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DNF roundup
May. 5th, 2023 12:41 pmWhere Love Grows by Jay Northcote
M/M contemporary about a former gardener recovering from serious illness and a software guy recovering from addiction and mental illness. This had a lot of surface things I ought to like, but fell into that horrible romance trap where the author just shoves the two protagonists together in a house for romance reasons and that’s it, that’s the book. They each have a token friend whose only function, at least by the point I stopped, was to comment on the protagonist’s life. I genuinely like slow, deeply internal books, but you’ve gotta be a lot better at writing interesting people for this to work.
Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter
Picked up because it’s about a space expedition to examine a mystery big dumb space object, bonus clones, and I was in the mood for scifi explorations with generations stuff after some Adrian Tchaikovsky. I could barely choke down 7% of this. It probably suffered mightily by coming right after Tchaikovsky, who is generally great. Maybe I would have stuck with this at a different time. But as it was I said “uh-oh” out loud when the prose n the first page thudded laboriously along. It’s just not a good sign when the professional audio book performer is killing themselves to sell the dialogue, and it’s still one of those humans don’t talk like that situations.
Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault
This has been on my TBR, in its various incarnations, for twenty years. It’s a shame that this really is not working for me now, because (1) this is an important artifact of queer culture, (2) it is actually pretty good, and (3) I surely would have been way into this at various points in the past. But now I’m not – my patience for historicals is at an incredible low for reasons I don’t fully understand, and I’m super not in the mood for tragic queers, and there are so so so many more options for queer books now that I know I would like a lot more.
The End of the Day by Claire North
The one about the guy recruited to be an angel of death, and something something the end of the world. I really like North’s stuff, but woof, this one really did not land. It’s an anti-capitalist screed which, yes, sing it, so when I say that it overplays its hand on this, I really mean it. I could not make my brain stick to this fragmentary, frustrating book with a damp dishrag main character.
M/M contemporary about a former gardener recovering from serious illness and a software guy recovering from addiction and mental illness. This had a lot of surface things I ought to like, but fell into that horrible romance trap where the author just shoves the two protagonists together in a house for romance reasons and that’s it, that’s the book. They each have a token friend whose only function, at least by the point I stopped, was to comment on the protagonist’s life. I genuinely like slow, deeply internal books, but you’ve gotta be a lot better at writing interesting people for this to work.
Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter
Picked up because it’s about a space expedition to examine a mystery big dumb space object, bonus clones, and I was in the mood for scifi explorations with generations stuff after some Adrian Tchaikovsky. I could barely choke down 7% of this. It probably suffered mightily by coming right after Tchaikovsky, who is generally great. Maybe I would have stuck with this at a different time. But as it was I said “uh-oh” out loud when the prose n the first page thudded laboriously along. It’s just not a good sign when the professional audio book performer is killing themselves to sell the dialogue, and it’s still one of those humans don’t talk like that situations.
Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault
This has been on my TBR, in its various incarnations, for twenty years. It’s a shame that this really is not working for me now, because (1) this is an important artifact of queer culture, (2) it is actually pretty good, and (3) I surely would have been way into this at various points in the past. But now I’m not – my patience for historicals is at an incredible low for reasons I don’t fully understand, and I’m super not in the mood for tragic queers, and there are so so so many more options for queer books now that I know I would like a lot more.
The End of the Day by Claire North
The one about the guy recruited to be an angel of death, and something something the end of the world. I really like North’s stuff, but woof, this one really did not land. It’s an anti-capitalist screed which, yes, sing it, so when I say that it overplays its hand on this, I really mean it. I could not make my brain stick to this fragmentary, frustrating book with a damp dishrag main character.
