I’m a sucker for books. My wife foolishly still leaves me unattended in book stores sometimes, and the result is almost always me ending up with a book or two (or… okay, three) for the kiddo, plus maybe one for her and one for myself.
And while I’ve written previously about preferring physical books to e-books, there are of course real-world limitations to how many analog books you can have. E-books, meanwhile, are only limited by the amount of storage you have on your reading device of choice, which makes collecting them much easier. I did a quick calculation upon getting my Kobo a couple of years back and vaguely recall that it could hold books numbering into four figures.
I continue to receive a daily newsletter with links to cheap or free books, well aware that I get them way faster than I could possibly read them. And I know that’ll bite me in the ass at some point with just more than I can ever read, but for now, it is what it is.
What I’ve found, as mentioned a while back, is that unfortunately, what’s available in these newsletters tends to be… let’s say not great. I’m not saying they aren’t worth the bother, because there have been a couple of pleasant surprises. But I can say with certainty that the vast bulk of the free ones I’ve checked out tend to… well… not surprise one that they’re free.
The one I’m currently reading, and I don’t wish to mention the title because I don’t want to ruffle anyone’s feathers (and because it may end up sucking or being really good and don’t want to cast a judgement just yet), is a bit unusual as far as these freebies go: It’s decently well written as far as its description and action, but not as far as being informative enough.
We open with one spaceship chasing another in low orbit around a planet where circumstances have put them. We see it all from the perspective of the pursuing ship’s deck crew. But I’ve gone through the prologue plus the first chapter and top of the second, and… well… I honestly don’t know what’s going on in it.
Other than class designations of some ships, the names of the handful of crew, and some sketched character qualities of the captain, the reader isn’t given anything to go on about why what’s happening is happening. Who’s in the other ship? Why is the pursuit happening and why are the ship crews trying really hard to kill each other?
I’m not even quite sure if the only crew we’ve seen thus far is supposed to be the heroes of the story or if they’re bad guys trying to run down an errant good guy ship. There are hints that these are the good guys, like demonstrating care for the lower deck crew who took casualties during the fight, but there’s precious little to hang any hat on. The captain clearly really wants to destroy the other ship, but why?
Normally I give these free books a bit of time to pull me in before I make a call on sticking it out or ditching it. How long that is can vary pretty wildly depending on the vibe I’m getting from it, or just if I’m enjoying it at all, and for how long. I stopped reading one book within a couple of pages because the writing was just that bad–seriously, folks, don’t just go with your gut about how good you think something is once you’ve thrown it on the page, show it to friends and family who have a clue about that kind of story, and then fork out some cash for really real editing, because you’ll save yourself and your potential fans a lot of wasted time–and stopped reading another book close to half-way through because the writer evidently decided that the main character we’d been following the entire time to that point could suddenly take a back seat to a secondary character we knew almost nothing about. It may not sound that bad, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that done before and it was really distracting and completely bumped me out of the story. For good, as it turned out.
But, the point here is that this spaceship-chase writer is proving to be engaging enough in one respect–the writing style and details of the intense pursuit–but is totally dropping the ball in terms of doing any explaining of who’s who or any context of what we’re seeing. And yet, the former is, to my genuine surprise, keeping me reading regardless. It does have a certain je ne sais quoi about it. But yes, that can only get you so far when you’re dating, and it can only get you so far when you’re trying to draw in readers.
Suffice to say, if I get to the end of the second chapter and still don’t have enough to answer some pretty basic, fundamental questions, I’ll be tossing this book into the digital garbage bin without hesitation and moving on to give something else a shot.
Word to the wise (writer): Give your readers what they need early enough in your story, at least some bread crumbs promising a meal in the future, or you will have wasted your time writing it, because otherwise you’re not informing the very people you’re trying to engage and, like any person with countless options but nothing they’re attached to, they will happily seek out something else that gives them what they need.