According to their website, they have over 145,000 books available to borrow and 100 New York Times best sellers.
Well, even if I could find a NYT best seller on the list, I probably wouldn't want to read it. I scratch my head sometimes on what the world finds popular. 50 Shades of Grey? Twilight? Nora Roberts?
Anyway this isn't a blog post about best seller lists. I searched the Lending Library for a quick book to read to pad my stats on the Goodreads challenge.
The Lending Library isn't searchable. You select a genre and it displays the 6,000 books in that category. Sure you can find a romance! Here are a few thousand to scroll through! You can sort by highest rated or most recent, but that doesn't narrow it down too much. If you had a book in mind that you wanted to read, you aren't going to find it on the Lending Library. Not unless you scroll through page after page of results looking for it.
Of course, everyone on Goodreads has given it 5 stars. I have to assume they are the author's friends and family. It simply wasn't mature writing. It was good enough to tell the story, but not enough for me to love it. If you want to read about pyrokinetics, read <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97967.Mystic_and_Rider">Mystic and Rider</a> by Sharon Shinn.
Back to the writing, here's an example of what I mean. The first time the protagonists are attacked, the male hero has a flashback to his childhood from the last time he encountered the monster. Okay, but it takes page and pages to go through.
Then when we finally do come back to the present, it's right from where we left - the pounding at the door. Turns out it was just the landlady. However, we know the monster is around. The protagonists can sense it, taste it even. (it's bitter). The flashback and misdirection don't add suspense, they slow down the action. Here's an excerpt from the middle of the action scene:
CLICK-CLICK-CLICK. Like fingernails - no, more like claws - against that second car. An Oldsmobile, dark tan, big as a boat and as old as anyone's grandmother. Oddly enough, it was the car that had never moved. Not once during Cass's four year residence at the Amigo Apartments had that car left its spot. Two or three times a week, from dinnertime to midnight, a small gathering of her Hispanic neighbors would play the roles of mystic faith healers.....
You get the idea. A freaking monster made of shadow and claws is only two cars away from her and the author is breaking to tell the reader about a damn car. It slows down the action, makes the scene feel less than life-threatening, and generally the car has ZERO role to play in this story. Two Kindle pages later and the Olds rocks side to side (finally). The next page they discuss running away. Two pages later the monster appears over the Olds. Three pages later she asks the monster why it hates her. The next page, the damn thing finally pounces.
Really, really slow read. Especially for an action scene. Sentences should be quick, fast, full of tense emotion. It's sad because the plot was a good idea (love me some pyrokinetics), but the pacing was just terrible.
Anyway, I have a feeling this is the quality you get from the Amazon Lending Library.
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