Friday, October 1, 2010

The End

A month and a half since I've posted anything. Sad, yeah? There is a pretty good reason behind it though. I haven't been reading.

Now, I don't mean what most people would mean by that. I just mean that in the past six weeks I probably haven't read more than six books rather than the 30-45 I normally would have read.

Now you may or may not be interested in why but since this is my little narcissistic playground, I'm going to tell you anyway. In one word. Romance. I am sick to fucking death of it.

When I started reading UF around 80-90% of the titles I could find completely lacked romance as a primary plot point. I loved the genre and even branched out into some paranormal romance just so I could have more books of a similar genre to read. I went on like that downing 200-400 books a year exclusively in those two genres.

It was great. If I was feeling my inner surly bastard, I could pick up a UF title and be assured I wouldn't have a romance novel with vampires. If I was feeling all hugs and puppies, I could grab a PR and rest comfortably secure in the knowledge that everything would work out fine for the MCs. You know what they say about things that seem too good to be true though...

Fast forward nine years (for those keeping track, that's about 3,000 books later). Today, try picking up a UF book without caricaturized, chick-lit-style romance either leading as the main plot point or tied for it. I guarantee a random selection will have you throwing 80-90% of what you pick up back on the shelves.

Yeah, sure, I could wade through all the chaff to find those 10-20% that don't. I could keep up with all the review sites and only pick up the ones that don't sound like a soap opera producer wrote them on Halloween. Thing is, I'm just not willing to. Every time I see another bad PR novel being marketed as UF it makes me want to teach someone the secret neck shake and I don't enjoy being pissed off all the time.

So, with a hearty Fuck Off and Die to the shitheads in marketing, this is it. Unless the author's awesomeness has cemented them a place on my must read list (about 30 authors worth), I won't be buying any new UF books. And since I won't have UF to balance out PR anymore, I won't be buying any of them either.

No point in keeping up a site with maybe one review a month, so adios.


~The Mighty Buzzard