Out of the reading slump
Since my last mini-review post back in June I basically haven't read anything. I'm not sure what happened, exactly, other than that I slipped into a reading slump for some reason and it's taken me 6 weeks to get out of it. Thankfully I'm now reading again.
I did read a few books on the rest of my holiday before my reading slump started, and I've just discovered a mostly-finished blog post about them in my drafts, so here it is. Looking at this post, I wonder if the reason I hit a slump was because so many of these books were DNF and I just got sick of starting books and not enjoying them? Or perhaps the reason I DNFd so many of these was instead because the slump was starting and I just didn't know it. Who can say?
Holiday Reads
Here are the rest of the books I read while away this week, most picked from the CWA Dagger shortlists again. There's quite a high number of DNFs here but I'm fine with that, and I feel like I gave everything a decent chance before giving up on them.
City Of Vengeance - D. V. Bishop
This one isn't actually on the CWA Daggers shortlists, since it's the first in the series and was published in 2021, but the latest book in the series (A Divine Fury) is shortlisted for both the KAA Gold Dagger and the Historical Dagger, so I thought I'd give this first one a go with a view to reading the rest of the series if I liked it.
Unfortunately I didn't like it, and I DNFd at around 20%. It's a shame because the pitch absolutely grabbed me and I went into it wanting to love it, but a fifth of the way through I wasn't connecting with any of the characters and simply didn't care about anything that was happening. And the setting, which I hoped to feel immersed in, felt really scant. At times I found myself wondering if this was actually the second book in the series and I was missing previous context, but no - it's just not for me.
A Song Of Legends Lost - M. H. Ayinde
How many times am I going to tell myself that I won't start a new fantasy series until it's actually been finished, and yet here I am reading book one in a trilogy as though I haven’t learned from the lesson of The Kingkiller Chronicles. It turns out I'm a sucker for “fantasy debut of the year!”-based marketing.
I'll be honest, this didn't start well for me. I'm always put off when the first few pages in a novel are given over to a Dramatis personae, because it signals to me that I'm not going to know who everybody is just by reading, and frankly I think that's a bad thing. Once I actually got into it I was briefly impressed; the summoning/invoking reminded me a lot of Final Fantasy X (the best one) and the science-fantasy world was interesting. But by the end of Part One - nearly a third of the way into the book - the sheen had worn off and I was, frankly, bored. I couldn't connect with anything that was happening, and simultaneously felt like the scope had grown too big too fast but also like nothing was really happening. This is a DNF at 28%.
A Good Place To Hide A Body - Laura Marshall
CWA Whodunnit Dagger Shortlist 2025
Another DNF, unfortunately. This one was a victim of poor categorisation and just not being what I wanted to read. With this being on the Whodunnit Dagger list I went into it expecting a classic murder mystery, and that's not what it is. 25% into it I'm not sure exactly what the mystery is other than that one of the characters isn't what he seems. Unfortunately it just wasn't holding my interest, so I called it a day.
Deadly Animals - Marie Tierney
CWA First Novel Dagger Shortlist 2025
This is an interesting one, because I often really disliked the writing style - it's so sparse at times as to feel rushed and empty, stating events and internal thoughts of characters incredibly plainly when I'd much rather spend some time actually experiencing these things rather than being bluntly told about them - and every time the police solicited the help of a 13 year old girl I had a moment of intense disbelief. Similarly the characters regularly speak in a way that's so artificial as to be jarring. But the story itself, and the characters of Ava and Delahaye, are so compelling that I wanted to keep reading despite that.
In the end I enjoyed it but didn't love it. There's nothing like a twist in here; everything is telegraphed early and regularly, and the story progresses linearly from one event to another until it's over, with nothing surprising happening at any point. It's not a bad book, it's just fine.
Dragons Of Autumn Twilight - Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
I can't explain the reasons why I decide to read things. What made me suddenly want to read a 1980s fantasy trilogy that I last read as a child and that I know, objectively, is bad? I have no idea.
I thought maybe nostalgia would carry me through this, but no. I got about 20% of the way through and realised that I simply wasn't enjoying what is very clearly fanfic of a home D&D game. I don't think it helps that I decided to reread this while partway through a Wheel Of Time reread - contemporary books that are, at least to begin with, actually good. I DNFd this and decided to read something else instead.
The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
I was enjoying this a lot, but my reading slump hit right when I was halfway through it and the thought of starting it again didn't really appeal to me, so unfortuantely this is also a DNF. Because it's so long since I read it and I didn't make any notes while reading it I unfortuantely don't have anything to say about it, really. It was good but not great, and I probably would have enjoyed finding out how it ended, but at the time of writing this post I can't remember a single thing about it.