A Town Called Dust by Justin Woolley

Not a fan of the cover. What are your thoughts?

Title: A Town Called Dust

Author: Justin Woolley

Page count: ebook, 248 pages.

Publishing date: 2014

Publisher: Momentum

My rating: 1.5/5 stars!

Blurb:

Stranded in the desert, the last of mankind is kept safe by a large border fence ... Until the fence falls. Squid is a young orphan living under the oppressive rule of his uncle in the outskirts of the Territory. Lynn is a headstrong girl with an influential father who has spent her entire life within the walled city of Alice. When the border fence is breached, the Territory is invaded by the largest horde of undead ghouls seen in two hundred years. Squid is soon conscripted into the Diggers—the armed forces of the Territory. And after Lynn finds herself at odds with the Territory's powerful church, she too escapes to join the Diggers. Together Squid and Lynn form an unlikely friendship as they march to battle against the ghouls. Their journey will take them further than they ever imagined, leading them closer to discovering secrets about themselves, their world, and a conspiracy that may spell the end of the Territory as they know it.

When I first downloaded this title from Netgalley, I already had my doubts. While I thought the blurb was okay, I didn't care for the cover at all. I firmly believe that a cover needs to stand out in order for people to pick the book up. If it's an ugly or boring cover, people will pass by it without a second glance, moving toward the book with the interesting and neat cover. This is one of those books that people will pass by without a second glance. I'm sorry to say that, but it's true. 

The truth is, I didn't like this book even when I began to read it. Like I thought, the insides of this book were just as bad as the outside. The pacing was very slow, making the story boring. The first few chapters should have been edited completely or even deleted outright. The first chapter needs to be interesting because it draws the reader into the story. The first chapter in A Town Called Dust wasn't even remotely interesting. I was so bored with the chapter that I felt like it dragged on and on and on. 

I can forgive a boring chapter, even the first one, if the book makes up for it in future chapters. If there's interesting characters, funny one-liners, and an intense plot line, I'll forget all about the first, or few, chapters that dragged. 

But I couldn't do that for this one. Why? This book didn't make up for the slow beginning. Instead, the boring, uninteresting chapters set the pace for the entire book. I was well fed up with this book after halfway through, but I wanted to tough it out and finish it. I put my Kindle down several times while reading this, yawned, and said that I needed to take a nap. This book put me to sleep. 

I still would have been able to give the slow/boring pace and chapters of the book if the characters had been really great. Characters are supposed to liven the story with their personalities, their flaws, their thoughts and emotions. Some will make you laugh. Some will make you cry. Others will just plain piss you off. But the worst kind of characters in a book are the ones that don't make you feel any emotions at all. Those characters happened to be in this book. I wasn't emotionally invested. I didn't care what happened to the characters- if the lived or if they died. Hell, even when I HATE a character, I still have an emotion for them. These characters in A Town Called Dust couldn't bring out a single emotion in me. 

Lynn is supposed to be the hero; a woman disguised as a man so that she can join the military. She's supposed to be lovable. Fierce. Loyal. Wonderful. But I couldn't find those qualities in her. She was bland. Like me, she had no emotions in this book. I'm sure the author wanted her to have feelings, but Lynn came off as a puppet. Nothing more. Squid was the same way- maybe even worse.

Nothing really happened in this book. Nothing of importance, anyways. I was bored through 95% of the book, only being interested for the 5% that included the fight with the ghouls. And that brings me to the reason I gave this 1.5 stars instead of just 1. I gave half a star to my overall rating because I did enjoy the major fight with the ghouls. THAT was interesting and fighting small hordes, or bigger ones, should have been incorporated into the story more than it was. That was the only time that I had a small spark of emotion in this story. That's all. Nothing else made me care. 

Overall thoughts?

A Town Called Dust was a disappointment. The slow pacing, bland characters, and my lack of interest caused me to give this a low rating. + 1/2 of a star to the final fight of with the ghouls, which was the only thing I liked, giving this a total rating of 1.5 stars out of 5.