Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher --First DNF in 2017--

I am DNF'ing this book at 229 pages (just shy of halfway)

I had heard so many amazing things about this series. I am currently in Japan for the next three months and I needed a good decently sized fantasy book to get me though a chunk of it....I got about halfway in about a week and couldn't take anymore.

So, I know this series was started with two silly topics, but I think both of them weren't really done that well. I understood the Pokemon references (I mean, there is a mountain (?) called Garados....XD) and I could see the roman legion-ness...but honestly neither of these things made the story any better for me.

I really hate when the author names the characters similar names...I guess that's common in Roman times to have names that honor others and such...but he didn't make them interesting enough for me to remember who was who. And as I'm dyslexic, having indistinguishable characters with similar names name it IMPOSSIBLE for me to keep them straight. Gaius Sextus.....honestly tho. Besides the shitty naming the characters were super boring. I honestly couldn't care less about what happened to any of them. I felt like they had no personality and when bad things happened to them, I didn't really feel myself rooting for them to win. I also felt like things would happen to them just to try and give the story substance...or to move the not so good plot forward. Kinda. I think there was so much action that I didn't know what the plot was....and then once I figured out the plot I felt like it had just been thrown in there randomly so that the story would have a plot. Period.

If you are looking for a rich world, you won't get it here. You are just kind of thrown in. The world history is thrown at you as you go along, almost as if the author is making it up as he wrote the book. And the furies? LAME! I didn't really understand how they worked. I mean, I understood that they chose you based on your skills to furycraft an element (like water or fire), but I had a hard time picturing what they looked like or how they did some of the things they did.

At the point I DNF'ed, I decided I didn't care if I came across any spoilers, so I looked up the book's fan-wiki. I was bored just reading the summary...At no point was anything the wiki said a surprise nor was it something that I thought would be interesting to read. I then read the last few pages and decided it really wasn't worth it to read all the middle bits, so I put it down. Also, I did find the plot points in the other books to be interesting enough for me to continue reading so I decided to sell all the books once I got back to the states.

I do plan on reading his Dresden Files series (as I did enjoy the first few chapters I read as a sampler), so I'm not completely giving up on Jim Butcher. I am just giving up on this series.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch -- Another DNF in the year of the great DNFing

So I made it through 149 pages of this book and I officially decided to DNF this book. It breaks my heart...but I couldn't do it anymore. *sigh*
 
When I am reading a book that I'm not really feeling, I usually scroll through the reviews (on Goodreads) and see what the general consensus is. All I could see were stars for days. Everyone LOVED this book: A 4 star review over here, a 5 star review over there....boy did I feel like a complete ass. How could I have these feelings when everyone was so in love with this book...So when I found some 3 star and DNF ratings, I clicked on them. As you do. That is the moment I decided that I needed to just put the book down and call it quits. I felt like the DNF/low star reviews understood my soul. Kindred spirits. Though, unfortunately, their reviews were quite harsh and maybe a bit mean and degrading at times, I completely understood where they were coming from. So I'm going to stop my blabbering and get to the heart of the matter.

First off, this book is quite non-linear. We start off at various stages of Lamora's life and for the first chunk of the book I had no idea how old he was or where we were. I don't mind a flash back here or there, but when you can't tell which is past or present, it gets a bit tricky for me to follow. It took me forever to realize that even in the present time he wasn't a child. As the main story started to progress, I thought he was still a kid.....I was like, "DAMN! This Don Lorenzo is getting played by a child!!" Maybe I missed the part where Scott Lynch mentioned that he wasn't a kid...I mean...there was so much going on, I'm not surprised I did miss it. I would have liked to have just started Locke Lamora's life from the beginning. I would have liked to know more about his time with chains and how he got to be this amazing thief, but it was scattered through all of the boring bits. I thought that maybe Lynch thought his childhood wasn't important, but he kept revisiting it at weird points, so it must have been.

I also felt nothing for the characters...I mean, I had no reason to. I knew next to nothing about them. This is a thing that authors do that sometimes really bothers me. I'm very excited to learn about your characters and have strong emotions for them, but I need to know them first. There was a scene where the Gentlemen Bastards were arguing at the dinner table and it got quite heated...but I didn't really even know why it was a thing. I didn't know the characters. Just meh.

The world. This is a love/hate for me. I hate nothing more than being thrown into a world and then expected to know things. I don't understand your world or your government or how things work, so I can't be expected to understand why certain things are happening. The world was rich and I feel like I could see Camorr and smell it and feel it. One thing Lynch does is describe very well. I was definitely there with the characters...but I was so totally lost.

Speaking of descriptions...There was so much describing going on that I often felt like I was pulled out of the story to be shown something or told about something. I wanted things to move forward, but the descriptions kind of got in the way. Like I said before, all of my senses were engaged. I could feel the fabric of Locke Lamora's coat and see the glowing glass towers...but it was too much.

Scott Lynch is quite a funny guy though. There were a lot of chuckles along the way and I appreciated that. And like I said, he is very descriptive. But this book wasn't for me. Even as I write this review and all of the frustrating thoughts get puked out, I still can't help but feel sad that I didn't finish this book and that I didn't enjoy it. The reviews were great and he's a fellow Wisconsinite (yay Wisconsin authors!) but that being said, I don't really regret DNF'ing this book. I know so many people out there enjoy it and I know many more will enjoy it as well.