Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories that I Wish I Could Have Loved

Recently, I wrote an article listing a few stories that took me by surprise. In the article, I talked about how sometimes I would select a book to read after doing a great deal of research, and at other times I would select books blindly and start reading them without knowing anything about the story or its characters. When I do the latter, I get to find treasures in unexpected places and that was what the last article was all about. Nevertheless, in situations when I take care of my reading after performing extensive research into the books, their authors, and their stories, there is no assurance that I will end up loving the tale. There have been a couple of instances where I could not get into the story even after multiple attempts and finally realized that the story was not for me.

In this blog, I talk about a few stories that just could not hold my attention even when my groundwork concluded that everything about the story ticked all of the right boxes. These were good examples where the idea and concept of the tale seemed quite alluring but something in the execution felt very lackluster to me. Being in such a situation was unfortunate as all of my built-up expectations fell flat. It saddened me, even more, when I saw that these stories were beloved by a large community on the internet and somehow I could not see myself getting on this bandwagon. So, below I list these stories in no particular order and explain what went wrong while reading them that took away all my enjoyment.

1. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

I was extremely thrilled about this book. This was Morgenstern's second novel and her first novel "The Night Circus" was one of my favorites. I adored her style of storytelling, her characters, and her descriptions of the surroundings. So, you can imagine my elation when I learned that Morgenstern was coming up with a new story. I checked the storyline for this one and learned that it was about a young man who found out that he had been mentioned in a cryptic book. This then took him on a journey through an underground maze where both stories and storytellers could take refuge. I was quite intrigued by the idea and wondered what more will the story have. But alas, the story was just that. A young man trying to find his way through the underground maze. The most jarring part was the fact that I was unable to understand the whole point of the book. I think a connection with the characters is essential if one wants to enjoy a story and I did not correlate with the characters in this book at all. I could not discern the motivations behind any of the actions of the characters for a major portion of the tale. Nevertheless, in situations when I cannot associate with the characters, I hope that the plot is intriguing enough to keep me hooked on the book. Unfortunately for me, the book didn't seem to have any plot. The story didn't seem to have any central theme or goal that it wanted to achieve. Without any goal, the main character's "adventure" (if one can call it that) appears futile. The writing was beautiful and quite soothing to read, but it failed to get the story's intent across to me. And when one is not enjoying either the characters or the plotline, it is easy to get frustrated with whimsical writing. And I guess, that was exactly the case with me. I envy anyone who could relate to this book and came to love it because I genuinely wanted to.

2. The Mirror Visitor Quartet by Christelle Dabos

The Mirror Visitor Quartet, a Young Adult (YA) fantasy series, was originally written in French by Christelle Dabos. The story had been set in the future where the planet had been "ruptured" and people lived on the different fragments or "arks" of this ruptured world. Each of these arks had a guardian spirit, each with its unique powers, from whom the people living on that ark had descended. This allowed the people to inherit the powers of their guardian spirit in varying degrees. The story began when Ophelia, our main character, got engaged to a resident of a distant ark and moved with him to his ark so that they can get married. The story then followed Ophelia as she navigated around this new ark and its political situation. I was pulled in by the setting of this book and my first impression told me that it was going to be a political fantasy. Sadly, by the end of the first book, I realized that it was not going to be so. Still, I continued with the story because I wanted to see where Ophelia's journey will take her. It took her to a variety of places, I'd give the story that but more than half of the journey, especially towards the end of the series did not make any sense at all. At least to me, it did not. I could not fathom several things in the story. Especially the "barely-there" romance between Ophelia and her "barely-there" husband, Thorn. There were hardly any scenes between these two characters. Still, by the end of the first book, they began to fall in love and by the end of the second book, they were in love with one another. I just did not find that believable. And because I did not have faith in the romance, many actions of the characters motivated by this romance baffled me. Honestly, I did not think that giving a romantic angle to these characters was necessary. Essentially, the marriage gave these characters a means to inherit each other powers, but somehow I was unable to observe any worthwhile additions to the plot due to this exchange. I also had issues with the pacing of each book. The first book felt more like a preamble to the whole series where nothing much happened except exploring this "new" ark that Ophelia had moved to. I liked the second book much better as I felt that it did have a plot and resolutions were provided for a considerable number of threads of the tale. And then the third book took a completely different turn and it felt like a whole new story started within the series. I think that the fourth book was my least favorite of the set. The last two books felt slightly disconnected from the first two and the characters that I grew to like in the first two books were essentially absent in the last two. Completely new characters were introduced and I did not find myself drawn to any of them. I believe that this highly impacted my enjoyment of the last two books. I am also aware that I read the translations of these books and not the original work themselves and sometimes things get lost in translation. But overall, this was a series that I hoped to cherish, but in the end, I could barely like it.

3. The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

The Illuminae Files is a three-part YA Science Fiction series that is set in space. In all honesty, when I first saw these books, I was captivated not by the storyline but by the format in which these books were published. The story was told in the form of reports, chat communications, diary entries, and drawings. Filled with all sorts of pictures, figures, and virtually blank pages, this book told its story in an extremely creative manner. So, I geared up for this new reading experience and picked up the first book. The story began when a fatal attack happened on a tiny planet where two of our main characters live. The story followed their journey as they, along with many of the residents of this planet, escape on two spaceships - Alexander and Hypatia - and try to survive the different hardships that come their way. I liked the story but was not blown away by anything other than the format of the book. And when one can distinctly remember the format of the book but not its content, it can be concluded that the content was a bit flat. But this did not stop me from picking up the next book in the series. And that's where my actual problem began. This book too was formatted creatively with pictures, chat messages, and diagrams. But even though the book followed different sets of characters, it felt as though I was reading the same story as the first book. Even the interactions between the main characters appeared to be considerably similar. And then this happened again in the third book. All the books gave acutely similar vibes. Everything from the introduction of the characters, their interactions, the different plot points, and to some extent the resolution was handled identically. And this disappointed me immensely. It was apparent that a huge amount of effort was put into formatting a book that had a fairly average plot but then this formula was just repeated to create three books in the series. I do wish that the plot and the characters were as great as the format of the books.

Experiencing disappointments with stories that one had expected to love leaves one feeling very sad and hollow. There were times when I began questioning myself and my ability to judge my reading tastes. However, I have also realized that stories are just like us humans, sometimes we click with them, and sometimes we do not. And so I did find a few stories that were not to my liking even when my research indicated that I would.