Nightwatch on the Hinterlands 📚 Spoiler Free Review

Title: Nightwatch on the Hinterlands
Author: K. Eason
Genre: Adult Sci-Fi Mystery
Publication Date: Oct 19th, 2021
Pages: 416
Publishers: DAW Books

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Usually I would give a book to 20% before DNFing but I just couldn’t. I was extremely confused the whole time I was reading. The writing is very flat with little to no emotion and I just couldn’t get into it. I felt like I was reading a text book. There were also a lot of terminology used based in this world with very little explanation of meaning. This made the experience very choppy as I was constantly stopping to try and make sense of things that had no explanation.  Not to mention the over usage of ‘big words’ that felt uanessacry. I’m no English major and neither are most people & I feel like a lot of people would struggle with this writing like I did. Between the made up terminology & the ‘big words’ I had no idea what was a real word that I just wasn’t familiar with & what was made up. 

I have read books before based around topics I am unfamiliar with. Take This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada for an example. I have no knowledge of the tech discussed and very little regarding DNA and the science stuff mentioned but it was explained in a way that could make sense to anyone and also didn’t feel like info dumping. It can be done but from what I read so far of this book the execution just wasn’t there. 

Also am I the only one that has a pet hate for every name in a book being impossible to pronounce? I don’t mind unique names but if EVERY single character has a name where I literally have no idea where to even start to pronounce it it starts getting annoying and hard to follow. This one had that for both character names & locations! Can we normalise pronunciation guides at the start of books please?!

Overall I just couldn’t keep going with this one. I planned on giving it to 20% but I was forcing myself to read & it was taking forever! I read for about 10 minutes and I was still on the 5% mark on the eBook. I am very much a fan of DNFing books now. Why should I waste time read books that aren’t for me when I could be reading a book I love!