Seraphina

DNF fueled rant to follow. You have been warned.

Okay, so let me explain things. Earlier this year I started going through all my books that have been packed away, deciding which ones I want to keep, which ones I want to get rid of and which ones I need a reread of before deciding. This book easily falls into the latter category. It is a book that I know I tried to read once and marked it as DNF and moved on. However, it's something that has long been in my thoughts. Like, there are so many things that people say are in this book that makes it sound like it's for me, that I had to try again with it.

So I sat down with it and let me tell you, the prologue? Sucks. The first two lines in the book:

I remember being born.In fact, I remember a time before that.

No. Just no. That right there is enough to make me stop reading just about any book. So I figured that was probably what made me stop the first time. I figured I read something like six pages and just stopped. This time I forced my way through the prologue. The five page prologue that seemed three times that length and then took a breather. Set the book down and came back to it a day or two later so that I wouldn't feel such ire.

Didn't help.

I was treated to a reference to someone's ‘dark complexion.' Now, I have been told several times as a white person that is attempting to write and maybe even one day be a published author, do not call black or brown people ‘dark' skinned. I don't know. It bothered me because I've been told by people that it's not a good word to use and I understand why. Do with that what you will.

Now, in short order, I got ‘It wasn't his fault; he assumed I was a normal person, whose arm might be touched with impunity. ... Okay, first of all, I don't like being touched by people I don't know really well. Like, the only people I have zero problems touching me is my mom and my brother. I've been hugged by people that don't ask first and the majority of the time, I wish they hadn't have. So, for me, this is not only a breach of consent (because no one is owed touching with ‘impunity') but also me being told because I don't want random people touching me that I'm not ‘normal.'

Let me tell you, by this point, this book and I were on our last legs. But I pressed on. Only to be treated to an angry mob attacking a young dragon in their human form. I'm not even going to unpack this - and how I've heard it mentioned that this war has been over forty years and how this is all some allegory for racial tensions in our world and the fact that detractors of this book have brandished the word ‘Nazi' around.

To save my sanity, my ever shrinking time to read, my patience, and my own stress level, this is where I bow out.

Now, for numbers: I made it to page 21 before I gave up, removed my bookmark and prepare to shove this book in a box to sell to some poor, unsuspecting someone.

That all being said, imagine my shock (utter, severe amazement) that I made it to page 88 the first time around. I have no idea how I did, but, in truth, I've gotten a lot more impatient with books and my own personal problems with them in the four years it's been since I first tried this book.