Dragon Storm

DNF at 35%.

Man, this book is not good. Very, very not good.

The author has an astonishing amount of works there, so when it comes to work ethic, I have to salute her, but it honestly feels like she has huge issues when it comes to some other things. Some authors develop in their skill levels very fast, you can see the huge jumps in quality. Here I'm just disappointed. After so many thousands of pages and so many great ratings the whole thing feels very amateur and very... juvenile, honestly. Sure, there are rookie mistakes that are called that because rookies do them and they are common. But she isn't such a rookie. I am disappointed.

Steampunk is something that's either a hit or a miss with people, it's relatively controversial when it comes to subgenres. I personally love it. One of my biggest discoveries last year was Anthony Ryan's Draconis Memoria, I am a huge fan of the Ketty Jay series by Chris Wooding, it all just appeals to me. So I was over the moon when I found an indie author with a steampunk series with dragons. Cool stuff, right?

Would be if the whole execution wasn't so BAD.
Snappy, humorous dialogue isn't easy, I understand. I'm not great at coming up with stuff like that, truly. I have no idea why everyone feels they can ace that shit, honestly. Here it's an absolute disaster in the most childish, “14-year-old sasses in a Tumblr post” way. Sometimes it feels like a lot of authors hinder themselves with spending so much time online and developing the very same type of dialogue writing as you can see in every clone of a clone “I'm so random” blog or comment section. It's derivative, not that funny and... honestly, it doesn't fit the setting. That has to be considered as well; maybe you quip like a god in a casual way with your friends or something, but not every setting benefits from 201X humour. (It will also really date the writing, by the way.)

The humour is not the only thing smashing my immersion, either. The characters are soldiers, they communicate with their subordinates and bosses and NOBODY is ever even just remotely professional. Zero discipline, zero respect. Commanders don't cutesy-cutesy with their wives in front of subordinates they met 2 minutes ago. The way they talk to each other wouldn't fly in any even just barely professional setting.
Sure, you can say it's fantasy, but that doesn't excuse the seemingly nonexistent knowledge the author has about any wartime protocol. It's horrid.

Now we also have the dreadful characters. They are idiots, plain and simple. Priceless weapons just get handed over to random people. Our heroine with 3 uni degrees has no idea how to fix a wobbly table. Important information gets thrown around casually and without proper thinking.
And of course we have to have our “bestestest smartest female character who is such a little victim of men”. Not stale at all. She also blabbers like crazy about supposedly smart things that are basic and people are amazed. Then she looks at an attacking dragon and magically calculates everything for the soldiers to shoot it, because she is a Big Bang Theory level of “genius”.

I will be honest, this was a dumpster fire. I will not mention it to anyone (except to point out it's baaaaaaad), I will not read the sequels or anything else by the author Epic fail.

Have a nice day and let me storm out now!