Review (Sort of): The Word Exchange

The Word ExchangeThe Word Exchange by Alena Graedon


I received a free copy of this book through the First Reads program at Good Reads. I also was given an eARC by NetGalley.

While I appreciate these freebies, I shouldn't have clicked those buttons to put myself in the running for them. I started this book tonight, and was quickly going, "eh..wtf?"

It's just...no...

Earlier this year I read a book called The Book. It was a dystopian near-future tale about electronic reading devices replacing real books and eventually controlling what we think, etc. I don't want to compare this to that (I'll get to that in a minute), but some of that basic plot is here again. Or so it would seem, if I could understand the plot.

I also don't want to compare them because this is well written. I mean, I can't understand it, with all the big words and gimmicky language, but I can at least see that this author knew what she was doing. She had genuine fun crafting a story of language with language through language. Or something. I don't get it, but I can see that it's done well.

The Book was just rubbish. I won't even mention the author, as I don't feel this is the place to criticize his work. Or rather, his piece of dystopian paranoid claptrap filled with spelling and grammar errors.

This book obviously had some hard work put into it. That's why I feel kinda bad not continuing with it. But since I don't get it, and can see that it's just going to annoy me and take a huge amount of time away from my reading schedule, I'm going to take a pass.

Thanks go out to the publisher for the freebies. I do appreciate them.

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