Goodreads Reading Challenge – 49%

Almost half way through my reading challenge! So what have I read since my last update?

 

Well, after my marathon of Robert Fabbri Historical fiction books, I jumped genre to that of fantasy fiction, starting with:

Book #21 The Age of Odin – by James Lovegrove

I bought this book as liked the idea behind it, and it did seem to have a lot of good reviews on various websites, all about a down on his luck, out of work, injured ex-soldier stumbling into finding and joining the Norse gods battle a war. With Odin and Thor etc. all in the mix, so I thought yeah, this should be good.

Then disappointment sets in almost straight away. The main character ‘Gid’ I can’t stand. Too much of a ‘Lad’ with his drinking, fighting, letching and constant swearing. A conversation early on with his friend is littered with, I felt, unnecessary swearing! Don’t believe I’m too sensitive, but it put me right off.

Then this out of work, already previously injured and to be fair loser becomes an overnight hero and tactical genius. Early on when he first meets and fights Thor for example, although already half deaf from previous injuries, he has recently just survived a car crash, been caught in a violent snow storm and already savagely attacked and wounded by a pack of wild wolves manages to then best Thor, the mighty Thor!, with a stick. Mmmmmmmm?

So no, I really didn’t enjoy this book, skipped pages towards the end in a hurry to end the book.  1 star out of 5.

Book #22 – The Builders by Daniel Polansky

This is a short story about a group of warrior animals, brought back together after a big war to get some revenge. Definitely reminded me of the book ‘Redwall’ who then meets the film ‘The Dirty Dozen’. The front cover art work is amazing and really caught my eye, I enjoyed this book and do wish it was a little longer!

The first half of the book introduces us to the numerous characters in the story, which although I enjoyed, felt a lot of time was spent developing them which sadly later on didn’t feature a great deal. It’s funny because this book reminds me of some English homework I did at school when I was about 12 years old, I excitedly spent all my time creating the characters of my story, that I ran out of time for the main story which ended up being very short and rushed. My teacher marked me low because of this. Now I’m not saying this is exactly what happened here, but it echoes of that a little. I kind of hope this book leads on to others, although without trying to add a spoiler, a few of the characters…don’t make it…so how possible this is I’m unsure.

So 4 stars from me, I enjoyed the story and was engrossed all the way through and to add further weight to that, I will now have a look at what else this author has done.

Now, on to passing the half way mark of my annual target, which book next?[image error]