bounced off it

Oooo I like that.

Not paying people is his entire business model. The “art” is convincing small businesses who can’t afford lawyers to do the work and accept payment afterwards, then stiff them and delay them in court until they go bankrupt.

Years ago somebody gave me a book they thought I would like based on the cover blurb. C.A.D.S. was about elite soldiers with armed exoskeletons fighting a Soviet invasion IIRC. The writing was cartoonishly bad, the bad guys were so one-dimensional they should have been wearing T-shirts that said “EVIL” on them. Apparently the invasion was a pretext to kidnap and torture teenaged American girls.

I read another years ago about a high-tech war between the US and a newly imperialistic Japan. From what I recall it wasn’t totally awful … but this was a book based on high-tech weaponry, and the writer never described any of them. At all. Literally “the Japanese combat system crested the hill” or “the Japanese combat system dove out of the sun and began firing.” Literally zero picture in your mind.

Eon by Greg Bear. One of the best exercises in sci-fi world-building I’ve ever come across. My buddy handed it to me and told me it was so good he had to take a break from science fiction for a while. I could see why!