So, firstly, I'll admit I got this book as a free e-book for my reader (because so much of my reading material is in storage right now T_T). That being said, I had a feeling it was going to be bad.
Unfortunately, I was right.
It's one of those anthology collections (read: a bunch of half-assed, unfinished stories that are supposed to encourage you to go out and BUY the next one in whatever series they're attempting to write). The focus is, of course, Paranormal. Romance, specifically.
One of the ways I mark a decent book is how well it holds my interest - and in all fairness, a lot of the time, it doesn't take a lot - and let me tell you, these didn't. They were discorded drivel, pieced together with the hopes that if you throw in a werewolf or a vampire or a gargoyle (insert preferred supernatural creature here) then it's all good and you don't really need much of a story. Or the story you have doesn't have to be intelligible.
It's annoying, because they can get away with it and people will still read it.
But that's not what really bugged me about it.
(Okay, it was part of it. It was a collection from DIFFERENT writers and the only thing they really had in common was how poorly developed their stories were.) What actually bugged me the most was that at one point, I could see the fanfiction in it. Literally.
I believe it was Seventh Mark by W.J. May that had me just beating my head against the wall. Why you ask? Because it was Twilight Fanfiction. I could tell you which characters were which, where she changed the story, and how it went originally.
And the thing is, I'm not against fanfiction. In fact, I think it's an excellent tool to hone your skills - but you shouldn't be publishing anything that belongs in fanfiction as a legitimate, original novel. Why? Because it's NOT. And it's a trend that's really starting to bother me. I don't care if a book was the inspiration for your novel, so long as you changed it enough that it's an original novel now. That's fine. But these? They don't qualify, not when I can go through and pick out the characters and tell you who they are. There's a problem with that.
Unfortunately, the REAL problem with that is, W.J. May was probably one of the better writers in this anthology. For the first half of her story, it was more interesting than a lot of the others and had just a little more cohesiveness to the story. Maybe, in fact, because it was fanfiction, I don't know. But I do know that I didn't care for much of the writing in this collection, I'll probably try more of W.J. May to see if she writes ORIGINAL fiction that's any good, and I won't go out of my way to find the 'sequels' to any of these short novellas.
(show spoiler)
Wish I had better things to say.
