the kevin's Extreme Disappointment Reads aka DNFs for April 2022

Some books aren't worth finishing. DNFing sets you free! Here's my DNFs for the month of April. It was an unusually good month, with only two DNFs.

A Hitman's Forever by BC Robertson

My review on Goodreads

DNF at 12%

I was intrigued by this premise - second chance, enemies to lovers, FBI agent/hitman? Sounds great.

Reality has it less so. My issues:

1. The time jumps and associated issues

The first chapter starts off by saying “18 years before”. Or maybe 18 years earlier, whatever same idea. We don’t have any other context. It reads like we’re in the head of a child, of maybe 6 to 8 years old, musing on his mother and life. It turns out that the POV character is supposed to be 12 in that segment. Oops.

The time jumps themselves - again, all contextless with ages and life. We jump two years, then one year, then two years, then 10 years?

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2. POV issues

This is dual first person POV. I can’t tell them apart. Their voices don’t change with age, or scene, or events. Static.

3. The plot just doesn’t make sense

There’s all sorts of things that just don’t make sense. There’s suspending disbelief, and then there’s too much. Rylan comes from a rich family, yet gets sent to a group home for spray painting a warehouse? No ones going to do that. Maybe juvie, but a group home? As if.

Edric’s whole homeless whatever thing is glossed over to the point that I don’t understand how he stayed alive. If it was just skipped over I could ignore it, but we get snippets throughout the teenage years, so now I’m wondering. Eventually he ends up in sex work, which at least gives reasons for his way of existing, but it’s a bit late in the game.

Which does remind me - the reasons whatshisface say he’s a good hitman…lol detachment is normal? Especially for sex workers? Nothing to me says that Edric is going to be a competent or useful hitman based on what that dude was saying. It doesn’t work for me.

4. 100% telling, 0% showing

Everything is told, in very matter of fact simple internal monologues. There’s no emotional connection to the characters or their struggles, and I certainly didn’t feel any connection between the characters themselves. Edric’s struggles in life fell totally flat, for the lack of emotion on top of the total bonkers plot.

5. The writing

I have some highlights to cover this mainly. I found it choppy and prone to short simple sentences that broke up any flow that might have formed accidentally.

Overall, while this was an ambitious setup, it might be better to scale back on the plot ideas to focus more on the character development? It felt a little like it was racing to get to the next plot point instead of taking the time to deepen the story.

Disrupt by Michelle Frost (Iron Heretics #1)

My review on Goodreads

DNF at 17%

This is not a standalone. At all. There are three (3!) novellas floating around, two of which seem to be critical to reading this.

First: the listed series prequel, Discord. I always miss these existing, but if its a standalone like the blurb says, that shouldn’t matter. It does.

Second: Cold Light - part of the Criminal Delights series. Not connected on Goodreads. A friend read (tried to read) it and gave me the heads up, otherwise I never would have found it.

Third: Make Snow Mistake - this one I’m not sure is required to read before Disrupt, but it seems like you need to read this universe to understand it.

In summary: the connections are a mess, and this is not a standalone.

But wait, I have more. Specifics, I mean.

The 30 side characters:

As soon as like 20 side characters were introduced, as couples, with dramatic backstories, I got suspicious. These characters have clear Other Book energy. There’s so many people I don’t know, and introducing them by their previous-book backstories is meaningless as a first time reader, and the sheer number of them means I forget them immediately.

The missing backstory for these characters:

Adding insult to injury, it turns out the inciting, important Plot Event - MC1 being kidnapped and tortured I think - happens in another book. The most we get is a little snippet in the beginning, where MC2 sees MC1s injuries (unexplained to reader) and is like “I’m gonna kill the man who did this to you” blah blah whatever I don’t know you people so this is just weird, you don’t know each other so this is weird (or do they? did they meet before, maybe in a previous book and not shown here, in this standalone novel?)

Overall, the writing style was sort of meh to me, and nothing terrible or offensive had happened as of when I quit the book. If it had truly been a standalone, I would have kept reading, but I’m not about to track down three books so I can then return to the book I already started.