I’ve mentioned in earlier posts for this year’s reading challenge that perhaps my choice of material perhaps wasn’t all together smart. It seemed like a good idea six months ago… Read the first book of a fantasy series each month. See what I think to it, see whether I’d want to read the rest of the series. And, having read a number of fantasy series, I didn’t think it would be that difficult.

What I’d not taken into account is that my taste in books has changed a bit since I ploughed through Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, or George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire…

As a result, May’s book – The One Kingdom by Sean Russell – proved a real slog and I was late finishing it (see here). And I’m running late on June’s. Which is King’s Dragon by Kate Elliott. I also very much doubt I’m going to finish it.

I’m less than 100 pages in. One narrative is about a sixteen-year-old girl who has just been forced into slavery, and it seems her “owner” engineered the situation as much because he fancies her as because he wants some sorcery book she owns.  So she’s likely to be raped. The second narrative has a youth sent to serve the local count. At present, he’s mucking out the stables.

I don’t want to read books like this. And King’s Dragon has 700 pages. It’s not a book, it’s a blunt instrument. To be fair, the writing is perfectly readable. But there’s far too much world-building, one of the narratives is offensive, and the other one is just plain dull.

So I’m giving up. I’m also giving up on the challenge. I managed it for six months, and it was too much of a chore. I’m going to try just one more book – The Wizard Hunters by Martha Wells – and then stop. I’ve got my summer reading project anyway.