Ah! From the File, “Book Blurbs That Make You Say ‘NO!'”

“If you like Hitchhikers guide [sic] to the Galaxy and the Starship Troopers movie, you’ll love this book!”

Firstly, the movie adaptation of Starship Troopers sucked swamp gas. Secondly, The two VERY different stories had almost nothing in common whatsoever, apart from the fact that the books they were based on were a couple of the best works of two very different masters of the science fiction field.

If the execrably written and edited excerpt from a book blurb that went downhill from there is at all representative of the book, then the best thing to do is flip on by with a curt, “No.”


Aside–and having nothing to do with the comment above–I dislike “dramatis personae” lists in the front of a book. Sure, I imagine it might help folks keep characters straight, but I think a writer is better served (and better serves his readers) by organically introducing his characters within the narrative, as different characters meet, and, although if a book is in a series and I have read 1,000-1,100 books–not all fiction, of course–in the six months between episodes (and that’s roughly a six month reading list for me), I still prefer to exercise my lil grey cells and recall the characters that were introduced previously w/o reading down a list of ’em.

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