Every year I say I’ll get better at DNFing books, and I feel like I’m never making forward progress on that front. There are too many books on my TBR to waste my time on something I’m not enjoying. I must keep telling myself this over and over. Of these, I’m only particularly interested in returning to Mercy Makers, and then only in a different format.
Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian
I’d just come off Make Me No Grave, which I found mostly disappointing, right on the edge of DNF territory. I figured Red Rabbit a much more popular title, would satisfy that itch. At 120 pages though, I just didn’t care about anything. The story is pitched as a Folk Horror Epic, but I found the atmosphere in the book to be frighteningly underdeveloped. The writing of the witch Sadie Grace was the only saving grace, but her POV chapters were few, far between, and quite short. It felt like characters were going places and doing things, but I spent the whole 100 pages wishing Lee Mandelo or Nghi Vo had been writing the story.
The Mercy Makers by Tessa Gratton
I wanted to like this book sooo much. It has so many things I love and look for. Deeply thought out queerenormative worldbuilding, criminals, political intrigue, a long con, and more. It isn’t afraid to steer clear of fantasy stereotypes and try something new. Unfortunately, the writing kept me at an arms length. I felt like the entire first quarter of the book got stuck in exposition, and I never got drawn into the characters like I thought I would. Other than Silk’s obsessive ramblings about her magical craft, it all felt distant and removed. I attribute part of this separation to my lack of buy in to one of the core plot points (that Silk, whose criminal kingpin father is set for execution as she hides her role as savant heretical mage, ends up recruited as a handmaiden to the second most powerful person in the Empire). Perhaps reading this book physically would have been easier for me to immerse myself in the story, but as it was, I just couldn’t keep my attention anchored in what was happening. People I trust rave about this though, so it might be one I return to in physical form at some point.
Door into Fire by Diane Duane
I pushed too far into this book, and should have DNF’d sooner. This is a very meandering novel with some cool ideas on a queernorm society that feel appropriately dated (written in 1979) but fun. Ultimately though, there wasn’t enough driving the plot forward, and the core romantic relationship started falling apart for me once they actually spent on-screen time together, instead of when it existed as memories in the protagonist. The book has a cool magic fire elemental horse though, and a passage with a goddess that I liked quite a bit. Just not enough here to keep me interested, even when I wanted to push through to honor the queer classics.
The Wizard’s Butler by Nathan Lowell
I came without knowing much of what to expect other than that this book had rave reviews every time I encountered it. My gut feeling is that I probably didn’t get to the good parts, because the interactions between the ex-marine and the grumpy old man who claims he’s a wizard were fun. There was simply too much ‘she bent over and boobed boobily’ for me, and it was far more blatant than I’ve seen in a while. I put it down because I needed a rest from how weirdly shoehorned in those passages were and never had the motivation to pick it back up.
The Merriest Misters by Timothy Janovsky
All I can say is that the first two minutes of this audiobook were filled with more trope-filled language than I have ever seen in my life. The Romance grab bag of flowery language was laid on so thick it made chunky peanut butter look like water. I couldn’t get through the first chapter, and I like cheesy romances. It might have gotten better; certainly the premise of a romance where the couple is already married but rapidly falling out of love appeals to my enjoyment of gay relationship trainwrecks. But this felt like an injection of high fructose corn syrup into my prefrontal cortex.
Marked for Plot 