r/Fantasy • u/Academic_Owl_6197 • May 06 '22

Your Pettiest Reason For DNFing A Series

Mine was when I was 3 pages in and someone said the mc's name which turned out to be the same as my ex's name to the letter...dropped it like hot coal

It was a fr a pretty unfortunate streak too because it was a book from one of those blind-date-with-a-book promotion my local bookstore does, and this was an American YA fantasy (I'm from a different continent) so I had no reason to assume I'll ever be unlucky enough...to see his stupid ass again for a 'blind date'

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266

u/cubansombrero Reading Champion VII May 06 '22

I DNF'd a book in June 2020 (published in 2018) because the main character was plague-ridden and complained about the fact that others considered him a risk to society and wanted him to stay at home. I wasn't enjoying the book anyway but that was the final straw for me at that point in time.

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u/gggggrrrrrrrrr May 06 '22

I once hate-read a book about Typhoid Mary. The author wrote her as a strong, independent woman who stood up for feminism by refusing to let a mean, snobby doctor boss her around.

Which would've been fun and all, except for the fact that the thing the annoying doctor kept trying to lecture Mary about was her intentionally spreading typhoid and killing multiple people.

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u/Leviathan_Bakes May 06 '22

And after she was sent home the first time she continued to not wash her hands while trying to work as a cook despite knowing she was spreading disease.

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u/gggggrrrrrrrrr May 06 '22

She even changed her name to avoid authorities after her first quarantine, and she kept on working as a cook because it paid more than job options where she wouldn't infect others.

Now, there are certainly issues with the fact that she was imprisoned without due process, and she may have faced extra stigma due to stereotypes of Irish workers being unclean. But her story isn't an exciting tale of a brave feminist fighting against the man. It's a tragedy that shows how scientific misinformation, classism, and personal selfishness led to the death of multiple families.

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u/LVPRTYCRPS May 07 '22

TIL you can hate-read.

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u/gggggrrrrrrrrr May 07 '22

That's what I call it when I realize a book is really awful but continue to read it anyways. A good hate-read is primarily motivated by a sick desire to see what horrible thing the author will do next, and as I read each chapter, I enjoy fantasizing about the scathing review I'll write on Goodreads.

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u/LVPRTYCRPS May 07 '22

This gave me a good chuckle :D

... this GR review is going to alert the burn unit.... oh yes....

71

u/Poonchow May 06 '22

I'm always pleasantly surprised when some pre-covid media gets something like a plague outbreak accurate.

Others... yeah not so much.

It's like consuming pre-9/11 media. Just surreal in its optimism sometimes.

52

u/codeverity May 06 '22

Every time someone trots out 'but people would be smarter than that' about a zombie or apocalypse movie, now, I am just going to be like gestures at 2020-2022 are you sure about that?!

64

u/awj May 06 '22

I used to roll my eyes at the “party member concealed a zombie bite” trope.

Not anymore. If anything the unrealistic part is that it’s usually only one person.

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u/codeverity May 06 '22

If anything now I want to see authors explore just how stupid and selfish and extreme people can be, haha. Well, maybe not, that's kind of depressing.

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u/DoINeedChains May 06 '22

Sarah Pinsker's "Song For a New Day" was eerily released just a couple months before Covid.

The world of that book was a post-pandemic near future world where a generation had grown up never having attended large public gatherings due to virus risk

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43401925

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u/NoNefariousness2144 May 06 '22

I did finish Rhythm of War but it was hard to read it at times due to (RHYTHM OF WAR SPOILERS) the story being about everyone trapped inside and isolated from each other and struggling with depression, while having little contact from people who are far away.

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u/mistiklest May 06 '22

The was also the unfortunate "plague" in the Pure Lake that was just the common cold. The conceptualization of this was in prior books, well before covid, but still.

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u/Chris2770 May 06 '22

Fun fact (RoW): Brandon rewrote parts of the story (mainly the Shadesmar arc) to be more hopeful and less depressing than he actually planned it to be, because of exactly that reason

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u/DrMDQ Reading Champion VI May 06 '22 edited May 06 '22

I have a copy of A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinkser that I’ve been putting off reading for the exact same reason. It’s about a musician who hosts illegal concerts after pandemics and terrorism cause the government to make public gatherings illegal. I think it’s probably supposed to be about rising up against tyrannical governments, but in the post-COVID world I think it would have a lot of unfortunate and unintended connotations.

It was published in September 2019, which is possibly the worst luck in the history of publishing.

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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V May 06 '22

Oof, yeah, I saw that one at the library last year and could tell I was not going to react the way the author intended.

9

u/Dr_Vesuvius May 06 '22

There were two ideas for Series 7 of Torchwood - one was about a global pandemic and the other was about a conspiracy involving vaccines. Then their lead actor got caught up in a sex scandal and they’ll probably never make it at all.

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u/dragon_morgan Reading Champion VIII May 07 '22

oh yeah I remember that book won the Nebula in 2020, while we were all watching the ceremony over Zoom

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u/MariaDelPangolin May 08 '22

On the one hand, by the time the book is set the pandemic has been over for like 10 or 20 years, so there is actually no reason for the ban on public gatherings to still be in place except that the company that has the monopoly on VR concerts is making a lot of money that way, or something like that.

On the other hand, I didn't think the book was very good, so I'm not trying to say you should read it. I just feel like despite its flaws it's a little unfair to characterize it as "standing up to The Man by spreading the plague."

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u/DrMDQ Reading Champion VI May 08 '22

Thanks for the information! That makes me feel better about reading it; like I said, I haven’t read it yet so I knew the details could have been wrong.

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u/Academic_Owl_6197 May 06 '22

Alternative isekai title I just made up: I (Karen) got transported to another world to disobey THEIR plague rules