The Dubious Honor of being the first books on my DNF shelf are...
The Winter Road by Adrian Selby - this book made me have a book block for at least a month or two. The total opposite of a book binge lol. I wanted to like it, I really did. A cool female protagonist in a winter fantasy setting? Sounds decent. My library also had a Game of Thrones themed book display with books that are similar to the Houses in the TV show and this book as under the House Stark recommendations for being winter I guess lol. Instead i got...this?
It just. Went so slow. Forever. and normally i can deal with fantasy words and fantasy society concepts but this book did not give me anything as far as context to go on imho. Who the heck are the White Boys? How do clans work? and the tie skip things??? Ive dealt with Baccano! and its ridiculously stupid (but fun) jigsaw puzzle plot and literal 3-4 different timelines with less difficulty. This though with only two timelines? totally confusing. i also couldnt feel attached to any of the characters. in hindsight though, that might have been deliberate considering the main character wants to not get too attached to the curent caravan she’s guarding considering that the last one was implied to have been killed off or something. whatever the reason, i read this thing feeling totally detached and oncused nd one day i just decided that i shouldn’t have to force myself to like a book. so i stopped trying to read and my book block disappeared. this book is literally the reason i created my DNF shelf on goodreads! wow! that an honor (?)
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai by Bradley P Beaulieu - like the Winter Road, i wanted to like this one. a cool female protag/assassin/gladiator (?) in a desert city state who wants to kill the rulers sounds cool. but it was so slow. and again i felt detached to the characters, even though this protag, Çeda, did care about a small amount of friends/family. i think i got to the part where the book plot began to pick up? but i have a lot of other books in my reading queue and i wanted to focus on something that didnt feel like a chore to read. maybe i’ll come back to it later or something, but until then, it has the dubious honor of being the second book on my DNF shelf. I got like 20% into it before deciding to give it up in favor of Bellamy and the Beast, the Emperor’s Edge series, and my planned reread of The Vagrant series.
