Top 5 Worst Reads of 2017

List number three, and this is the spicy one:

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5. Voice of Our Shadows by Jonathan Carroll

There's a lot of individual elements to this story that are rather good - a great first chapter and some memorable set-pieces - but it genuinely seems unfinished. About halfway through the story kind of loses direction, some more things happen that don't appreciably effect anything, then there's a very sudden ending which is massively disappointing.











4. The Falconer by Elizabeth May

In a sense putting The Falconer on this list at all is rather harsh - it's not really like its outstandingly bad. But it's not outstandingly anything, just kind of exists, and that kind of mediocrity is much worse than other books that have many more flaws. This is a shrug of a book.













3. World War Z by Max Brooks

Filled with really great concepts, and a few characters whose stories could be interesting, this book takes a fantastic premise and renders it a slog by being less interested in telling a story and more interested in largely irrelevant minutiae.













2. The Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

Charming for a while, but uninspired. I'm generally not a fan of period fantasy, but this is quite easily the worst example of it I've encountered. Paced really awkwardly, structured poorly and one I came very close to not finishing.













1. Bloodlines by Claudia Gray

This was just hot garbage.