DNF: We tried to read them so you don’t have to

We do our best to only accept books for review that we think we will enjoy, but it is impossible to safeguard 100% against bad reads.  These are the books we Did Not Finish

We do not give up on books lightly.  In fact we hate not finishing a book, even a bad book, but there are times when for one reason or another, we just can’t bring ourselves to reach the end.  In our latest poll you guys said you wanted to hear about which books made it onto our dreaded DNF pile, so here you have the first of hopefully very few DNF posts.  We’ll be posting them when we collect a few DNF reads or every few months depending. 

Darkness Descending (Vampire Armageddon #1)

by Devyn Quinn

Description:

Fallen angels in the form of vampires are infecting humans one by one, creating an army fit for Armageddon. Jesse Burke, driven by vengeance to destroy the vampiric angels, has been protecting New Orleans from the onslaught, unaware that she has a much greater destiny awaiting her in the face of the oncoming apocalypse...

Abigail’s DNF Thoughts:

Wow was this a hot mess.  I mean shockingly bad on just about every level.  The writing was awful, the characters incomprehensible, and the logical inconsistencies too numerous to count.  The one sex scene I made it to was on the ick side.  The heroine was an emaciated bag of bones who stunk (author’s description, not mine), but the hero could barely keep from attacking her due to his raging lust.  This is within hours of meeting btw.  I’ve had this author’s mermaid series on my wishlist for ages, but after trying to read this book, there is no way I’ll be picking them up.  Again...wow. If I’d been able to finish this, I probably would have had to find a way to rate a book less than 1 bat.

The Monster's Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

by Christopher Golden

Description:

An all original anthology from some of todays hottest supernatural writers, featuring stories of monster's from the monster's point of view.

In most stories we get the perspective of the hero, the ordinary, the everyman, but we are all the hero of our own tale, and so it must be true for legions of monsters, from Lucifer to Mordred, from child-thieving fairies to Frankenstein's monster and the Wicked Witch of the West.  From our point of view, they may very well be horrible, terrifying monstrosities, but of course they won’t see themselves in the same light, and their point of view is what concerns us in these tales.  Demons and goblins, dark gods and aliens, creatures of myth and legend, lurkers in darkness and beasts in human clothing…these are the subjects of The Monster’s Corner.  With contributions by Lauren Groff, Chelsea Cain, Simon R. Green, Sharyn McCrumb, Kelley Armstrong, David Liss, Kevin J. Anderson, Jonathan Maberry, and many others.

Abigail’s DNF Thoughts:

This proved to be a much different type of horror than I expected.  The first story was about a father’s growing obsession with a teenage girl who was his son’s best friend.  The girl had a Lolita thing going and set about seducing this guy.  I was beyond uncomfortable reading the escalating sexual situations culminating in one that was truly disturbing on several levels.  I didn’t even finish the next story which opened with a brutally gang raped woman covered in her own blood running from the men who raped her who hadn’t even bothered to zip up yet.  When they caught her and started to rape her again, I couldn’t get far enough away from this book.

Dark Inside

by Jeyn Roberts

Description:

Since mankind began, civilizations have always fallen: the Romans, the Greeks, the Aztecs…Now it’s our turn. Huge earthquakes rock the world. Cities are destroyed. But something even more awful is happening. An ancient evil has been unleashed, turning everday people into hunters, killers, crazies.

Mason's mother is dying after a terrible car accident. As he endures a last vigil at her hospital bed, his school is bombed and razed to the ground, and everyone he knows is killed. Aries survives an earthquake aftershock on a bus, and thinks the worst is over when a mysterious stranger pulls her out of the wreckage, but she’s about to discover a world changed forever. Clementine, the only survivor of an emergency town hall meeting that descends into murderous chaos, is on the run from savage strangers who used to be her friends and neighbors. And Michael witnesses a brutal road rage incident that is made much worse by the arrival of the police--who gun down the guilty party and then turn on the bystanding crowd.

Where do you go for justice when even the lawmakers have turned bad? These four teens are on the same road in a world gone mad. Struggling to survive, clinging on to love and meaning wherever it can be found, this is a journey into the heart of darkness – but also a journey to find each other and a place of safety.

Abigail’s DNF Thoughts:

The writing was odd from the start.  Very short sentences of three or four words: "...It was a sunny day. Beautiful. Early September. He'd been laughing. School had just started. Someone told a joke." It didn’t help that the story was uninspiring.  I made it through the first four chapters and as many point of views before calling it quits.

Hunter of Shadows (Moonlight #5)

by Nancy Gideon

Description:

NANCY GIDEON RETURNS TO HER STEAMY NEW ORLEANS PRETERNATURAL WORLD WITH AN IRRESISTIBLE NEW SHAPE-SHIFTER ROMANCE.

The secrets he knows about her could get him killed.

Transferring to the New Orleans Police Department, Detective Silas MacCreedy has a hidden agenda: to secure his clan’s place once again in the Shifter hierarchy. What he didn’t count on was stumbling upon a sexy assassin who could shred his best intentions and lead him into a dangerous dance that threatens to engage his heart.

But the ones he doesn’t know . . .

Monica Fraser knows just how to make a man beg—for his life. But she has no clue how to fight her attraction to the fiercely intense detective who seems determined to get in her way, both professionally and intimately.

. . . could kill them both.

When emotional attachments to the past and an unexpected glimpse of a different future have her questioning her deadly purpose, Nica must discover the truth about her secret abilities in order to free herself from the forces that control her. But that freedom comes with a price—trusting those she’s been ordered to eliminate.

Abigail’s DNF Thoughts:

It’s not a good sign when a book jumps between three different POVs in the first chapter alone, and not once was there any indication that a switch had been made until the pronouns cued me in.  It was disorienting.  Other than that, the story was just not engaging.  Tired characters and dull dialogue dominated the two and a half chapters I made it through before putting this down.

Description:

The Sylvermysts have a reputation as sinister cousins to the fey, and none are more mysterious than Ariyal and his tribe. To save his people from banishment, he faces a new challenge: Jaelyn, an elite vampire warrior sent to capture him. By rights, he should kill her on sight. Yet he cannot bring himself to hurt her—or to resist her…

Jaelyn is stunningly beautiful, utterly lethal—and always alone. Until Ariyal. From their first encounter, she knows that what's between them is more dangerous than simple lust. And as they unite to thwart a terrifying prophecy that will mean the end of his clan and of the world they know, she will risk everything to fulfill her destiny by his side…

Julia’s DNF Thoughts:

The barrier to entry this far into the series was too high for me to make it (this is Guardians of Eternity #8). Too many names and too much backstory flew by, I had to read in slow motion to get through the first few chapters. Even once I had picked out the main characters, the story’s emphasis is on plot and sex rather than their relationship, a strategy I couldn't stay interested past the first hundred or so pages. The writing was good (a familiar reader might have kept going for plot alone), but I had to give up. I may try WHEN DARKNESS COMES to see if this series works for me from the beginning, but I need a break for now.

Description:

Calliope just wants to make it big in the Big Apple like any other working girl. But Callie is also Death's Daughter, no matter how much she tries to stay out of the family business. And now her older sister has made a deal with the Devil himself to engage in a hostile takeover of both Death Inc. and Heaven-once they get Callie out of the way.

Julia’s DNF Thoughts:

I tried DEATH'S DAUGHTER and failed to get more than a few chapters in, but still tried SERPENT'S STORM (just in case my dislike for the series “pilot” was a fluke).  This proved not to be the case.  My main issue was Callie's very chatty POV. I didn't enjoy viewing the world through her willful denial, and from the first chapters of book one to the first half of SERPENT'S STORM, there wasn't a noticeable improvement in her life skills. Other than my heroine issues, the mythology was interesting and the writing was ok.

Description:

Bleeding to death after brutal mugging on the campus of UNLV, Twenty-five year old Alyssa, is rescued by the cold and aloof, vampire, Lysander. Taking pity on her, he shares the gift-and curse-of immortality.

She awakens as a vampire and is soon devastated by harsh realities of her new way of life: the loss of her friends, her independence, and her humanity.

As if having her humanity stripped away was not enough to make life interesting, Alyssa finds out her “turning”, did not go unnoticed by the rest of undead society. Old enemies; an ancient sect of vampire hunters, known as the Acta Sanctorum, as well as a powerful Vampire mistress, each set plans in motion to destroy both Alyssa and Lysander.

Only by accepting her newfound immortality, seizing the night, will Alyssa hope to survive. She and Lysander must fight together against two sets of enemies bent on destroying them both.

Julia’s DNF Thoughts:

The first person perspective bothered me, it made Alyssa seem pretty simple minded. Furthermore, her emotional reactions swung wildly from inappropriately dramatic, sociopathic-ly indifferent, to too-stupid-to-live. I must say, in the half I read, the writing was getting better on the tail end. This gives me hope for Book #2, but I’ve given up on Book #1.

Description:

FIRST IN A NEW SERIES.Enter the night world of the OSI... OCCULT SPECIAL INVESTIGATORTess Corday, Occult Special Investigator for Vancouver-s Mystical Crime Lab, is used to seeing dead vampires. But there-s nothing ordinary about this case. Not the lab results on the cause of death. Not the teenage girl living at the address found in the vamp-s pocket, who may well be in thrall to a demon. And certainly not Lucian Agrado, the necromancer who is liaison to the vampire community. Agrado is supposed to be part of the solution, but Tess suspects he might be part of the problem.Soon she finds herself in the middle of a paranormal conspiracy that will change her life forever-and possibly end it.

Julia’s DNF Thoughts:

This one just couldn't hold my attention from one reading to the next.  I was often surprised to find it queued up on my eReader, the characters were so forgettable I’d have to reorient myself. After the second or third time I had to backtrack to refresh my interest, I let this one go.

What is one of your recent DNF titles?  Did you read any of my DNF titles?  Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts?