I got the Star Wars book "Choices of One" by Tim Zahn for kindle -- when it's showing 75% through the book ends. The remaining 25% was a timeline and excerpts of other novels. Star Wars novels are notorious for that.
It really weirds me out when people complain about this. I read an amazon review of one of these that was like "I paid for 100% of a book, not 75% of a book plus a bunch of other stuff." No, you actually got the whole book, same as everyone else, they just added a bunch of extra stuff at the end because size is free when you're publishing an ebook.
It is very annoying when you're reading the book, though, and you think "cool, there's at least 2 chapters left because there's 50 pages to go, I wonder what the next twist will be" and then reach the end of the book 2 pages later.
Actually there are some people who would consider it a spoiler to know they were nearly at the end of a book, and would thus appreciate not knowing how many pages were left. Besides, countless print books have had extra material after the end of the story, whether afterwords or appendices or previews of future books or advertisements or whatever.
It does seem like a weird perceptual thing, Kind of like getting to the end of The Wrath of Khan on DVD and discovering a few extra bonus features. "Hey, what gives? I thought I was getting an entire DVD's worth of movie! What a rip-off!" Then again, I've never tried reading an ebook so what do I know?
Oh, well I wasn't just talking about e-books, I was talking about any book where the last chunk isn't the novel. When I'm immersed in the world of a book and it comes to an abrupt end, it bothers me. It's a compliment to your skills as writers by the way, I don't want to leave the story
I haven't posted on this thread in a while, mostly because I had a whole mess of books to read all a once. Continuing my quests to read all the Star Trek books in order, I finished with the DS9 books, and decided it was time to dive into TNG books. So I started with the 9 part "A time to..." miniseries! Overall I thought it was an excellent books set. Its the kind of series that gives everyone an chance in the spotlight, and provides a ton of opportunities to bring back old characters, enemies, past plot points. The stand outs were Mack and DeCandido (7-9), although I thought John Vornholt did a great job as the lead off writer. Those first two books really stayed with me. One thing I have to say about DeCandido is his strength at writing long complex conversations. Near the end of war/peace there's a scene with the entire TNG cast, Ross from DS9, Alexander, Scotty, Vale, and Nan Bacco! That could have been a mess of a scene but under Krad it works wonderfully. It's why he's become one of my favorite writers of any genre. Next up I'll be rereading Articles of the Federation and then onto TNG book Death in Winter! -Chris
Started Double Helix: Red Sector. About eight chapters in... and so far we're dealing with a hyperspace problem and not a virus?!? Plenty of time for it to turn around, but seems a little odd, especially since Spock has only really had a cameo so far as well.
Exactly, I got what I paid for. It wasn't my wallet bitchin, it was my imagination! Almost done with the 4th book of the Invasion! series, will probably finish it this evening. Overall, I really enjoyed it. To be fair, I rarely dislike Trek books. At least the ones I've read so far. I suppose if I had to pick, I liked the DS9 novel the least, but I guess it was necessary to give some depth to the 'viroids'. I really enjoyed the Furies as villains in this series, its hard to top a manifestion and reasonable explanation of mankind's deepest rooted fears. The TOS book was my favorite, the Klingon captain and Fury Verod (sp?) were great characters. They reminded me of 'The One', but with more sympathetic qualities and depth. One line struck me in the TNG novel as particularly poignant. The more vicious captain of the Fury force in that novel said something to the effect of "You have met us, but not our kind" (paraphrased) which led me to think that there were separate malevolent\benevolent types of Furies, example of a more forward-thinking Fury being the captain of the Fury ship in the first book of the series. I'm not done yet, so maybe this is a plot twist waiting to unravel, but if not, i think it would have been a great direction to go with the Fury plot device.
After giving up on the Time to ... series a few months ago (at the last book! Just couldn't take it anymore) I decided to jump ahead to Destiny. Um, maybe I need to rewind a bit. Holy Exposition, Batman.
A lot of what's new in Destiny is actually new, though. Like, there's a lot of exposition about Ezri, but that's not recap, that's not in any prior book.
I didn't say I got cheated somehow. I was just disappointed since I thought there'd be 25% more book left and I was enjoying it. Exactly so. Yes, in the whole of human history regarding the written word I'm sure you're right. The problem is we're talking about ST/SW books and this isn't the norm - or at least it wasn't for SW pre-ebooks. I can assure you no print Star Wars prose book had 25% of its content be material of this type.
Well, I finished the Invasion! series and I won't spoil the ending by saying if my theory was right or wrong. I will say I was happy with the ending and enjoyed the series for the reasons stated in my previous post. A story well-written and well-told by all authors involved. I went on to start and finish the Voyager novel Unworthy by Kristen Beyer and I thought it was excellent. Multiple threads of mystery and suspense, some starship fire-fight action, good dialogue and interesting character drama. Everything I want in a Trek novel. I've read very few of the Voyager novels, and this is the first one I've read set after the TV series, so getting some new (to me) plot points was refreshing. I'll probably put a higher priority on Voyager novels after reading Unworthy. Started Warchild, a DS9 novel set between seasons one and two, and its pretty bland so far, compared to the last few novels I've read. It's entertaining in its own way though, I'll finish it and enjoy it, but I'm already looking forward to another book.
Finished the "Envy" entry in Seven Deadly Sins. Pausing with "Wrath" because I just downloaded Terry Pratchett and Steven Baxter's Long Mars... which apparently begins with a frame. I have a severe dislike for stories beginning in medias res just to jump back to somepoint before and beginning to tell the story in order. There are exceptions to that, though. It was fitting in ENT "Twilight" because of the subject matter.
Too bad! It was the second book of the 'new' relaunch. Full Circle came directly before it. You really should check it out as soon as possible. It's one of the best trek books ever
I'm reading Indistinguishable From Magic, and its pretty good so far. It's cool getting a book focused on Geordi, and reading about Scotty again is nice.