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This was supposed to be a review of The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
This was supposed to be a review of The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. Okay, here is the story: Failbetter Games put out a promotional game for this book. Despite my reservations about another hitchhiker on the grand Oregon-bound steampunk wagon train and the unpromising description of the book, the promotional gambit inherently sold me, since, Failbetter Games, so I picked it up. I was -- am? -- was? -- am? thinking that I'd read The Night Circus, get it over with, then move on to my copy of Snuff which at least has some percentage of guaranteed entertainment value.
Unlike The Night Circus. My plan is being foiled by how fucking mediocre this book insists on being. Here's the thing: if it were really bad I'd have finished it already. Badness has a certain allure, at least for me, or the SyFy channel wouldn't be my automatic flip-to on the TV. I can get angry with bad. I can't get angry with boring. This book is just fucking boring. It reads like a hobby RPer's first attempt at original fiction after all their little friends told them their pretentious no-contractions Yuletide fic was good. I cannot think of a single turn of phrase that was anything but an attempt at beauty through descriptions that look like "A Softer World" captions.
It's also one of the worst examples of an American failing to write British English and Victorian British English in particular that I've ever seen, but you see a lot of that these days -- please, everyone, take a hint, if you think all it takes not to sound American is to excise the words "baseball" and "booyah" from your vocabulary and write like a textbook, do not write a book set anywhere but the United States. Fuck, I'm an American and I can tell. That's a bad sign. I am seriously a Yank and nothing but. I shouldn't be able to tell a Yank stupider than me wrote your book.
This book is so lackluster I can't even bring myself to go into the other ways in which it's lackluster. Bad form, publishing industry. Bad form. Fuck you, I'll finish you yet, and then I'll review you. As God is my witness, The Night Circus. As God is my motherfucking witness.
In other news, I'm not dead, just contemplating all possible meanings of the ever-90s song lyric "when it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year." Uh. Well, aside from that, Rel and I have gotten into The Walking Dead! It's actually kind of good. The existence of Glenn and Daryl helps. Shane needs, um, attention. I don't mean the social kind. Like the kind that takes swearing the Hippocratic Oath to be able to administer.
Unlike The Night Circus. My plan is being foiled by how fucking mediocre this book insists on being. Here's the thing: if it were really bad I'd have finished it already. Badness has a certain allure, at least for me, or the SyFy channel wouldn't be my automatic flip-to on the TV. I can get angry with bad. I can't get angry with boring. This book is just fucking boring. It reads like a hobby RPer's first attempt at original fiction after all their little friends told them their pretentious no-contractions Yuletide fic was good. I cannot think of a single turn of phrase that was anything but an attempt at beauty through descriptions that look like "A Softer World" captions.
It's also one of the worst examples of an American failing to write British English and Victorian British English in particular that I've ever seen, but you see a lot of that these days -- please, everyone, take a hint, if you think all it takes not to sound American is to excise the words "baseball" and "booyah" from your vocabulary and write like a textbook, do not write a book set anywhere but the United States. Fuck, I'm an American and I can tell. That's a bad sign. I am seriously a Yank and nothing but. I shouldn't be able to tell a Yank stupider than me wrote your book.
This book is so lackluster I can't even bring myself to go into the other ways in which it's lackluster. Bad form, publishing industry. Bad form. Fuck you, I'll finish you yet, and then I'll review you. As God is my witness, The Night Circus. As God is my motherfucking witness.
In other news, I'm not dead, just contemplating all possible meanings of the ever-90s song lyric "when it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year." Uh. Well, aside from that, Rel and I have gotten into The Walking Dead! It's actually kind of good. The existence of Glenn and Daryl helps. Shane needs, um, attention. I don't mean the social kind. Like the kind that takes swearing the Hippocratic Oath to be able to administer.