/bad books, I'm starting in on a new project, one I've been putting off for at least a year. The Gone series by Michael Grant was really, really good... or at least the first four books of it were. I've been putting off reading the last two forever, since I wanted to reread the whole series first. In general I don't want to reread books, there are too many new ones on my list to read, but in this case I wanted to have the first four books fresh in my mind before finishing the series. I read the first books in 2011, so there's been enough time that I forgot a lot of things (but not all of them, sadly).
Reading Gone (the first book) reminds me of what reading a good writer is like -- he has such a way with words, it makes reading a pleasure instead of a chore.
There might not be another book review post for a while. I'll probably make one post for all six books, especially since I reviewed the first four books once already.
Rating: 2/disliked (1-5/hated-loved)
I sure do wish I had my 'this book sucks' icon. Not that this book sucked, but I'm really tired of books that are just barely on the far side of 'okay' -- not bad enough to hate (and then perhaps be amusingly bad), but just unskillfully written, boring story, flat characters.
Nightshade City was about a group of intelligent, long-living rats (sound familiar?) who are revolting against the evil (fat, ugly) rat in charge, and escaping to make a new city. All the characters were so black/white and stereotypical: The evil rat was ugly, his second in command (a torturer) was deformed. All the good rats were beautiful/uniquely colored/had uniquely colored eyes.
The writing was just not good. Not the most awful thing ever, but something a high school student might produce.
I got about 25% through the book before giving up. Life's too short for meh books.
As I'm really frustrated about this string of meh/bad books, I'm starting in on a new project, one I've been putting off for at least a year. The Gone series by Michael Grant was really, really good... or at least the first four books of it were. I've been putting off reading the last two forever, since I wanted to reread the whole series first. In general I don't want to reread books, there are too many new ones on my list to read, but in this case I wanted to have the first four books fresh in my mind before finishing the series. I read the first books in 2011, so there's been enough time that I forgot a lot of things (but not all of them, sadly).
Reading Gone (the first book) reminds me of what reading a good writer is like -- he has such a way with words, it makes reading a pleasure instead of a chore.
There might not be another book review post for a while. I'll probably make one post for all six books, especially since I reviewed the first four books once already.