Quite honestly I can’t stand only a few books that I’ve read, recently The Awakening by Nora Roberts.
Holy crap, do I reallllyyyyy want my money back. I was bored. So. Bored. The magic system was subpar, the characters just….ew, everything was so, so boring. The MC is an idiot.
What book is a zero star read for you?
Artemis by Andy Weir
The man is incapable of writing natural dialog that doesn’t originate from a self-insert middle-age space-nerd. Furthermore, he abandoned all knowledge of engineering and chemistry in order to make an ending happen.
My theory is that he went on an epic nine month bender after the Martian money rolled in, drunkenly promised a new book, forgot about it, and wrote the whole thing in 12 days.
Chekhov’s Condom.
It was BAD. So bad. He does not know how to write woman.
I liked the book, actually, but the science is wonky as fuck the whole way through, not just at the end. Like half the world-building of the book is that they would go through all the trouble to build a giant dome city on the fucking moon, but then just not pressurize the atmosphere so they could have a standard nitrogen-based mix to avoid literally every issue that comes from living in a pure O2 atmosphere. The ISS right now operates under a standard Earth atmospheric mix under pressure. We haven’t used pure oxygen since like Apollo 1 in the 1960’s (precisely because of Apollo 1’s pure O2 atmosphere catching fire and killing everyone). Weir did a bunch of research on stuff like how an automated lunar mining machine’s cooling system might work, but also didn’t bother researching basic shit like what astronauts breathe. Yet, I still found the book oddly charming somehow. Weird how that works.
I just finished Project Hail Mary and really enjoyed that. Also really enjoyed The Martian.
I guess you are saying don’t bother with this one!