Author: Michael R Underwood
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WARTY
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is less detailed so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more in-depth than you'll typically find elsewhere!
Errata in galley ebook:
P42 "Pprofessional' should be "professional" or "Professional"
P106 "…roast.Her…" should be "…roast. Her…"
"I know what I don’t know what I'm getting into." should be perhaps "I know when I don’t know what I'm getting into."?
P219 "firs-floor" should be "first-floor"
P242 "She hustled home assembled some war tools…" would better read with a comma: "She hustled home, assembled some war tools…"
P271 "I'msupposed" should be "I'm supposed"
P340 "Ree hrmed internally…" ???
P348 "She'd heard a few cinemancers swear that they magical buck went way further with Blu-Ray…"
P374 "He slipped a hand from the strugle…" should be "He slipped a hand from the struggle…" (or maybe strudle?!)
Here's a choice quotation: "Around midnight, Ree got a call on her phone." On what else would she get a call?! Just asking!
Celebromancy is book 2 in the Geekomancy series. I didn't realize this, so please note that I haven't read book 1 (although that's in progress!). I advise you to do this if you're just starting on this series, because it seems to me that it will clarify a few things. At least I hope it will since I already bought the ebook for Geekomancy (it's very reasonably priced, and cheaper at Amazon than at Barnes & Noble as of this writing).
This title initially appealed to me from simply reading the title! Obviously, I wasn't going to fall for it just based on a title any more than I would if based just on a cover, but after I read the author's (publisher's?) description I decided it had to be worth a try. Like a new apartment, I felt good about this location, but the apartment itself can sometimes be a disappointment if the place you're moving into turns out to be a real dump. This one didn't - at least as far as I read initially! It was well-furnished and comfortable, and I felt at home quickly. First hurdle cleared! Unfortunately, the other hurdles became increasingly higher and higher.
The premise for the story is that of magic, but not in the traditional sense. You know that feeling you get when you read a really good novel, or watch a great TV show or see an inspiring movie? Well Underwood has taken that emotional magic and formalized it into a real magical power which you can derive from watching a video (and from other sources - more anon). If you enjoy a movie, it empowers you, and with whatever it is you were watching, and you can then draw on that store of magic and use it yourself. If you want to solve a mystery, you watch a Sherlock Holmes video. If you want to climb buildings, watch Spider-Man! How I wish this premise were true! I’d be one of the most powerful and talented people on the planet with my love of novels, movies and TV - that's what this blog is all about! So yes, initially, I felt quite at home here; it was another 'why didn’t I think of this first' moment, a big swallow and off it flies.
Having not read the first book in the series when I started this one, I first took the female protagonist to be a Celebromancer, but she's a Geekomancer. The difference will become clear shortly. What bothered me about this is that when Underwood introduces a new character, he follows their name with their stats, as though they're a player in a card game or a role-playing game! This was both annoying, confusing, and apparently misleading. For example, when the main character, Ree is introduced, she appears thus: Rhiannon Anna Maria Reyes (Strength 10, Dexterity 14, Stamina 12, Will 18, IQ 16, Charisma 15, Geek 7, Barista 3, Screenwriter 2, Gamer Girl 2, Geekomancer 2), but none of this means anything! She's supposed to be a Geekomancer, yet her Geekomancy score is pathetic, even after the first novel!
Aside from those minor irritations, the novel impressed me to begin with. It was believable within its framework, it was initially realistically told, and it was entertaining. I liked the main character at the start, too. My problem with the stats suffix to the name was never resolved. I still have no idea what they really mean having finished this novel. I mean, on what scale are these scores issued? If the maximum is twenty, a score of 18 on your 'Will' is really good, but if the maximum is a hundred, then you're pretty much a complete pawn! Perhaps hardened gamers will instantly clue in what these are supposed to convey, but for the rest of us, we're left in the cold, and that's not a good way to treat your guests if you want to sell novels. I'm neither a game card player nor an online gamer, so I ignored the stats, and it cost me nothing. So here's my point - if the info conveys nothing and the reader can safely ignore it, then what's the point of it?
So how does this magic work? Well, Rhiannon - aka Ree - can watch a scene from (for example) Castle and absorb skills from the experience, which she can then turn around and re-employ to aid her in her endeavors, but the skills wear off rather quickly. Frankly, I can think of far more empowering shows than Castle, but each to her own! I started out liking that show, but it quickly became so formulaic and tedious that I couldn’t stand to watch it any more, especially with the dysfunctional relationship between Castle and Beckett which was taken way too far, and the unresolved and boring quest to find Beckett's mom's murderer. Find something new already!
This show evidently has quite the opposite effect on Ree however, and she uses this to her benefit. She has succeeded in getting her spec script accepted by Jane Konrad, who was once a big star. Jane was Ree's idol during her teens, when Konrad was a teen herself, but she's fallen onto slim times of late. Her DUI's and other drunken behavior have not helped. Lindsay Lohan's checkered history was more than likely an inspiration for this character.
Ree not only has a helping of hero-worship going on here for Jane, but there's also a real physical attraction, and when Jane invites Ree out to dinner and offers her a choice of clothes to wear from her own wardrobe, Ree realizes this could be a hellishly slippery slope she just stepped onto. Not only is this new show which Ree has created going to be Jane Konrad's last big chance at resurrecting her career (her production company is poised to go bust if this fails), if she and Ree become an item and then suddenly they're not, what will that do to Ree's career, to say nothing of her mental state, even if Jane's takes off?
Although Underwood was smart enough to start this novel out with no prologue, which is always a big plus with me, there are chapter quotes which are just as annoying. What I call a chapter quote is some quotation which may be a real one or not (in this case they're faked), which appears at the start of a chapter. I routinely skip these with the same disdain I employ in skipping prologues, but in this case it was harder to do because the quote was pretty much in line with the text and had no quote marks or special font to make it stand out very much from the regular text. This font problem occurred elsewhere, too: the description on the back of Ree's personal chair on the movie set had a font which was bizarrely small. Instead of it appearing in-line with the text and looking normal, the tiny block capitals really jumped out and not in a good way. It almost looked like he had super-scripted the phrase REE REYES WRITER. But maybe that's me! Maybe the actual novel will be different from the galley.
So I found it peculiar that the author included quotations at the start of the chapters, which contribute zero IMO, but then gives us nothing at all regarding what these character evaluations/scores mean in the big picture! Given the excessive name-dropping (TV shows, bands, songs, games, movies, etc.) throughout this novel, it seems that the reader is expected to understand all of this or die trying! This novel appealed to me originally, and I'm not exactly an adept in the gaming world, so I have to ask: why not open it up more, and let a wider audience participate by offering a tid-bit of explanation here and there? Otherwise geekdom is simply turned into snobbery.
Anyway, Ree has a lot of fun with Jane at the club, but she notices weirdness pervading the air. She does light battle with one creature (with a light saber - another example of the magic. Her toy light saber, in her hands, becomes real. A game card, torn in two, can give her the power which the card would have given to a card-playing gamer). Even that battle, however, doesn’t prepare Ree for being woken up that night next to Jane who is screaming in the throws of a nightmare. Nor does it prepare her for discovering that whatever Jane is fighting off is real, it's in this world, yet it's invisible and tough as nails.
It turns out that another actress, Rachel McKenzie, has apparently put some sort of curse on Jane. Jane is a Celebromancer: she can draw real power from her fans, and this power makes her even more appealing, drawing yet more power, but Rachel's curse, born of jealousy, distorts Jane's power and warps it back on her with these nightmarish attacks. Jane never was a drunk. She was being assaulted by animal-like chimeric demons. Now it’s up to Ree to track down the source and fix this.
Ree impersonates a news reporter to try and learn something directly from Rachel, but it's a complete waste of time, and I have to wonder why this scene was even written - unless it was to convince me that Rachel is a red-herring. Jane, meanwhile, is not doing well. She calls Ree to come over that night to stay with her - not for anything intimate, but just for company, and Ree accepts this offer, but you and I know where that resolve's going don't we?!
And that's plenty of detail to whet your appetite! The rest of this review will be generic observations and commentary, the first of which is that writers might want to actually read what they write and spare some thought to IAN (Inadvertent Absurdity Nuance). Here’s one that particularly struck me on p299:
The small woman turned in place, letting Drake through before she left.
"Drake, right?" Cole said, extending a hand.
Turned, left, right?! That's a bit much to read in two consecutive sentences with a straight face - unless the author intended to be giving inane direction with his writing! Another example of this confusion occurred on p322, where we learn that first, the attacking supernatural gorillas were in "snicker-snack" range; then they were "out of measure"? What does "out of measure" actually mean in this context (or even snicker-snack for that matter!)? Is this just another way for him to say 'out of range' without actually repeating those words? They were either in range or they were not. And repeating himself inanely is not something Underwood avoids like the plague, as this example on p323 shows: "That left only one gorilla left." So please, a bit better writing and a lot better editing would be appreciated.
On a different note, Drake's lingo is not only grammatically stupid, it's really annoying. I don’t know what Underwood was trying to do with him. Whatever it was, for me he failed - and now he's nudging Drake and Ree together. I don’t want to read about the two of them as an item, I really don't. These are relatively minor concerns when taken individually, but when you're reading for enjoyment, and you're hit with one thing of this nature after another, it seriously detracts from the quality of the reading experience.
Underwood channels Charlaine Harris pretty well, too. I mean, do we really need to know the precise ingredients that went into the pizza they ate? I don't. I call pretentious bullshit on that one. I have no time for snotty novels which insist upon conveying the minutiae of every outfit the characters don, and every meal in which they partake, every vintage bottle of wine they consume. Ian Fleming was the master of this kind of trash chic and it turns me off. I really don’t care what they're wearing or what they eat unless it's critical to the plot. I do care what they think about in relation to what’s going on, and how they react to it. Why some people feel a need to emulate Fleming's snobbery is a mystery.
Then there's the lack of credibility in the magic! At one point in the novel, after an assault by some guerrilla gorillas, a dragon attacks Ree, and it’s twenty feet up in the air so she concludes that she can’t take it on with the light saber - but she's supposed to be channeling a Jedi isn’t she? Jedi can can jump spectacularly and throw a light saber to good effect. Is she not geek enough to know this? Even if she's not a full-on Jedi, she can throw, can’t she? This lack of anything approaching a schematic for how and when this magic works, really let the story down for me. A little more rationale (within the framework of the story) would have been much appreciated, but Underwood's random use of magical powers which have no inherent logic with regard to when it works or doesn’t, or how powerful it might be, or even what the internal rule-book is, does not help at all to endear the novel to me.
On this same note, Ree starts powering up for her ritual with Jane, and she says she has three to five hours to do this, but we've learned that the power she gleans from DVDs, etc., lasts only for about three hours before it fades to nothing, so what’s the point of powering up five hours before she'll need the power? She can’t usefully watch videos more than one at a time! And this was also where the mistyped sentence from my errata derived: "She'd heard a few Cinemancers swear that they [sic] magical buck went way further with Blu-Ray…". Why? Why does Blu-Ray go further? Again, no explanation let alone a rationale. And why video and not audio? Why can’t they use music to "magic up"? And why not literature, if they can use comic books?
So to wind this up, I was rather disappointed in it, for the reasons given. This was merely a galley ebook, but it wasn't in great shape - it gave me the impression it had been rushed out for no good reason. That alone obviously isn't enough to condemn the novel, but it seems indicative to me of the author's approach to the story overall: sloppy and uninvolved. I started reading this enthusiastically, enjoying it despite some reservations, but it went downhill too far for my taste, and it wasn't that great of a story or that great of a set of characters to persuade me to hang in there for the ride. I ended-up up-ended, skimming a lot of pages towards the end just because they were boring. I really didn’t care about two Hollywood stars who each thought that they were better than the other. I mean, how petty is that? I can’t take that seriously, and I can’t bring myself to side with either one of them, much less empathize or feel sorry for them. I really can’t.
The ending was entirely nonsensical. The local production in which Jane and Ree are involved somehow fails because of all the supernatural pressure put on it (especially from the big finale), but there's no real explanation given as to why it can’t pick itself, dust itself off, and start all over again, as the song would have it. Here's a dance clip from that same movie! I once saw a bumper sticker which said, "Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in heels". I've never forgotten that!
Ree and Jane are talking like they have to start over from rock bottom scratch, and it’s gonna be tough. For goodness sakes, this is the age of the Internet and Indie films. Jane is so clueless that she never heard of webisodes? I can’t get with that at all especially in a novel of this nature! The fact is that there's absolutely nothing whatsoever stopping them from going ahead and making a web series, yet they both sit around moping about how it’s all over!
You’d think they couldn't top that, but Ree manages it! Twice! To begin with, she has the chance to go to Hollywood and pursue her career as a screen writer there, and she turns it down flat. My guess is that in book three, which I don’t intend to read, she'll still be griping about how her career isn't getting off the ground. I'm sorry, but I don’t want to read any more of her self-pitying comments on that score! Her other problem was that she's still pining for Eastwood. Now I haven't finished reading Geekomancy as I write this, so I can't offer personal testimony yet, but from what I've read of his conduct in Geekomancy I don't see that anyone in their right mind would want anything to do with Eastwood. much less pine for him. The fact that Ree does means I don't want anything to do with her.
I finished reading this on a Monday and it was a real Monday, so I have no doubt that my irritation from other sources played into my assessment somewhat, but this alone tells me that it’s not a worthy novel, because if it had been really good, it would have pulled me out of the minor irritation I had brewing, and taken me somewhere else. It failed. For that alone, I'd have to rate this as a warty, although I'd never claim that there couldn't be varieties of deep geek who might like bits of this novel. I even liked bits myself. Just not enough bits.
