The Unpopular Opinions Book Tag

I saw this tag when I was visiting the blog of Alma over at Journey through fiction and she tagged anyone visiting who wanted to take part. It looked like fun as I love answering questions about my reading! http://journeythroughfiction.blogspot.ie/

Please remember this is a FUN book tag and if you are visiting my blog just to argue about my choices or to complain about it, then you're missing the whole point! By all means express your opinion respectfully but if you start this 'how can you HATE that wonderful book, are you mad?' nonsense, your comment won't be published!

1) A popular book or series you didn't like 
How long have you got? Catch 22 and The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy are two of the worst books I've ever read! As for series, I read several of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books but just couldn't get into them. They were well written etc but just didn't appeal to me for some reason.

2) A book or series that everyone seemed to hate but you loved 
Hmmm, this was tricky. I don't think there is anything obvious-I tend to be the one who hates the popular things! I'm picking out an urban fantasy that I gave 5 stars to which had quite a few low star ratings. It is The Bloodhound Files series by DD Barant. I totally loved book one, Dying Bites, to bits and it was one of my all time favourite books in the genre!

3) A love triangle where the person ended up with the person you did not want or an OTP you didn't like 
I couldn't think of an answer to this because I go out of my way to avoid books that have even a hint of love triangles in their plots. 

4) A popular book genre you hardly reach for 
*grins* fantasy, crime, romance and contemporary! I hardly read anything from these genres! 

5) A popular beloved character that you do not like 
If there is one thing that baffles me, it is readers swooning over brooding 'heroes' who slap their women around. I HATED Heathcliffe in Wuthering Heights for this reason and I felt the same about the actions of Jericho Barrons from the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning. Trying to break a womans ribs and dragging her around by the hair is not going to make me love this thug!

6) A popular author that you can't get into 
There are a lot, believe me! Patrick Ness is pretty high on the list. I did not like anything of his that I tried and really hated his MC Todd in the Chaos Walking series because of his cruelty to his poor dog. 

7) A popular book trope that you're tired of seeing
I totally HATE insta-luv and love triangles! Urban fantasy is being swamped by this rubbish and has stopped me reading countless books in the genre. I hate both because the romance angst always gets in the way of the darn plots. Show some imagination in your writing!!! 

8) A popular series you have no intention of reading 
50 shades of grey. Erotica in general doesn't interest me and I won't be reading it.

9) What movie/TV show do you prefer more than the books? 
I really like the Walking Dead comics but the TV series is just so amazing! I'm a bit behind in it so no spoilers please! Book wise, I liked Stephen King's The Running Man but I loved the Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster more! 

OK there we go! Now it's tag time and I tag YOU! Yes if you like the questions and want to take part, consider yourselves tagged! If you do join in, let me know here so I can come and see your answers!

Book Review: Suicide Forest by Jeremy Bates

Just outside of Tokyo lies Aokigahara, a vast forest and one of the most beautiful wilderness areas in Japan...and also the most infamous spot to commit suicide in the world. Legend has it that the spirits of those many suicides are still roaming, haunting deep in the ancient woods.

When bad weather prevents a group of friends from climbing neighboring Mt. Fuji, they decide to spend the night camping in Aokigahara. But they get more than they bargained for when one of them is found hanged in the morning—and they realize there might be some truth to the legends after all.

My Review:
I didn't like anything about this book. Firstly the plot was so slow that nothing seemed likely to ever happen. It was a bunch of people wandering around a forest and waiting for something to happen. To amuse themselves on this exciting adventure, they fight, swear and plan sexual encounters. Nothing new or original there.

The characters are uninspiring, obnoxious clowns. The young Japanese characters sound like wannabe gangsta rappers with their language. We got n***** this, n***** that and there were more m***********s and fbombs than the entire population of China. It was a swearfest and showed little imagination for witty dialogue or character development. I wanted the idiots to die, which is not a great start to the book. Of course our heroic MC is the usual drugged up waste of space that you expect in books, along with the steriotype rude, brash, obnoxious American guy John. John is a truly dreadful character and I hated him from page one. The girls as usual were all dippy idiots just there for the guys to feast their eyes on and served no other purpose except to whine constantly. You just wanted everyone to die. NOW.

This is basically a cheaply written book with a z movie plot about disrespectful asshats wandering around looking for their brains.

Book Review: The Unwashed Dead by Ian Woodhead

In a rundown council estate in the North of England strange things are happening. The dead suddenly are not quite as dead as they should be......

A mysterious government body has decided to use the estate as an experiment. Things are out of control & now they need to eradicate all knowledge & existence of the estate

But what happens when a small group of survivors band together? Will they survive the apocalypse & triumph over the undead?

My Review:

This book is an example of an author who doesn't take the time to think up interesting dialogue and descriptions. Instead he chooses to have totally pointless swearing in every sentence of the book. This is what we get in the space of the first 1.5 pages of the ebook:

-shitty kitchen and effing lino on the floor
-his hosts, who are b******s, not giving two s***s about decorating
-refers to himself as a miserable b*****d (correct!)
-his friend's are all effing retards
-the music gets on his t**s and is a pile of s***e

Swearing in books is ok with me if there is a purpose ie when someone is angry or scared of being chased by fast zombies. But I do not find it entertaining to be bombarded by f bombs and stuff because of lazy writing and no imagination. People might say 'yeah but it's realistic because people talk and think like that'. True but if I want to hear that language all day, I'll go and sit in the city centre and hear it for free. When I read a book, I want to get away from everyday life and be entertained, not feel like it's a Friday night when the pubs have closed.

This was not clever writing or witty dialogue. This was just rubbish and I'm so glad I got this free. If I had paid for it, I would've been really angry. I will NOT be reading anything else by the author based on that standard of writing.

Book Review: Blood Prophecy by Alyxandra Harvey (Drake Chronicles #6)

Solange Drake has been officially crowned Queen of the Vampires, fulfilling the centuries old prophecy that foretold the rise to power of a daughter born to an ancient vampire line. Except Solange's thoughts and actions are no longer her own—she's been slowly being possessed by the spirit of Viola, the first daughter born into the Drake line, since her bloodchange. And instead of uniting the vampire tribes under the rule of an ancient daughter as the prophecy predicted, Viola would rather destroy them all and enslave humans in a personal vendetta for the devastation both wrought to her life centuries ago. Can Solange break her hold in time to save everyone she loves from a vampire civil war, hunter attack, and each other? Not everyone will survive the prophecy, perhaps not even her.

My Review:
The first four books in this series were packed with action, humour and romance, and I had really loved them. Sadly the last two books did not live up to this promise and the series ended with more of a whimper than a bang for me. It's very unlikely that I'd read Blood Moon and Blood Prophecy again.

The chapters where Viola fully takes over Solange, leaving Solange trapped in a castle inside Viola's mind, were very dull and confusing. We have Solange wandering around this castle looking for answers and an exit. This was repetitive and dull on a grand scale and I did not enjoy this at all. Endless memories that Viola was 'sharing' with the reader through Solange bored me and added nothing to the plot. It just slowed things down again. It took so long to move the plot forward when we kept having to suffer these dramatic mental interludes until Solange found an idea on how to escape Viola. I was ready to cheer with relief when we finally got to that stage.

The other thing that bored me was the author deciding to resort to that boring YA cliche of the heroine being bullied at school. It was really getting on my nerves to see Lucy constantly having to deal with bullies in this book. We got through the rest of the series without dreadful cliches so I don't understand why the author decided to drop all that into the plot now. It was not a great plot advancement. And frankly, why is Lucy there? She never seems to actually go to classes! Or sleep, for that matter.

This book does not have enough kickass Drake Brother action. It is focused too much on the terrible ordeal of poor possessed Solange and Lucy being bullied, and not enough of all the great characters introduced in earlier books.

So what I did like about the book? The ending. The book finally kicks back into gear with Solange learning how to fight Viola, Lucy getting herself into a pile of trouble and trying to find a way to escape, the attack on the school and on the Blood Moon camp. Basically you could miss out all the boring stuff at the start and go straight to the end of the book where things start to kick off. This is where we get to see the things we loved about those first four books! I still don't understand why the author deviated from that great writing in book five and the start of book six. I was thankful that things were salvaged by a satisfactory end to this book.

However, the ending alone did not make this a great book and I cannot bring myself to rate it higher than a three, and it's only getting that because of the big finish. 

Book Review:Blood Moon by Alyxandra Harvey (Drake Chronicles #5)

"I can still smell his blood, Lucy. I can smell it everywhere. It's in the grass, in the air, on me. I'm not safe."

When the vampire tribes convene for the rare Blood Moon ceremonies, Solange Drake is plunged into a battle with her feral nature. The Drake brothers have been raised knowing they had to protect their younger sister at all cost. But forbidden magic and a mysterious stranger have put all of them in terrible danger. 

Nicholas is going to have to make a difficult choice: between his girlfriend, Lucy, and his little sister, Solange - blood or love?

My Review:

After the shocking cliffhanger to the last book, I had high hopes for this one but I found it very disappointing. The standard of the other books was high but there were so many things about this book that I didn't like. Frankly if it hadn't been the second last book in the series I might have even quit during it. This book is narrated by Lucy, Nicholas and Solange.

Solange becomes the royal bitch from hell in this book and I hated her. She was behaving like a spoiled whiny brat, hurting Lucy, breaking all the rules and being cruel to her family. I had suspicions about what was happening but even being proved right about it didn't change my feelings towards her as the damage was done. I think if the author had shown her hand earlier we could have had sympathy for Solange as she struggled not to do bad things, especially with her as a narrator. Instead we don't get the why until I had turned against her and I have never warmed to her again since.

I liked seeing how Lucy fitted in at Helios-Ra, watching her trying to learn to protect herself while having a vampire boyfriend and trying to work out what to do about Solange. I love her character and her narrated chapters were the bext thing about the book by far. I still enjoy the relationship between her and Nicholas who are the best couple in the series.

I wasn't interested at all in the Blood Moon gathering. I don't enjoy it when urban fantasy descends into vampire politics and endless talk about who hates who and diplomatic relations between tribes and their security teams attacking people. I found the whole thing to be long drawn out, boring and tedious. The vampire politics is one of the reasons I lose interest in the Anita Blake books and it had the same effect here. I started to disengage with the book and several of the characters.

I had no interest in Solange and Constantine. I didn't find him interesting in any way as a bad guy, and the scenes between the two were boring in a mind-numbing way. I really wanted to skim every time the story switched to them. I didn't enjoy the whole Viola storyline either.

I would have preferred a more straightforward grab for the crown plot instead of this confused attempt at a storyline which was neither entertaining or exciting. Instead we had a book that was padded out to look bigger but totally lacked the kickass action and intrigue that made the other books so good. Sections of the story were so slow that I considered stopping several times because I was bored. Only Lucy and Nicholas kept me reading.

I really hope the final book in the series dekivers more of a punch than this. 

Book read in January 2015.