We are pleased to introduce our newest feature here on ARWZ: Unfinished Fiction.

Many of us reviewers here on ARWZ are fiction writers ourselves, and so we know that one of the necessities of good storytelling is to keep the readers' interest, to create a sense of urgency so that the reader feels driven to find out what happens next. 

Unfortunately, even this fundamental element of storytelling is difficult to achieve. Crafting a compelling story is the first challenge, of course, but the writer must also avoid pitfalls and roadblocks, ill-conceived storytelling decisions that get in the way of revealing the story to readers in a way that will inspire them to continue. Of course, some stories inspire certain people to read voraciously, while other readers just don't get the appeal. Oftentimes it is primarily a matter of taste whether we continue with a story or toss it back to the book pile unfinished.

Here at ARWZ, we pick up a lot of books in the course of our reading adventures, but not all of them make it to the website as review subjects. Some stories lose our interest or turn us off. It is, of course, not good policy for a writer to review a book that he or she hasn't finished reading, and yet, we find ourselves fascinated by the perils of fiction. What makes us stop reading a book? What confluence of circumstances results in our giving up on a book forevermore? 

Those are the questions this column seeks to answer. In this column, our regular reviewers will have license to tell you about what makes them stop reading. You will find out what books we attempted to read and why they lost our interest. We'll tell you which ones lost us right away, and which ones we put in an earnest effort to finish before finally giving up.