Ah, yes. The old "when a world of technology and a world of magic collide."
Seen it done. Seen it done better, in fact. But that's neither here nor there.
First, there is absolutely no excuse for this crappy book to be 814 pages long. Excuses are made for it, like "world-building for future volumes," but still. A better execution could have made its point without being 800+ pages. I made it almost 150, and do you know what I got?
Lots of backstory on what will probably eventually be secondary (if that) characters.
One (1) gun battle.
Much (much) walking through the jungle.
Technical explanations for spells and dragons. (which really bugs me, because once magic starts being science, it stops being fantasy and starts being science fiction. Yeah, I'm looking at you, DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN.)
Way too long. Characters I don't care about and wouldn't care about if you paid me. Overly detailed explanation of devices masquerading as story.
This book sucked.
Oh, there's not much to love here.
Chip gets bullied.
Chip takes Karate lessons.
Chip doesn't get very far in his karate lessons. He doesn't have that Special Something.
Chip quits karate.
Chip sees the bully bullying one of his friends.
Chip threatens to kick the bully in the face.
The bully runs away.
Chip's former Karate teacher, who was watching, determines that Chip now has the Eye of the Tiger or whatever, and rewards him with his next-level belt.
Chip returns to Karate class.
Supposed moral: I don't know, something about perseverance, or being a good sport or standing up for yourself and those weaker than you?
Actual moral: when you threaten to kick people in the face, they generally give you what you want.
This book sucked.
Good concept, ruined by one page at the end.
See, the school lunch lady has developed a bad case of burnout, possibly because she's been cooking short-order-style for about four hundred kids. Whatever. She takes a nice long vacation, and the kids send her postcards (which is totally backwards), telling her about the long succession of guest chefs they've had exposing them to new foods. They get the greasy diner guy, a French chef, a vegeterian shef, all kinds of good and interesting stuff, and then we hit a roadblock.
See, towards the end of the book, the Principal ran out of ideas for guest chefs, so ordered Chinese takeaway, and the resturaunt got the order wrong and sent over fish heads and rice. Because, and the book goes to some lengths to point this out, the lady at the resturaunt who took the order doesn't speak English very well.
Just off the top of my head, I think that getting the order wrong because the phone connection was bad just might be a better way to, oh, not introduce kids to subtle racism.
This book sucked.
There's a structure to the art of imparting information in the written form. You probably learned about it when you wrote your very first term paper:
- Tell them what you're going to tell them.
- Tell them.
- Tell them what you told them.
I made it about forty pages in (out of 229), and we were still on Step One. It's an intriguing concept, this idea that "I believe in America" as a national religion, but when I'm almost twenty percent through the book, it's time you stopped discussing how and why you'll be talking about "American Zionism," and a "Biblical Democracy," and start explaining what you mean. Because if those are going to be your key phrases, I'm going to need them eventually parsed out a little bit, because they don't do much for me on their own.
No, I didn't finish this one. For all that it's not very long, it talked in circles way too much.
Here am I, and here's my deal:
Yeah, I like / love reading, but for every book out there that's good, there's at least one that's truly terrible, and it turns out that those, *those,* are waaay more fun to review.
So I'm going to review them. When a book sucks, I'm putting it here. I'll tell you how it sucked. I'll tell you why it sucked. I might give you some indication of things that might have been done to make it suck less.
Nothing's safe, nothing's sacred. I'll do fiction, nonfiction, kids' books, textbooks, academic books, business books, anything and everything I run across that sucks. I'm like gofugyourself on print. My only caveat is that if it sucks too much, I might not finish the book. But I promise to tell you if and when that happens.
So hit me. I can't find all the sucky books on my own. If you've got something that sucked, send me the title and I'll take a look. If you're feeling extra-special, drop me a whole, snarky review, and we'll see about putting that up.
thisbooksucked at gmail dot com
See you soon, with a book that sucked!
