Daniel > Recent Status Updates

Sweeping everything off the "currently reading" shelf, cuz it stresses me out.

Back to this. It's picked up a little. Started something else last night, but not sure about it yet.

The characterization is not deep, and it's more sex focused than I'd like, but it's really funny. :)

Jasper is hilarious.

not a page turner, that's for sure

Confused at first because I didn't realize it's simultaneous with the first book, but Jasper's a 1000x more agreeable narrator than Ray was.

I may have* stayed up to late reading again.
(*definitely)

No danger of this keeping me up late.

The writing is a little dry, but it is kinda funny.

Ok, the grown ups are flirting now... but the college boys are heading for a mess.

I like this a lot. Ace guy confirmed. No new wordcrimes. We just had class on a Saturday, followed by another Saturday though.

No real unpardonable word crimes since the last update. I like it. Two couples in the works. Maybe one ace guy? Is that why I own this? It's one of my rare preorders from a new author and I have no recollection of why I preordered it. 1st person switching between all 4 of them and no trouble at all keeping them straight so good job on voice.

So... the voice here is charming, delightful, and then all of the sudden there'll be an absolutely stunning, WOAH! STOP THE BOOK level wtf word choice. 4 of them so far. Besides the mangled idiom on page 1, we've had "Norsemen University" (in L.A.), "DQ comic con" DQ? Fucking Dairy Queen's holding comic conventions now? Adult man calling his college age son "honey". WTF

Ok, I'm ignoring the egregious mutilation of an idiomatic expression at the end of the second paragraph and giving this ago. Cross your fingers :)

damnit i need to be asleep

A couple of rough spots, but good so far.

So glad that's over... ugh.

I have been thinking McDonald should stick to novellas. I'll finish, but I don't know why. Just feels bloated and pointless.

ok, things have improved a wee bit, dnf averted for the moment

wow, pick this back up and the first chapter I read is absolute garbage. i did not need the history of a fictional Polynesian country all the way back to the creation myth. this is seriously flirting with dnf.

Good so far, but Hopeland was enjoyable this far in too. 🤞

Hopeland and I are having a trial separation.

Haven't given up on this... exactly. But it's become extremely put-downable. It feels like it's meandering, and I've basically stopped caring about everyone. Still kind of hoping Amon comes back from it, but Raisa could die in a fire on the next page and I would just shrug.

When you pick a long book on purpose, but then be antsy cuz you're not finished yet. (Not cuz it's bad, I like it, just...)

Getting close to the present finally.

Still 2011, visions of the future, but we're still in the past.

So far this has been nothing like I expected. Vaguely urban fantastical, (Amon seems to have something like real magic, whereas Raisa's side is more like, is this supposed to be magic, or just bullshit performance art?) mostly romance, with a very loose? poetic? (in the sense of creative wordplay, not rhythmic) prose. And mostly in 2011. Hopefully I will continue to like it as it goes off the rails.

Oooh, shades of To Like The Lightning. I really could use an annotated version of this though. So many references and I have no idea if they're all real or which if any are made up.

I am reminded of of Matthew Swift. The electromancers, and something about what he's doing with the prose, but it's very tenuous, this feels much more modern and light. Different, but there's something. I like it.