Crazy in Poughkeepsie by Daniel Pinkwater

 

After enjoying the eARC of Adventures of a Dwergish Girl I got from NetGalley in the past, I was excited to get an eARC for Daniel Pinkwater’s new book in exchange for an honest review. Sadly, this new book doesn’t hold up to Pinkwater classics like Alan Mendelssohn. 

The book got off on the wrong foot with me with the “guru” character, who might have seemed funny in the 70s, but now oozes with some unpleasant cultural appropriation vibes. The plot also made even less sense than some other Pinkwater books and, overall, this one seems skippable. 

Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham

 Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham

I’m getting old. At this point in my life I think of all of the books I have not yet read and all of the books I wish to reread, and I have decided I am not going to finish books I don’t like. Sadly, I am giving up on finishing Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham at the 48% mark. 

I was initially very excited by this book. I really enjoyed the Expanse novels (except for the last one, it didn’t end particularly well) and I know that Abraham had written well-received fantasy novels before his foray into science fiction, so I was excited when Orbit gave me an eARC of a new book in a new trilogy in exchange for an honest review. 

I tried. I really did! This book is long, and I have read a lot of it, but it doesn’t have that sense of grabbiness that I want from a book - this book is easy to put down and hard to pick up again. The pacing is slow and all the characters (save one) are either boring ciphers or bad people. I don’t like any of them. Except Sammi. She is the only reason I kept reading as long as I did, and I still want to know what happens to her, but not enough to slog through the rest of this tome. 

I’m not saying the book is bad. But it’s not for me. If you want a fantasy doorstop on a slow build, it might just be for you.