Didn’t finish reading it. Didn’t finish listening to it...

A few disturbed nights (okay, more than just a few...) and all of a sudden reading isn’t becoming a chore as such but it is becoming a lot more difficult to find books on the pile that will let me get right into them right away. That’s the way it goes here and I know that it’s a phase that will pass soon enough.

In the meantime, I’m not letting this feeling affect the books that I am managing to get into. If I’m going to put a book down unfinished (and never pick it up again) then it should be for reasons relating to the book rather than a particular mood I’m in. As it happens, I’ve had to ditch a couple of reads over the last few days and here’s why...

‘Sati’ – Christopher Pike (Tor)

I was after a read that I wouldn’t normally pick up at all and ‘Sati’ seemed to fit the bill here. A trucker picks up a young hitchhiker called Sati who declares that she is God and sets about proving her divinity in a number of life changing ways. At least that’s what the blurb said, I never got far enough to find out.

Maybe I quit on this one too early (although halfway through a two hundred and forty seven page book isn’t doing too badly, I’d say that I gave it a fair chance) but an interesting premise instead became a long and rambling religious diatribe that felt more like it belonged in a textbook somewhere. It certainly didn’t do anything to advance the plot and I couldn’t see that happening anytime soon so I put the book down and can’t see myself picking it up again. Shame really as, like I said, the opening chapters looked very interesting...

‘False Gods’ – Graham McNeill & Martyn Ellis (Black Library)

I’m always looking forward to my next Black Library read and their audio books are a great way to spend the journey into work. With this in mind I really thought my luck was in when the abridged audio book of Graham McNeill’s ‘False Gods’ (a book I’d enjoyed reading in the days before the blog was even the merest spark of an idea...) arrived on the door mat. You can’t fault the story here but its delivery failed on the most basic level, at least as far as I was concerned.

A high standard has already been set by Toby Longworth’s narration and it’s a shame for Martyn Ellis that his own narration doesn’t meet the grade. You might disagree with me but Ellis was simply not able to infuse the story with the sense of dark grandeur that the setting usually commands. Worse still, the voices that Ellis used for the characters bordered on the comedic (as far as I was concerned) and that really didn’t work at all. The story and its delivery were at odds with each other to the point where I literally couldn’t listen to it any more (I'll also admit to being a little shallow and missing the sound effects that have worked so well on previous audio books). This was a real shame as I’d spent ages making room on my iPod so I could fit it all in...

Have you come across either of these titles? Do you think I’ve made a mistake in dropping them without finishing first? Leave a comment and let me know what you think...