This Year's Bad Books

My dear friend and collaborator Halagan asked me to mention a book I read I didn't like, so he doesn't have to go crazy buying everything I recommend. The truth is that I'm usually lucky when it comes to choosing books by authors I've never read, but there are some exceptions, of course. Therefore, I'll give you the three books I've read I haven't liked this year (out of 31 books and 19 graphic novels so far), and tomorrow I'll write about the five books (out of 60) I didn't like last year.
The book that has the dubious honor of opening my peculiar list is The Accidental, by Ali Smith. The premise was interesting: a girl that suddenly shows up at a house and gives each member of the family what they want. The book, however, bored me to death. Also, the author thought it would be cool not to use quotation marks when characters speak, so, most of the time, you go like "Hold on. Did he say that, or thought it?" (actually, you would go like Hold on, did he say that or thought it? If your lines were written by said author), and you have to backtrack and make sure what the context is. I'll tell you what the context is: a big boring piece of crap: a big fat ZERO out of 10.
The second book on the list is actually not a book, but a graphic novel (based on a book, though). It is Dragonlance Chronicles: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, originally written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and adapted into comic book format by somebody I don't remember (and I don't want to get up and check the book, cause I might end up burning it), and illustrated by somebody I don't remember either. (I guess I could check it on the Internet, but you can follow the link and find out by yourselves).
I saw the book at Waldenbooks, and thought the artwork looked nice, and the story was probably going to be okay. Still, I had misgivings, because I had read the first two books of a trilogy by Weis & Hickman like twelve years ago (in a Spanish translation, because I didn't read books in English at the time), and I hadn't liked them very much. But I thought I'd give them another chance, and thus I bought it.
When I got home, I started to read it, and after two or three pages, an unsettling feeling of déjà vu started to creep over me. I kept reading, but it was hard work, because the dialogue was not very good, the story was not very interesting, and the narration boxes were very expository and redundant, which is never a good thing. Also, the artwork didn't really look as good as I had first thought it did, and the artist's storytelling was not exactly awesome. Not too happy, I kept going, but the story was appallingly bad, and that was certainly influencing my opinion of the pictures, because I started to actively dislike them.
By the time I was halfway through the damned thing, and still unable to shake off that feeling of déjà vu, I realized I had the two aforementioned Weis-Hickman books with me, some of the many books I brought with me when I moved in. I went to my bedroom and checked the titles. The first one was called (but in Spanish) "The Return of the Dragons", but I know better than to trust the translation of a book or movie title, so I went to the copyright page. And sure enough, the so-called "The Return of the Dragons" was but a translation of the original "Dragons of Autumn Twilight". I was reading the exact same book I had read and despised all those years ago! Shaking my head and thinking it was kind of ironic, I finished the graphic novel, but I hated every single page I had left. When I was done, I put it back on the shelf. If anybody is interested, I'll sell it to you, 50% off (and it is brand new). It gets a negative 1 out of 10.
And the third book on the list (or second, depending on your point of view, I guess) is Faith & Fire, by James Swallow. It is the first Warhammer 40,000 book I've ever read (and it'll probably be the last); and no, I've never played the game either. The story is your basic "escaped prisoner needs to be brought back to us", but the fact that the people after him were a warrior Order called the Sisters of Battle -all clad in cool, high-tech armor- made it look interesting to me. No such luck, though. The book is mildly entertaining (much more than The Accidental, mind you), but it's not very compelling, and you don't really care about any of the characters, so it doesn't really matter when somebody dies. But I'm feeling kind of generous (especially after comparing it to both The Accidental and Dragons of the Boring Sunset), so I'll give it a 4.5 out of 10.
And that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the rant.