I also DNF'ed Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. Let me tell you why. First, the book is a tell (he's literally telling his story to a scribe) so there is absolutely NO sense of immediacy or suspense. Two, it's HORRIBLY overwritten. There is enough purple prose to fertilize ten gardens. But the tipping point for me involves... a movie from 1984 called Red Dawn. It's a bit of a cheesefest with Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, and I adore it. It's about a group of teenagers who hide out and fight back guerrila-style when their town is taken over by Russians. WOLVERINES!
Anyway. At one point in the movie there's a kid that's creepily obsessed with killing the Russians. They've met up with a downed American fighter pilot, and their dialogue goes something like this:
Pilot: All that hate will burn you up, kid.
Kid: It keeps me warm.
So, back to Empire of the Vampire. I'm reading away, rolling my eyes at the crap writing, when I come across this exchange between the scribe and the vampire hunter:
Scribe: Too much hate will burn a man to cinders, chevalier.
Vampire Hunter: But at least he'll die warm.
I MEAN. Who steals from RED DAWN of all freakin' movies? Come on. I'd have thrown it if it wasn't a library book.
What I'm Reading Right Now: I've started Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is apparently a (new?) genre called "litrpg", which is like the prose equivalent of a video game? It has begun with literally the world destroyed and most people killed, and the survivors must compete in an 18 level dungeon, earning prizes and entertaining people watching in order to build an audience. ... I don't know. I'm going to give it another night of reading before I decide to continue or not.
(Carl is in the dungeon with a cat that I have heard learns to talk, so I am going to try to at least get that far.)
What I'm Planning to Read Next: It'll either be a library book I picked up about mutated spiders (I HATE BUGS AND AM TERRIFIED OF THEM, WHY DID I DO THIS) called The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone, or one of my bingo prompt books, either The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist for a palate cleanser or Goblin if I want to get scared.
( 121. Stinger by Robert McCammonCollapse )
( 122. Annie Bot by Sierra GreerCollapse )
( 123. Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun BythellCollapse )
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