![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I finally finished that horrible Nora Roberts book. 1/10. Hell, that's being generous. 0/10. I know, I could have put it down and saved myself some trouble, but I hate leaving books half read.
Seriously, though, how did Nora Roberts get published? There are way better fic writers out there. Ugh. This makes me so angry. Why does romance sell so well?!?! Not that this book is sold as a romance. It's a mystery, first, with some romance thrown in, but neither element works. And the mystery is so bland. Oh my god; I think I started to skim the pages towards the end.
I'm sorry, but learn how to write, Nora Roberts. Apologies to any Nora Robert fans out there who may read this, but it's true. Sure, you can argue that having mostly dialogue is a stylistic choice, and as amateur writer myself I know how hard it is to have good description, but if you're going to have lots of dialogue, at least make the dialogue interesting to read. Every conversation in this book felt so rote and horribly unnatural. Yes, this is a book, not real life, but if you want to have believable and relatable characters, they have to sound like actual people and not bad actors in a bad TV show. And the future slang in there. Pure bleh.
The future setting had no redeemable qualities what so ever. It's not the far future, maybe 2050s or something like that, but I still felt like I was reading something set in the present day but with slightly different technology. I think the main problem was that the world building wasn't obvious. This was book #27, so maybe all of the set-up was done near the beginning of the series, but I had no sense of how society changed, or will change, in 40 years. I'm not exactly asking for a lot. Other sci fi writers make an effort. It's like Nora Roberts got a pass because she has all of these best selling romance novels. Yeah, just because you sell a ton of books doesn't mean that what you produce is quality work.
Anyway, that's just my personal opinion and no one has to listen to anything I say. From now on, though, no more books written by people who initially established themselves as romance writers. I'm sticking to writers who know their genres.
(Need some good sci fi or fantasy to clear this fluff from my head...)
Seriously, though, how did Nora Roberts get published? There are way better fic writers out there. Ugh. This makes me so angry. Why does romance sell so well?!?! Not that this book is sold as a romance. It's a mystery, first, with some romance thrown in, but neither element works. And the mystery is so bland. Oh my god; I think I started to skim the pages towards the end.
I'm sorry, but learn how to write, Nora Roberts. Apologies to any Nora Robert fans out there who may read this, but it's true. Sure, you can argue that having mostly dialogue is a stylistic choice, and as amateur writer myself I know how hard it is to have good description, but if you're going to have lots of dialogue, at least make the dialogue interesting to read. Every conversation in this book felt so rote and horribly unnatural. Yes, this is a book, not real life, but if you want to have believable and relatable characters, they have to sound like actual people and not bad actors in a bad TV show. And the future slang in there. Pure bleh.
The future setting had no redeemable qualities what so ever. It's not the far future, maybe 2050s or something like that, but I still felt like I was reading something set in the present day but with slightly different technology. I think the main problem was that the world building wasn't obvious. This was book #27, so maybe all of the set-up was done near the beginning of the series, but I had no sense of how society changed, or will change, in 40 years. I'm not exactly asking for a lot. Other sci fi writers make an effort. It's like Nora Roberts got a pass because she has all of these best selling romance novels. Yeah, just because you sell a ton of books doesn't mean that what you produce is quality work.
Anyway, that's just my personal opinion and no one has to listen to anything I say. From now on, though, no more books written by people who initially established themselves as romance writers. I'm sticking to writers who know their genres.
(Need some good sci fi or fantasy to clear this fluff from my head...)
Tags:
