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DNF #84. Usually I don't use this template for DNFs, but this book was so (overly) long, getting to the halfway point was basically a whole book.

Heretical Fishing by Haylock Jobson.

Quick synopsis: The richest man on Earth is killed and ends up in a video game where he is completely perfect, godlike, always correct, and better than any other person on that new planet. And yet they all love him/fear him.

Brief opinion: One of the two things that makes me drop a book right away is if the author describes overweight characters as "waddling". I was enjoying this story in the beginning enough that I overlooked "waddling" being used, but I really should have just DNFed it the first time it happened. The writing went so downhill from there.

Plot: The richest man on Earth gets hit by a truck and killed, and somehow ends up inside a videogame world (in LitRPG you never question that kind of thing). For some reason, even though the main character is really unlikable (he never tries to fit in, uses Earth slang that he knows no one will understand), everyone loves him off the bat.

He knows more than anyone else. He is stronger than anyone else. He is literally the most powerful, smartest, and most liked person in that world (yawn).

All he wants to do is fish, and yet even though fishing is the #1 worst thing a person can do in that world, everyone loves him and accepts that he fishes. For zero reason.

The only people who don't love him are fat and ugly people -- they fear him. (I don't know if the author has some kind of issues or is just a bad writer or both.) Fat people fear him, ugly people hate him.

Writing/editing: The book was edited well, I can give it that. The whole thing was 550+ pages, and in the half I read I didn't spot one editing issue.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Where do I even start. The ultra-perfect main character? The god awful descriptions of "fat" people? The annoying curses characters used (it was Mad Libs, like the author had three piles of words: A god's name, an adjective, and a body part. So he'd end up with curses like "Zeus's throbbing toe!" and "Hephaestus's glowing tongue!")?

While the typo-finding style of editing was good, this book was so incredibly long for zero reason. It could have easily had two-thirds of it cut and the "story" wouldn't have been impacted at all. (There was so little story. The main character fished and ate fish endlessly, adopted a crab and an otter. Farmers came to him for help. Everyone was his best friend.) An editor should have taken a hatchet to it and made a tighter book of it.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ ¼ - Very strongly disliked. A quarter-star because I did like the story in the beginning, but by the first third of the book I downright hated it. For some reason I forced myself to keep going and hit about the halfway mark before DNFing it.

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Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park.

Quick synopsis: Little House on the Prairie but with a half-Asian main character and an acknowledgement of the extensive racism of the time.

Brief opinion: A lot of books that have racism as a main theme are depressing and unpleasant to read (rightly so!), but while this one had a number of sad and at least one scary scenes, all in all I enjoyed the story a lot.

Plot: Set in America in the 1880s, Hanna, a half-Asian girl, and her father travel east from California to find a new place to live. They end up in a small town in the midwest where the father opens a dress goods (material, sewing stuff) store.

Most of the story is Hanna's day to day life and the nonstop racism she encounters (for example, her dream had been to go to school, but the other students made it awful for her).

Near the end of the story, pre-teen Hanna is attacked by two adult white men. It's very clear what they intended (rape), though the book keeps things vague for younger readers. Luck and her wits allow her to escape the attack, though not without injury...or without blame for the encounter.

Writing/editing: Nearly perfect. There was just one small editing error in the whole book; this level of quality of editing is rare nowadays for even traditionally-published books.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: This is one of the uncommon cases where I'd have liked the book to be longer. I'd love to read more about Hanna, her town, and that time period.

And an even less common case: I'm glad this is a MG book and not an adult one, otherwise the attack on Hanna would have resulted in rape. Usually I'm all for a story being darker, but everything was so serious and realistic in this book, I don't think I could have coped with her being raped.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ - Liked it a lot.

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DNF #83: Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini. What a miserable story this was. The main character was so depressed he was nearly suicidal (over the breakup of a relationship the reader never sees, so the whole thing seems way overly dramatic), and every other character was unpleasant and/or a troll. Whoever approved this group of people to being a crew on a small spaceship should be fired, because the group seems perfectly made for nothing other than arguing with each other and hating the main character.

DNF at 25%, but I should have dropped it way sooner.

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Between Monsters and Marvels by Alysa Wishingrad.

Side note: I really hate how authors/publishers are shoving a ton of extra info into book titles. On Amazon this book's title is: Between Monsters and Marvels: A Middle Grade Fantasy for Kids (Ages 8-12) About Monsters, Deception, and Dangerous Truths

Quick synopsis: An impatient young girl outsmarts adults to save wild animals monsters.

Brief opinion: I've often said that a good MG/YA book can be enjoyed by any age, but you can't blame it if it only works for the intended age. MG readers would probably enjoy this book, but adult reader me did not.

Plot: A young girl named Dare lives on an island full of rich people who look down on her and her not-rich father. The father's job is to protect the island from monsters, but as far as anyone believes, monsters are gone from the world.

Except they're not really.

When Dare's father is killed by a maybe-monster, her mother immediately remarries the richest, most powerful man on the island, and that man sends Dare off the the mainland to get rid of her.

From there Dare learns the truth about monsters and outsmarts a whole criminal organization of adults.

Writing/editing: Both were fine.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: At first I liked Dare (a misunderstood, "too clever" girl), but once she left the island, she started to annoy me instead. Part of it was that she was a believable pre-teen girl (annoying, impatient, willful), but a big part of it was that she was way too smart for her age. (I know kids outsmarting adults would probably please young readers, but as an adult I find it ridiculous.)

The lessons in the book were seriously heavy handed, but again this was a book for kids. That's probably good for them.

I did like the twist with her friend Gil. I knew something was up with him, but I hadn't guessed exactly what.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked. I was ready to DNF it at 50%, but another review said it got good in the last quarter, so I pushed through. While the last quarter was packed full of action, it still bored me to death. I wish I had DNFed it.

https://thistle-chaser.livejournal.com/1787333.html