Didn't Finish the Books...

It's funny how despite what people think, life isn't actually too short to finish a book you don't like, so long as it's engaging you on one level or another. At least you'll come away, at the end, feeling like you've been challenged in some way or another. You've had to work for it, and you may still not agree with what the book is saying, but you made it through.

Books that don't engage with you at all though, that's another story. Live is definitely too short to be spending on those books, at least as far as I'm concerned. If you're struggling to maintain any kind of interest, put the book down and pick another one up. That feeling you get when you connect with a book is magical; you deserve better than to trudge through a book that isn't giving you that feeling.

All of which is a long winded way of saying that I didn't finish the books below. It happens, I'm not going to feel bad about it. Hopefully the blurbs will introduce you to a book that works for you :o)

LEGENDS AREN'T BORN. THEY'RE FORGED.
Dug Sealskinner is a down-on-his-luck mercenary travelling south to join up with King Zadar's army. But he keeps rescuing the wrong people.
First, Spring, a child he finds scavenging on the battlefield, and then Lowa, one of Zadar's most fearsome warriors, who's vowed revenge on the king for her sister's execution.
Now Dug's on the wrong side of that thousands-strong army he hoped to join ­- and worse, Zadar has bloodthirsty druid magic on his side. All Dug has is his war hammer, one rescued child and one unpredictable, highly-trained warrior with a lust for revenge that's going to get them all killed . .
It's a glorious day to die.

So there I was, looking for a book where barbarian types smashed the you know what out of each other with whatever was close to hand. I thought this would be the book but there was something about it that just felt a little flat to me. I don't know what it was but, after a couple of hundred pages, I was interested enough to jump to the end, and see how it ended, but not all that interested in taking the long way round to see what happened in the meantime.

Any fans of Angus Watson here? The book is still on my shelf so tell me what I'm missing out on.

A band of mortal heroes are sent by the duardin god Grungni to retrieve an artefact of dark power and keep it from the clutches of Chaos.
In the beginning, there was fire. And from that fire came eight weapons of terrible power, honed to a killing edge by the chosen weaponsmiths of Khorne. Now, as the Mortal Realms echo with the thunder of war, the great powers seek to acquire the eight wherever they might be found, no matter the cost. In a city of prophecy and secrets, Grungni, smith-god of the duardin, gathers together a group of mortal warriors from across the realms in order to locate the first of the eight weapons. But they are not alone in their quest; agents of the Ruinous Powers search for the weapon for themselves. Now the race is on, as man, duardin and daemon alike seek to claim the Spear of Shadows.

This one was a little easier to pin down. I love some good worldbuilding in a book and can quite happily get lost in a book when this is done well. It wasn't done well here, not for me anyway. I don't know if 'The Age of Sigmar' is still a fairly new setting but it certainly came across that way in the book with hardly any hint (again, to me) of a wider world outside the two settings I was introduced to. I'm also a little wary of books that insist on calling dwarves something like hmmm... Duardin... I know Games Workshop/Black Library got their fingers burned trying to coyright the term 'Space Marine' but the word 'dwarf' is still safe to use so use it! It's a good word.

I might give 'Spear of Shadows' another go in the future but don't really feel like I'd be missing out on too much if I just quietly dropped my 'Age of Sigmar' reading and stuck with Warhammer 40K instead.

And so then, back to my latest read which is moving along a lot better than these two did...