Storm Siren by Mary WeberMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
I tried with this book. Honest to Dogg, I really did. But the clunky writing and terrible metaphors finally caught up with me about three-quarters of the way through, and I threw it down and said, "That's it." I'd nearly hurled it against the wall at the halfway mark; I'd taken it to work to read on my breaks, and threw it on the table and said, "This book is stupid!" But I picked it up again (mainly because I didn't have anything else to read) and gave it one more try.
No more. I'm home now, and I have two more library books to get through, plus my own ever-expanding To Be Read pile. Life is just too short.
The sad thing is that there is a good book here struggling to get out, if only the editor had been a little more diligent. The main character is well drawn. The setting is rather generic Fantasyland (though the story reminded me, more than a little, of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Stormqueen). What completely fractured my suspension of disbelief is the uneven writing--for the most part, the action scenes are good, but the author's descriptions, metaphors and similes are terrible; I don't know why her editor didn't clamp down on this--and the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding is lacking to say the least; cliched and not thought out. Especially regarding the ecosystem of her world: there are "ferret-cats" and "panther-monkeys" (groan) and the final deal-breaker for me--flesh-eating horses.
For crying out loud. That simply does not work. And it's not as though said deer-chomping mounts even play a main role in the plot (at least, as far as I read) which makes the whole thing even more irritating. If you want your readers (or at least this reader) to accept your story and your world, you've got to get these background details right, or the reader is hurled out of your book. If you want a savage carnivorous riderbeast, fine. Just don't make it a horse.
Bah. There's got to be better books than this.
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