Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts

Sunday, July 1, 2018

Lily Pond by Shelley Daniels Lekven


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This book has to be seen to be believed, although you can look at some illustrations on the author's book website: http://lilypondbook.com. Make sure you type only a total of two Ls in Lily! Otherwise the entire Internet will break down, weeping and not knowing where to go or what to do!

I don't know how someone can find the patience to do something like this, with this level of inventiveness, let along find the time - and the skill in the first place - but she did it, and it's awesome to behold. This is why she's known for her art work on movies like Toy Story, James and the Giant Peach, and The Nightmare Before Christmas (she's on IMDB!).

The story is of the cutely-named Lily Pond (no relation to Amy Pond as far as I know), on the cusp of her eight birthday, imagining with great imagination all the things she can do or be, and the adventures she will have as she matures. She has a bunch of choices as does any young girl who wants to follow her own dream and is willing to go after it fiercely enough. This story is inspirational, informative, and beautifully illustrated with the photographs of the painstaking clay sculptures the author created. Amazing! I recommend this highly.


Ready to Ride by Sébastien Pelon


Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a young children's book which seems to convey the message that it's just fine for a young kid to go out by himself, meet a stranger, wander off with the stranger without saying a word to mommy, spend hours gone, and then come back and offer no explanation. I felt it was entirely inappropriate and the wrong message to send to kids.

The child in question wants to go out and play on his bike, and the poster parent for bad parenting, who is the kid's mom, lets him out on the street with no supervision and no safety gear such as a helmet or elbow/knee pads. He sees some weird giant creature which is riding a bike and so he follows this creature, which then teaches the kid to ride without his safety wheels.

He does give the kid a helmet, but this is an afterthought and indicates that it's okay to accept gifts from complete strangers. I'm sorry but there are far better ways of achieving the end here than teaching a kid that it's fine to do the things depicted here with someone you don't know and to wander off with a stranger without a word to mom or dad. There are far better ways to have written this, and I cannot approve of this book at all.


Mae Vol 1 by Gene Ha


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Some of us amateur reviewers don't get to pick the cherry off the top. Once in a while we get lucky, but often, we're reduced to going after the Read Now offers on Net Galley, and this was one of those. It's always a bit 'potluck' in the Read Now bleachers, but every once in a while a gem comes along and this is what I found here. Although it seemed to borrow a bit (there were elements of CS Lewis (the portal to another world), Doctor Who (the many headed robot and the arachnid girl) and even Star Wars (some of the creatures were rather reminiscent of the appalling Ewoks), but that aside it was a fun and original story with a kick-ass female times two, and I typically enjoy that kind of story.

As the blurb has it, Mae is missing her older sister who disappeared several years ago and all Abbie has is memories. Now Abbie's back, from inner space, she's just standing there with that ferocious look upon her face! She is telling fairy tales, and she is making poor Mae wail, but it turns out that Abbie isn't lying as Mae learns, up close and personal, when some of these creatures come over from the parallel work and start going after Mae.

Inevitably the sisters travel back to the other side where everything Abbie told her sister is confirmed, and Mae in turn confirms that she's just as awesome as her sister when it comes to being a strong, decisive, inventive, and imaginative young woman despite the odds. The artwork was really intriguing to me because it had elements of computer-generation and hand painting, so I am not sure how it was done, but I really liked it. I also like the script which was snappy and kept the story moving, but wasn't overly wise-ass or juvenile, and the female characters were portrayed as real females, not as pneumatic adolescent male fantasies, which was a big plus for me. This is a great fantasy, I enjoyed it very much and I look forward to the next volume.


Skin & Earth HC by Lights


Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I have to say I was not impressed by this new-age-y comic from a singer who is evidently well-established, but of whom I'd never heard before. The story supposedly is supported by a dedicated soundtrack (a 14-track corresponding album) and there were 3D bar codes in the comic in various place which you were supposed to be able to scan with your phone and then go listen to (as I understood it), but every one that I scanned went to the same place, which was some sort of news page which offered no prospect of music that I could see - and I was not about to read through all the material in search of a song or two that ought to have been up front and center.

After the third time of going to the same web page from a different bar code, I gave up on this, forced to conclude that it was some sort of a bait and switch to get you reading somebody's web site! I got this review copy in electronic form, but there's no clickable link for the e-version! That seemed a bit antique to me. For that matter they could have included the songs right there in the e-version! But comic books are all about the print version, make no mistake, I guess comic book writers really don't like trees very much!

The comic itself wasn't any better. The artwork was fine enough, but the story was non-existent. As far as I could tell, it was supposed to be about a journey of self-discovery - a girl looking for hope in a hopeless world we're told, but if that's really the way you think, then you're already doomed.

Besides, the journey was far too boring and I gave up on it about halfway through. I think some writers view their own lives as way more interesting than they actually are, and can't wait to lay their personal story on as many others as they can. You could argue that this is what writers (prose, poetry or songs) do as their stock in trade, but I'd disagree.

If that is what you're going to do though, you'd better make the journey interesting. It can't just be a pictorial diary of your random thoughts which is what this felt like. I just read this one a short while ago and I literally cannot remember a single thing about it now. Obviously, it made no impression on me whatsoever! I wish the author all the best in her career, but I can't recommend this aspect of it.


Joy by Corrinne Averiss, Isabelle Folath


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Gorgeously colored and sweetly painted by artist Isabelle Folath, this story by Corrinne Averiss follows young Fern in her seemingly forlorn attempt to find joy for her grandmother who appears to be missing hers. Just when Fern thinks her quest has failed, she discovers that her very recounting of her adventure brings joy to her Nanna.

I thought the art was awesome and the story beautifully told. I have some reservations about the wealth of 'unhealth' in the food on the picnic blanket in a book for young children! It's never a bad idea to promote healthy-eating especially in a biook for young children, but I was willing to let that slide since the rest of it was so well done. I recommend this.


Valiant High by Daniel Kibblesmith


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a lightweight and fluffy story of some of Valiant's superheroes as they were in high-school, but it's not Superboy - far from it. It was fun and light, and active, and well-drawn and scripted, so I had a good time with it. It was really nice to see Faith in her element and to see her respected and treated as a human being, not as a weight problem, which I've never seen her as anyway. The other characters I confess I was not familiar with - or if I ever was, I've forgotten them.

The nice thing about this is that it's a PG-13 kind of a story so anyone can read it. There's some high-school jinks, some kissing, some action, and cartoonish violence, the occasional oddball fantasy creature, but there's nothing I wouldn't let my kids see. Not that they're very much into comic books! The main protagonists are Amanda "Livewire" McKee and her best friend, Faith "Zephyr" Herbert, and Faith never looked more present than she does here bringing hope and charity wherever she goes. Amanda is pretty cool too, but I'm a Faith fanboy what can I say?! I recommend this if you're into the Valiant hero world at all.


Tug of War by Naomi Howarth


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a sweet and fun story of how brains beats brawn. I'm not sure it was a good advisory on how to make friends though. The story is that the elephant and the hippopotamus both reject the friendship overtures of the tortoise because it's small and wrinkled and slow. The tortoise challenges each of them to a tug of war which they both accept, but what they don't know is that they're tugging against each other, not against the tortoise!

In the end they all become friends. I'm far from convinced that having friends that dumb and bigoted is worth all this effort, but who knows? Maybe the tortoise will be a positive influence in their lives. Hippos are known to be irascible; elephants, not so much, and they're really smart, too, so while on the one hand I resent the elephant being misrepresented, I also found the story entertaining for kids who aren't going to analyze it at all. Plus it teaches a lesson about teaching lessons, so on balance, I consider this to be a worthy read.


Fat Girl on a Plane by Kelly deVos


Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I had to quit this novel at only 18% in because of the stark hypocrisy in the writing. The author's bio on her website says, "Kelly is also a passionate advocate for body positivity and fat acceptance" and I am one hundred percent onboard with that, yet the main character in the novel seems to engage in a high level of what might be termed 'skinny-shaming' and also 'fashion-shaming'. Worse than this though, is the objectification by this character of another character, as in when I read, "I glance at his biceps and quickly look away." Her "face heats up" no less than three times over him, and she decides it's not fair that he should look so good. Barf.

These are some of many examples of fashion blogger Cookie Vonn objectifying fashion designer Gareth Miller, who she's supposed to be objectively interviewing. In her author's note, I read, "We are more than just our bodies," yet her main character is ogling this man's body. Body image is not a just two-way street, it's a rat's nest of streets and footpaths and bike trails and overpasses, and for me this author failed to grasp that crucial fact in her writing.

Cookie works for a fashion blog, and I should say right up front that I have no time whatsoever for the fashion world or for Hollywood for that matter. As this author admirably makes clear, fashion is about discrimination, but she doesn't go far enough. It discriminates in favor of the well-off, the young, and the thin, so the problems go way beyond simply fat-shaming. Again, none of this was made clear at least in the early part of this novel, and I was saddened by that because the whole reason I picked it to read was that I thought it would be in interesting take on the industry.

The main character seems to grasp none of this. She comes off very much as an insider: as one of 'them,' not as one of 'us', by which I mean those of us who are not slaves to how a person 'should' look or dress according to the dictates of the shamefully well-off. This did not service the book's PoV well and did not make her look like an outsider by any means. On the one hand it's admirable that this character thinks she can change it from the inside, but on the other hand, she never seems to be cognizant of how self-indulgent, fatuous, and pointless the whole farcical, shallow and abusive edifice of fashion truly is, so I felt like she was doomed to fail before she got started.

I especially wouldn't read a blog where I would see something like this: "Sportswear is where fashion meets Feminism." Really? Has this author never seen a female athlete? Depending on the sport, they don't typically dress in a manner similar to the male athletes. They quite often dress in a manner that too many men would like to see female athletes dress. In track, men typically wear regular running shorts and tank tops. Women wear what are, let's face it, bikinis. That's feminism? Really? If the bikini makes an athlete more streamlined, why don't men wear them? This dichotomy on what male versus female athletes wear is very odd in sports. Female basketball players, for example, wear pretty much what the men do, yet female soccer players wear their shorts distinctly shorter than their male counterparts. Why? Is it really feminism? I think that's a question worth asking in place of tossing out a bon mot like I read here.

Cookie is the daughter of a well-known model of yesteryear (or given that this is the fleeting world of modeling and fashion, perhaps yester-week would be more accurate), and looks like her mom facially, but not bodily. This wasn't explained in the admittedly limited portion I could stand to read. Was her father big bodied? If not, and her mother was a model, then how did Cookie end up with her body? Maybe it was explained in the course of the tennis-match of past and present being knocked back and confusingly forth later in the novel, but it would have been nice if there had been an explanation up front for this.

I'm evidently not the only reviewer who found this see-sawing between 'fat' Cookie and relatively thin Cookie serving to undermine the author's stated purpose. And if that is cookie on the cover of the book, she's not what I'd describe as fat by any means. But then my perspective on a women's body isn't informed by unhealthily-thin fashion models and Hollywood celebrities. It's informed by real, everyday people which is the only sane perspective in my opinion.

The other thing that was missing for me was any talk about health. There is abusive fat-shaming, which is to be fought tooth and nail, but there is also a health factor here for a certain portion of the population (overweight or not), and it's not a shaming, but a caring. It doesn't matter (objectively) if people consider you overweight as long as you're healthily and getting some exercise, yet this wasn't touched on. Again, I quit this novel early, so maybe this was addressed later, but even so, it would have been nice had there been a statement right up front about this, because it's important. People can go to hell with their fat remarks and abuses, but if a person is healthy, it's not even a concern, so maybe they should go further to hell?

The author is a graduate of a creative writing program, which frankly tends to put me off reading a novel, because I've read too many such novels which have turned out to be so bland as to be indistinguishable from one another, and all-too-often pretentious to a sickening degree. This author had some moments of excellence and some appreciated humor, but what got to me, and this is what caused me to finally quit the book, was that it was so disgustingly trope YA that it was almost literally nauseating. Take this as an example:

"It's your eyes," he decides. "They're blue."
"Wow. They're not wrong when they say how observant you are."
Gareth chuckles. "The gold flecks. They make all the difference."

Gold flecks make her eyes pretty? I feel bad for the millions of women who have no gold flecks! How awfully ugly they must be with those fleckless eyes! Body positivity? I have read this 'gold flecks' quote so many times in so many YA books that it is way beyond a joke at this point. If this is all you get when you graduate from a creative writing course more than likely taught by someone who can't make a living from their own writing then it's a self-evident waste of time. Do they not teach originality? Do they not teach participants to read a lot so they can learn both what to do and what not to do? No self-respecting YA author who wants to be taken seriously should use the words 'gold flecks' or even 'biceps' in a novel ever again, but at least this author wrote 'biceps' rather than 'bicep' so I should credit her that much!

On one technical matter, I have to give this ebook file an 'f':

Piper f lips open
I f lop back onto
In the space of a couple of sentences and in many other places too, we see words which begin with an 'f' having a space after them. Amazon's Kindle process mangles files. It's an all-too-common feature of the ebook review copies I see. It does not well-handle files that are anything other than plain vanilla with regard to formatting. I suspect that's what happened here. Additionally, there was a confused mix up of notes and text:
There's nothing wrong with being the fat girl on the plane. soScottsdale [[New Post>Title: We're SoReady for an Early Look at GM Creator: Cookie Vonn [contributor] Okay Scottsdale,
"remember Fairy Falls?" FAT GIRL ON A PLANE 31 I snort. Of course I do."
The book title and page number from the page header is embedded in the text there. The impression I had was that this book was designed for a print version without a thought being given to how the ebook looked. I know ebooks often sell at rock-bottom prices thanks to Amazon, which seems to share the public's view that books ought to be valued by weight, not quality, and ebooks, being the lightest of all should be also the cheapest of all. It evidently also likes its overseas contract workers to get rock-bottom pay, but that doesn't mean readers want rock-bottom quality! Another example is that conversations which should have been separated by a line feed and a carriage return are run together on one line: "What kind of questions?" he says, his eyes narrowing. "I plan to have them ready for you on Sunday at 2:00 p.m."
Hopefully those issues will be resolved before this book hits final publication.

Final there's the cover and the book blurb. These are not on the author (unless they self-publish and design their own covers), but they don't help a book when they're profoundly dumb. The blurb is predictably idiotic, as far too many of them are. I have no time for book blurbs that end with a question so numbingly dumb that only a complete, utter, and lifelong dedicated moron could not get the right answer: "Will she realize that she's always had the power to make her own dreams come true?"

Now just what, I wonder, is the answer to that question? Do book publishers want us to think they believe readers are idiots? Because that's what they do when they ask brain-dead questions like that in the blurb and far too many books, especially ones aimed at female readers it would seem, do this. Do publishers think female readers are dumber than male readers? I sure don't, but maybe the only way to prove that would be for women to boycott all books where the blurb asks a dumb question at the end?!

I don't normally talk about book covers, except on occasion to point out how, as is the case here, the cover designer clearly has no clue what's in the novel - or is simply clueless period. The silhouetted girl on the cover isn't remotely fat. She's not even what might be uncharitably called "big boned" - she's normal and ordinary - that is, she looks at first glance to be a healthy height and weight (healthy that is by realistic standards not by asinine anorexic standards of Hollywood and the fashion industry). So is this supposed to be Cookie after she lost weight, and why do we see only that rather than both, or just the Cookie of the past? Doesn't this make the book's very cover a form of fat-shaming?

I wish the author all the best with her writing career, but it's for the reasons outlined that I cannot recommend this book.


Chilly da Vinci by Jarrett Rutland


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This children's book of a little over forty pages tells the entertaining and educational story of the inventor penguin who won't give up. It's a good lesson to learn in life. Adrift on an iceberg, which is slowly being chiseled away by a very hungry orca, Chilly has to devise a plan to rescue himself and his fellow drifters before the ice barge completely collapses and they all become killer whale crunchy breakfast cereal.

While the other penguins are standing around panicked and hilariously chanting "Gakker gakker gakker," young Chilly is chilling with his blueprints (actually more like sepia prints), and scraps retrieved from floating sea junk (which is a serious problem in real life). Can he rescue them? Why do blurb writers idiotically ask these asinine questions? Of course he can! And yes, the ex-special forces guy will rescue the child, and yes the failed woman who an back home will find true love. Why insult us with a dumb question like that?! LOL! Fortunately this blurb writer is smarter and more inventive than that, which I truly appreciated. I loved this book and fully recommend it.


Friday, June 1, 2018

Why Juan Can't Sleep by Karl Beckstrand, Luis F Sanz


Rating: WORTHY!

This 'mystery' book for young children examines why it is that Juan can't sleep! There are a gajillon rhyming reasons, every one of which is valid and has probably affected you at one point or another! Although driving through a stop sign with grandpa never was one of my issues! maybe I'll start that trend in my family?!

Luis Sanz's ustrations are far from ill 9as you can see form this sentence!), and the rolling, cascading, helter-skelter poetry is mesmerizing. This is the second Karl Beckstrand book I've enjoyed, the first being The Bridge of the Golden Wood> which I reviewed back in July of last year. I have no hesitation in recommending this one to go with it.


Freaks by Kieran Larwood


Rating: WORTHY!

Sheba is a freak, so-called. She has some sort of wolfish traits in her that don't come out at the full Moon, but which do surface when she's emotionally disturbed. Fortunately that isn't often, since she's quite accepting of her freakishness and her lot in life which is as a lonely exhibit on a pier in an obscure Victorian seaside town.

This all changes one day when a rotund man from London shows up with his traveling freak show and buys her from her 'owner'. She finds herself in a wagon full of people like her - not wolfish, but each with strange appearance or talents, and unfortunate smells. Sheba's enhanced sense of smell is one thing which is always on tap, she's sometimes sorry to suffer. At other times it can be very useful.

This change isn't a bad thing as it happens, because she finds acceptance and companionship in this circus as they travel back to London and take up residence in their permanent quarters, as a freak show in a dismal London side-street in a ramshackle, run-down and dirty house, where Sheba has to sit each day in a room so people can stare at her. But it's just for a short time and then she gets to have a decent bed and not too horrible food, which is new to her.

One day a little girl sneaks in to the show and meets Sheba, before the interloper is discovered and tossed out. The two of them bond in that moment, so when Sheba later learns that this same girl - a mudder who scours the low-tide banks of the Thames for anything of value to sell to buy food for her family - has gone missing, Sheba is moved to act. In her search for the mudder, she is joined by Sister Moon, a ninja girl with almost super-human speed and accuracy, and Monkey Boy, who is frankly gross-out disgusting.

This for me was the first and one of very few false steps in this Victorian era novel with steampunk elements, which is aimed at middle-grade readers. Given that three of the main five 'freak' characters are female, it suggests that the novel is aimed primarily at girls, yet the toilet 'humor' if you can term it that, is aimed at boys, so it made little sense. Other than that it was fine and it featured some other intriguing characters too, such as the woman who trains rats and the gentle giant who writes romance stories!

The plot became clear pretty quickly, but for younger readers it may remain more of a mystery for a little longer, and the story is engaging, with a few thrills and spills to keep a young heart racing, so overall I liked it. In some small ways it reminded me of the Philip Pullman series 'His Dark Materials' and young Lyra Belaqua. Sheba isn't quite like that, and this novel isn't in that league or about the same subjects, but young readers who enjoyed that might like this, and vice-versa. It's educational too, about the horrific conditions under which children lived, and how they were exploited back then, especially if they were not like most other children, so I recommend this as a worthy read.


Summit Vol 1: The Long Way Home by Amy Chu, Jan Duursema


Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
Aeropsace on p13 Misspelled.

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

There was an event in which an asteroid nearly hit Earth. The planet was supposedly saved by Lorena Payan, which no doubt is pronounced 'pain'. Some people developed superpowers from this event, but curiously, the event seemed to have a preference mostly for white American adults.

The stories of these mutants are covered in various editions by various writers and artists. This one is the story of one of those white Americans who happened to be actually on the mission: Valentina "Val" Resnick-Baker who rescues and protects a young kid. Can anyone say Aliens 2 Redux?

Frankly this story it was a bit bland, repetitive, and disjointed, but overall it was better than the other two I read in this batch of stories. While I am happy to rate this one as a worthy read, I think I'm done with this whole series which really isn't moving, shaking, or breaking new ground. It's petty much broken and crumbled like the asteroid was at this point.


Gina From Siberia by Jane Bernstein, Charlotte Glynn


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

A really short review for a really short book that's based on the author's own experience! It tells the story of a migration, but from the perspective of a wire-haired terrier. Gina is the unlikely name of the Russian dog who has to leave all of her friends behind and move to the USA, 5,681 miles away from her old home. Or maybe 5,682. They travel by bus, train, car, and plane. Gina isn't happy. She doesn't want to participate her new environment at all, but slowly, she decides it's not so bad.

This was a cute story for kids that may help them cope if they're moving themselves - even if it's just to the next town, or across the city. The text was nice reading and the illustrations are fun and colorful. I recommend it.


Final Draft by Riley Redgate


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

“...but the team here are great people...” this was spoken by Mr Madison, an English teacher Seriously?! 'Team' is singular.

Laila Piedra, like me, is very much into writing, but she's better looking! She secretes herself away in her room with her laptop and creates sci-fi worlds of adventure and derring-do. But daring isn't something Laila ever does herself. She'd rather have a quiet life: no partying, no boyfriend, no extra-curricular activities. She's all about writing, and meeting with her high-school senior year English teacher, Mr Madison, on lunchbreaks to discuss her stories. Apparently he has very little of a life too, and you have to wonder why he's misleading Laila so much in his advice. He seems so full of praise, but later a professional author disagrees with him.

Due to an injury, Mr Madison was forced to take time off school and substitute teacher came in. This woman was a Ukrainian ex-pat who had a successful writing career. Even given that she was a friend of the principal's, it seemed a bit of a stretch that someone of her purported stature would step in to teach. This oddity was explained later in the novel, but even accepting that, it made little sense that her approach to teaching was so minimalist that she essentially didn't teach at all. Instead, she merely had her students continue their writing projects and then marked them scathingly.

Despite Laila's skill and the endless positive, evidently criticism-free encouragement of Mr Madison, Laila's first score from Nadiya Nazarenko was a 32%. Everyone else scored less, and no one was given any real advice about what was wrong or how to improve it. No-one read their work in class either, so it felt unnaturally like a super-secret, under-the-table event; like everyone was ashamed of what they wrote, or their work was too scandalous to ever see the light of day. Worse, Laila never questioned Mr Madison's bona fides given that he was all 100% and the Nazarenko consistently less. That rang hollowly - that Laila never questioned anything.

Frankly she was a bit too passive for my taste, but then I seem condemned to prefer the side-kick characters in young adult and even middle-grade novels rather than the main one. Her sidekick is Hannah, and Hannah fascinated me.

Laila's desperate desire to impress the substitute flings the young writer into dangerous territory, visiting bars with a fake ID, and risking arrest by the police at a fight. Never once does she consider she's being foolish in pursuit of a ridiculous goal. It felt odd, too, that when a school hottie guy befriended her, she didn't try to talk him out of fighting her own friend, a guy who was dating his ex. That was an interesting little story.

The novel could have easily gone downhill several times for me, it didn't, fortunately for this review! It kept me hanging in there, sometimes by a slim thread, and even as I wondered about some of the writing choices the author was making. What made it worthwhile in the end was Laila's outcome, which I had seen coming for a while but was never quite sure if the author would actually take me there - despite having a pretty awesome name for an author: Riley Redgate! I mean come on! That's almost as good as Teenage Negasonic Warhead. You know Riley Redgate's middle name is Negasonic, right? Well, it might be!

Meanwhile, back in Realityville, I have to say that it was such a nice gift that she did do this, that I felt a bit miffed when there wasn't more of it. The novel ended somewhat abruptly with Laila's future seemingly left rather hanging. I don't know if this was a conscious choice or if the author plans on continuing this story in a second volume. It's difficult to see where that would go given the powerful ending this one had (before the abrupt bit!), but I might be tempted to read such a sequel even though I'm not a fan of series, trilogies, and the like. As for this particular volume, I consider overall, that it's a worthy read, and I recommend it.


Friday, May 18, 2018

Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty, David Roberts


Rating: WORTHY!

Written poetically by Andrea Beaty and illustrated artfully by David Roberts, this book shamelessly promotes a girl as an engineer. We need far more female engineers than ever we get, so anything that puts the idea into young children's fertile minds that this is something they can do, beats the heck out of far too many books, TV shows, and movies which depict women as not engineers, not even close. It's nowhere near often enough we are shown professional women in this kind of a career, so this book is a welcome addition to children's literature in showing what a smart, capable, and self-motivated child Rosie Revere is. "The engineers are coming! The engineers are coming! And they're girls!" Let the cry ring out! I recommend this because it is a welcome and refreshing variation from the usual book-in-a-rut for children.


Saturday, May 12, 2018

Hoodoo by Ronald L Smith


Rating: WARTY!

This was another failed audiobook experiment. It's aimed at middle-grade readers, so I am not the intended audience, but two things really bothered me about it and constitute my main reasons for rejecting it. I would not recommend this at all for young, easily scared, or overly sensitive children.

The story is about 12-year-old "Hoodoo" Hatcher who grows up in a very superstitious 1930s Alabama. A stranger comes to town who is evidently Satan himself, coming to collect a debt apparently owed by Hoodoo because it was incurred by his deceased father, but I don't know for sure because I didn't listen to all of it.

You know, I am really tired of reading stories about black kids growing up with their grandparents or other relatives. Less than ten percent of African American kids are raised this way, and while it is unfortunate, even tragic, and while it is over twice that of white kids, it's still less than ten percent. If you were to judge by how often it's portrayed in novels, movies, and on TV, you'd think it was all black kids.

It's inaccurate and it's particularly appalling in novels which children read and can be misled by; novels which often win idiotic Neuteredbery awards and such nonsensical crap. In fact I think that's a rule: that if your novel isn't about a dysfunctional family, you can't be nominated for a Newbery - but I may be wrong about that.... My point is that it's time for authors to tell it like it is, not tall tale it like it isn't.

The endlessly-repeated sleeping (and later, waking) dreams/nightmares in which this unintentionally comical Satannic figure threatens Hoodoo in his basso profundo voice were ridiculous, and were what turned me completely off it. It became tedious to listen to. The "Yes, Massah!" voice of reader Ron Butler was inappropriate and a turn-off to boot.

The other thing which bothered me were the many extended scary sequences which are going to be too much for young readers - and especially listeners. You do not want your child listening to this as a bedtime story! For me they were boring. The story seemed to be going round in circles instead of going somewhere interesting, and Hoodoo's obsessive-compulsion of doing this himself was laughable when there were others who could have helped him if the author hadn't been so rigidly dead-set against it.

It was an uninteresting and unimaginative story told badly and I do not recommend it.


Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Catalina and the King's Wall by Patty Costello, Diana Cojocaru


Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

A dear friend recommended this to me and I was glad she did. She has a knack for finding cute children's books, and this is one of the cutest. Illustrated colorfully and prettily by Diana Cojocaru, and written wittily and with a great delight in making choice puns by Patty Costello, it tells the story of a young woman's quiet determination to undermine the isolationist policy of the king.

Catalina is cookie-maker to the king and when she learns of his plan to build a wall between his nation and the nation next door (because they're 'different'), she cannot bear the thought of being separated from her family and concocts a series of seditious subterfuges to sabotage the king's plan - and she succeeds!

I loved the story, and adored the art. The book is short and very telling, and is most enjoyable. I fully recommend it.


Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Bonfire by Krysten Ritter


Rating: WARTY!

If this novel had been written by an unknown and submitted as is, it would never have got published. The only reason it did get published is because it was written by a celebrity. The author is an actor who currently plays Jessica Jones in the Marvel TV series of the same name, and in that show I adore her, but a writer she's not. Not yet. She may become one if she can quit writing YA trope and cliché and find a topic that's not been done to death. And have an editor who's not afraid to say no to a celebrity.

This follows the done-to-death trope of the prodigal son (or in this case, daughter with the unimaginatively bland name of Abby Williams) returning home to confront "demons". Barf. Yawn. Barf some more. Yawn a bit. Ho-hum. So anyway, the main character returns to her even more unimaginatively named small town of Barrens, Indiana where she grew up (or maybe not) and where a conglomerate named Optimal Plastics appears to be responsible for polluting the water and causing people to get sick. We're told the town is now booming, but we're never told why a huge corporation would put its roots down in a lifeless hick town nowhere near major artery roads or airports in the first place. At least not in the part I listened to.

Abby is an environmental lawyer living in Chicago and apparently lives a life of drunkenness and debauchery there. You would think someone with that portfolio would be able to confront the girl who bullied her in high-school and now acts like they were old friends, but this character is such a limp rag that she doesn't say squat. Let me just make it clear that I would never want Abby Williams to represent me in court!

It was when Abby discovers that the house she's renting has a neigh-bore who is a single dad with a precocious young daughter that my nausea rose far too high to continue. It didn't help that Abby had lost all interest in pursuing the chemical company even by this point, and had become instead obsessed with tracking down this girl, Kaycee Mitchell, she knew in high-school who had since gone off the grid. Abby was not a likable character, and I honestly didn't give a damn about her or anything else in this story. I could not care less what happened to the missing girl, because I've been given no reason to care more.

From reading other reviews out there I understand that the author knows nothing about Indiana, thinking it a football state when it's a basketball state (even I, who has almost zero interest in fatuous and ultimately pointless sporting events, knew that!), and she misnames the state university and invents a toll road where none exists. It's so easy these days to research a place on the Internet, in Wikipedia, and even go look at it on Google maps, that there's no excuse for getting things like this wrong. It's sloppy and lazy.

The asinine blurb (for which I don't blame the author) promised "tantalizing twists, slow-burning suspense," but the only word in that whole phrase which applies here is 'slow'. I pulled this off the library shelf solely because it was written by Krysten Ritter. I thought it would be well worth reading, or rather listening to but it wasn't, even though reader Karissa Vacker did a decent job.

The best thing that can be said about this novel is that it's short, but apparently, according to some reviews I read, it could have been shorter still if the endless repetition had been cut out, and I believe them far more than ever I'd believe a blurb writer! I cannot recommend this based on the part I could stand to listen to. A bonfire is a great place for a novel like this.


One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson


Rating: WARTY!

This was my third voyage into the world of Kate Atkinson. As I mentioned twice before(!), I came to her via the TV series Case Histories, and I hoped her novels would be as good as the TV show, but they were not. I could not get Case Histories on audiobook and didn't want to go with the library print book. I have too many print books on my shelf and actively try to avoid procuring any more until I've read-down some of this pile! I live in fear that they will fall off the shelf onto my head when I'm sleeping and I wish to bypass such a rude awakening.

This was the second-in-line in the series, but the problem with it was that it was too rambling. The interesting thing is that in the first novel, Jackson Brodie, the ex-soldier now turned PI inherits a lot of money, but in the TV series he did not have this money. I'm not sure how they will reconcile it if they continue the TV show. I liked how there were several plot threads seemingly unconnected, and which in the end all became woven together, but that was TV. The audiobook was far too sluggish.

I could not get started on the novel. One of the characters was such a limp rag of a man that he was repulsive, yet the author seemed determined to follow him into the most mundane of activities including a writing class he attends (which I think was a flashback but I'm not sure. It's easy to miss bits in an audiobook when driving. At least it is if your focus is on the road where it should be!). The writing class wasn't even interesting, and it seemed like the author was maybe using it to insult people perhaps she had known in a similar writing class which she attended. I don't know. It just felt a bit like that.

The story begins with this limp rag man breaking up a road rage incident, and then it just rambles on and on. Jackson Brodie is nowhere in it and did not show up right up to the point where I couldn't stand to listen any more. It was read pretty decently by Steven Crossley, but that couldn't make up for the material (or lack thereof). I felt bad for him having to read this. Just in case it isn't clear: I cannot recommend this one!


Hell Gate by Linda Fairstein


Rating: WARTY!

If I'd known that this author was once the prosecutor who railroaded the Central Park Five black kids into jail for a crime they never committed, I would have spit on the novel rather than picked it up. But I didn’t know that until after I’d read enough of it to know it was a lousy novel written by an author who is so far out of touch with things as to be very effectively retired even as she continues to write. It was only after I gave up on it and looked her up in Wikipedia that I discovered this and other interesting facts about her.

Fairstein resigned in early summer of 2019 as a member of the board of trustees of her alma mater, Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York, after a netflix movie on the event stirred up enough resentment that finally something came to a head. If I’d known this novel was merely wish-fullfilment - this author basically putting herself into her own fiction as a prosecutor of sex crimes - I would never have picked it up either.

I'm not a fan of first person stories because they're irritating at best and completely unrealistic. Few authors - and even fewer stories - can carry that amount of weight, but far too many authors aren't smart enough to realize it. The woman who read for this audiobook story, Barbara Rosenblat, had entirely the wrong voice for both the story and the character, so that didn’t help either. That wasn't the worst part though.

The hypocrisy in this novel was astounding. For an ex prosecutor of sex crimes to write a novel about human trafficking and then lard it up with sexist material is mind boggling. If I’d know this novel - published in 2010 - would read like it was written in the fifties with all the unaddressed genderism it contains, I’d never have picked it up. But until I listened to it, I didn't know that there would be repeated remarks made to the main character of an inappropriate nature, and never once does she address them. Guys can say pretty much whatever they want to her and she doesn’t even react. In short, she's part of the problem and the author ought to be thoroughly ashamed of writing material like this.

I don't have a problem with reading a novel by an older writer (this author is now in her seventies). The problem isn’t that. The problem is when the older writer fails to move with the times and instead, writes a modern story with an antique mindset, which is evidently what happened here. And that's not even the whole problem.

The author seems so obsessed with describing old buildings that she forgets what story she's telling. This story could have been about architectural design. I quickly tired of hearing yet more building history, and yet more descriptions of arches, columns, and windows. This was as much a DNR as it was a DNF. You have my word that I will never read another novel by this author. I'm tempted to say that I'm glad I never paid for this one, but in a sense, I did pay for it by merely listening to it.