Three bad self-published books and two traditionally published ones (5 DNF)
If nothing else, this alphabet project is at least getting a lot of self-published books off my Kindle...
N: The Mage from Nowhere
O: Stranger Origins
P: Phoenix Project: Jacked In
Q: The Quantum League
R: Accidental Heroes: The Rogues
DNF #71: The Mage from Nowhere by B.T. Narro. While this book has 220 5 star reviews on Goodreads, of the 10 on the first page, 8 are 1 or 2 stars -- they're the most upvoted ones. Pretty strong hint that the author paid for those 5 star reviews...
Anyway, the book itself. Writing was awful, characters were awful, not one thing enjoyable about this book. The main character's name is Tarak, which sounds more like a caveman name than a powerful mage with a "destiny".
DNFed early on.
DNF #72: Stranger Origins by Jack Castle. Annoying things about this book:
1) I never read the blurbs of quotes in the beginning of books, ones singing the praises of the book you're already holding, but one caught my eye this time. Written by "Gary Norton, Owner of Silverwood Theme Park". Because if you're looking for an expert on good books, a theme park owner is who you'd turn to? Plus, based on the author's burb, one of his previous jobs was at the Silverwood Theme Park...
2) It does not matter how you are pronouncing it, it is never spelled "Leftenant".
3) The author doesn't like "fat" people, that much was clear just a couple pages into the book.
A well-deserved DNF.
DNF #73: Phoenix Project: Jacked In by N.A.K. Baldron. Why are there still LitRPG books on my Kindle? Why? I keep thinking I've gotten rid of the last one, then I stumble upon another.
Like the vast majority of these "takes place in an MMO/video game" books, this one was overflowing with typos and horrible writing. I mean multiple typos, grammar issues, and editing mistakes per paragraph. So bad.
DNFed early in.
DNF #74: The Quantum League by Matthew J. Kirby. I pains me that I DNFed this one. I really love this author, I read a number of his other books, but this one just did not work for me.
Set in our world, except magic (through quantum mechanics) exists. Seems like a great idea, but the problem is we learned nothing about the characters. By 14% into the book this is what I knew about Ben, the 12 year old main character:
- He has a mother.
- His mother has some guy who is interested in her, but she doesn't return his feelings.
- Ben is smart? I think?
The characters could have all been cardboard cutouts for all I knew about them, so sadly DNFed the book.
DNF #75: Accidental Heroes: The Rogues by Lian Tanner. The setting didn't work for me and I didn't like any of the characters. The writing didn't work for me either, both story-wise and in a technical sense.
One of the settings of the story is the Strong-hold. Or the Stronghold. 60% of the time it was written with a hyphen, 40% of the time as one word. For a major setting in the story, it's boggling that it couldn't be written in a consistent way. Plus so many commas were missing...
DNFed at 30%.