My Audible subscription just renewed and I got all enthusiastic. Back when Netflix was DVD only, we had a, “go ahead and try it,” policy: stick whatever recommendations in the queue, and when they showed up, pop ’em in and hit play. If the movie wasn’t compelling after the first 15 minutes, we’d put it back in the mail. The cost of trying something new was pretty small. Same with the Audible subscription – you can return books, so I go ahead and take risks when I’m flush with credits. When I get down to one or two left, I get really conservative.
So anyway, I went ahead and tried out a modern fantasy book. It didn’t absolutely suck, and the author had subsequently been fleshing out his universe and written many more books, so I plumped for two more in the main thread and one in a spinoff. The spinoff was okay, although the narrator’s idea of a Scottish accent was…grating. But the second book in the main series managed to lose me mid-way. I had hoped that, even within the predictable tension/conflict arc of the episode there might be interesting characters doing fun things; by the beginning of act 3 the only interesting character was the dog, and the others were getting less believable with exposure, not more.
I’m keeping the two books I finished — I figure it’s fair since I did listen all the way through and enjoyed the first one enough to try the others. But they’ll sit there in my audio library, a reminder not to go down that particular road again.