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06/11/2004 Entry: "JENNA STARBORN -- Laurie couldn't finish"

Jenna Starborn

I tried to read Sharon Shinn's JENNA STARBORN last month but have to give it a discommend. (Can I do that on books I didn't finish?) It just didn't have that certain something that compels me to keep reading. Anyway, because I'm lazy, here are my journal notes from bookcrossing.com:

5/22/04: I ended up starting this last night and immediately fell into it. Dare I admit I haven't read JANE EYRE? There, I said it. ;) Despite that fact, I am finding the story completely fascinating, imaginative and heartwrenching.

5/31/04: I made it through 50 percent of this story before giving it up. The beginning held much promise, but somewhere around page 90 things began to rapidly slow down, and I found it very easy to put the book down. This may be my current mood (too busy to read and too stressed to relax with a book) but I'm very disappointed with myself and my inability to finish JENNA STARBORN. I loved Shinn's THE SHAPECHANGER'S WIFE, and ARCHANGEL is still one of my all-time favorites, so I'm very sad that this one just didn't have the same magic for me and that the characters just seemed a little too bland to hold my attention. :( Maybe I'll try it again at some other point in my life when things are quieter. --Laurie

--JENNA STARBORN review page
--JENNA STARBORN at Amazon
--THE SHAPECHANGER'S WIFE review page
--ARCHANGEL review page

Replies: 1 Comment

The only reason Jenna Starborn is not illegal is because Bronte has been dead so long no one cares. I love a lot of what Sharon Shinn does, but when an author takes the plot, the characters, and ideas from another novel and copies them adding no real ideas of their own I find that rather disgusting. That Jenna Starborn gets any literary acclaim at all just blows my mind. She didn't do anything! She wrote a synopsis of the original and set it in a poorly crafted sci-fi universe!
Yes, I'm done, sorry :(

Posted by Rebekah @ 06/12/2004 08:48 AM ET



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