Welcome to the most Disappointing Reads of 2019, where I whinge about books I read this year that I wasn’t a fan of. Let’s get the negativity out of the way so my last post of the year can be all happy and shiny.
Enjoy.
Enchantée by Gita Trelease 2/5
Where was the bastard Revolution? No, we can’t have that, we have to suffer an insipid main character with zero personality who learns throughout the course of the novel that it’s better to be an aristocrat than a peasant. To the Guillotine with you.
The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale 3/5
This started well and then veered off into complete WTF territory about half way through. It ended in a completely different place to where it started which is a shame because the beginning was beautiful.
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott 3/5
This is just a personal preference thing. It’s got a decent plot but the characters are flat as cardboard and I kept forgetting their names and their genders.
Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor 3/5
You promise me history and you don’t give me history. Fine, there are dinosaurs but that is palaeontology not history.
The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton 1/5
Borning. DNF’d 100 pages in because it still hadn’t got to the point where King Lear started and I didn’t give a shit about any of the characters.
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon 1/5
Also boring. DNF’d just over half way through its 800 pages because NOTHING was happening. I also didn’t give a shit about any of these characters either.
Tower Lord by Anthony Ryan 2.5/5
This is a book where I just don’t understand its need to exist. Blood Song was excellent but Tower Lord added nothing new.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern 2/5
Another story with boring as fuck main characters who have zero personality and yet I am supposed to invest myself into their weak and dull relationship. Also, the blurb completely mis-sells the book as something action packed and I resent it for not being that way.
Planetfall by Emma Newman 2/5
The ending was so WTF that it completely wiped out any feelings I had for the rest of the story. It has some interesting themes and the main character was good for the most part but that ending, Christ it was bad.
The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin 3.5 and 3/5
These are just two books that couldn’t live up to The Fifth Season, which was excellent. They just plodded on and although the ending was decent it couldn’t save the series overall which is a shame.
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett 2/5
Die Jack Die! Just fucking die. Bland, one dimensional characters who are either very good or very evil and they can all just fuck off in my opinion.
THE HOBBLEIT 
Yikes! The Priory of the Orange Tree was my favorite read of the year. Funny how a book can work so well for one reader yet fail so spectacularly for another, isn’t it? I saw that with a few of my DNF reads that have shown up on best-of lists, so it works both ways. 🙂
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