Misleading novels?

[Hey Missy]

What are times when you picked up a piece of TrekLit expecting it to be what the cover blurb describes and it turns out to be completely different?
I read The 34th Rule thinking it was going to be like a comedic Ferengi episode in novel form, and it turned out to be very dark and depressing, filled with descriptions of torture and suffering. Amazing novel though, but certainly not what I expected!

 

[David cgc]

I suppose the canonical example would be the Janus Gate trilogy, where the cover copy was infamously off-base compared to what the actual books were about (something about being written based on the original outline, I think).

But a definite count for misleading blurbs is "The Latter Fire," which gives a complete red-herring plot. While the mystery it describes is an important part of the backstory, it makes it sound like a mystery, espionage, or even a courtroom-drama story, when it was actually something totally different. Personally, I wouldn't mind if every blurb was just based off the first chapter or two and let the novel be a surprise. Better that than the opposite (I remember some books where I was three-quarters of the way through and still hadn't reached the last thing described in the cover copy).

 

[Therin of Andor]

For me, Dean Wesley Smith's "A Hard Rain" was not at all what I expected.

Originally planned to be another serialized novel (one bonus chapter per new novel, over a year) like "Starfleet: Year One" the previous year, it ended up as an unnumbered MMPB. A stunning Dixon Hill cover, but an underwhelming story, an unexpected antagonist reveal and, due to the book's original intention, very cliffhangery at the end of each chapter.

While SFY1 actually worked much better as the expanded reprint omnibus in MMPB that eventually came out, "A Hard Rain" should probably have been left as a serial.

 

[Steve Roby]

As I recall, A Hard Rain wasn't just cliffhangery, it was full of infodumps early in each chapter to make sure anyone who'd missed a chapter could be brought up to speed. Maybe the word count would have been too low if they'd edited out all that redundant material.

As a fan of old noir and hardboiled crime fiction, I seem to recall that the book didn't really deliver on that front. Wasn't there some science fictiony intrusion into the storyline?

 

[Jinn]

As I recall, A Hard Rain wasn't just cliffhangery, it was full of infodumps early in each chapter to make sure anyone who'd missed a chapter could be brought up to speed

Maybe when I get around reading this one I'll randomly skip a couple of chapters to see if this actually works.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Maybe when I get around reading this one I'll randomly skip a couple of chapters to see if this actually works.

Hehehe. It would have worked so much better as a serial. Just restrict yourself to one chapter per month, as originally intended.