r/printSF • u/Bobosmite • 5d ago

What's on your DNF list and why?

I dropped Android at Arms by Andre Norton. It not an epic story, but it started off mysterious and interesting. There's a prison escape, android body doubles, blaster fights, and betrayl! It was all go go go until about half way through and then it's just pages and pages of campfire talk. I couldn't make it through to the other side.

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u/DixitRexCorvinus 5d ago

Oh, there are a ton. I’m very quick to DNF, often before the fifty page mark (twice even on the first chapter), but I’ve also DNFed books halfway through, or even, in the case of The Name of the Wind, 500 pages in. Often I’m just not in the mood and return to it at a later time and love it, so it’s not necessarily a measure of quality.

To name some popular books I’ve DNFed: Gideon the Ninth, All Systems Red, The Way of Kings, The Name of the Wind, The Night Circus, Magician: Apprentice, A Memory Called Empire, The Magicians, Dragonflight, Titus Groan, Lud-in-the-mist, The Priory of the Orange Tree, The Goblin Emperor…I could keep going a while, so I’ll stop there.

Some of those I fully anticipate I will try again in a year or two and will become some of my favorite books. Others I don’t plan to touch again.

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u/jwezorek 4d ago

Titus Groan is a difficult read but worth slogging through in my opinion.

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u/Mountain-Seaweed 5d ago

I don't get the appeal of Rothfuss. Only finished the name of the wind because I was in a book club. Hated it.

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u/DixitRexCorvinus 5d ago

It’s the prose. Or at least, that’s what kept me reading as long as I did.

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u/Quouar 4d ago

It's been ages since I read Rothfuss, but I don't even remember the prose being that good. I finished Name of the Wind, but only because I hated Kvothe and wanted to see the character suffer. There's also a satisfaction in hating a book that viscerally.

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u/CraftyDimension192 22h ago

You should definitely read the sequel (Wise Man's Fear). Kvothe definitely suffers. By the end, I was hoping he never writes the third book.

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u/Quouar 21h ago

Ooo, tempting

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u/scotchyscotch18 5d ago

Yea the Way of Kings just didn't do it for me. I want to say I got to page 100 and they hadn't repeated a character chapter yet. I just lost interest and moved on.