Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Going Against The Flow: Shocked By What Ratings Show

Midnight's Daughter, by Karen Chance $7.99 (New York Times Bestselling author of Embrace The Night).Published by: ONYX: New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA).


Maybe instead of rating this book "Too Horrid To Read" I should have rated it "WTF?" At any rate, I'm giving it zero stars because I could not visualize the people, places or things that Chance wrote about. Most of her book made no logical sense to me, at all.


FOR EXAMPLE: (I quote the book)


page 7: "I busied myself pouring some of the expensive alcohol in my pocket over the clean portion of the handkerchief and pressed it ruthlessly to the worst of the boy's wounds. He screamed, but neither of us paid any attention." [I pour expensive alcohol in my pocket and scream before ignoring myself too. Don't you?] LOL 



Trust me when I say it gets much worse.
I went cross-eyed just trying to understand or enjoy the first chapter. I had to smack myself in the head to get my eyes unstuck.

The following paragraphs were found just by very quickly flipping through the rest the book, at random. (Confusing sentences and discombobulated paragraphs were much too easy to fall upon.) See if you can grasp what's being described, below, without having to read the paragraph twice, or three times.


page 72: "They needed a null to keep anything freaky from happening while their people decided if whatever it was could be stabilized."


page 77: "I pushed away sickening memories and concentrated on translating the brief scrawl. It was leaking down the walls and was fairly indistinct against the black paint, especially where it crossed the poetry, but I got the idea. [Maybe the editors and writer were all tweaking out when they published this book?]


page 185: (Some dude named Louis-Casare is touching Dorina's cheek and then:)"Light mental fingers danced past my tattered shields and suddenly I could breathe without pain. His hands were warm on my skin and his touch swept away the last of the confused frenzy. They made me feel steadier, anchored, and I realized that he'd hit me with a suggestion. Normally that sort of thing wouldn't work, but my shields were in shreds."


page 285: "Louis-Cesare beat the things back with an armchair, which he stuffed in the hole left by the shattered window. I looked at it dubiously, doubting that wood and leather would hold them for long. I barely had the thought when the makeshift plug exploded through the room, wedging in the open door to the hall, blocking our retreat. [Note: how does an armchair explode through a room (I visualized wood splinters) to wedge between an open door and block a retreat? Perhaps Chance meant the intact chair was merely hurled through the room?]


page 325: "Power was curling upward from every wound now; my skin prickled with it even halfway across the room."


page 368: "I could still see Louis-Cesare's mutilated body, with Jonathan tenderly stroking the multiple wounds he'd inflicted. I understood what Mircea meant; one death was far, far too good for him. I'd have loved to give him one for each and every scar, but wasn't sure I'd given him even one. He'd fooled me with the illusion that Louis-Casare was dead. No vamp healed an almost decapitation in a couple of minutes, not even a master. Especally not a master so drained of power he couldn't even stand up." [Are you confused about what's going on here? One death is too good for whom? Jonathan? Louis-Cesare? Is Louis-Casare dead? Or alive? The next paragraph doesn't help clear anything up. It asks:] "Was Jonathan really dead? Or had it been another illusion?"


Maybe I'm the only blogger who thinks readers should not have to employ mental telepathy to understand whatever message an author is trying to convey. It alarms me to think 175 people could have collectively rated this book 4.5 stars (see Barnes and Noble). It makes me wonder if anyone actually read this gibberish before voting?

Then I wonder: were people paid to rate this book? Or, maybe ONYX publishing drugged them! Now those poor people are probably being held captive, used as slaves on some remote island, where they're continually forced at gunpoint to rate all the books ONYX publishes, 4 or 5 stars.




Character Blog: Vamchoir
Tweet: @Vamchoir
Facebook: Vamchoir
Publisher: SunTigerMOJO.com 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...