Reading Analysis
Mar. 13th, 2021 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearOut of sixteen books I've read so far this year, only three have been written by men. One I really enjoyed, but two I didn't finish. Of the other thirteen books, all by women, I gave three or four stars to all of them.
My most recent DNF was The Bone Ships by RJ Barker, which is the first in a fantasy trilogy about ships that are made from the bones of dragons. The main ship in the book is crewed by condemned criminals who are forced to work on the ship (and presumably die in battle or at sea) rather than being executed for their crimes.
And it's certainly not badly written - not at all. The setting is very vividly portrayed and there are a whole range of varied characters aboard the ship, a lot of them women. But I realised, after it took me five days to ready 75 pages, that I wasn't engaged enough with the story to want to read another two books, so I decided to quite early rather than push to the end of the first one.
The main POV character is Joron, who is demoted from nominal captaincy of the ship when a stronger leader usurps his position at the start. And I just wasn't that interested in him - most of the other characters pulled my attention more, and he felt quite whiny and self-pitying.
But I'm sure a lot of people who like nautical fantasy would enjoy this book - it just wasn't for me.
My most recent DNF was The Bone Ships by RJ Barker, which is the first in a fantasy trilogy about ships that are made from the bones of dragons. The main ship in the book is crewed by condemned criminals who are forced to work on the ship (and presumably die in battle or at sea) rather than being executed for their crimes.
And it's certainly not badly written - not at all. The setting is very vividly portrayed and there are a whole range of varied characters aboard the ship, a lot of them women. But I realised, after it took me five days to ready 75 pages, that I wasn't engaged enough with the story to want to read another two books, so I decided to quite early rather than push to the end of the first one.
The main POV character is Joron, who is demoted from nominal captaincy of the ship when a stronger leader usurps his position at the start. And I just wasn't that interested in him - most of the other characters pulled my attention more, and he felt quite whiny and self-pitying.
But I'm sure a lot of people who like nautical fantasy would enjoy this book - it just wasn't for me.
