Couldn't Finish It... 'Turbulence' - Samit Basu (Titan Books)

A great way to start a new month, on the blog, then... Most times I'll finish whatever book is in front of me no matter whether I like it or not (just like I used to do with my dinner as a child) but things haven't been great just recently and this has been reflected in my total lack of reading patience. More likely than not it isn't the books fault at all but if it's not working for me then down it goes. Such was the case with Samit Basu's 'Turbulence'...

Aman Sen is smart, young, ambitious and going nowhere. He thinks this is because he doesn’t have the right connections—but then he gets off a plane from London to Delhi and discovers that he has turned into a communications demigod. Indeed, everyone on Aman’s flight now has extraordinary abilities corresponding to their innermost desires.

Vir, an Indian Air Force pilot, can now fly. Uzma, a British- Pakistani aspiring Bollywood actress, now possesses infinite charisma. And then there’s Jai, an indestructible one-man army with a good old-fashioned goal — to rule the world!

Aman wants to ensure that their new powers aren't wasted on costumed crime-fighting, celebrity 
endorsements, or reality television. He wants to heal the planet but with each step he takes, he finds helping some means harming others. Will it all end, as 80 years of superhero fiction suggest, in a meaningless, explosive slugfest? 

I can only comment on the hundred, or so, pages that I read but 'Turbulence' comes across as a verbose read with a lot of detail that doesn't seem to have much to do with the plot (although I'll admit that I could be wrong here, not having finished the book and all...) Normally I can deal with that but what made me put the book down was that it felt like 'Turbulence' was a book all about discussing superheroes rather than letting people actually be superheroes. I think there's definitely a lot of discussion to be had here but it's not a book that I want to be reading right now... so I'm not :o)

This has been an odd post for me to write then... The blurb looks great and I can see a lot of potential but it just didn't work for me. It might work for you though, let me know if you read 'Turbulence' and what you thought. Did I put the book down too soon?

Apparently Titan are giving away ten free copies of 'Turbulence' over on Twitter (if your interest has been piqued by the blurb here). All you need to do is tweet the link to this post to @Titanbooks (#Turbulence) along with a description of the most original superhero you can think of. Samit will pick ten favourites and they all get a book...

Didn’t Finish It… ‘Thief’s Covenant’ – Ari Marmell (Pyr)

The plan is that you won’t be seeing so many of these posts in the future; well, hopefully… The impending daily commute means that I’ll more than likely be forced to finish whatever comes to work with me for the day (which isn’t a bad thing) instead of just going to the bookshelf to find something more appealing. A book is going to have to be truly awful to make me put it down and share a train with early morning commuters! I’ll guess we'll just have to see how that one goes.

In the meantime… Certain books don’t seem to work for me, for a number of reasons, and I want the blog to reflect that a little bit more. A book may be badly written, it might just be the wrong book at the wrong time. Or it might be a book like Ari Marmell’s ‘Thief’s Covenant’. Here’s the blurb…

Once she was Adrienne Satti. An orphan of Davillon, she had somehow escaped destitution and climbed to the ranks of the city's aristocracy in a rags-to-riches story straight from an ancient fairy tale. Until one horrid night, when a conspiracy of forces—human and other—stole it all away in a flurry of blood and murder.

Today she is Widdershins, a thief making her way through Davillon's underbelly with a sharp blade, a sharper wit, and the mystical aid of Olgun, a foreign god with no other worshippers but Widdershins herself. It's not a great life, certainly nothing compared to the one she once had, but it's hers.

But now, in the midst of Davillon's political turmoil, an array of hands are once again rising up against her, prepared to tear down all that she's built. The City Guard wants her in prison. Members of her own Guild want her dead. And something horrid, something dark, something ancient is reaching out for her, a past that refuses to let her go. Widdershins and Olgun are going to find answers, and justice, for what happened to her—but only if those who almost destroyed her in those years gone by don't finish the job first.
I was really looking forward to reading ‘Thief’s Covenant’. Not only did a number of other bloggers (that I read reguarly) enjoy it but I’d already enjoyed Marmell’s ‘The Conqueror’s Shadow’ and ‘The Warlord’s Legacy’ and planned to read more of his stuff. I’ll probably still do that but the anticipation will now be tempered somewhat.

The big problem for me was that after a hundred and eight pages, of a two hundred and seventy two page book, nothing actually seemed to be happening. It was all about the build up and I couldn’t help but think that Marmell was running out of time to stop building up and start doing something.
This approach wouldn’t have been too bad but there wasn’t a lot about the lead character, Widdershins, to get me interested in her story let alone keep reading it. There was no spark that would have made Widdershins stand out in her own right; if I’d dropped her in a room full of teenage thieves (from fantasy novels) then I don’t think I would have ever been able to tell her apart from all the others…

So, a book where nothing seemed to be happening with a dull lead character… Never a good combination for me and, despite my best attempts, not a book that I’ll be continuing with. Pyr have a very nice line in fantasy fiction but I guess there always has to be an exception to prove the rule…

Didn’t Finish It… ‘A Game of Groans’ – George R.R. Washington (Thomas Dunne)

This post was actually meant to be a review of something completely different but this week just seems to laugh at all my plans to review certain books… What do you get instead then…? No review, just a few words on why I didn’t finish this book.

Just in case you were wondering (this being the second book that I’ve put down unfinished this month), the plan is still very much to actually… you know… finish books and review them here. Wouldn’t be much of a blog otherwise. These days (what with job hunting and so on) I think I’m a little more impatient with books than I used to be. I don’t have as much time to wait for a book to deliver so if it doesn’t do the job that it promised then that’s that I’m afraid. It’s not just that though. A book might be awfully written and have me giving up in disgust. It might simply be that I’ve picked the wrong book up at the wrong time and I’m not in the mood to press on with it. Or… it might be a book like ‘A Game of Groans’.
Go on, have some blurb…

A PARODY OF THE BELOVED FANTASY DOORSTOP… ER, SAGA

In the land of the Eight (or was it Six?) Kingdoms—where the seasons last as long as a series of bestselling Tolkien-esque novels—trouble is brewing. The mud is growing muddier, the onions are rotting, the Wall to the North (or is it the South?) is melting, and Lord Barker of Summerseve is getting worried. His wife is addicted to Godsweede, his King is too fat to fit into his armor, and the foreshadowing is out of control. All in all, not the position you want to be in when Summer is coming.

From this world of outdoor fornication with horse-people (and indoor fornication with blood relatives) comes an epic story of novella proportions. Amid plots and counterplots, power-hungry warriors and overworked ravens, poor reception and no wireless, the future of the Barkers, their BFFs, and their enemies dangles in the balance, as each strives to survive long enough to appear in at least two of the sequels.

If there are sequels to ‘A Game of Groans’ you won’t find me mentioning them here as this book simply wasn’t as funny as it desperately wanted to be. What I read actually wasn’t funny at all and that’s pretty much a deal breaker if I’m going to read a book that promises some laughs. The ‘jokes’ are forced onto the reader by a writer who is trying just a little bit too hard to be funny. Maybe things could have been different with a little bit of observational humour rather than fart jokes and lame sounding commentary on where George R.R. Martin got his ideas from. What I was left with though… It all just fell flat and I actually felt more in need of a laugh than I did before I picked the book up in the first place.

I’ll admit that I am a fan of GRRM’s books but that wouldn’t have stopped me sticking with ‘A Game of Groans’ if it had made me crack even the tiniest of smiles. None of that was forthcoming though so down the book went. I wouldn’t let this post put you off picking up ‘A Game of Groans’ and trying it for yourself; just because I didn’t find it funny doesn’t mean that you won’t. Ultimately though, this isn’t a book for me.

Didn’t Finish It… ‘Fated’ – Benedict Jacka (Orbit)

Because life is far too short to keep plugging away at a book that just isn’t working for you… isn’t it? I’d say yes, of course it is!
As much as I try to finish everything I read it’s not going to happen all the time, law of averages and all that. Some books are just plain atrocious (and there are a few of them covered here in this blog) and others have the misfortune to be the wrong book at the wrong time. Other books are out down for other reasons entirely, books like Benedict Jacka’s ‘Fated’ for instance. Here, have some blurb…

Camden, North London. A tangled, mangled junction of train lines, roads and the canal. Where minor celebrities hang out with minor criminals, where tourists and moody teenagers mingle, and where you can get your ears pierced and your shoulder tattooed while eating sushi washed down with a can of super strength beer. In the heart of Camden, where rail meets road meets leyline, you might find the Arcana Emporium, run by one Alex Verus. He won't sell you a wand or mix you a potion, but if you know what you're looking for, he might just be able to help. That's if he's not too busy avoiding his apprentice, foiling the Dark, outwitting the Light, and investigating a highly toxic Relic that has just turned up at the British Museum.

That looks like a great blurb doesn’t it? Well, the book itself may work for you but it didn’t for me.

I knew something was up when Jacka’s Camden didn’t come across nearly as cool and lively as the real thing. I don’t spend nearly as much time there as I’d like to but I love Camden and this just wasn’t Camden, not for me. It just felt a little lifeless.

I could have dealt with that though, and kept going, if it hadn’t been for the big issue that really turned me off reading any further.
The way I see it, you have to be very careful if you pay homage to another writer’s work in your own piece. If you’re not careful then you’ll find yourself writing in that writers world rather than your own; you really want to avoid this if you’re writing your debut novel and want to get readers involved in your own world.

For my money, Jacka fell foul of this trap when he paid a little homage to one Jim Butcher and his ‘Harry Dresden’ books. Butcher’s world is larger, and more established, so one almost throwaway sentence had the unwelcome effect of making Jacka’s world a part of Butchers.
So that was the sense of identity well and truly gone then and things started feel more and more like a ‘Dresden’ novel after that. It was at that point where I realised that if I wanted to read a ‘Dresden’ book then I may as well read one of the originals instead of ‘Fated’. About three seconds after that I put ‘Fated’ down and haven’t picked it up since. Fans of Harry Dresden might like it but not me, not this time.

If anyone here has read ‘Fated’ and disagrees with me please feel free to leave a comment in the usual place. This is how I feel about the book at the moment but I’m willing to be talked round :o)

Couldn't Finish Them...

Sometimes the temptation is there to put books that I couldn't finish to one side and pretend that I never picked them up in the first place... Actually, that's only the case with the really awful books and we've all read a few like that haven't we? ;o)

Books like that will more often than not get a whole review slot all to themselves but what about the others? What about those books that didn't actually do anything wrongbut just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Well, they end up in an occasional series of 'Couldn't Finish It' syle posts where I come out and say, "It wasn't you, it was me..."

Up today are,

Her fate is in her flesh.

In an environmentally fragile world where human and animal genes combine, the rarest mutation of all--the Trader--can instantly switch genders. One such Trader--female Sorykah--is battling her male alter, Soryk, for dominance and the right to live a full life.

Sorykah has rescued her infant twins from mad Matuk the Collector. Her children are safe. Her journey, she believes, is over, but Matuk's death has unleashed darker, more evil forces. Those forces--led by the Collector's son--cast nets that stretch from the glittering capital of Neubonne to the murky depths below the frozen Sigue, where the ink of octameroons is harvested to make addictive, aphrodisiac tattoos. Bitter enemies trapped within a single skin, Sorykah and Soryk are soon drawn into a sinister web of death and deceit.

I fancied checking out something a little different to what I'd read normally (I'm finding it far too easy to feel 'jaded' these days but that's another story...) so agreed to give 'Tattoo' a go. I really got into the characters, setting and even found 'Tattoo' one of the few books I've read that manages to be erotic without going way over the top and being plain corny instead.

So what led me to put it down then? As rich as it is, 'Tattoo' is a book where you have to have read its predecessor ('Ice Song') to really get what is going on here. I haven't read 'Ice Song' so found myself tripping up, a lot, on the bits of 'Tattoo' where I really should have done. It was time to put this book down but if I ever do get round to reading 'Ice Song' then I'd definitely come back and give 'Tattoo' another go. It's worth it.

Senator Howard Stark wants to be President of the United States. So does the demon inside him. With the competing candidates dropping out due to scandal, blackmail, and ‘accidental’ death, Stark looks like a good bet to go all the way to the White House. And if he gets there, Hell on Earth will follow.

Occult investigator Quincey Morris and white witch Libby Chastain are determined to stop this evil conspiracy. But between them and Stark stand the dedicated agents of the US Secret Service – as well as the very forces of Hell itself. Quincey and Libby will risk everything to exorcise the demon possessing Stark. If they fail, ‘Hail to the Chief’ will become a funeral march – for all of us.

Having had some fun with Gustainis' 'Evil Ways', I was expecting more of the same with 'Sympathy for the Devil' but only lasted about a hundred and fifty pages before finding I couldn't go any further. The reason why really stumped me, it has to be said, until I saw the following lines in my review of 'Evil Ways'...

I got the impression that Gustainis’ writing style was more about recounting events rather than getting right inside the heads of his characters. While this works up to a point, it felt like there was a wall between me and Quincey/Liberty etc and this left me feeling a little detached from the book as a whole.

It was exactly the same this time round and if an author isn't too bothered about my getting to know his characters then I find that I'm not all that bothered either. Down went the book and that was that.

And so it's onto the next book(s) to see if things pick up. 'The Cold Commands' is looking good although I'm waiting for it to hurry up and get going. Peter F. Hamilton's 'Manhattan in Reverse' is also looking promising.
What about you though? What are you reading and (perhaps more relevant to this post) what books have you found that you cannot get through? Comments here please! ;o)

Couldn't Finish It...

On the whole, this blog is about books that I finish as (more often than not) I polish off whatever I pick up. Every now and then though a book will be put down unfinished and never picked up again; sometimes it's the book's fault, sometimes it isn't. The bottom line though is that I want the blog to be just as much about the books that I don't finish as it is about the ones that I do. Which brings us nicely round to Bruce Cordell's 'City of Torment'. "Isn't there a picture of 'Key of Stars' there as well?" I hear you ask. Well yeah but I'll get onto that in just a minute.

I read Bruce Cordell's 'Plague of Spells' back in December 2008 (review Here) and while I had my issues with it I was more than happy to pick up the next books in the series. The next thing I knew it was last week and those two books had been sat on the pile for over two years... What can I say? Life does seem to be on a mission to stop me reading at the moment.

It turned out to be too long a gap. Coming to 'City of Torment' I found that I had no idea who the likes of Raidon Kane or Anusha were or what they'd been up to. "But you could have a quick skim through the first book and catch up" is what you're probably saying right now. I could have done if I still had the first book (moved house last year)... What I was left with were characters that I couldn't remember who were on a quest that was moving a little too slowly to keep me interested. To be fair, a second book in a trilogy (that's building things up for the finale) is going to be like that but it wasn't something that I was up for at that point. It's not the book's fault but there was no way that I was going to finish 'City of Torment' and that had the knock on affect of 'Key of Stars' not being finished by way of my not even starting it. If I couldn't finish 'City of Torment'... well, you get the point.

As always, I'm up for being persuaded to give a book another go. Did I put down 'City of Torment' too soon? Is there something online where I can re-visit 'Plague of Spells' before giving 'City' another go? All comments are welcome :o)

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...