Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It is rare that I take the time to write a negative review, but it is even rarer that I have to give up a book after six chapters because I simply can't stand any more. The first person narrator is 21 centuries old, a point made over and over again, but though the term "old soul" was used several times at this point, he is as shallow, banal, self-involved, self-important, and insensitive as a teenager. (That he thinks he is interesting does not make it so--any more than it does for most teenagers.) There is no sense of the maturity and wisdom decades can bring someone--let alone centuries. As for other characters, such as fey gods, they do things like refer, stiltedly (because they too are millennia old but apparently unable to adopt the "hip" slang and "get with the scene" the way the narrator can) to "new inventions" like the Internet and fruit smoothies and wonder if the narrator has heard of them. I was very quickly disappointed in the characters and what passes for humor, but I was willing to keep reading in case anything about the plot or premises caught my interest. That is an hour of my life I'll never get back again. After deciding I'd be better off spending the evening with another book, I decided to read the last couple of pages to see how the author wrapped everything up and to see if there was a hint that the book did anything to redeem those earlier chapters. This will not involve a plot spoiler at all--just an example of the "great sense of humor" people keep talking about. The narrator has decided to give his faithful sidekick dog, whom he communicates with telepathically, a reward for a job well done. They get home, and the dog discovers that the narrator has arranged for five "black, fluffy, curly-tailed French poodles" in heat to be waiting for him in the back yard. The dog starts eagerly out there only to suddenly stop, whimper, look sadly at him, and pathetically think/say, "Only five?" Seriously. That's the end of the book. That is the what is apparently intended as an hysterically funny scene, and it is the last impression the author chose to create for his readers.