tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47132359161327707472024-02-07T21:29:30.614-06:00NovellumA book review blog, including writing about writing using reviewed books as examplesIan Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comBlogger5000125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-73890337741486572392021-12-12T07:06:00.015-06:002021-12-13T17:02:35.878-06:00The Twelfth Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
So the Twelfth and last Day of Christmas reviews is finally here! Yeay! My last ever! That's not to say I won't ever back to, perhaps, fix a review if I find a mistake in it, or maybe even add a note or an idea here and there if inspiration strikes me, but the grind of reading and reviewing, and writing and posting reviews is at an end, and it's such a relief to know I never have to do any of this again! From now on I read purely for pleasure. So this final day is a wish list if anything, and it's a wish for tired tropes and clichés to be banished from novels, TV shows, and movies. So this last day is a look at novels, plots, and genres which are essentially trope to the max.</p>
<p>
Some tropes are expected in various genres - it's what genre really means I guess, but there's a difference between generically following conventions in a genre and in outright retreading previous stories that have already been done to death. Even the accepted standard tropes need to be busted to keep things fresh, and there's nothing I despise more than an author who robotically writes a cookie-cutter story that's really no different in any substantial way to anything that's gone before.</p>
<p>
I was decided on this topic when I tried to read the novel titled <i>Graveyard Shift</i> by Angela Roquet recently, and it makes for a great finale to my twelve days. The novel was a grim reaper sort of a story where the reaper is a woman instead of the usual guy, and apparently there's more than one reaper.</p>
<p>
The story reminded me a bit of Spongebob Squarepants which my kids used to watch. Though the stories in that TV cartoon concerned only sea creatures and it's set on the seabed under god knows how many fathoms of pressure, the characters all act and behave exactly like humans who live on land with an atmosphere of air - and they have day and night! Spongebob works at a restaurant where they cook food - on a flame...underwater! A viewer should expect kids' cartoons to be goofy like that, but this novel was for grown-ups, yet it was still that kind of stupid.</p>
<p>
So this reaper has a ship - which she bought - <i>bought</i> - from a pirate with her co-owner, who is another female reaper. They have to ferry their charges across an ocean to an assortment of ports, so they're really the ferryman...woman, not the reaper. The ocean has pirates. Heaven has Saint Peter at the gate. Why is <i>anyone</i> needed at the gates of Heaven? Just asking. But every single trope is included and there's nothing fresh at all.</p>
<p>
This is why I could not for the life of me understand the mentality of an author named Kimberly Frost - of whom I'd never heard - who claims this novel is "darkly comic and wildly imaginative." In fact it's neither. It's not remotely funny and it's as <i>un</i>imaginative as it's possible to get. This does have the advantage of informing me that I need never read anything ever written by the apparently delusional Kimberly Frost, so thanks for that heads-up at least!</p>
<p>
The Harry Potter series was yet another fictional creation of this type, where women are witches and men are wizards and ne'er the twain shall meet! They all carry little wooden sticks which they wave while chanting two Latin words to create something out of nothing, and no matter how much magic they do, they never incur any cost for it. I guess that's what magic is, right: the ultimate free lunch, but if there's no risk and no cost, then where's the danger? Where's the excitement? Where's the compulsion to read? Fortuantely for Jo Rowling, she added enough new and original stuff that despite all of the tired trope, the stories were engaging - to millions! There's a lesson to be learned there.</p>
<p>
You know the thing that's always fascinated me about this free magic crap in her stories, is that those who do dark magic typically seem to have to pay a price - using blood or even a severed limb, so it makes me wonder, which is the real evil side here: those who are willing to pay a price to achieve their ends and those freeloaders who take all their magic and don't pay a penny - or anything of value - in return for it?! I have one remaining question: if magic is achieved by saying spells in Latin, how the hell did they ever perform magic prior to Roman times, and before Latin ever became a language?</p>
<p>
We see this same kind of garbage in vampire stories. The vampires are pretty much always timeless and ageless, with fantastical charms and winning ways, and it never costs them anything. They often have hierarchies and councils and all of them fall in line! There are no rebels. The older vampires are always depicted as more - never less - powerful. Why is that? Is it from the number of victims they take? Is it the sheer amount of blood they've drunk? Or is it merely the passage of years? It seems to me that if it's anything other than years, then any new upstart vampire could readily surpass an older one if he or she were willing to really go for it in drinking blood from numerous victims. No writer ever explores this because...we're gonna have to face it they're addicted to trope! (Apologies to Robert Palmer).</p>
<p>
The werewolf novel writers are no different. They have the same tropes. Wolves are always in a hierarchy with an alpha male. This isn't how humans typically work. They tend to be much more democratic and cooperative, particularly females, so why are writers (and very often female writers at that!) always having females kowtow to the males? And how come the wolf part of them is so much stronger than the human part, in that they behave more like wolves than like humans - or even than a fifty-fifty mix of human and wolf? And why are these were-writers too cowardly to break these rules and write against trope? Is it because they're really were-chickens? Or is it because they write for an audience that's so brain-dead they swallow these tropes uncritically like a bunch of sheep doing grass in a meadow? You know, even sheep will surprise you when you find out more about them.</p>
<p>
If any genre is irrevocably chained to trope, it's fantasy. Dwarves are always short, bearded and irascible. Elves are always tall, beautiful, ageless and skilled archers. Trolls and orcs are unevitably ugly and violent. Fairies are never to be called fairies - they're always 'fae'. Do these authors not know that 'fae' is a Scots word that is merely a variant of 'foe'?! It's also half of 'faecal' in the British spelling!</p>
<p>
Another trope is that names typically have an apostrophe in them. Why? This same thing happens in sci-fi novels, but an apostrophe means one of three things in a word. The first of these is that there are letters missing, and the apostrophe marks the gap. A lot of writers of one sort or another, make the mistake of using 'your' as a contraction of 'you are'. The missing letter is the 'A' in 'are', and so 'you are' is contracted to you're. The apostrophe marks the absent 'A'. So 'your' is entirely wrong, unless you're using it in speech or in a text message sent by an illiterate, which would be fine because uneducated - and even some educated - people do that. It's a serious error to use that in your descriptive writing. The question here though, is why would anyone have letters missing from their <i>name</i>?</p>
<p>
There's only one case where that happens, and that is, for example, in an Irish name like O'Conner, where the apostrophe marks missing letters of a sort. The origin of such names lies in the fact that this person is the daughter or son of Conner, and so is 'of Conner' which is shortened to O'Conner. But to randomly put apostrophes in a person's (see what I did there?!) name for no reason is the mark of a moron.</p>
<p>
The third case of apostrophes comes from some languages where there is a glottal stop in a word, which when transposed into English will employ a question mark to identify the stop, or some other character. Hebrew employs the aleph ⟨א⟩ to achieve this aim. In some cases, like in the translation of Arabic into English, an apostrophe is used, but none of this applies to names used in fantasy stories so W'T'F?! It's pathetic and pretentious, and frankly? Stupid.</p>
<p>
Private dick stories is another genre where tired trope (read tripe) flourishes. Despite the fact that he or she is brilliant, unsurpassed, and miraculous in solving the most intractable cases, the private dick inevitably has issues which for the life of them they cannot solve. The story can <i>never</i> be about a <i>successful</i> detective agency because the writer then has to actually do some work to make their story outstanding, whereas if they make their private dick exactly like all other dicks who've come before it makes it a lot easier to ejaculate trope on top of cliché, and never actually have to do any of the real work of creating a unique and inventive story.</p>
<p>
Another fine trope is the police detective, or alternatively, the special forces guy - always a guy - who has retired, but is so fucking capable and unique, and so utterly indispensable that no-one - and I mean no-one on the entire planet can hold a candle to them. So he - it's nearly always a he for the detective, always a he for the spec forces dude - has to be pulled out of retirement to solve a case or to fix an injustice because every other motherfucker on planet Earth is useless. Despite this, the special ex-retiree stellar credentials dude has issues just like the private dick. It's the one that got away, or the brother-in-arms he lost in battle who is on the spec dude's conscience; all tired, over-used and worn-out tropes.</p>
<p>
What about sci-fi? Here, it's the trope of a small renegade group of space pirates or other such rebels which always has, and I quote, "a misfit crew." Immediately I read that in a book description, that's the end of all of my interest in that book! You know that, just like in the Firefly TV series, and in the Star Trek TV series for that matter, the misfit crew is going to be perfectly brilliant. The best pilot in the galaxy, the best engineer running the engines, the best military guy in charge of weaponry, etc. It's farcical - and it's boring. There's never anything at risk or even any excitement because you know for a fact before you even start chapter one or watch episode one that, in the words of Bob Marley in <i>Three Little Birds</i>, "...every little thing gonna be all right."</p>
<p>
Star Trek is particularly pathetic because it's always the heroic, Mary Jane of a captain who goes. They always send all the senior officers on every away mission, which is frankly fucked-up in the head stupid, and begging for disaster. There's never anything at stake here, because you know that these pompous, self-satisfied dickheads will never come to harm. And where are the drones and robots? Despite society today being replete with robots and drones, Star Trek has zero robotics. Why is that? What are they afraid of? The closest they came to having one was the idiotically-named Commander Data, and he was turned into a running joke. Clown-mander Data, who is supposed to be trying to become human like Pinocchio, yet he has an 'emotion chip' that he can turn on and off at will? LOL!</p>
<p>
Star Wars, the other dumb-ass space opera, took this clown robot feature to another level, going entirely the opposite direction by having numerous robots, yet making every one of them invariably be a complete numbskull. I can't think of anything more useless or laughable than the Laurel and Hardy pair of stand-up comedians that deservedly aren't even given names. Here's the weird thing though: when they made a living version of C3PO that they ridiculously-named Jar Jar Binks, then this character, which in every way was <i>exactly</i> like C3PO save being biological rather than mechanical, it was universally reviled. Go figure!</p>
<p>
I don't watch Star Trek or Star Wars because they're such a tired joke, but I would watch a Star Wars where the first thing that happens in scene one is some impatient tough-guy blasting C3PO into smithereens as soon as he opens his stupid mouth, thereby eliminating that worthless piece of tedious trash permanently from the cannon. I'd pay money at a movie theater to see <i>that</i> Star Wars!</p>
<p>
Moving on, the local interest story set in a village with a cast of 'zany' characters is the same thing as the sci-fi 'misfit crew' story to me. For me, it's a huge no-no when it comes to deciding whether to read a novel. I have zero interest in reading about a 'zany' group of eccentric people and there are so many such novels published that it's truly tedious.</p>
<p>
Believe it or not, I actually enjoy a good romance story, but there are so few original and engaging stories out there as compared with the hoards of such books that seem to be nothing more than rubber-stamp versions of all previous novels, and which have tired tropes stacked-up to the ceiling. The woman who loses her job and her fiancé/boyfriend on the same day and goes running back to her home town is a piece of shit that's been done ten billion times too many. Even the very first one of those 'weak woman' stories was one too many. Another is the guy who comes back into his ex's life to win her back, and it's such a pile of horse dung that those books need to be burned if any books do. Yeah, he treated me like shit, but this time it will be different is a tragic lie women in dire need of psychiatric help tell themselves. It's called codependency. A variation on this is the regretted lost love, such as two that were in a recent audiobook flyer - the same flyer, essentially the same story: <i>Sweet Talk</i> by SL Scott has it that "Once college sweethearts, Danny and Reese eventually went their separate ways. Now, Danny is a top model who would do anything to win back the girl who got away." Barf! <i>Kiss Me in Christmas</i> by Debbie Mason claims that "Actress Chloe has locked lips with A-list Hollywood stars — but when it comes to her high school crush, Easton, she feels like she’ll always be an awkward schoolgirl. Can a little holiday magic change how he sees her?" Yuk! A third, and perhaps the most evil, version of this kind of story is the woman who is trapped somehow with the very man she hates, and yet inevitably falls in love with. Stockholm Syndrome anyone?</p>
<p>
So here's my Christmas wish: please, authors, ditch your tropes and write something truly original, truly inspiring, and truly new and fresh. Pretty please?</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-1501895120556804672021-12-11T15:28:00.003-06:002021-12-11T16:31:22.180-06:00The Eleventh Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #006600;">WORTHY!</a>
<p>
What's with all this negativity! Today I'm going to look at eleven writing tips that are suppsoedly aimed at helping writers, and we'll see if they're really of any utility. You might have noticed that whenever someone puts out a book that purportedly tells you how to write a best-seller, it's always by an author you never heard of before; it's never by the author of an actual best-seller! Unless of course they seriously do what I jokingly do - which is call my one novel that sold any amount, my best seller! LOL! Well, it's true, right? Out of what I;ve written so far, it did sell the best!</p>
<p>
So let's look at these writing tips and I'll toss in my two-cents worth for what it's worth. I've written over thirty novels, novellas, and novelettes, and if I say that each averaged a bare miminum of around 40,000 words, that's over a million words I've put down. I've also read, or tried to read, some 5,000 books at least, so that counts as some experience too. That sure doesn't make me an expert or a wizard prognosticator, but it does give me some amateur insights.</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Write What You Know About</b>. I call bullshit on this one. Here's how I know: Did Stephen King ever know a girl in high school who could move things with her mind? Did he ever meet a classic car that was haunted by a ghost or meet a gunslinger from a parallel world? The answer to all these questions, as I'm sure you already know, is a resounding 'No'! He never did. So how is he writing what he knows? Did Jo Rowling ever spend seven years going through the British schooling system among a bunch of witches and wizards? Nope. Did Stephanie Meyer ever meet a vampire or a werewolf? Sha right! Did Ian Fleming ever travel to exotic countries on spy missions durign the Cold War, battling master criminals? Nah! Did Suzanne Collins ever have to fight to the death in a vicious contest representing her district? No, she did not. None of these people were writing what they know. You know what they were all writing? What they could get away with! That doesn't guarantee sucess, and you will look like an idiot if you write outside your comfort zone without researching your topic properly, but you do not have to stick to writing what you know! You're writing fiction for goodness sakes! It's <i>all</i> made up. You don't have to write what you know, you just have to <i>look</i> like you're writing what you know, or at least make it so enthralling that your readers won't give a shit that you're making it up as you go along - which is what all of us are doing anyway!</li>
<li><b>Show, Don’t Tell</b>. This one I can get with, but again, you're the writer. You're in charge. You get to decide how much you tell, and how much you show. That said, it is tedious to be all Tell, William! It's called info-dumping, and no one wants that. But back to Stephen King. I'm not a fan, but this is a guy who's made a career out of info-dumping every character's entire family history even unto the third and fourth generation of those that hate me! This guy cannot stop himself from telling up the wazoo, and he seems to have made a fine career out of it.</li>
<li><b>Allow Yourself to Make Mistakes</b> is a very misleading piece of advice. <i>If</i> you make those mistakes in your first draft, don't sweat them, but they had better be long gone by the time you self-publish your novel. Even if you publish with Big Publishing™ your editor will not catch them for you, nor will your beta readers. Only you cna prevent fiction fires I've seen far too many novels from the publishing establishment with the most egregious mistakes in them ot ever trust those fuckers. So yeah do whatever it takes to get your first draft written, inlcuding wiritng nonsense, ignroign msitakes and skippign gleefully over plot holes and <i>deus ex machina</i> devices, but be damned sure you edit it fully and in detail, and you fix every pothole on The Road to Wigan Pier before it ever sees the light of publishing.</li>
<li><b>Read So You Can Write</b> is another decent one. But your reading needs to be smart. If you're wanting to write in genre X, then read the best writers who have come before you in genre X. That doesn't mean you can't read other genres at all - sometimes a little cross-pollination is good for the soul of your work, but do read the best - and then <i>do not</i> copy them! Your work needs to be original, not a clone, not a cookie-cutter replica, not a retread. If you are widely-read in romance genre, do not set your next romance in space unless you also read some sci-fi first, otherwise you'll look like an idiot. The same goes for creating a modern day western - read some fo the classic westerns! You already know about the modern day so yourle covered there. The same applies to any cross-genre writing. Being an expert in one does not necessarily equip you to tell a story in another, even if you're transposing a genre with which you're intimately familiar.</li>
<li><b>Write and Write, and Write.</b> Apart from reading, the next best way to become good at what you do is to write. Don't imagine you have to work at writing your epic novel every single day all the live-long day. Some will advise you to write every day. but that can be soul destroying if you're going through a bad patch. Don't be afrair to 'bunk off' as the Brits say. Do be afraid to quit and never get back to it. One way to avid this is to write something different if you feel like you're getting bogged down. It doesn't have to mean starting a new novel, which coudl prove to be a serious distraction from getting that first one finished. It doesn't even have to mean writing something fictional. You could just write down what you did that day and elaboate on it. Or you coudl write what you'd really like to eat for dinner if your budget were limitless, or where you would spend your next vacation if the same financial restraints were gone. The point is not to get burned out. Forcing yourself to write, like itl;s a pchore or a punishment is the worst thign youc an do to yourself. Writign needs to be a joy if yourel goignt o makle a career out of it, so write that joy. A relaxed attitude doesn't mean you can afford to be totally lax. At some point you will need to knuckle down and get it done. But you do nto ahve to flag yourself. If you find you do, then you're fpding it worng! Yourel weigther wiritng the worng nvoel or takling the worng approach to it. Maybe it's not a comedy. Maybe it's a horror show. Or vice-versa. This is not a piece of furniture in a packing crate. It's not lead-crystal glass. It will nto break if you open it from the other side, get it wet, or drop it! Do not be afraid to stand it on its head to figure that out.</li>
<li><b>Write Even When You Feel You Have Nothing to Say</b>. This sounds like the opposite of the previous observation, but the thing is, if you really want to write, don't stop yourself by saying, "I don't have it, I'll just take today off." Use the mood! Go ahead and write, even if it doesn't fit with the rest of the story. Even if you edit the whole thing out on the penultimate read-through. If you feel the need to write, then get our of your way and let yourself write, even if it's nonsense. Even if it's a different story. Even if the chacter you killed-off two chapters ago wants to resiurrect themselves because they still have something to say or something to do. It's fiction, but it does need to breathe and move and have its being.</li>
<li><b>Don't let your first draft depress you!</b> William Shakespeare never did. He edited like crazy and he's considered a genius. I don't know if I agree with that, but he certainly has longevity doesn't he? And he made a living from his work during his lifetime, so he definitely had the write idea. Get that first draft done, employing whatever techiniques it takes to get you to the end. Let it sit. A good pot of tea has to brew for a while. Then taste it and see how much sugar and milk - if any, you need to add. Maybe it needs lemon, or orange, or honey? Those are the rewrites and they're much easier and more fun than the first draft, believe me. Book editors don't know how easy they have it.</li>
<li><b>Write What You’d Like to Read</b>. This was the idea that Marvel Comics' Stan Lee had, an he was a genius, but I'm not sure it's great advice. I mean it's a wonderful thing to be original, but that's not what readers are buying or publishers are publishing in this era of endless cloned YA trilogies and so on. It's really frustrating, which is why I self-publish. I do write what I'd like to read. I write what's missing from the cookie-cutter world of cloned literature that's so pervasive these days. it doesn't mean it will ever sell, not while readers are sheep and follow the crowd everywhere regardless of how boring and tedious it is to do so.</li>
<li><b>Keep a Notebook Handy</b>. Bullshit! No one in their right mind uses a notebook and one is useless when you're driving. These days you can send a text or an email to yourself (or anyone else!) even while driving - hands-free, that is! <i>DO NOT</i> text and drive using your hands! But if you cna send mail or texts using voice only, then while still focused primarily on your driving, by all means send your ideas to yourself as a text or an email, because while you will remember the best and most exciting ideas you have - they will come back to you even if you think you have forgot them - you will also forget a lot, and especially the details that sounded so good the night before, or that you worked out while waiting at the red light!</li>
<li><b>Be Disciplined</b>. I'm not into BDSM; nor would I need to be to write about it (LOL!), but writing discipline is another thing. It's back to thart idea of forcing yourself to write every day which we already decided is not a charmed idea. However, you do need to nudge yourself often and make yourself write most days to get that first draft done, no excuses. This is where the dicipline comes in.</li>
<li><b>Have Fun</b>! None of these so-called writing experts will tell you that, but it's really the most important advice of all. If you're not enjoying what you're doing, you're either in the wrong profession or, purely in the realm of writing - you're writing the wrong story, or the wrong plot, genre, characters, location - <i>something</i>! You <i>need</i> to have fun or you're going to be a miserable writer and your readers, should you garner any, will know it.</li>
</ul>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-91087746855842140782021-12-10T08:16:00.026-06:002021-12-10T10:02:43.550-06:00The Tenth Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
For the Tenth day, let's talk about interminably resurrected fairytales, shall we?</p>
<p>
<b>Beauty and the beast</b> Did you know there is over TWO HUNDRED retellings of this fairytale out there? That's pretty much 200 too many. Here are some I've had at least a passing acquaintanceship with:</p>
<ul>
<li><i>Rebel Rose</i> by Emma Theriault is one I ditched recently.</li>
<li><i>The Scarlet Rose</i> by Valia Lind is one I Non-Reviewed.</li>
<li><i>Rose Daughter</i> by Robin McKinley is anotheer. Notice a commonality here?</li>
<li><i>Beauty and the Professor</i> by Skye Warren.</li>
<li><i>For the Wolf</i> by Hannah Whitten seems to me to be another one. Maybe not. Maybe it's just a <i>Red Riding Hood</i> redux, but if it was a mix of the two at least that would be <i>something</i> new, right?</li>
<li><i>Cruel Beauty</i> by Rosamund Hodge was one I actually liked, believe it or not.</li>
<li><i>Beast</i> by Christine Pope, who has three strikes against her for me. I've tried three of her novels and haven't liked a single one of them so I'm done with her as a author.</li>
<li><i>Bellamy and the Brute</i> by Alicia Michaels is another a reviewed negatively a year or so ago.</li>
<li><i>Uprooted</i> by Naomi Novik is another bad one.</li>
<li><i>Of Beast and Beauty</i> by Chanda Hahn was another yawn.</li>
</ul>
<p>
<b>Cinderella></b> has literally scores upon scores of re-writes. It's tedious.</p>
<ul>
<li><i>Cinderella Screwed Me Over</i> by Cindi Madsen. The title is, I admit, mildly amusing even though it makes no sense, but this is another one that I reviewed negatively.</li>
<li><i>Cinderella Assassin</i> by Allie Burton is a Non-Review for the stupid book description.</li>
<li><i>Midnight Wings</i> by Ariele Sieling yet another Non-Review based on the dumb-ass book blurb.</li>
<li><i>The Dragon Choker</i> by Stephanie Alexander was another fail.</li>
<li><i>Cinderella Is Dead</i> by Kalynn Bayron. How I wish that were true! But Cinderella will never die.</li>
<li><i>Cinder</i> by Marissa Meyer was a winner, but it still had serious issues. And I quickly gave up on the series it started.</li>
<li><i>The Shadow in the Glass</i> by JJA Harwood - another loser.</li>
<li><i>Cinders</i> by Cara Malone. WARTY!</li>
<li><i>Ella the Slayer by AW Exley. Warty to the max!</li>
<li>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-68234282694716775122021-12-09T14:04:00.004-06:002021-12-09T14:07:47.036-06:00The Ninth Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
This list of Young Adult novel tropes and clichés first appeared in my parody novel <i>Dire Virgins</i>. This is why you will find references here to names of characters appearing in that parody, such as eLess, Mox, Tatu, Toby-Ass, Tokina, and so on.</p>
<p>
<b>Gender</b><br>
Your main character must be a female, typically fourteen to seventeen years old. My main character, eLess is perfectly in the sweet spot here as indeed are pretty much all of the successful Hunger Games rip-off novels.</p>
<p>
<b>Appearance</b><br>
The Main Female Character (MFC) must be homely and plain in appearance, but not outright ugly, and she must know this about herself only too well. eLess knows this intimately about herself as do most MFCs in nearly all YA trilogies and series.</p>
<p>
<b>Nomenclature (part one)</b><br>
The MFC must have a long, if not outright spectacular name, but the name must be shortened to something cheap and nasty to infantilize her. Hence eLess: the perfectly-demeaning name.
Note that if your MFC or her parents (if in existence - see Parental Units, below) fails to shorten it, one of the inevitable two guys (see Inevitable Triangle, below) must shorten it for her, or give her a demeaning pet name. 'Stiffie' is a good demeaning name and has the advantage of being rife with double-entendre.</p>
<p>
<b>Socio-pathology</b><br>
The MFC pretty much has to be a loner, virtually, if not actually, hence eLess, although surrounded by members of her fiction in this novel, is the only one (so she initially believes) from Abjection, and she's the smallest, which both isolates her and contributes strongly to the necessary infantilization and marginalization of your main female characters.</p>
<p>
<b>Mentality</b><br>
The MFC has to have extraordinary issues - that is, she must have mental problems which aren't normal for a child her age. eLess, for example, is haunted by her betrayal of Abjection.</p>
<p>
<b>Isolation</b><br>
The MFC must arrive at a new faction/group/school/town/tribe. This facilitates her both being a loner, and being 'special'.</p>
<p>
<b>Companionship</b><br>
The MFC has, or soon ends up with, a quirky side-kick (who I tend to like far more than the main character!). In eLess's case, this is Tokina, the token black girl (see Tokenism, below)</p>
<p>
<b>Parental Units</b><br>
At least one parent, preferably both, is not in the picture. The best way to do this is to have them killed off tragically, or stupidly, as I do with both eLess's parental units.</p>
<p>
<b>Older Influence</b><br>
This isn't really critical, but it can add a certain poignancy to your fiction, especially if you kill off the older influence. So your character might be unusually close to an older relative such as a grandmother. In eLess's case, the older influence is Tatu who gets killed off, which is sad, but only because she's the only Asian in the entire novel.</p>
<p>
<b>Betrayal of your MFC</b><br>
Yes, your MFC must be betrayed in the novel, but it's also very effective to completely undermine your novel by creating a purportedly strong main female character, and then undermining your work by depicting all other female characters in traditional gender rôles as though it's the 1950's.</p>
<p>
<b>Male Influences</b><br>
The MFC's father cannot ever be the biggest male influence in her life. That's a huge mistake, because we know that this never happens in real life. No, your MFC must have at least one, preferably two, preferably slightly older guys who can completely overshadow and very effectively replace the father figure. The guys must be hot and if she's going to have two, they must be polar opposites who immediately show an unnatural interest in her and quickly become the controlling power in her so-called life; never underestimate the importance of this. Your MFC cannot, I repeat absolutely cannot be allowed to take charge of her own life or even have a life outside of the pernicious influence of at least one guy. This is critical. Never forget that she's not a woman but a girl and therefore must be controlled by a guy at all times. eLess, as you know, is entirely under the power of Toby-Ass aka 10:4 and it's just a wall that she is.</p>
<p>
<b>Age of Male Influence</b><br>
The guy is typically the same age, but preferably somewhat older in order to become her symbolic (if not with some bollocks) father as well as her lover. Why is that wrong?</p>
<p>
<b>Electricity</b><br>
Even societies in the most chronologically distant fantasies have electricity. It's between the MFC and at least one guy whenever they touch. It's shocking, I know, but you cannot forget this, otherwise you risk your MFC operating on her own and that would never do. You must amp it up by having your MFC recharged at regular intervals. It's currently how these trope MFCs are controlled, rather like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are controlled by withholding an enzyme. Your MFC cannot truly have any power; YA insists that women aren't wired that way.</p>
<p>
<b>Brooding</b><br>
At least one of the guys must be brooding (no word on when the eggs will hatch) and secretive, preferably both.</p>
<p>
<b>Nudity</b><br>
The MFC <i>must</i> see the guy without his shirt on, and quite soon after she meets him. If you can have him stripped down when she meets him, this would be perfect. Why? Read on....</p>
<p>
<b>The guy is muscular</b><br>
In stripping the guy, the young, impressionable, female readers get to see his 'chiseled abs'. 'Chiseled abs' are critical because you know that no guy who lacks them is of any value whatsoever. In fact, such sickly and worthless guys need to be exterminated ASAP. The Nazi's had it right with their ideas of Aryan perfection, which you will see running rampant in all YA fiction rip-off trilogies. Also, if you can actually use the word 'chiseled', do so.</p>
<p>
<b>Hate = Love</b><br>
The girl and the guy hate each other on sight but this 'hatred' is really just another word for instadore. Some people employ the term 'insta-love', but it's not actually love, so my phrase is much better. Note that this is in full compliance with the long established principle that guys have been taught to employ, which is that 'No' and 'Yes' are interchangeable, and can actually mean the same thing, especially when said by a girl. There is no such thing as rape in a YA trilogy, so feel free to have at it, as indeed should all your male characters, and especially if they're 'dumb jocks' because no jock can be smart, and no girl can be a jock!</p>
<p>
<b>The guy is troubled</b><br>
At least one of your YA guys must be deeply troubled over something (which can, in the end, be completely trivial), but only your special girl can wheedle out what this trouble is.</p>
<p>
<b>n Each Other's Arms</b><br>
Your MFC must end up in at least one of your guy's arms because of some ridiculous happenstance which literally throws them together. The train rides in <i>Dire Virgins</i> are the engines of this locomotion, and accomplish it admirably and keep things on track.</p>
<p>
<b>The Weak Girl is Injured</b><br>
No matter how special your MFC is, she must be injured to show how tough she is - because toughness only equates with physical injury - never anything else. Once you have her injured, you can immediately negate this purported toughness by having your guy rescue her and nurse her to health. The guy must take care of her even when a parent (if in existence), or her bestie, or even competent and willing medical personnel are available, because no matter how special your MFC is, the guy is more important, and much more heroic than your MFC can ever hope to be. Never forget that.</p>
<p>
<b>Aryan Supremacy</b><br>
The guy's eyes are Aryan blue. Period. No exceptions. No brown eyes. If you have two guys and insist upon giving one of them another color, make them green. Brown eyes, like brown skin are verboten in YA fiction except as minor throw-away characters. And you know that.</p>
<p>
<b>Hair Apparent</b><br>
At least one of your guys must have hair falling into his blue eyes. I cannot overstate the importance of this. If you have the two polar opposite guys, then it must be the lower-class, bad-boy guy who has the blinding, eye-piercing hair.</p>
<p>
<b>The Inevitable Triangle</b><br>
Two guys are better than one, and some of the ground rules listed here will have to be adjusted to make room for two guys. In this case, both guys are unnaturally and/or irrationally attracted to plain vanilla MFC instantly, and for no reason. The two must be polar opposites, one 'good', and one 'evil', yet the MFC loves them both equally and cannot possibly choose between them, often going back and forth between them as the plot dictates. She cannot survive without either of them. One of hot pair must be clean-cut, spoiled, wealthy, self-absorbed, and he is brooding, with a dire secret, whereas the other guy is lower-class, works with hands, has chiseled muscles and hair falling into his eyes, and he is brooding, with a dire secret. There can be no exceptions to this rule. This bad guy must touch the MFC inappropriately, and talk to her like she's his property, and she must never see anything wrong in his conduct. If he's an adventurer, his name must be Jack. At least one of these guys must stalk or at least creepily follow the MFC all around; he's always there, yet she finds no problem with this, nor even when she discovers he's watching, or has watched, her sleeping. The MFC is overcome by the wilts and the vapors and/or is unnaturally and/or irrationally curious about at least one of the trope dude(s), each of which also has non-standard issues just like the MFC. At least one of these guys has some dirt on the other which he fails to share with the MFC because she's just a girl. At least one of these guys, preferably the 'good' guy, must have gold flecks in his eyes.</p>
<p>
<b>Bitches</b><br>
You cannot possibly have a YA trilogy without having at least one (and preferably more) girl(s) who are outright bitches and who completely detest the MFC for no reason whatsoever. These bitches must serve no purpose at all other than to be bitchy. Ideally, one of the bitches has some sort of hold over, or dirt on, or a previous/ongoing relationship of some kind with trope guy.</p>
<p>
<b>Lunches</b><br>
If it's a school setting, the school lunches are invariably nasty.</p>
<p>
<b>Embarrassment</b><br>
As if YA trilogies aren't already embarrassing enough, at least one of the trope guys must catch the MFC doing something odd/ juvenile/ embarrassing/ sentimental. Ideally, this will be in an intimate situation where the girl is at least partially undressed, or is wearing a swimsuit. This activity is readily tied to the next one in the list for even greater trope and cliché.</p>
<p>
<b>Caught in the non-act</b><br>
The couple is caught <i>in flagrante delicto</i> by the bitchiest girl in the faction/ group/ school/ town/ tribe, who now has 'dirt' on them. This is best used where the 'dirt' she has is so harmless or mild that it's quite plainly stupid to even make an issue out of it.</p>
<p>
<b>Evil That's Not</b><br>
The MFC must, at some early point in the story, suspect at least one of the guys of perpetrating some evil act that turns out not to be evil, or that turns out to have been unavoidable (for example to prevent a greater evil), or he was set-up.</p>
<p>
<b>Out of Character Experience</b><br>
Rather like the fictional out of body (OOB) experience, your MFC has to be presented with a challenge or opportunity that if she were playing true to her established character, she'd avoid in a millisecond, but which she takes on anyway.</p>
<p>
<b>Nomenclature (part two)</b><br>
Minor characters must have calculatedly super-kewl names that border on the absurd. Don't even think about looking up likely names to match the birth year of your characters so you get something that's actually realistic. That's just plain stupid. Instead, come up with the most out-of-the-ordinary names you can possibly think of, no matter how stupid they seem. One easy ruse is to use family names as first names for characters, so names like Anderson, Bailey, Carter, Conner, Cooper, Ellis, Emerson, Kennedy, McKenzie, Morgan, Parker, Preston, Quinn, Walker, are perfect, but note that you can never shorten these names. McKenzie, for example, is never called 'Mac', Kennedy is never 'Ken', Preston is never 'Prez', Conner is never 'Con', and no two characters can ever have the same name because this never happens, even in real life.</p>
<p>
<b>You're Special</b><br>
The MFC must be somehow special, even in a novel that isn't fantasy or magical. She must have powers or traits which make her highly desirable for admission to clandestine organizations, or to save the world even though she's just a kid.</p>
<p>
<b>Don't Go There!</b><br>
When it comes to 'don't go there' you must always go there in YA fiction. It's just stupid not to. If the MFC is warned away from becoming involved in a new, preferably risky opportunity/ endeavor/ activity or from visiting a location, she must ignore all warnings no matter what, and do the very thing she shouldn't, even if it's completely against character and makes no sense. Preferably she should be encouraged to do this and accompanied by the bad leg of the triangle. If you're really good, you can turn this event into a rift between her and the good guy, thereby artificially raising the melodrama of your novel.</p>
<p>
<b>No Adults Allowed</b><br>
Whether she started out as a loner or not, your MFC must end-up in teen group which has little or no adult supervision. Indeed, no teen in your novel can ever really have adult supervision.</p>
<p>
<b>Young Girl</b><br>
This group she hangs out with behaves uncomfortably below the chronological age of its members, and your MFC sees no problem with this no matter how grown-up and responsible she was beforehand. If you write this properly, you can make her naughty behavior be the cause of an accident, preferably occurring to the good trope guy who is heroically trying to save her from herself, and his resultant injury then causes her all manner of deep guilt.</p>
<p>
<b>Kissing (part one)</b><br>
Kissing and intimacy must be indiscriminate and shameless. The MFC must end-up kissing at least one trope dude quite early in the story - preferably the bad guy.</p>
<p>
<b>Kissing (part two)</b><br>
Shortly after that first kiss, your MFC must shamelessly kiss the other trope dude.</p>
<p>
<b>Kissing (part three)</b><br>
Your MFC must slut-shame all other girls who do the very same things she is doing, but your MFC must remain a virgin no matter what.</p>
<p>
<b>Tokenism</b><br>
Your novel must be racist or bigoted. Extra credit if you can do both. Thus, <i>Dire Virgins</i> has only good, honest, decent white folk in it, but it has two token people of African descent: Mox and Tokina (hence her name), and one Asian, Tatu, because of course tattoos and drugs can only be dispensed by Asians.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-58892244968750087512021-12-08T08:49:00.005-06:002021-12-08T08:52:14.762-06:00The Eighth Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
Today features eight stories from <i>Tales From the North Road</i>, every one of which was warty! This was one of those compendia of short stories designed to showcase the work of several writers who, judged from their names, are Scandal-navians! It so happened that this particular volume had eight stories, every one of which was warty, so it's perfect for today!</p>
<p>
This was one of those volumes where a contents list made at least some sort of sense because there were eight different writers and no sequential path through the stories. They could be read in any order. The problem as usual was that once you got to a story, there was no way to get back to the contents by, say, tapping on the chapter heading to return. On the e-reader I was using, you have to tap the screen, then slide the bar back to the left to go to the start, and there's no way to gauge where you are exactly. It's clunky and pathetic in today's world.</p>
<p>
Here are the stories:</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Eden</b> by Andreas Christensen is a story of a generation ship that has been zooming through space for two centuries at least. He talks of a "starry nigh sky" - something a spell-checker will not catch, but the thing is, he also says no one alive on the ship had been born when it left on this journey, so the character's 'reminiscences' of blue sky, trees and that starry "nigh" sky were bullshit since he's never seen them himself. But he also talks of being a prisoner of war who was brought aboard more dead than alive, which is utterly ridiculous and flatly contradictory. I gave up on this garbage.</li>
<li><b>The Curse of the Elf Prince</b> by Linn Tesli begins with barely intelligible flowery language and opens with this elf who is spying on female elves who are swimming nude, and his only interest is in their bodies. That's not the image you want to present of your main character. I quit reading this one in the second paragraph.</li>
<li><b>The Fugitives</b> by Theresa Marie Sanne was first person, so I never even began reading it. First person most often sucks and not in a good way.</li>
<li><b>From His Taste in Wine</b> by an author with the stupendous name of Ole Åsli had the word 'hobbling' in the first sentence and 'halfling' in the second which told me <i>exactly</i> what this story would be like. I quit it right there.</li>
<li><b>Point of Return</b> by Paul S Land is about the eponymous location being invaded by what sounded like a Viking hoard. As soon as I read "We must send for help from Deephold..." I quit reading this because it was clear right then how uninventive and trope-ly boring it would be.</li>
<li><b>Angel in the Snow</b> by Laila Sandvold Macdonald made such a big deal of the 'it' in italics, that was pursuing this guy escaping through a snow-laded pine forest that it became quickly tedious. I know it's a short story, but this farcical laboring of <i>it</i> pissed me off so much that I quit reading after the fourth or fifth mention. It had become a joke - like this was a parody rather than an actual story. Is <i>it</i> hardly surprising then that Macdonald is the one author of these eight whose name is omitted from the contents list?! LOL! The story was also one continuous paragraph because of poor formatting. Even the bolded header for part two was right there inline with the rest of the text. Somebody screwed up royally.</li>
<li><b>2100</b> by Matts Vederhus was a story I quit reading in the second paragraph when I read: "Suddenly Anne Cathrine [sic] appeared in his side view. She had blonde hair that stretched to her shoulders. Her breasts were the size of small watermelons." Note that this isn't some character saying this, which would be fine because there are guys who reduce women to purely skin-deep. No, this was in the author's own hand in a descriptive passage, so clearly women in this author's world are nothing more than fuck-dolls. That was the end of that story for me. I must confess to some intrigue however, by the employment of the phrase "small watermelons." Why not large grapefruit? Or even just 'grapefruit'? Is it the idea that melons is a sad euphemism for breasts that drove this? That, too, is as informative as it is condemning.</li>
<li><b>The Revelation</b> by Alex Tovsen was first person so I didn't even start on that.</li>
<p>
One collection, eight stories, all warty to the max. Here endeth the eighth lesson.</p>
</ul>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-13884316952125314472021-12-07T10:10:00.004-06:002021-12-07T10:14:32.100-06:00The Seventh Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #006600;">WORTHY!</a> (The First Two) <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a> (The Last Five)
<p>
<b>Nenek Tata and the Mangrove Menace</b> by Judith Vun Price, Jacqui Vun</p>
<p>
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.</p>
<p>
This is, I think, to be my last advance review copy book. I've now completed 1,400 such reviews through Net Galley, as well as others from other sources, and it's high time to retire from this - which really does nothing to help <i>me</i> at all - and focus on my own work for a change.</p>
<p>
I can't think of a better book to end that streak on than this one, which was a truly fun <i>and</i> educational book set in Borneo, where older couple Tata and Jantan, of the family Nenek, are starting their day to the unnerving news of a storm brewing. The story is told very well by, I believe, Judith Vun Price, and illustrated exquisitely by, I believe, Jacqui Vun in bright colors and playful illustrations.</p>
<p>
They start this ~35 page book and their day enjoying their coffee, and then they split up, with Jantan heading to town on his bike to purchase some supplies, and Tata doing an assortment of chores in their homestead, including feeding the ducks, chickens and pigeons, as well as her pet cat, which is actually a clouded leopard kit.</p>
<p>
Next she has to cut some juicy grass for the buffalo and finally, she must go empty the crab traps. Unfortunately, this is when she encounters the horrific mud-beast which follows her home! Her brave antics and the resolution to the story are amusing, educational, and highly entertaining.</p>
<p>
This was a great story and it contains a glossary at the end to clear up any confusion from some of the local terms used in the story. I enjoyed this immensely and commend it fully as a worthy read.</p>
<p>
<b>Harry's Lovely Spring Day</b> by NGK, Janelle Dimmitt</p>
<p>
Riffing off the town mouse and the country mouse idea, this is a meticulously drawn (by Dimmitt) and nicely-written, short picture book about Harry Mouse who becomes homeless and is helped a little by Katie Mouse (no relation). Katie lets him have her umbrella and raincoat on a nasty night because she's going to the country. Harry is so happy the next day that he seeks out Katie in the country and has quite the chore in tracking her down. The book was fun and pretty to look at. There's no indication where the story takes place but to me the illustrations had a distinct French flavor to them, although I can't really pinpoint why. But the book told an interesting story for young kids and I commend it.</p>
<p>
<b>The Haunted Hotel</b> by Wilkie Collins</p>
<p>
This was yet another in a forlorn and long line of attempts to read the classics. It met pretty much the same result: tedium. The story was boring, drawn-out, rambling, and going nowhere. I made it barely a quarter of the way through before I gave up. At least it gave <i>me</i> an idea for a story so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but whether I'll ever write that one, is an open question.</p>
<p>
It's hilariously subtitled "A Mystery of Modern Venice" given that it was written in 1878. Doubtlessly Venice was modern back then just as it is now, but it amused me. Quite literally nothing happens in this novella in the first six chapters and apparently not for considerably longer even than that from what I've read about this book, but I can't really comment past the point I read.</p>
<p>
In a novel titled 'haunted hotel' one expects there to be some sort of a haunting quite early in the story but no, there isn't! This doesn't even occur in the first <i>half</i> of the story, so I understand now, and even then it's questionable as to what's going on. Personally, I suspected that the disappeared man might well not have disappeared at all, but still be hiding out in the hotel and this is why it appears haunted, but I have no idea if this is the case.</p>
<p>
There's no scene setting here. I'm not one for eleborate descriptive prose, but here we don't get any at all! We just get places named without anything supportive. The only real description I read was of a woman who visits this doctor right at the start of the story. She says it will take five minutes of his time, but it ends up consuming him, pretty much, and then either I missed them as a result of glazed-over eye syndrome, or both of these characters simply disappeared from the story. Maybe they reappeared later, past the point at which I quit, but I honestly do not care. Neither was interesting or appealing.</p>
<p>
Everyone is stupid in the story. When his Lordship dies, it's written off as bronchitis despite his wife's (non-)brother avidly experimenting with noxious chemicals. It's like the author insists upon sending you a telegram whenever he's planning something, just so it doesn't take you by surprise.</p>
<p>
There were so many interchangeable characters introduced in such a lethargic way that I honestly lost track of who was who, which did not help of course! Given all the issues mentioned here though, I can't commend this remotely as a worthy read based on what I read of it. It told a profoundly boring story, and it completely failed to pique my interest.</p>
<p>
<b>Lady Audley's Secret</b> by Mary Elizabeth Braddon</p>
<p>
Written in Victorian times, this is both contemporary - for when it was written and historical, for when I read it. Those are the best kind of historical novels for they are authentic. Despite that, this was another forlorn attempt at the classics. I do intend to continue these occasional forays, despite being sorely disappointed most of the time, as I was this time. I didn't finish this one for the reason that it was tedious to read. It also seemed obvious to me that Lady Audley's secret was that she was the wife of adventurer George, who had gone to the antipodes to seek his fortune. The moron had not written a single word to his wife back in England, so she had thought him dead and consequently accepted an offer to marry Lord Audley, abandoning her son in the process. When George returns, he's told she's dead and buried. This is purely conjecture on my part. I do not know if it's true and I really don't care whether it is or not. This gave me an outline of a novel I could write myself, but whether I will or not remains to be seen. As for this one, I can't commend it based on the twenty percent or so that I read.</p>
<p>
<b>We Didn't Give Up</b> by Richard Carlson</p>
<p>
This is an English Welsh bilingual story about a mommie duck and her three ducklings, who are trying to take a walk to the pond, but the gusty wind keeps blowing them back. However, they do not give up and make it safely there in the end. Each part of the story is told first in English and immediately afterwards is repeated in Welsh. I do not speak a word of Welsh although I love the accent and have been to Wales several times. It's a sweet place to visit with lots to see. I have to say this is far more of a language tutorial rather than a picture book since the illustrations are very rudimentary and not in color. They're just simplistic and rather repetitive line drawings, so the purpose here has to be for the languages rather than the arts, and that said, the story is simple and repetitive. You'd think this would make it a lot easier to match the Welsh words to their English counterparts, but it really doesn't because there's no color-coding of matching words which would have been really easy to do. Without that we have to guess, so, for example, the Welsh word for pond appears to be pwll, which as far as I can ascertain without actually consulting a native Welsh speaker, is pronounced rather like 'pool' which is really easy to remember. The word for bridge is 'bont' which reminds me of 'pont' which is the French word for bridge, so for me, not a stretch! The thing is it could have been a smarter book, better laid out and better organized and failing that, and as simplistic and scrappy as this is, I really can't commend it at all. The author seems to be making a point about determination, but there's also such a thing as admitting failure and giving up. There's no shame in that and sometimes it's by far the more intelligent option!</p>
<p>
<b>Daughter of the Gods</b> by Stephanie Thornton</p>
<p>
This audiobook was far too fictional. Yes, Hatshepsut had a sister named Nefrubity, but it's not known how she died. It's assumed she died young since there is mention of her and then abruptly no mention of her. She may have died as an infant or toddler, whereas this story has her as the older sister nobly saving Hatshepsut's life when the latter was foolishly trying to hunt a hippo. It's highly doubtful that any of this is remotely close to the truth since the Egyptians above anyone would have known how thoroughly dangerous and unpredictable the hippos were, and no one but a congenital idiot - which Hatshepsut was certainly not - would go off alone trying to bag one, much less a child. That turned me off the story because it felt like such a cheap shot. What made it worse though, was that there was nothing interesting going on. Not even the hippo fiction was very good and I quickly lost interest in the story and DNF'd it. I can't commend it based on the part I heard.</p>
<p>
<b>Midnight Wings</b> by Ariele Seiling</p>
<p>
Ariele Seiling again. That name amuses me. This is yet another retelling of Cinderella, which I trashed in a non-review. Typically I have no interest in ever actually reading such a book, but it turns out this one was on offer for free as a loss-leader, so I decided to test my theory and see if the book really was as bad as my non-review painted it, and sure enough - it was! It just goes to show that even an admirable attempt to take Cinderella sci-fi, cannot make a good novel out of it if the author doesn't have the chops to really make the story different. I have now read two (at least!) sci-fi Cinderellas, both of them were part of a series, and while the other one was much better than this one, they both suffered from a lack of imagination on the author's part when it came to Cinderella and her prince. Both of them literally had a prince and the gist of the story panned put exactly as it had in the fairy-tale. Boring!</p>
<p>
In this one, Cinderella (called Eleanor here for unknown reasons, and going by El), lives on a space station with two step-sisters and a stepmother, all of whom are unrelentingly evil in the sense that they have zero regard for Cinderella and literally dump chores on her unrelentingly, yet she was also supposed to have a full-time job as a mechanic - and have some free time to go sit in the community greenhouse to get some peace and quiet - like there was none to be had at home when her family was all asleep. This endless tedium and repetitive cruelty made for a boring read. The bizarre thing was that this family had at least one servant and yet Cinderella was still doing all the chores! I'm like, what the fuck was the servant doing? Sitting on his ass all day? It made no sense.</p>
<p>
Neither did the sci-fi setting. The space station is ruled over by a queen; the prince being her son of course. Why was there a queen in charge of a space station? How the fuck would that ever happen? There was no explanation for this - or for anything else in this entire story. World-building was non-existent, which really wasn't surprising since the whole story was only 100 pages long. It was literally a prologue to draw readers in to buying the rest of this series, so it was barely a story at all, and since we already know how it's going to end, you'd think the author would put in a twist or two here and there to stir things up, but she never does. It was like an animated cartoon for children with farcical 'set-backs' and almost instantaneous resolutions. And Cinderella is such a Mary Sue. No matter what happens, she comes out on top notwithstanding the chores. Actually, on reflection, it's more like the first rough draft of an outline for a story. It's not a story in itself.</p>
<p>
Everyone on the space station supposedly has a 'social standing' score and because Cinders's sisters have trashed hers, she has a social standing of zero, which means she has no prospects. When this happened, how, and why, are completely ignored in this story! There's nothing about it other than a passing mention. Why there are even such scores on this space station isn't even touched on. Her means of getting out from under all this comes in the form of her penchant for playing "jet fighter" video games at which she's very good. When does she have time to play video games with all her chores? Again, this is completely glossed over, but evidently she's had sufficient time to become an ace. There's no explanation for why the callous step-sisters let her use their accounts, nor for why she doesn't have her own. Again, like everything else in this story, it's skimped and skimmed.</p>
<p>
El meets the prince - who is unknown to her, in one of her greenhouse visits late at night, She's sitting looking for some peace and quiet and this asshole just busts in on her unapologetically, acting like a clown with no regard for her solitude, and she doesn't even resent him for it. The bizarre thing is that she doesn't recognize him. There are apparently not <i>that</i> many people living on the space station, and only one of them is the prince - who must have his face all over the media - yet idiot El doesn't have a clue who he is. It's nonsensical.</p>
<p>
Of course she meets him again in her job because she's working on fixing his fighter "jet" naturally! And of course she doesn't know it's his. Unnaturally. Why the prince is flying fighter "jets" is again glossed over. Yes, royals do train in the military, often, but they do not, after their training, go on active service, putting the royal lineage at risk. On the contrary - they're protected from it, so the prince being an active duty pilot made no sense, especially since he was so bad at flying - repeatedly damaging his fighter - which is why El is working on it. Note that the Cinderella character in the other sci-fi I read was also a mechanic. Clone much, Ariele?</p>
<p>
Her chance to make a name for herself comes in the form of a contest, open to all citizens regardless of social standing, to find new "jet" fighter pilots. Why they need pilots instead of being able to use drones or AI is yet another topic which is completely glossed over. Why are there no robots in this high tech space station society? Who knows? On the same topic of technology, this ignorant author has no clue that jets don't work in space. They would not be called jet fighters, but that's how they're consistently referred to. Why do they have these and why are new pilots needed? There is no war going on - or if there is, it's never mentioned, so why this urgent need for fighter pilots? Again, the story is silent on the topic. Again, it makes no sense.</p>
<p>
There are so many ridiculously artificial (non-)barriers to El getting into the contest and the whole story is ridiculous at this point. "Friends" come out of the woodwork to help her, like woodland animals helping Snow White. It's asinine. And of course she ends up entering the contest quite magically. Yes, of <i>course</i> she's outstanding and of <i>course</i> she becomes a pilot.</p>
<p>
Of <i>course</i> her social standing score is wiped clean, but what that means is a mystery sicne it's already at zero. Isn't that wiped clean? LOL! The idiot prince never once questions why it was so bad or how it was possible for evil stepsisters to trash someone's score like they did. No one pays any penalty for their evil at the end, either.</p>
<p>
The whole story stunk from start to finish. I would have DNF'd it were it not so short. It's a horrible story and I actively discommend it. It's like the author not only wants to rip-off a tiresomely retreaded fairy-tale, that's been done to death already, but she also then wants to completely skimp on doing any real work to get it up and running as a viable story. On top of that, she wants us to buy her stuff based on this shitty example, when clearly she has no interest in doing any work to actually interest us in reading more. I don't get that mentality at all. To me, that was the only alien thing in this story! And the story completely confirmed my 'non-Review' assessment of it. QED! I rest my case.</p>
<p>
Thus we are finished with Day Seven.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-18629930723582334252021-12-06T09:05:00.002-06:002021-12-06T09:05:47.303-06:00The Sixth Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
Today on this sixth day, we look at poorly chosen topics for stories, the most egregious of which is a young woman losing her virginity. This is always about women because with men, there's never an issue. A woman on the other hand is presented as a different species where her entire worth is contained within her virginity. She has no other value. The word 'virgin' or its derivations are not mentioned in YA. It's always 'V' - like we daren't even really talk about what this is, so we'll use a code word...letter!</p>
<ul>
<li><b>V-Card Sharing Spaces</b> by Alicia Michaels. This could have been on the first day of Christmas since it's a first person voice story - inevitably - but Alicia Michaels already appears on that day for a different first person voice novel! It makes a reviewer wonder if she has some sort of a disorder which prevents her from writing in third person. This novel could also have been on the dumb-ass book covers fourth day of Christmas, since the cover of course is never going to show her hymen, or any of her hips or legs. It shows only her innocent face and her top sliding off her shoulders. But here it is because of the topic.</li>
<li><b>A Virgin for Two Brothers</b> by Jenika Snow. I hereby pledge to never read anything written by this author. This is a story told more than once by different authors where a virgin auctions off not only her virginity, but also in this case, her hand in marriage, and she's 'bought' by not one, but two men - brothers - so how the marriage is going to work is anyone's guess. Yuk. Just Yuk. And barf. There's the in-built assumption in these stories that some guy who's willing to <i>buy</i> a woman is automatically going to be her best choice for a partner. How fucked-up is that?</li>
<li><b>Cowboys & Virgins</b> by Alexa Riley is a bundle that includes "dirty alpha cowboys" and "innocent virgins ready to ride." Seriously? How innocent are they if they're ready to ride, and what is the 'innocent' virgin contrasted with? The guilty one? The rakish one? The slutty one? What a load of horseshit.</li>
<li><b>Pretty Virgin</b> by Alexa Riley (again) is another obnoxious title - telling us, hey, not only is she a virgin, but she's also pretty. No brown paper bag needed. That;s two strikes: Alexa Riley should be thoroughly ashamed of how she treats women.</li>
<li><b>His Virgin Acquisition</b> by Maisey Yates is no better. She seems to have made a career out of writing this garbage. Now a virgin is a business acquisition.</li>
<li><b>The Virgin Scorecard</b> by Lauren Blakely. Just the title of this is enough to make me nauseated; there's no need to read the blurb or have any clue what garbage is inside the covers. This same author has cloned this novel into at least a couple of others which are, as judged solely from the titles, exactly the same story over and over. Other titles include "The Virgin Game Plan," and "The Virgin Rulebook." All of these idiot books feature a buff-looking guy - and probably the same guy - topless on each over, because clearly the woman isn't important. Only her pussy, which is obviously represented by the 'V' in 'virgin'.</li>
<li><b>Virgin</b> by Radhika Sanghani is more first person bullshit - a story where the blurb claims she's gasping for it - sex, that is, because she 'hasn't done it' and she so desperately needs it. "Anyone out there want sex? Anyone? Hello?" the blurb asks. It's as pathetic as you can get. "Hey, what have I got to lose?" she asks like a fucking idiot. Well her disease-free status is the first thing that comes to mind....</li>
<li><b>The Virgin Who Bewitched Lord Lymington</b> by Anna Bradley is one of five clone books I list starting here.</li>
<i><b>The Caveman's Virgin</b> by Sam Crescent and Jenika Snow (yes, the same Jenika Snow) has a buff guy with a shaved chest on the cover who looks nothing whatsoever like any caveman ever did, and I seriously doubt that any caveman ever gave a shit about whether a woman was a virgin or not.</li>
<li><b>The Virgin and the Viscount</b> by Robyn Dehart. Robbing the heart? Seriously?</li>
<li><b>The Virgin and the Rogue</b> by Sophie Jordan is pretty much the same story as the one immediately above. The above novel describes Mathilda as a 'Lady of Virtue' like women who've had sex are nothing but cheap sluts. Men who've had sex are, of course, worldly rogues. Jody Picoult praises this, which merely serves to teach me that I need never read anything she's ever written.</li>
<li><b>Scandal's Virgin</b> by Louise Allen is yet another clone.</li>
<li><b>Virgin Marriage</b> by Alexa Riley has 'marriage' embarrassingly misspelled right on the fucking pink cover with the 'A' and the 'I' reversed. LOL!</li>
<li><b>The Virgin in the Ice</b> by Ellis Peters is a Cad-fail novel. What the fuck does it matter if she's a virgin or not - especially if she's frozen corpse?! Pathetic and shameful.</li>
<li><b>Virgin Unwrapped</b> by Christine Merrill leaves it in no doubt right from the title, what the value of the female character is: a present to give to a man and nothing more. If she's not a virgin when he 'takes her' and 'makes her his' then she's fucking worthless, of course. Thus author also has a novel titled 'Paying the Virgin's Price" because of course a virgin is worth something. A hymen-free woman is useless, so this author appears to think.</li>
<li><b>His Christmas Virgin</b> by Carole Mortimer makes it equally clear that virginity is a present to give and if you don't have that, then you have nothing to offer.</li>
<li><b>Talos Claims His Virgin</b> by Michelle Smart - who appears to be misnamed - makes it clear that every man is entitled to a virgin and he'd better get what he's owed. Most women need not apply.</li>
<li><b>Sins of a Virgin</b> by Anna Randol begs a question that I have no interest in learning any answers to.</li>
</ul>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-86433554776611873742021-12-05T00:10:00.001-06:002021-12-05T00:10:41.152-06:00The Fifth Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
So today we're looking at five books I've read in the last couple of months - or tried to anyway. Not a one of them pleased me! First up is:</p>
<p>
<b>Fairy Metal Thunder by JL Bryan</b></p>
<p>
This started out well enough except that the idiot main character was clueless. He didn't seem to exist beyond his evidently unrequited yearning for another character, which not only made him creepy, it also made him very shallow frankly. And if that's all he is, it doesn't endear me to him at all. It was far too YA for my taste.</p>
<p>
The story then abruptly switched from being a tale about a garage band to being one about fairies. At least the author had the guts to call 'em what they are instead of trying to hide their embarrassment under this pussy-footing chickenshit 'fae' euphemism. But the fairy world was boringly trope and less than thrilling. When this idiot main character, despite multiple warnings, stole magical fairy instruments for no apparent reason and without any establishment of any credible motive, it not only made no sense, but it also made him seem like a jerk, and a bigger loser than he already was. It was at that point that I just went off the story irretrievably and DNF'd it. I can't commend it based on what I read.</p>
<p>
<b>It Ain't Flat by Karl Beckstrand</b></p>
<p>
I've had such mixed luck with this author that I think this is the last of his efforts that I shall try reading, and this was another failure. The book is ridiculously short, and appallingly formatted, since it went through the Amazon Kindle conversion process and ended up - predictably so, for anything that's not the plainest vanilla text - as kindling. Amazon sucks and so does its Kindle system which is yet another reason I will have nothing to do with those assholes.</p>
<p>
As far as this "book" is concerned, all it was was a rhyming list of all the nations of the world - intended, supposedly, to be a way of memorizing them. Why anyone would want to do that, I do not know, but this isn't the best way to do it, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with flatness or otherwise of the globe and the formatting was so bad that it was barely readable, so I can't commend this - not even a little bit.</p>
<p>
<b>Wizard in a Witchy World by Jamie McFarlane</b></p>
<p>
This Jim Butcher wannabe was far too trope for my taste and involved such a hail of antagonism and violence that it turned me off from the beginning. I'm no fan of Jim Butcher's wizard series by any stretch of the imagination, although I loved his Alera Furies pentalogy, so anything that smacks of that bullshit is a non-starter for me and this did! This idea of 'witch councils' and territories and so on just makes me laugh out loud. It's so tired, and so were the magical practices described here. And what the fuck is up with the idea that if you're a guy you're a wizard, but if you're female, you're a witch? I hated that genderist horseshit in Harry Potter, and it's no less detestable here. There's nothing new in this book, and it bored me. I DNF'd it in short order and I cannot commend it based on what I did read.</p>
<p>
<b>The Origins of Heartbreak by Cara Malone</b></p>
<p>
This is the start of a loosely connected series of stand-alones called "Lakeside Hospital" which is nowhere near as bad as an actual series, but I still could not get with this, because the writing was really poor in a variety of ways.</p>
<p>
The story is about a woman who is training to be a a paramedic and her lesbian crush who is training to be a doctor. I liked the idea of this which is what drew me in, but when I started seeing how poorly it was written I decided enough is enough. At one point, for example, I read: "...then she’d walk from the hospital to campus and spent the rest of the morning" Wrong verb tense: it needed 'Spend'. Next I came across this: "...but he died shortly thereafter...." Who talks like that? Nobody! Later, I read, "...dic-in-training would cross paths again, at least not until Megan stared her rotations...." 'Started' was needed there.</p>
<p>
I don't think anyone knows better than I how a misspelled word or a bad grammar choice, or an oddball bizarre mistake can crop up in your text. When you're a one-person operation, it's easy, and I don't normally care about such mistakes, but when there is a high frequency, and a consistency to them, it makes me think the author doesn't care either, and I lose faith in them. Those issues were not the only ones though. I read, for example, when one character had a moment of vulnerability, the other character was trying to "...work up the courage to kiss Megan while they were sitting alone on that bench." Is the author having one of her two main characters seriously take advantage of a person in a moment of insecurity and weakness? That's really bad and very creepy and anti-romantic.</p>
<p>
Another error arose from the author pushing her story so much that she apparently forgot it's supposed to be set in a real (if fictional) world where things are happening and time is passing. I read, "In the five minutes or so that they were alone together...." Now this five minutes was apparently all the time it took to do a complete autopsy in this fictional world! Sorry but no! A real autopsy tales an hour or so. Maybe a bit shorter, often longer, and there's no way in hell its going to get done in five minutes no matter how experienced the coroner is! This was seriously bad writing. Later I read, "After a few minutes, during which she noted gratefully that no tears were threatening to rise in her throat...." Nope. Tears come from tear ducts, not from the throat. Maybe <i>something</i> was coming from her throat: difficulty swallowing, dryness, something, but never tears. That's just sloppy writing.</p>
<p>
So the problem with this was that I had the impression that the author was so intent upon getting these two characters into bed that she honestly didn't care how unrealistically she achieved that, and that she really wasn't interested much in creating a story around then or having them behave naturally, or having the romance arise organically from the relationship. That's why I DNF'd this and why I won't be reading any more of this author's work.</p>
<p>
<b>Magenta Mine by Janet Elizabeth Henderson</b></p>
<p>
I am honestly at a loss as to how this novel ever got onto my reading list. Seriously. I began reading it and halted with a screech at four percent. The screech was from my mouth when I read this obnoxious part where Harry is quite literally harassing Magenta. There's no other word for it. She works, of course, in a lingerie shop despite this being - from what we've read of her character to that point - the very last place she'd ever work.</p>
<p>
She's previously made it clear she has zero interest in him. Another woman, Harry's trusted business partner, has warned him off bugging her, yet he goes right into the store and starts trying to get her to date him despite having been rebuffed before. She clearly tells him no, and does it no less than four times. Then the idiot author has her hand Harry some lingerie to sort, "as long as he's there." Seriously? He takes a look at one of the thongs and says to Magenta, the girl who had just made it clear she wants nothing to do with him, "These would look good on you."</p>
<p>
It's fucking obnoxious and this author needs to be thoroughly ashamed, if not thoroughly shamed for writing this abusive trash. I not only do not commend this, I actively condemn it.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-14913294456497333662021-12-04T18:12:00.001-06:002021-12-06T09:13:14.181-06:00The Fourth Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
The Fourth Day of Christmas is book covers! Yuk covers! For me there are two main problems with book covers. The first and most egregious is that of featuring nude or near-naked females, or young women on the cover. They're almost exclusively young women, aren't they? Books about older women tend not the feature the main character on the cover, or if they do, the face is obscured or peculiarly absent. I can see how, though still inappropriate, a woman's body might figure largely on an erotica title, but curiously, most of those seem to feature male bodies, and none of the ones I'll list here are such novels anyway. Here are a few:</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Karma</b> by Donna Augustine features essentially a pair of legs. The woman's face is clearly unimportant since it's entirely in shadow. Who cares about her face when you can check out a great pair of gams? The ironic thing about this is that one of the first things mentioned in the novel is the woman's face. But it's a ridiculous first person voice story with the usual pointless contents list and it's worthless as a novel.</li>
<li><b>Zatanna's Search</b> is a DC comic about magician Zatanna, whose legs evidently take up three fifths of her body length. Comic books are the pits when it comes to portraying women.</li>
<li><b>The Housewife Assassin's Handbook</b> by Josie Brown features a headless woman - by dint of the fact that her entire body is shown from painfully high heels to her shoulders, but no head is visible because it's off the top of the cover. This is reminiscent of those magazines which routinely feature a woman's face on the cover, but her mind is obscured by the magazine's title. This used to be a common practice, sending the message that the magine title is far more important than a woman's brain, since her only useful feature is her pretty face. This story was another first person voice piece of trash.</li>
<li><b>Everblue</b> by Brenda Pandos has a very red cover, curiously enough because you cannot, by law - the law of the sea, in fact - ever have a mermaid whose hair isn't red. The thing is the mermaid's hair color was never mentioned in the original fairy-tale and the only red in that story was the sunsets, the flowers, and the seashells. So whence the red hair? Probably Disney, when they were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and desperately went back to their fairytale roots, and scored a hit! I don't have much time for Disney, and <i>The Little Mermaid</i> is one of only about three Disney animated movies that I actually like! Even then it was for the music rather than the usual dumb-ass Disney story. They only chose red hair to distinguish the Little Mermaid from Darryl Hannah's blonde mermaid who appeared in a live-action Disney movie - and apparently, inadvertently, and indirectly started a meme! This novel has one of the dumbest tables of contents ever created: it's literally a list of numbers 1 thru 60, covering three fucking screens. Seriously? The story begins on page 6 with the chapter titled 'Ash'. Chapter 2 is 'Fin' - get it ? A mermaid story featuring a guy named Fin? LOL! Fin quite literally manhandles Ash after pretty much drowning her in saliva generated by his non-stop physical wants. There's not a single word about her as a person. She's merely a female fleshbag for him to masturbate inside. It's all carnal all the way with Fin. Every chapter is back and forth like a fucking grandfather clock between these two assholes both narrating in worst person voice. What a pile of flyblown dogshit this one is!</li>
<li><b>Bound</b> by Kate Sparkes. Another redhead on the cover! Of course it;s a trilogy. It's YA! It's the 'Bound' trilogy! I automatically avoid any novel with the word 'bound' anywhere in the title. In this case the redhead isn't even remotely bound. Not a chain or a rope in sight. She doenslt look contrstrained in any way at all. Yet the title is 'Bound'. In fact, she appears about as unbound as one can get, standing outdoors in the wilds, in a creek, while seductively baring her cleavage. Go figure. Does that make her wet and wild? I don't care.</li>
<li><b>Flashover</b> by Annie Bellet. I get turned off byt he name Annie. I think it's from those long-ago CPR classes where you have to ask this dummy, modeled on an antique French drowning victim known as <i>L'Inconnue de la Seine</i>, if she's okay. You have to call her Annie, and of course she isn't okay: she has no legs or arms. I have to say that in general, I've liked Annie Bellet's work, including this one, but that cover sucks! Was it <i>really</i> necessary to picture a naked woman on the cover? Another redhead, too! It shows only her head and torso, so she's simultanoeously both topless and bottomless.</li>
<li><b>Big Girls Do It</b> by Jasinda Wilder. This consists solely of a woman pictured from the waist down, wearing black panties and red-violet thigh high stockings. All of this author's novels seem to feature naked male torsos on the cover except the big girl series, which is ostensibly about a 'fat girl'. That;s not my term. That term appears twice in this book and the word 'fat' appears many more times when describing the main character. The openign sentence reads, "My mom says I was always fat." I read one of these books and it actually wasn't bad, despite being first person, but the covers suck. They unnecessarily reduce the model to a vagina and a pair of legs, and the girl doesn't look remotely 'fat' to my eyes. She's not even big-bodied. At least not by my estimation. But doe sshe need to be reduced to her legs and gentialia? No! It looks like pretty much the same picture is used for every book in the series with the only change being the color of the stockings. It's not appropriate.</li>
<li><b>Big Girls Do It Better</b> by Cindy Larie is another offender. This series has nothing to do with Jasinda Wilder's series; it just uses the same title as one of her novels (or she uses the same title as one of Larie's!). The cover is still inappropriate - it shows a body up to the neck. Off with her head, as far as the cover is concerned, but at least it's actually a BBW in this picture. Not that that this makes the picture any better.</li>
<li><b>Loving Maddie from A to Z</b> by Kelly Jamieson has nothing but a pair of gray-scale legs wearing bright red shoes on its cover. Inside it has the usual useless table of contents, and while - at least - it isn't written in first person, it was boring. The author thinks she's being so daring and titivating, but there isn't a single thing she's purveying that outside of mainstream or even remotely daring.</li>
</ul>
<p>
In the other category - of weird or otherwise inappropriate covers, typically it will be where the cover has little or nothing to do with the story inside or the cover is just generally oddball such as:</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Too Clever by Half</b> by Will North. I never heard of Will North, yet this author puts his name up top on the cover in large letters like he's universally known! Go figure. I guess some people's ego looms large, huh? He's not the only such offender. I've seen it repeatedly. so that's one sin against this cover. Above his name he has 'International Bestselling Author" which requires no more than a one time score of 5,000 copies on the New York Times Best Seller list and you can use that title forever. If you buy those five thousand copies yourself, you're made for life, apparently! Who has ever done such a thing I do not know, but it's not impossible. Right below the author's name is a quote from another author I've never heard of, Robert Dugoni. Like this is supposed to win me over! Newsflash! Doing dumb shit will never win me over! This quoted guy says, "With beautiful writing, laser-fast plot...." Stop right there. Laser fast? Laser light is light. It's coherent light of one frequency which is what makes a laser so powerful, but that light travels, like all light, at light speed. So a laser is no "faster" than the light on your phone. Or your refrigerator light. I've heard of laser-focused, but never laser-fast. That's one of the dumbest things I ever read, so this immediately tells me I never want to read anything Dugoni ever writes, and it serves only to confirm I never want to read a novel by Will North either, and all of this came from the first third of the cover! For a title that contains the word 'half', the cover is divided into fifths. The top two-fifths are the sky, the middle fifth the surface of a lake, or maybe the ocean, and the bottom two-fifths are underwater, showing what looks like an Iron Age neck rings known as a torc. But it looks huge - too large to fit your average neck! In short, for me, the cover is a disaster. Inside, the contents list shows chapters "One, Two, Three..." and so on, so you can jump to any chapter, but who even wants to? It's stupid pretension that publishers insist upon blindly because they have never actually made the mental transition to the ebook medium. A contents list is pointless and moronic in an ebook, and this list covers three pages! This is followed by acknowledgments and so on, and a dramatis personae list which is so stupid in a novel. But ti gets worse! There's a prologue! I automatically skip prologues and often the fact that there is a prologue is enough to turn me off a book because if that's the author's mentality, I don't want to read anything they've written. So we'll leave it there.</li>
<li><b>Love is Love</b> by Mette Bach is one I reviewed negatively about three years back. I mentioned then that the cover has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anybody or anything in the entire novel. The main character, Emmy, is overweight, but the character pictured on the cover is a very slender androgynous person who bears no resemblance either, to the ftm transgender character in the novel. I'll bet that cover mdoel isn't trans either, which is a crying shame, notwithstanding how gorgeous they look in their androgyny. This is the problem with the cover, Some asshole cover designer slapped that on there without a single thought in their head as to whether it bore any relationship whatsoever to the story between those covers.</li>
<li><b>More to come</b></li>
<li><b></b></li>
<li><b></b></li>
</ul>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-8643305405015318482021-12-03T10:01:00.021-06:002021-12-03T10:39:48.316-06:00The Third Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
The Third day of Christmas is naturally trilogies! What a ridiculous waste of time they are. The first book is always a prologue. The second is nearly always awful, and the third merely serves to starkly highlight what a bloated waste of trees this effort was. The philosophy of the author is that of the publisher which insists on getting a three-fer rather than a singleton because they can milk far more money out of desperate suckers from three novels than ever they can from one. It works for authors too, because they have to do little to no work in volumes two and three, since they're merely recycling the same charcters, world, and plot with a tweak or two. They're really troll-ogies.</p>
<p>
Self-published authors readily adopt this scam, because they can give away the prologue for free in hopes that people will be suckered in to buying the next two - or however many more are to come. It's an extortion racket that works because people are sheep. Those with zero self-control cannot help themelves but to buy into the blackmail. I've read negative reviews of the first of a trilogy where the idiot reviewer concludes by saying, "But I'll probably still read the next volume just to see what happens"! Morons! So they're rewarding piss-poor writing. No wonder trilogies have bloomed like toxic algae.</p>
<p>
In passing, when I did a search online for trilogies, the Amazon-owned Goodreads individual-review website-killing steamroller showed up. They list two 'trilogies' that aren't even trilogies which just goes to prove what fucking morons the librarians at goodreads truly are. <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is a single volume. It was divided into six parts, and intended to be a companion novel with <i>The Silmarillion</i> which Tolkien had submitted as a follow-up to <i>The Hobbit</i>, but which was rejected by his publisher.</p>
<p>
Inversely, these same dipshit Goodreads librarians list the Twilight "Saga" as a trilogy when it was a tetralogy with three additional supporting volumes. The imbeciles at Goodreads cannot count! Their librarians are utterly useless. Trust me, I have personal experience of trying to deal with these assholes, and I gave up on them and quit having anything to do with Goodreads when I learned that Amazon had bought it. In passing, 'saga' is entirely the wrong title to label Twilight with. It has an entirely different meaning, and any author or publisher with an ounce of smarts would know this. By the same token, Goodreads lists <i>The Giver</i> as a trilogy when in fact it is also a tetralogy. Morons.</p>
<p>
Here's a selection of trilogies of which I've had some experience with:</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Apes and Angels</b> by Ben Bova. This is described as the second in a trilogy, but the first in the 'trilogy' is also described as a sequel to a previous novel, so how this works as a trilogy rather than a tetralogy or even a series is a mystery. I did not like it anyway, so another fail, regardless of what it actually was. Reviewed here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2017/11/apes-and-angels-by-ben-bova.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2017/11/apes-and-angels-by-ben-bova.html</a>.)</li>
<li><b>Children of Icarus</b> by Caighlan Smith is the start, so I understand, of a trilogy, but since the first volume came out in 2016 and the follow-up in 2018 and there's been nothing since, maybe this is dead in the water, which is the best place for it, believe you me. The first volume claimed to be rooted in Greek mythology but proved to have zippity to do with Greece or with mythology. Fail! My review is here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2016/08/children-of-icarus-by-caighlan-smith.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2016/08/children-of-icarus-by-caighlan-smith.html</a>.</li>
<li><b>The Dark Artifices</b> starting with <i>Lady Midnight</i> by Judith Lewis aka Cassandra Clare. I read the first of these because I loved the title and the plot didn't seem like it was too godawful. My review is here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2016/07/lady-midnight-by-cassandra-clare.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2016/07/lady-midnight-by-cassandra-clare.html</a>. The prologue (i.e. the first volume) was ridiculously long and the story that the book description promised never actually materialized. We're told that the protagonist lives to fight demons and yet in the first fifty percent of this novel that I could stand to read there was precisely one brief fight; the rest of it was the mind-numbingly tedious minutiae of the main character's life. It was boring as all hell. No thanks!</li>
<li><b>Daughter of Smoke and Bone</b> trilogy beginning with <i>Daughter of Smoke and Bone</i> by Laini Taylor, reviewed here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/04/daughter-of-smoke-and-bone-by-laini.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/04/daughter-of-smoke-and-bone-by-laini.html</a>. I read volumes one and two. Loved one, not so much 2, never made it to three. Again a disappointment with the story going steadily downhill instead of thrilling me.</li>
<li><b>Edelstein</b> trilogy starts with <i>Ruby Red</i> by Kerstin Gier. I liked this and the sequel Sapphire Blue, but the thrid volume failed for me. You can find links to all three reviews here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/12/emerald-green-by-kerstin-gier.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/12/emerald-green-by-kerstin-gier.html</a>. That URL is to the third volume, which begins with a prologue. Now this is volume three in a trilogy, so how is there a prologue? Aren't volumes 1 and 2 the prologue? This, to me, is hilarious and pathetic simultaneously.</li>
<li><b>Eyes Like Stars</b> trilogy by Lisa Mantchev. There was no indication on the book I read that it was the start of a trilogy, and though I liked this particular volume (review: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2019/11/eyes-like-stars-by-lisa-mantchev.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2019/11/eyes-like-stars-by-lisa-mantchev.html</a>), I ended it with no desire to read any more. One book is usually more than enough - if it's written well.</li>
<li><b>Gemma Doyle</b> which starts with <i>A Great and Terrible Beauty</i> by Libba Bray. The reviews for this trilogy can be found here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2017/04/a-great-and-terrible-beauty-by-libba.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2017/04/a-great-and-terrible-beauty-by-libba.html</a>, followed by <i>Rebel Angels</i> reviewed here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2017/04/rebel-angels-by-libba-bray.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2017/04/rebel-angels-by-libba-bray.html</a>, and concluding with <i>The Sweet Far Thing</i>: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-sweet-far-thing-by-libba-bray.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-sweet-far-thing-by-libba-bray.html</a>. Believe it or not, I enljoyed this trilogy, but that's because I enjoy Libba Bray as an author. Not all authors can carry a trilogy, but that doesn't mean that some talented writers cannot.</li>
<li><b>The Girl of Fire and Thorns</b> by Rae Carson turned out to be another trilogy I liked, and links to my reviews are here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/03/var-gaq-gaq-gaq_4.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/03/var-gaq-gaq-gaq_4.html</a>.</li>
<li><b>The Girl Who Kicks Ass trilogy</b> starting with <i>The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo</i> by Stieg Larsson is the start of this excellent trio. Links to all three reviews are here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-girl-who-kicked-hornets-nest-by.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-girl-who-kicked-hornets-nest-by.html</a>. I loved this without reservation. Loved the Swedish movies too. The English language remake not so much, although I admired Claire Foy's performance especially after seeing her in <i>The Crown</i>. Talk about chalk and cheese! What a difference in character portrayals!</li>
<li><b>Graceling Realm</b> starting with <i>Graceling</i> by Kristin Cashore, I review at the following URLs. <i>Graceling</i> at <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/06/graceling-by-kristin-cashore.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/06/graceling-by-kristin-cashore.html</a>, <i>Fire</i> at <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/06/fire-by-kristin-cashore.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/06/fire-by-kristin-cashore.html</a>, and <i>Bitterblue</i> at <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/06/bitterblue-by-kristin-cashore.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/06/bitterblue-by-kristin-cashore.html</a>. The beauty of this trilogy is that it's not a derivative series, all using the same characters. These three standalone novels are all set in the same world. I have a lot more respect for an author who can do that.</li>
<li><b>The Grisha Trilogy</b> starting with <i>Shadow and Bone</i> by Leigh Bardugo of which I review the first volume here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2014/08/shadow-and-bone-by-leigh-bardugo.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2014/08/shadow-and-bone-by-leigh-bardugo.html</a>. I have zero respect for Bardugo as a writer at all because she has no clue how to create intelligent female characters.</li>
<li><b>His Dark Materials</b> which starts with <i>The Golden Compass</i> by Philip Pullman, and which is probably my favorite trilogy wherein all three books follow the same character throughout. This trilogy consists of <i>The Golcden Compass</i> (reviewed: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-golden-compass-by-philip-pullman.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-golden-compass-by-philip-pullman.html</a>), <i>The Amber Spyglass</i> <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-amber-spyglass-by-philip-pullman.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-amber-spyglass-by-philip-pullman.html</a>, and concluding with <i>The Subtle Knife</i>: </a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-subtle-knife-by-philip-pullman.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-subtle-knife-by-philip-pullman.html</a>. These books were well-written, inventive, and original. They didn't repeat the same story three times over, and they told an engaging tale over all three volumes and showed a strong female main character who grew and changed over the course of the trilogy - and who didn't get a sappy happy ending, but who got a realistic one given the story premises.</li>
<li><b>The Hunger Games</b> trilogy (<i>The Hunger Games</i> <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-hunger-games-by-suzanne-collins.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-hunger-games-by-suzanne-collins.html</a>, <i>Catching Fire</i> <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/08/catching-fire-by-suzanne-collins.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/08/catching-fire-by-suzanne-collins.html</a>, and <i>Mockingjay</i> <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/08/mockingjay-by-suzanne-collins.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/08/mockingjay-by-suzanne-collins.html</a>) by Suzanne Collins. I liked this trilogy, but even so I have to say that volume two was essentially a repeat of volume one. There was enough difference in it to make it readable, but it was esssentially the same story again. This is a problem with trilogies.</li>
<li><b>The Maze Runner</b> which starts with <i>The Maze Runner</i> by James Dashner, the first volume of which I negatively reviewed here: <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-maze-runner-by-james-dashner.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-maze-runner-by-james-dashner.html</a>. I had seen the first movie and didn't think that was appallingly bad, so I decided to give the novel a try, but it turned out to be a real disappointment and I never went on to read any further. The real problem here, even with the movie, is that the story makes zero sense as I pointed put in my review. The boys are supposed to be training for something, but not a single thing they do in the maze prologue has any bearing whatsoever on anything they face afterwards, and if the scientists are so amazing that they can effortlessly create and maintain the maze environment in the first place, what can they possibly need with young and inexperienced boys? Or are they simply pedophiles and voyeurs?</li>
<li><b>Sprawl</b> trilogy by William Gibson, beginning with <i>Neuromancer</i> <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/01/neuromancer-by-william-gibson.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/01/neuromancer-by-william-gibson.html</a>, followed by <i>Count Zero</i> <a href="https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2017/03/count-zero-by-william-gibson.html">https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2017/03/count-zero-by-william-gibson.html</a>, and concluding with <i>Mona Lisa Overdrive</i>, which I read a long time ago, but which is one of very many novels I've read that I never got around to writing a review for. These all came out in the space of four years in the mid-eighties. You can argue this is more than a trilogy because <i>Johnny Mnemonic</i>, <i>Burning Chrome</i>, and <i>New Rose Hotel</i> are also set in this world, but they're not really a part of the same story. The first and last titles in the trilogy are kick ass, and <i>Neuromancer</i> remains one of my favorite stories of all time. I completely fell in love with Rose Kolodny, aka Molly, aka Sally Shears.</li>
</ul>
<p>
So maybe now you're thinking 'he claims to hate trilogies, but he's listed here several that he likes. Well, it's a built-in bias. I only read the whole trilogy of ones that I liked, and most trilogies I've automatically skipped no matter how tempting the book blurb, precisely because I've had so many bad experiences with trilogies - as my extensive reviews will show - that I won't even give them the time of day anymore.</p>
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Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-81297270450620344682021-12-02T09:35:00.003-06:002021-12-02T18:56:36.221-06:00The Second Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
The second day of Christmas is dual first-person stories - which SUCK! You know they do. The problem with these stories its that they tick with such metronomic tedium back and forth between the dual-narration - which is nauseatingly often in first person - that they will put a reader to sleep in short order, so as an insomnia aid, they can be invaluable. But for all other purposes, they are utterly useless. It's just another admission by an author that they can't write a competent novel in third person which is how stories have been successfully and powerfully related for eons.</p>
<p>
Here is a couple of titles I ditched unread in the last month that suffer from this syndrome:</p>
<ul>
<li><b>The Girl in Between</b> by Laekan Zea Kemp. Love the 'Laekan' - makes you think this author should try their hand at werewolf stories! But seriously, the pointless contents list has nearly every single chapter titled 'Bryn'. There are one or two titled 'Roman' and some inexplicably, with nothing save a period serving as the 'title'. I ditched this novel based purely on that idiotic chapter listing. I didn't even need to look at the first chapter because I knew this was a first person calamity! Sure enough, when I checked for this review, it was! The very second paragraph read: "I saw his face, lashes tangled over blue lids, his lips parted against the sand. The breeze rippled off his clothes, ocean peeling from his face and ripping onto my hands. I was steeled there...." But the very next paragraph begins: "My hands trembled...." So is she steeled or trembling? I can't figure it out. But more to the point, who the fuck ever narrates like that? Even your own internal narration never runs along those descriptive lines, Only a stupid first person narration in a YA novel runs like that and it's farcical to the point of idiocy! When you discover a dead body, there are two things you can do if you're female. If you're in a movie or a TV show, you scream shrilly every time you find a dead body - no exceptions. It's the law. In actual real life, you check the body for signs of life as best as you're able, and/or you immediately call the police. There are no other options, unless you're an asshole who just quietly tiptoes away, pretending you saw nothing. This story sucked which is why I proudly walked away pretending I wasn't nauseated.</li>
<li><b>Heartache in Heels</b> by Cate Lawley is the second strike against this author, who was, prior to this, batting a .500 with me. I actually read and reasonably enjoyed one of her first person stories, but even so I felt no attraction to continue that series, and that was before I grew to detest 1PoV with the growing passion I do today. This one went down the drain by going on about the right wardrobe from the very first sentence. It was utterly unrealistic and it's one of those stories that bounces between two main protagonists. Hillary gets the lion's share of the chapters - by a ratio of around 3:1 according to the <i>two-page</i> contents list, which will let you jump to any chapter, but then in the Kobo books ebook reader, becomes a fucking nightmare to get back to the contents list because in its dumb-ass non-wisdom, Kobo not only fails to let you jump back to the contents list in case your finger - which for the average reader is larger than an infants - hit the wrong chapter, it also doesn't even offer a slider bar to get you all the way back. All it seems to offer is a slide to the start of the chapter you're in. There's a chevron button to go back chapter by chapter, but try that for thirty or forty chapters! You can search for the phrase 'Chapter 1' and jump there, but in this case there's no such thing since every chapter is called either Hillary or Brad. In short, you're fucking stuck. If there's a convenient way to do it, I dontl know of it, so I could only get back by exiting the book altogether and marking it as unread to bring me back tot eh start, but when I did that, Kobo ripped the book out of my current reading list and then I had to go search for it to bring it back and then get back to the content list! Thanks Kobo. You jackasses. I like kobo to publish with; I just think their reader was designed by morons who can't themselves read. Fortunately I'm not usually skipping around chapters like that so it's not a problem. I'm typically doing that only when reviewing a book, and I'm happy to say in another ten days or so I won't be facing that nightmare anymore! The author admits what a stupid mistake she made by choosing first person voice when she's forced into having two 1PoV protagonists; she further admits what a dumb-ass decision it was by adding a <i>third</i> first person in the penultimatre chapter!</li>
<li><b>More to come</b></li>
<li><b></b></li>
<li><b></b></li>
<li><b></b></li>
<li><b></b></li>
<li><b></b></li>
</ul>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-23326427899050287262021-12-01T14:54:00.021-06:002021-12-21T16:27:29.541-06:00The First Day of Christmas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
So! Let us commence into the twelve days of Christmas! Not the actual twelve days of Christmas, or Twelvetide which, depending on your denomination, runs either from December 25th or from December 26th, aka Boxing Day and ending on twelfth night. Nope, mine start today and run through December 12th whereupon I shall retire from reviewing and devote all my writing time to creatively producing my own stuff instead of spending way too much of it reviewing the work of others. This has been a long time coming.</p>
<p>
I don't consider that it has been a waste of time, because all of the reading and analyzing I've done over the years has, I hope, taught me a lot about writing, but it's time to move on from that. That's not to say I have nothing left to learn, but the law of diminishing returns inevitably ends in 'urns', as in 'funeral urns' and I'm not ready for that yet! Selflessly giving my time to promote the work of others hasn't done a darned thing for my own work, and for the most part didn't even get me a thank you from the author or the publisher, so what's the point in continuing to waste my valuabel time?!</p>
<p>
The first day of Christmas then, is devoted to first person novels, which I detest for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that they are so vacuous and self-centered. Once in a while there comes along an author who can carry a novel in that voice, but for the most part they are awful and unrealistic, and tedious to read, particularly the YA novels in this voice. YA novels in general are tedious for the most part, but even some YA stories make for a worthy read. Never in first person voice though.</p>
<p>
I have a large collection of unread ebooks which I delve into regularly for a new reading experience, but if I open one of those and see it's in first person, I immediately delete the book because I don't have the patience for that trash anymore. Those novels are all about 'me'! Lookit <i>me</i>! Look at what <i>I'm</i> doing now! Ignore everyone else! Pay attention to MEEEE! Hear what I'm thinking! See what I'm doing! Listen to me tediously describe the minutest details of my life in a thoroughly inauthentic manner that no real person even thinks about let alone takes the time to voice. It's ridiculous.</p>
<p>
So I'm also steadily performing a slash-and-burn culling of my ebook collection. No more first person, please! Delete! Delete! Delete! It would be real helpful if publishers put a warning on first person books, like cigarettes have. In my parody novel <i>Dire Virgins</i> I actually did put such a warning on the front cover: "Quitting reading this novel now greatly reduces serious risks to your mental health!"
<p>
Let me exemplify: imagine you're sitting with a friend, telling them of something that happened to you. Think about how you say it; how you convey that story. Do you even remotely tell it like an author tells a first person PoV novel? Hell to the no! Nowhere near. Now I agree that if you're writing a novel, you need to pass on a bit more than you'd normally include were you relating that same event to someone who knows you, precisely <i>because</i> the reader isn't a close friend and so needs a bit of background, but you still need to tell the story realistically as if you were talking to a real person - because you are! The last thing you want is to tell it annoyingly, stupidly, and unrealistically!</p>
<p>
Arguably the biggest problem with these stories is that they hog-tie the author. This results in authors hilariously admitting this through the inane acrobatics they perform to try to circumvent the in-built iron-maiden coffin that a first person story inevitably imposes, such as by alternating first person voice with third, or paradoxically employing a <i>second</i> first person voice.</p>
<p>
1PoV limits everything to what that person sees, reads, hears, smells, tastes, and touches. Why would a smart author want to impose a straight-jacket like that on their story? I know some of the lesser thinkers among them - typically YA authors, mistakenly think that first person gives their character more immediacy, more agency, and offers a more powerful link to their reader, but the truth is it just makes them more annoying and makes them look more stupid than YA characters typically do. Authors who think like that are simply saying, "I'm such an incompetent writer that I can't create a third person story that achieves these same objectives." It's an admission of being a lame writer.</p>
<p>
When you write in 1PoV you not only immediately limit the story, you also make your main character an insufferable egotist. It's tedious to read. On top of that, nobody - I mean nobody in the entire history of planet Earth's hominin population has anybody ever behaved like a first person character does in this ridiculous fiction! They don't have the same thoughts. They do not constantly narrate every tedious detail of their lives. They don't <i>describe</i> people in their thoughts! They don't make the same dumb decisions and mistakes. They do not behave at all in the thoroughly unnatural way that a first person fictional character inescapably does. It's entirely unrealistic.</p>
<p>
What's also unrealistic is how 'correct' people are in these stories in their use of English. This is also a problem in third person speech. It's worse in first person because we inevitably use shortcuts with ourselves in our own thoughts and this never comes through in those first person novels, not least because it would make the novel unintelligible if it were done realistically, so you'd have to cheat on that anyway if you were making the mistake of chosing first person as your voice for a story. No-one these days, for example, ever says 'whom' but I've seen it in speech frequently in novels. Yes, if you must, use it in the descriptive writing, but for fuck's sake never have someone <i>say</i> it, not unless they're a pretentious asshole or maybe an English language professor, or British nobility or something. It's stupid. Personally, I'm all for banning 'whom' from the language. It's antiquated and laughable.</p>
<p>
Here are just a few titles I ditched unread, just in the last month, as I went through my collection looking for an interesting ebook to read:</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Sound of Sirens</b> by Jen Minkman. There's a nude woman on the cover. Is that honestly necessary or is the cover designer just an asshole? There's a table of contents which literally has just a list of numbers - one through eighteen! If you tap on one of the numbers, it does take you to the chapter, but there's no way to get back from the chapter heading to the contents list if you tapped the wrong chapter by mistake, which is so very easily done since the numbers are <i>never</i> spaced generously. Instead, they're listed one after another with tight, single-line spacing. I've honestly never understood the point of listing the chapters, even in print books, even if you name your chapters rather than just number them. What purpose does that accomplish? When have you ever opened a brand-new ebook and thought, "Oh, I'll start this one on chapter seven, just for the hell of it. Seriously? In an ebook you can search to find what you want. A table of contents is entirely unnecessary which is why I never use them, yet the morons in Big Publishing™ insist on it. They're fucking imbeciles who even now do not remotely understand the power of ebooks, or that it's an entirely different publishing proposition to print books. Here's a quote to show how profoundly moronic first person authors all-too-often are. This is just page two of the novel, and already <i>Le Stupide</i> is strong with this one: "I get dressed in my simple jeans and white tank top. I brush my long brown hair and pull it back into a ponytail. The cracked mirror shows me the faint rings of exhaustion under my eyes...." When have you, or anyone you know, <i>ever</i> got up in the morning and described yourself - to yourself - like that? Try it! Tomorrow morning, when you wake, start describing every detail of your day for say fifteen minutes or so and see how inane it makes you sound! Even if you were <i>telling</i> this in first person to a friend you would never say that sort of thing! It's pathetic and it's the sad and tired hallmark of first person YA stories. Contrast that with a third-person version of the same event: "Enna dressed in jeans and a tank top as usual, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. She ignored the dark rings under eyes that looked sadly back at her from the old mirror." I know which one I prefer and which one wouldn't make me nauseated by page two. But that act of describing your character's appearance from looking in the mirror has been done to death. This novel SUCKED majorly.</li>
<li><b>Rosemary's Gravy</b> by Melissa F Miller. Again, dumb-ass contents list which literally lists every chapter from "Chapter 1" to "Chapter 23" spaced so closely together that, unless you have the fingertips of a child, you're as likely to hit "Chapter 2" as you are "Chapter 1". Once you hit the wrong one, you can't get back by tapping on the chapter title. This list of chapters serves zero purpose, yet the antiquated dumb-fucks in Big Publishing™ insist you do it. Morons. On page one we get the inevitable first person for the thoroughly unimaginative and uninventive genre of private dick slash interfering amateur story. I read, "I was up to my elbows in Pomegranate seeds when Felix, my client's impossibly hot stepson, strolled into the kitchen...." That would have been quite sufficient, right there, to ditch this summarily, even had there been no other indicators. We have the older woman pigeon-holed as kitchen help <i>and</i> her inappropriate lust for a boy. Reading just a little further, we learn that she's a scientist, supposedly, so naturally she's required to wear eyeglasses. All scientists do without exception. It's Federal law, you know. Barf. This was all in the first five paragraphs on page one! This story is the shits.</li>
<li><b>The Bionics</b> by Alicia Michaels. Again with this one, every chapter is listed in the contents starting with "Chapter 1" and so on. Pointlessly. This is one of the dumb-ass stories which lists time and place at the start of every chapter. Really, who gives a fuck about that? Who even reads that shit? At least I assume it starts every chapter like that since that's how "Chapter 1" began and I had zero desire to read any more of this shit since it was another first person disaster, and worse, this was told from the PoV of a cyborg, making it even more idiotic than usual. The very first sentence ran: "I am awakened by my internal alarm system and all I want is to turn it off, roll over, and go back to sleep." This moron then complains that her internal alarm will not shut up until she's upright with her eyes open, but none of that precludes her from lying right back down after the alarm shuts off. She's evidently too stupid to do that though. None of the narration she spews out is remotely natural. No human - even one with robotic implants, ever thinks like this one does; never has, never will. The story was just as inane as I expected for a first person story: it was unrealistic, tedious, predictable, and again it has this character staring at themselves in the mirror. That trope is long dead and buried, yet moronic first person authors can't imagine any other way to write than to copy what everyone who preceded them has done; then they wonder why no-one buys their shit. This is why I do not read these uninventive stories. They're pathetic. But at least the cover doesn't show a naked chick for no reason.</li>
<li><b>Resonant</b> by Alexia Purdy. This is another stupid first person story about a vampire apocalypse. It seems like a rip-off of that zombie movie which starred Brad Pitt, the name of which escapes me. If you ask yourself who the fuck she's telling this story to, it really makes it stand out how stupid her narration is. She's not writing it down. She's just saying it. Did she memorize every single word in every single conversion? "I slipped my fork onto the plate before taking it to the trashcan." Really? Who gives a shit? Would a young woman facing a vampire apocalypse, stranded alone with her kid-brother in their house, seriously be this calm and narrating this shit like she's telling it to someone over coffee one morning? Fuck no! It's ridiculous. The cover shows her wearing the same jeans and tank top that the other girl was in a previously listed story! LOL! There are only six chapters since it's intended to lure readers into buying the entire worthless series. The chapters are listed "One", "Two" and so on in the contents - so it's the same old shit. There's nothing new here; nothing original; nothing inventive; nothing imaginative. You can see it all right there in the contents list. You don't <i>even</i> need to go to the first chapter to know you should ditch this crap and never look back.</li>
<li><b>Paradox</b> by Kelly Carrero starts with this dick of a girl jumping off a bridge to impress friends. The first three sentences are "With my heart in my throat, I climbed over the railing. I wondered how on earth I had gotten myself into such a situation. A few days ago, I would've thought there would be no way in hell I would be standing on a bridge about to let go. But there I was, and there was no backing out." Yeah, I know you counted four sentences, but there really are only three. Carrero apparently was never told not to start a sentence with 'but'. You can do it when it's right, but in this case it wasn't. That last 'sentence' is really was a clause which belongs with the previous sentence, not standing alone. She used 'would' three times in that third sentence, rendering it tediously repetitive, and 'gotten'? I would have used 'got' since 'gotten' really has no strong currency.</li>
<li><b>City of Skies</b> by Farah Cook. Not to be confused with <i>City of the Falling Sky</i> by Joseph Evans. The first sentence reads, "The familiar spell of moist pine wafts through the air as I sprint through the wilderness." Who the fuck ever had that thought? I mean realistically? No-one! The next sentence is worse: "Strident steps close in on me, crushing the leaves on the earth." It's hard to know where to begin, isn't it? Strident is not, technically speaking, wrong, but given that it's usually applied to a voice, it seems out of place here, especially since the word is a little like 'stride' and the author is talking about steps. But she's in a pine forest, so how is anything there strident? She talks about leaves, when she ought to be talking about needles, and the the environment is moist, so how is anything strident even if there were leaves? She hasn't thought this through. That told me, right there, that I would not like this novel - after only two sentences.</li>
<li><b>Going for Kona</b> by Pamela Fagan Hutchins. The opening sentence reads: "The best-looking man in the River Oaks Barnes and Noble had his hand on my thigh, and with the weight of hundreds of eyes on us, I snaked my hand under the table, laced our fingers, and slid mine up and down the length of his, enjoying the contrast of rough against soft." This tells me all I need to know about how pointless it would be for me to try to read this garbage.</li>
<li><b>Rippler</b> by Cidney Swanson is all kinds of bad. Samantha is a 'rippler' because you have to have a cool new name for turning invisible. Samantha keeps talking about being out of her body, but she's still in her body. It's just not visible is all. This tells me the author is very confused and she proves it within the first couple of pages by channeling Marvel's X-men which operates on the asinine premise that one mutant gene can have a stunning array of physical effects. This is patent bullshit. The author claims - in her book blurb, that Samantha has a "freak gene that lets her turn invisible." Let's not get into how poorly-worded that is. It's a book blurb after all, so of course it's horseshit, but don't worry! There's the usual guy around, in this case the "hunky Will Baker" who knows all about her power and who will validate and save her, because as you know, every YA girl is worthless without a man. Barf. This book is total shit.</li>
<li><b>Dream Casters: Light</b> by Adienne Woods is another crappily-written and badly-laid out novel. The first page is the title and author's name, evidently included for morons who didn't manage to find that information on the cover. Page two and three are the contents - split into three parts, each containing, "Chapter _" and whatever the chapter number is. Again, stupid and pointless. Again no way to get back to the contents list from any given chapter. The author admits right up front that she made a serious mistake in choosing first person voice because chapter one starts off in third person and is a prologue. I avoid prologues like Dwayne Johnson movies, but in this case at least the author had the wherewithal to put it into chapter one. The problem though, is that this simply made the book more misleading, because after about eight pages, the author clunkily switches to first person with the sub-heading "Sixteen Years later" meaning we're starting the novel here with the usual ignorant female YA main character who is a special snowflake and doesn't know it. What this means in effect is that this novel starts with two info dumps one after another, and that's precisely two more info dumps than I ever want to read in a novel. It's also where I gave up on it. It sucks.</li>
<li><b>Skylar Robbins: The Mystery of Shadow Hills</b> by Carrie Cross. I think Carrie Cross is actually a pretty cool name for an author, but this first person novel ran right into the swamp in the first two sentences by being utterly unrealistic in how it told the story, and also in setting up Skylar with a hunky guy before the second sentence ended. The author wants it made clear that Skylar, despite being championed right up there on the book cover, is in fact useless without a guy to lend her value.</li>
<li><b>The Second Sister</b> by Rae D Magdon. It opens with: "I peeked out of the rain-streaked windows, searching for green as the carriage jolted over slick cobblestones." I'm sure the author was pleased-as-punch with herself for cramming all that information into one sentence, but the fact is that no-one ever talks like that, much less thinks such things. Try it next time yourel traveling. Describe your experience in this sort of ridiculous detail in words that would never normally even cross your mind, much less form full sentences. It turned me off right away.</li>
<li><b>Spellbound</b> by LA Starkey. Novels with the word 'bound' in the title are usually a waste of time, so I have no idea how this came to be in my e-shelf. Maybe I fooled myself into thinking the plot might be entertaining, but I was unaware it was also first person, so that was two strikes against it. The first sentence has the main character expressing relief at arriving at their destination and she says, "I pushed my brother's shoulder in the back seat as we drove up to the beach house that held all my summer memories." Ignoring the poor wording, it makes me sad that all these kids' parents ever did was take them to the same place every summer. How tedious that must have been. The second sentence has "...my father put the old Buick into park." Who cares what kind of car it is or how old it is? Is it relevant? Doubtful! The third paragraph has "My mother laughed and got out of the car before bending back in to pin me with a loving stare." A stare is loving? Her mom then says, "Come on. We have a lot to do over this four-day weekend." Who speaks like that? Who specifies the weekend length when everyone present already knows it? I'll tell you who - idiot authors who don't stop to think about how real people behave because they, as an author, are so desperate to cram as much information as they can into what they're telling the reader! Never mind that it makes the story sound ridiculously contrived and keeps kicking the reader out of disbelief suspension. And it's YA, so you know on top of this poor writing, there's going to be the inevitable guy show up because no YA female character can survive without one. I ditched this one on that first page.</li>
<li><b>Better Off Wed</b> by Annabelle Archer. Here's the descriptive section for the opening to this garbage pile: "I stood near the top of the wide marble staircase that swept down the middle of the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s central foyer. Below me, dozens of tuxedo-clad waiters scurried around the enormous hall filled end to end with tables and gold ladder-backed chairs. After having draped ivory chiffon into swags on all forty tables, I massaged the red indentations left on my fingers by the heavy pins." That was it for me. No one speaks like that, much less thinks like it. No one tells a story to a friend in words like those. It's kicking me out of suspension of disbelief with every other word, and I have zero interest in waiting around until the inevitable guy shows up to make this loser's life worth living. On top of all that, there's this wedding planner who's about to solve a murder, because as you know, wedding planners are much better at solving murders than trained police detectives, who are clearly useless. It's a fact. Barf! The entire premise of this inevitable series is fucked-up. What's the author's plan? To have this planner go through a series of weddings, and at each one there's a murder? How stupid of a concept is that?</li>
<li><b>First Touch</b> by Teyla Branton. This is three strikes against this author for me. Here's the first jam-packed unrealistic paragraph from this effort: "Two minutes before the cop entered my antiques store, life was good. My best friend, Jake, had bought Winter’s Herb Shoppe and was making regular payments that kept the bank off my back, my own business was growing slowly but steadily, and my recently-married sister was six months along with my niece or nephew. And, perhaps best of all, I’d begun helping people with the strange gift that had manifested the day of Winter’s funeral." Her gift is psychometry, and you know it will be just enough to give a useless clue without telling anyone anything of real value. Horseshit that it is. I dream of the day someone will write a novel of this nature and actually have the psychic give useful information, but make the issues be something else that prevents them from nailing the villain on page two. That would take some writing skill. This crap does not. Even disregarding that, what an unrealistic pile of info-dumping trash this first paragraph is! No thanks! Who gives a shit about best friend Jake and his shop? Is that necessary in sentence two? No! Who cares about an impending niece or nephew? Is it relevant? No! The psychometry would be better introduced when you get around to letting the fucking cop get into the store and say something! But no! By the bottom of that first page, he's still not inside, because we have to learn that she has an electronic doorbell and is helping a solitary customer, and that this cop is going to be the inevitable never-consummated love interest that these women so desperately need because they have zero value until a hot and hunky man comes along to lend them some utility. Barf!</li>
<li><b>Other</b> by Karen Kincy starts her novel with "I can't last much longer. It's been one week, three days,and I forget how many hours." Of course all sick/suffering people think like that. Not! Any first person novel that starts so unrealistically is going to be a fail so we need read no further into this one.</li>
<li><b>The Sorcery Trial</b> by Claire luana, JA Armitage. It took two people to start this novel like this: "I noticed two things in quick succession. One - the tops of his ears tapered to a delicate point. And two - his white button-down had been soaked in a tidal wave of coffee." The authors write literally a page and a half of info-dump before any words are spoken, because forever is typically how long it takes to speak when you bump into someone. How stupidly unrealistic can you get? Again, the authors are thinking of writing a story. The very <i>last</i> thing they're thinking about is how real people react in the real world. If they were, they wouldn't make the laughable mistake of writing in first person. And they'd probably be writign a movie script! LOL! Again in this book, nt he contents are lsite dover two pages as a sumb-ass list of "Chapter 1..." and so on. The cove ris pathetic, featuring five YAs in a standard V formation like a bunch of frigging geese. One of the guys has a glowing ball which he's holding right at his crotch. Seriously? None of these cover models actually look like people you'd meet.</li>
<li><b>The Rosewoods</b> by Katrina Abbott opened the first chapter with the narrator salivating over this guy who was approaching her. No one thinks like that, and certainly not for a whole page, when someone approaches you. That alone, even had it not been first person, was enough to turn me off this. It was way-the-hell too much squared. Barf!</li>
<li><b>All Eyes on Me</b> by Lindsey Lanier starts out with this long, rambling narration of a woman driving out into the desert, to dump a body - in sight of the city of Las Vegas behind her and the mountains ahead of her. Vegas has I-15 running roughly north-south through it. Perpendicular to that runs state highway 95. Those are hardly the deserted roads she describes. There are only a couple of minor roads out of there that <i>might</i> work for dumping a body, but they don't have that long highway, city behind me, mountains ahead of me, perspective to them, so the narration would appear to be inaccurate at best, and those minor roads hardly a good place to dump a body. I didn't like this at all.</li>
<li><b>The Boy Who Painted the Sky</b> by begins with "I remembered certain things about my mom." This approach is guaranteed to turn me off the story and it's only the first sentence. The story was boring.</li>
<li><b>Blood of Stone</b> by Jayne Faith begins with a narration that's utterly alien to how people actually think. "With an impatient tug on the cross strap of my broadsword's scabbard, I watched the bouncer, a lanky man of elvish descent, examine my mercenary credentials." This tells me everything I need to know about how pointless is it to try reading this crap. The sword is a broadsword, but worn on this asshole's back? How are they going to draw it? The truth is that you can't unless the bottom of the sheath is loose and therefore slaps your ass hard with every step you take, and since you're drawing it right by your neck, you're likely to cut your own throat in the event of a hasty draw during a fight! This carrying o'th' sword on your back is pretentious horseshit and needs to die a horrible death. The bouncer is "of elvish descent"? What does that mean? If he's an elf, say so. What the author seems to mean is that he's a cross-breed, and this tells me that the author knows shit about evolution, which shows that you cannot successfully breed outside of your own species - so are elves the same species as humans? Or is magical reproduction involved? If so, how does that work exactly and why does no one ever talk about it?! Every trope in the book is revealed right here in that first sentence. This tells me this author is unimaginative and is copying everyone else who writes fantasy instead of trying something new. I don't want to read the same shit that's been done to death already. This book is a no-no. And from only one sentence! But guess what? You could have told all of this from the novel's dumb title, without even having to open the cover at all.</li>
<li><b>Kill Process</b> by William Hertling into this at full tilt. "I scream. Not some girly scream. A full tilt blood-curdling yell...." A scream is a fucking scream. There's nothing girly about it - except, evidently, to sexist authors. It turns out that Angie had a bad dream and of course she screams because girls have to: it's the law. And she's narrating this collection of bad grammar in the most unnatural, unrealistic, and inauthentic manner imaginable. Another dumb-ass first person story - and I immediately put it on the bookself where it belonged - the one marked 'trash'. Truth be told though, you can readily discern what to do with this novel from the pretentious title alone.</li>
<li><b>The Faerie Prince</b> by Rachel Morgan begins with this execrable opening: "Every night I watch the same window on Draven Avenue. I keep my distance, and I never watch from the same place or at exactly the same time. Creepy, I know, but I have my reasons." Creepy doesn't begin to describe this, and how does this asshole manage to stake out a house in a residential area without anyone reporting her? It's an <i>avenue</i>! It's not a city street. She would be seen no matter how much she tries to change-up her stalker behavior. It turned me off this character right from that first sentence. This is even <i>before</i> the story gets into the same tired trope bullshit with calling them 'faerie' because the author is too chickenshit to call 'em 'fairy', and with having the way over-used 'unseelie' court - like the fairy world is organized exactly like ours, and everyone is beholden to someone, and how they behave <i>just</i> like humans - in a world of magic, yet! I call horseshit on that, and file this poor excuse for a novel under 'T' for trash as is meet and right to do so.</li>
<li><b>The Secret Sharer</b> by Joseph Conrad opened in first person with language so stilted I couldn't stand to read it! So that was a non-starter.</li>
<li><b>Sammie & Budgie</b> by Scott Semegran began, "I discovered that my boy Sammie - my son, my first child, my spawn, a chip off my ol' block...." That was enough for me to utter a disturbed shriek of a 'no'! A chip off my old block? Seriously? Budgie is an abbreviation of budgerigar, which is what Americans call a parakeet. It's a small short-beaked parrot which is found in a beautiful array of colors. I have no idea what relevance that has. The only other time I heard of the name being applied to a human was in an old Brit TV show known as <i>Budgie</i>. The amusing thing about this novel, given that immediately before it I looked at a Joseph Conrad novel, is that this one quoted Joseph Conrad on a page right after the contents listing! Usually such quotes appear at the start of chapters, and I routinely ignore them, as I did this one. This book presented a tedious string of boring pages before ever you could reach chapter one. There was one page after another of preliminary material which was way-the-hell overdone even by the pretentious standards of Big Publishing™. There was the front cover, as there usually is, but next after this came a black and white copy of the same cover, followed by another page with the title and author's name, followed by an extensive copyright blurb,followed by two pages of boring Scott Semegran publicity material, followed by a dedication, followed by a pointless tiny illustration, followed by a two-page pointless table of contents - one that gets you to a chapter, but from which you cannot return to the contents list by, say, tapping on the chapter title. At least this contents list was double-spaced, so it did have that going for it, worthless as a contents list is to begin with. This was followed by an illustration of a popsicle and a label identifying "chapter one." Finally, after all that shit, there actually was chapter one! On page 11! The thing is if you tap the chapter One in the contents list, you don't go to the illustration; you go to this page 11. So what the fuck is the point of the illustration? There's one right before every chapter and this is the entire extent of the "illustrated by Scott Semegran" proudly displayed on that third page. Tedious!</li>
<li><b>Deadlines</b> by Camilla Chafer actually does chafe. The narration is totally unrealistic and constantly kicks a reader out of suspension of disbelief. Total loser of a novel.</li>
<li>
<b>Never Enough Time</b> sounded interesting from the book description, but it's an insane first person which lists no less than ninety chapters in the contents list, not one of which worked to actually get a reader to that chapter in the Kobo e-reader. They did work in the Nook version, although again, there was no way to get back to the conents list from the chapter if you hit the wrong one by mistake, and what's the fucking point of listing <i>ninety</i> chapters one after another, Chapter 1...Chapter 90? So no thanks to the first person crap.</li>
</ul>
<p>
Tomorrow? Dual-first-person voice novels!</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-8103656367620635472021-11-29T14:37:00.008-06:002021-11-29T14:54:27.618-06:00 Graceling by Kristin Cashore - Graphic Novel<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #006600;">WORTHY!</a>
<p>
This review is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.</p>
<p>
I already reviewed the print novel of Graceling back in June of 2013 (<a href=https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/06/graceling-by-kristin-cashore.html>https://ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com/2013/06/graceling-by-kristin-cashore.html</a>), but I was very curious to see what they did with the graphic novel version, so when I saw this on Net Galley I asked to review it and the publisher kindly granted my request.</p>
<p>
I was not disappointed. This is my last Net Galley review before I retire from reviewing altogether, to concentrate on my own writing, so I was very glad to find one that I could end my career of some five thousand total reviews on a positive note for my last Net Galley.</p>
<p>
The story is no different from the original print version I reviewed almost a decade ago, but it's been so long, that I had forgot a lot of it, so this was a nice refresher and it had some enjoyable and nicely-worked art to go with it. I ended-up liking the original so much that I went on to read two other novels set in the same world: <i>Fire</i> and <i>Bitterblue</i>.</p>
<p>
This one tells the story of Katsa, who is an enforcer for King Randa of the Midluns, but she isn't happy in her career. When she discovers another one like herself - a person who has a 'grace' or special skill - her life begins to change in ways she had not foreseen. Katsa ends up on a quest of sorts. It is long and demanding, and during it, she makes some fascinating and unexpected discoveries, about herself, about her companion, Prince Po, and about the two of them as companions. She learns that she's prone to misunderstanding what a 'grace' actually is, at least with regard to herself and Po!</p>
<p>
As I mentioned in my original review, I initially had no interest in reading <i>Graceling</i> because I mistakenly assumed from the title that it was about fairies and I wasn't tempted by it. It was only when I saw <i>Fire</i> and realized that it wasn't a fairy-tale (so to speak!) that I also picked up <i>Graceling</i> at the same time, and read that one followed by the other. <i>Fire</i> precedes <i>Graceling</i>, but the author recommends reading them in the order they were published, so I did! Perhaps if this graphic novel does well, as it ought to, we can expect that there will be two more following it as there was with the original publication. I commend this as a worthy read.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-26634005389551031742021-11-09T12:25:00.004-06:002021-11-09T12:25:31.241-06:00King of the Mountain by Aiden Ainslie<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
"Multimillionaire, champion cycler, and extremely gorgeous — these are just a few ways to describe Clifford Du Frey. But there’s one thing that most people don’t know about the famous athlete: He’s in love with art student Gabe O’Reilly. Can their relationship survive a media frenzy...." And there's a media frenzy why, exactly? Fifty years ago this plot would have been cutting-edge. Now, it's just...yawn.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-34150268733125050412021-11-09T12:23:00.001-06:002021-11-09T12:23:05.926-06:00Mindspeak by Heather Sunseri<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
"Lexi can influence people’s thoughts — a power she’s kept hidden for years. But when newcomer Jack heals her broken arm with his touch, Lexi is thrown into a world of danger and deadly conspiracy." Right, because Lexi is useless unless she's validated by the mysterious Jack-ass, who has the most over-used, clichéd 'goto-guy' name in literary history. Barf. Why would I want to read a novel where the book blurb makes it crystal clear that the author has absolutely no imagination or originality?</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-33961722943377846982021-11-09T12:17:00.005-06:002021-11-09T12:17:41.959-06:00Big Girl Panties by Stephanie Evanovich<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
"When her husband dies, Holly is at her lowest point — and her highest weight. Trainer Logan helps her get back into shape, but what happens when the rest of the world starts noticing her, too?" Another fat-shaming novel where a female author who should know better tells every woman that she's useless unless she conforms to a white men's skin-deep beauty "norm". Forget the kind of person she is. Forget whether she's intelligent, companionable, capable, reliable, trustworthy, or can contribute in any other way. No. This is just about a woman's true worth according to this author: how attractive she is. Barf</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-73135044652465296952021-11-09T12:11:00.003-06:002021-11-09T12:11:28.444-06:00Ever Shade by Alexia Purdy<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
"Fire-wielding faeries, a sinister queen, and a perilous mission through an enchanted land — join Shade as she battles evil and discovers her own extraordinary magic!" No thanks. I can't get with any author who's too chickenshit to call them fairies. Barf.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-6272096699794420692021-11-09T12:02:00.003-06:002021-11-09T12:02:14.551-06:00The Love Bet by GL Tomas<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
"Magazine journalist Luz knows plenty about sex and hookups — after all, that’s her specialty. But when she’s assigned to write a column for Valentine’s Day, she decides to use the opportunity to answer a question: Will three nights of mind-blowing sex cause a person to fall in love?" How is she going to have <i>anything</i> going on in her mind if it's blown? This story is brain-dead, period. Barf.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-64021330563223200092021-11-09T11:59:00.009-06:002021-11-09T11:59:53.176-06:00A Girl's Guide to Vampires by Katie MacAlister<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
So rather than think up something original, this author clones "Twilight." Here's the asinine blurb: "Dating is hard." How exactly is dating hard" If it's hard you're doing it wrong, period, but how would this brain-dead YA character ever figure that out? "But as Joy Randall is about to find out, dating a centuries-old vampire is even harder!" And why would a centuries old vampire have the slightest interest in a teenager other than pure lust? That would be like a forty-year-old guy taking a romantic interest in a newborn. Imagine a ninety-year old dating a teenager and then multiply the ninety by three or four and see how much that grosses you out. That's this story. This author is evidently utterly clueless and has not an original bone in her body judged by her cookie-cutter approach to novel-writing.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-34400360846936883542021-11-09T11:52:00.003-06:002021-11-09T17:18:40.959-06:00Once Upon a Power Play by Jennifer Bonds / Good Guy by Kate Meader<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
Once Upon a Power Play by Jennifer Bonds</p>
<p>
"After her latest relationship ends via text, Chloe Jacobs decides to swear off men altogether." This tells me she's an asshole for two reasons. First that she'd get involved with a guy like that, and second that she makes such a childish declaration. "But arrogant, drop-dead gorgeous hockey player" What's with the fucking hockey player obsession? "Ryan Douglas might tempt her to break her rule" Sorry, my bad. She's an asshole for <i>three</i> reasons because she's going to get right back into the same sort of abusive relationship that just failed so catastrophically. Chloe is an irremediable asshole and I sure as hell have no interest in reading about a clueless jerk-off like her.</p>
<p>
AND</p>
<p>
Good Guy by Kate Meader
<p>
"Military veteran turned hockey star Levi" There is it again. What's with the obsessive compulsive hockey player? Barf. What this tells me is that there are far too many female authors out there who have szero creativity and no imagination. Why is that? What are they afraid of? Missing a sale if they write something truly original?</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-22916505059146359012021-11-09T11:47:00.003-06:002021-11-09T11:47:27.140-06:00American Christmas by Adriana Herrera<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
"Yin and Ari are celebrating their first Christmas together — and they’ve got some big ideas for presents. But when a holiday disaster ensues, both men are reminded that their love is the best gift of all." That may be all well and good, but why is it an <i>American</i> Christmas? There are some fifty nations, territories, and protectorates in the Americas. It's not just the USA. So my question is: are we so insecure that we have to nail this to a nationality or are we so arrogant and self-centered that only an <i>American</i> Christmas is worth telling a story about? Either way this is a fail. There are so many other ways this title could have played out. I'm just sorry this author wasn't imaginative enough to think of one.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-4599278440609571562021-11-08T14:21:00.005-06:002021-11-08T14:21:30.175-06:00The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
No wonder the morons at Kirkus's Last Stand thought this was "witty and compelling" so rumor has it. It's another tedious, unimaginative, uninventive, retreaded, cookie-cutter clone of Jane Austen. Why wouldn't they think it was sparkling? Barf! You know when it's evidently your policy to positively review everything that's out there, your reviews are utterly useless, right? Well, they <i>don't</i> know that at Kirkussed. Here's the idiot blurb: "Freddy is the star of a live-action TV show" Right - because naming your female star with a guy's name is witty and compelling and has <i>never</i> been done before. And of course it's "...based on Jane Austen’s novels" because why not? There's absolutely no point in doing any actual work when you can just repurpose antique romance novels. "...but she’s having trouble concentrating on her lines, especially when handsome, arrogant critic Griff is hanging around the set." Oh look - the infuriatingly handsome trope, <i>and</i> the enemies who fall in love trope, both on the same story! How witty and compelling. This author evidently does not have an original bone in her entire body. Yawn.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-83466421877870842652021-11-08T14:11:00.008-06:002021-11-08T14:12:33.655-06:00Ransom by Laramie Briscoe<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
"Even though Stella has known him her whole life, she’s never given Ransom much thought." Ransom? Seriously? Barf. "But after the daring K-9 handler comes to her rescue, she begins to see him in a new light...." What a fucking moron Stella must be. And how misnamed! Maybe she'll pay a Ransom for sex? Yawn.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-23741160473809801682021-11-08T14:09:00.004-06:002021-11-08T14:09:39.932-06:00The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
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"Sent into a war that has been waging for almost two centuries, Tau is confronted with death - and vows to become the greatest swordsman alive." Oh wow! What a sterling ambitiion. I am so excited by this book. Barf. Can anyone say George...ah...ah...Martin rip-off?</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4713235916132770747.post-28744562274740895092021-11-08T14:06:00.009-06:002021-11-08T14:06:45.853-06:00Real Food, Fake Food by Larry Olmsted<doctype html><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><script type="text/javascript">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-38582927-1']);_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'ianwoodnovellum.blogspot.com']);_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script><style>a:link{color:cyan;}
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Rating: <a style="background-color: #ff0000;">WARTY!</a>
<p>
"...an award-winning journalist reveals shocking secrets and deceptions behind common foods" This is shocking only to those morons who don't care what they put into their mouths, and who would never actually read a book like this anyway. Yawn.</p>
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</html>Ian Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17395530553235502880noreply@blogger.com