Time to get to know the Escape Velocity Collection’s curators! How? By asking them the questions that really matter! Let’s see what our curators have to say…
This week’s question is:
What is the last piece of media you didn't finish, and why?
The last book I didn’t finish was The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula le Guin, though I would like to tell myself that I’ll pick it back up and finish it sometime later. It was disappointing because I went into it with high expectations. I think that the main reason I didn’t finish was the fact that the audiobook I was listening too was a bit mumbly and made the whole thing sound like just another day at the office. Maybe I should read this one on paper instead.
(Dis?)honourable mention to the The Witcher TV-series, which I watched a couple of episodes of – but I felt it was a bit hit and miss in the storytelling and costuming, and I hadn’t read the books anyway so I decided to put it off too.
Peter
Jop
I believe that would be Netflix’s Kiss Me First. While watching the trailer, I was drawn to what seemed to be a fascinating thriller centred around queer characters and a VR simulation game. After a few episodes, though, the plot seemed little more than a lacklustre horror plot, in which flat characters get killed off one by one by a ‘mysterious’ murderer.
As for the queer characters: mostly queerbaiting. Though I shall admit that the two female leads were convincing in their acting, the writing was just poor. Jasmijn and I stopped watching after four episodes, around the time the climax was starting to pick up. It wasn’t enough to keep us engaged…
I recently started listening to The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan, which I ended up not finishing. It is one of my sister’s all time favourite fantasy series, so I was really hoping to like it. I read the first book in the series a year or two ago, and while I did not hate it I did not really love it either. Although it is well-written, I just found I did not connect well enough with any of the characters in order to be truly invested in the story. I was hoping that this would maybe change with the second book in the series, but when this did not happen after a couple of hours I decided to put it down for good.
Robin
Jasmijn
DUNE. The only reason I started this book was because Peter absolutely adores it. However, I could not get through it at all! I think this was mainly because the book is about sand and politics and not about people. It was also just So Many Words. See also our review on Dune.
My dad always gives me a book for my birthday and on Christmas. Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to them, but I do always read them. A year or so ago, he gave me The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula le Guin. I started it a couple of months ago, but I just could not compel myself to finish it. I think the main problem lies with the style of sci-fi of the book. It has lots of weird names and places that I find difficult to keep track of. At the end of the day, I read for fun. This means that if a book is hard to get through, it’s likely just not for me. I’ll probably finish it eventually, but I’m not, like, looking forward to it.
[Peter: Poor Ursula, she is under heavy fire today! Maybe I can borrow the paper version in the meantime so I can give it another shot first?]
Lotte
Key
I almost never not finish a TV-series or book I started. I get disillusioned, frustrated, angry, but I do want to know how it ends. And maybe I am just a little bit completionist. Not long ago I stood on the brink of quitting the audio drama Earth Eclipsed, but I persevered.
The last thing I definitely remember quitting was the TV-series Once Upon A Time. I really liked the first season, the second season was all right, but then the third season came along and it got so horribly boring. It took ages to get through the Peter Pan-storyline, but, I hoped, it would work up to something, it would get better. It did not. The semi-Witch of the West was terrible. And when off-brand Elsa appeared, I was out.
That’s it: another soul-searching question answered!
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