One thing that always annoys me when I’m reading, is when I keep reading a book because I keep hoping it’s going to get better, and then I realise that it’s not going to get any better, but I’ve gone past the point where I feel like I can give up on the book. You know, when you’ve invested too much time and energy into the book to just abandon it, and you just want to know how the darn thing ends.
This is the case with the book I am currently reading: Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It’s about aliens landing on earth, aliens with less-than-friendly intentions. Normally I enjoy this sort of thing, but not in this case:
- The aliens, which look like elephants with two trunks, seem like caricatures. It doesn’t help that their names strike me as silly: K’turfookeph, Fookerteh, Raztupisp-minz…
- There are way too many human characters, and they aren’t really developed.
- The writing is plain narrative with nothing particularly inspiring or interesting about it. The whole thing reads like a B-grade television mini series, something you can watch while doing something else, without ever caring too much for the story or the characters.
I much prefer books that are so bad I abandon them after the first few pages. At least I don’t waste any time on them!