Sunday, January 3, 2021

2020 Year in Review: My least favorite books I finished this year.

 


This is my annual least favorite post to make on this blog: my post where I recap the books and works that I honestly DIDN'T like and would recommend against reading.  As you might imagine, I tend not to have very many of these: I find my books from recommendations and reviews from sources I trust, who tend to have similar tastes to me - or at least, tastes that I can appreciate to a certain extent.  As such, usually, if I don't love a book as much as the person who recommended it to me, I will usually understand why others might like it and wouldn't consider such books bad.  And I've also gotten better at recognizing when books just aren't working for me and DNFing them, which also prevents them from getting on this list.

Still, when you read 180-220 books a year, you're going to get some misfires here and there.  Moreover, as someone who likes to take chances on sequels to books that intrigued but didn't quite fully satisfy, a few of those books are bound to disappoint even more.  But honestly, this year wasn't that bad: last year for example, I had two books I gave 2 stars out of 10, basically my lowest grade which goes to books that I find truly outrageously bad, and I had nothing this year below a 4.5, which tends to go to books that I felt had potential, but blew that potential in enough ways to make me kind of angry (as opposed to 6.5s, which are for books that had potential but just don't meet that potential, without me being that upset about it).

After the jump, we'll talk about the books that disappointed me and why:



4.5 out of 10 Rated Books:
Blazewrath Games by Amparo Ortiz (Review Here)
Medusa in the Graveyard by Emily Devenport (Review Here)
The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi (Review Here)

5 out of 10 Rated Books:
How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge by K Eason (Review Here)
Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi (Review Here)

5.5 out of 10 Rated Books: 
Harrow the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir (Review Here)
Before Mars by Emma Newman (Review Here)
Atlas Alone by Emma Newman (Review Here)
A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H.G. Parry (Review Here)
Sixteenth Watch by Myke Cole (Review Here)
Or What You Will by Jo Walton (Review Here)
Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan (Review Here)
Daughter from the Dark by Sergey and Marina Dyachenko (Review Here)
The Blade Between by Sam J Miller (Review Forthcoming)

So yeah there's a lot of commonalities here between these books.  All but three of these books feature either sequels or authors whose works I've read before, and either enjoyed or at least was intrigued by their earlier work.  The only three who don't fit that description are A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians, which told an alternate magical version of the French and Haitian Revolutions but didn't change anything that happened so as to make things seem pointless; Blazewrath Games, which tried a lot of interesting things but didn't succeed in any of them and didn't think through some of the implications of its fantasy version of international sports; and Waste Tide, which as Chinese SciFi had some severe gender issues that hampered the rest of the work and made it hard to like.  

But even the sequels or second books from authors I've read fit the category generally of books who had intriguing ideas that just not only didn't seem to pull them off well, but also did so in a way that frustrated me and made me kind of mad, even if none of them were outright bad.  So Harrow the Ninth, which has received a ton of acclaim elsewhere and might get an award nomination, drove me crazy because it filled a book with constant mysteries and couldn't actually payoff those mysteries...all the while not providing the character depth needed for me to actually care about what was actually revealed (unlike its predecessor).  Children of Virtue and Vengeance is another one that might pick up some award nominations, and I just really disliked - the character work just had them going in circles and repeating mistakes from the last book and the ending just was pulled off in a way that made me laugh in incredulity.  

Again, none of these books were outright bad, and I've read a few books like that over the last few years: My spreadsheet lists 8 books I've given 2 out of 10s from books I've read over the past 5 years, and none of these are that bad.  So I can see why some people might have enjoyed some of the above and why in some cases (Children and Harrow for instance), I might be in the minority.  But at the same time, all of the above are works that I just wound up feeling both unsatisfied and frustrated about having bothered to read them, and as such, I would recommend against reading them, if you are considering doing so, even if they might not be truly outrageously bad.  

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