I’m about to insert one large grain of salt into the 150 page rule. (Ouch.) The rule sounds generalized, but the results are individualized. There are books I can’t finish that you may love. Take Accelerando, by Charles Stross. Please.
For something that is so fast-paced, so jam-packed with nifty ideas, I found this book a hard slog. I felt little interest in Manfred Macx, and even less in his daughter, Amber. We are told an awful lot of things happen, or that the characters are capable of incredible feats, but we hardly ever see anything happen. That part came the closest to seeming human was the section almost entirely devoted to how much confusion Manfred suffers after his cybernetic extensions are stolen, but even that dragged on with his whining and misery. The first story about Amber is just as whiny, almost entirely dominated by her complaints about her attempts to escape the clutches of her mother. Then at the end, all of a sudden she’s done it. Wha?
I like Stross enough to give all his books a fair shake, but around the 150 pages in, my head was spinning. Sorry.
Writing Every Day 