I decided to not read a book.
It may not be a first for me, but it is definitely much too rare that I actively decide to stop reading a book. I can leave them around for a long time, sometimes eventually giving up on them. But the giving up is very rare, and a light sense of guilt that I should be finishing them is very easy to awaken.
I am therefore happy to report that I am not finishing Ken Follet's Never. I started it with some hesitation. I know that I can enjoy his writing quite a bit, but I also realized rather quickly that he is such a bastard to his characters. In a medieval story where the plague plays a part, do we really need a detailed description of someone being flayed alive? (If I recally correctly, it was also a total side note to the whole rest of the story.) How much rape do we strictly need to make the story come alive? Does every evil character have to get away with all their bad deeds all the way to the end?
I am not sure why exactly I started to see Follet as the evil puppet master when I have never thought of any other author like that. Perhaps I liked some of the good characters too much? Perhaps starting stories with literally putting someone's feet to the fire and randomly killing somebody's puppy was choosing to start uphill?
Or perhaps I have simply had enough of all the dumb evil shit idiots all over the world get away with daily? I do not mind if my fiction includes a bit more of the wrath of the heavens descending on evil-doers than does the flow of news.
I chose to stop Never when I realized how likely a horrible story of human trafficking centered around a woman and her child were to play a central part of the story.
Sorry Ken, I do not feel like bracing myself before my evening reading right now.
(The annoying part is that I am pretty interested in the bigger story of the book. Oh well.)