Rowan of the Wood by Christine Rose, Ethan Rose

Rating: WARTY!

Today I have three sorry reviews - sorry that I started reading the book in the first place! I read only a few chapters of each and was so disappointed that I DNF'd. Some idiots argue that you can't review a book when you haven't read it all, but they're morons. Yes, you can reject a book if it's garbage and or simply fails to move you anywhere other than irritation.

This is one of a pair of novels I picked up on close-out at a local bookstore. It was written by two fellow Texans, but I don't know the authors and probably would not have much in common with them if I did, they being evidently into to renaissance fairs and fantasy, and me...not so much! The books looked interesting, but when I finally got around to reading the first one, it was so loaded with fantasy trope that it turned me off. Tolkien did it all, so unless you have something really new to bring to the genre, what's the point?

This is my biggest problem with fantasy novels: they are so derivative and in a stagnating rut bordered on one side by the embarrassing lack of imagination prevalent in modern rip-offs, and on the other by a staggering absence of invention. Worse, in the case of this novel, the authors couldn't bring themselves to set the novel in is native Europe. I've seen this repeatedly in books and in so many movies. Gods forbid we should ever create a story set outside the USA. What's the point? There is nowhere else! Right?

So after an antiquated prologue so brief it may as well not exist (which I skipped as usual), we have another prologue in chapter one, which is fine. I advocate putting your prologue, if you must have one, in the first chapter. But then it skipped to the USA! Yes - let's get European fantasy and rather than set it in Europe, let's bring it to the US because really, who cares about anywhere else?>

And this from authors steeped in renaissance? You know there are plenty of third-world countries where people are perforce living lives of the same quality as those renaissance folks 'enjoyed'! Those who want to immerse themselves in that life can always move there if they really want an immersive experience. Yes I know, it's outside the US! Oh god what a quandary! Does even 'a place outside the US' exist in reality?

And do let us forget about the fact that the US has its own fantasy traditions abundant in Native American folklore. No! Those are simply not good enough! They're too primitive. Too childish. No, it must be genuine USDA grade A fantasy imported from Europe to count, but it must be set solidly in the good ole US of A to validate it. Sorry, but no, I don't shop there. The goods are tainted. This is why I quit reading this. There are many other books out there and more than a few of those get it right, I'm not going to waste time on reading any which are so very wrong-headed, and committedly-so right from the second chapter.

The Chimpanzee Complex Vol 2 The Sons of Areas by Richard Marazano, Jean-Michel Ponzio

Rating: WARTY!

Here's a problem with series that single books never have to face: unless you, as a reader, can get your hands on the compendium edition, you have to root out all the individual volumes! Thus, series are in no way written for the reader, but for the lucrative gratification of money-grubbing authors and publishers. This is one major reason why I will never write a series. It's not worth selling out for.

And how dumb does a publisher have to be to favor a series (which you know they do, especially in the YA world) when they have no idea how good it's going to be? All they have is the first volume and a promise of two or more follow-ups. They have no way of knowing how good or bad those will be, yet they would rather commit to that, blinded by cash rewards, than give three single-volume authors a chance because they can only rake in one third the money with one volume? Screw them. That's not a world I want to be a part of.

Thus my issue with this, a graphic novel translated from the original French (Le Complexe du Chimpanzé: les Fils d'Arès), the very medium which tends to be, almost by definition, episodic. The library had volume two on display which was odd, and it looked interesting from a brief skim. The artwork by Jean-Michel Ponzio looked pretty good, but they didn't have volume one. It would have been wiser on the part of the library to have not put this out there without including the first volume.

Anyway, I figured to take a chance (and it failed)! The story made no sense whatsoever, and I suspected that even had I read volume one, and assuming it had impressed me enough (of which I confess I have some serious doubts) that I ever made to to volume two, it would still make no sense. The problem (again definitive of series) is that the story really goes nowhere. In volume two there can be no beginning - that bus left with volume one, and since there is a volume three, there can be no ending here. So all we have is this free-floating story fragment, and I could make neither têtes nor queues of it.

The plot? Well, that's an open question. Other than its dedication to cheapening the achievements of people like Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin, what does it offer? Nothing that I can see. In volume one, set in 2035, a space capsule plunges into the Indian Ocean and when it's recovered, it's found to contain Armstrong, and Aldrin - and no Michael Collins apparently! Collins became the most isolated and lonely man in the world (or rather out of it) in 1969 when, having dropped off his two companions on the Moon's surface, he went behind the Moon alone, and was out of touch with the rest of humanity for a period of time! Yet not a word about him!

In this volume, we meet this woman who is going to Mars, leaving behind her daughter. No father is evidently in sight although there is this guy who is supposedly in charge of the young girl, but who he was I have no idea. He wasn't very good at what he was charged with undertaking, for sure. But more to the point, what woman would do that to a young child? Going to the Moon for a week or ten days, I can see, but going on a round trip to Mars for a year? That's child abuse. Her daughter feels it pointedly too, and runs away from home (she seems to be completely unsupervised), yet while I was mildly interested in the daughter's adventure, I had no interest whatsoever in the mother's non-adventure, which while commendable in that she was not your usual pale Caucasian protagonist (she was Asian) was boring.

And who, in 2035, has an encyclopedic knowledge of Russian cosmonauts from 1961 (I love the rotational symmetry of that year!) - such that she knows the middle name and exact dates of Gagarin's life milestones? This is an example of truly bad writing, and frankly, that was the weakest link here - not only did the writing make no sense, it wasn't even inspired. I really disliked this story.

Sword Art Online: Aincrad by Reki Kawahara

Rating: WORTHY!

Sword Art Online: Aincrad, known in Japanese as Sōdo Āto Onrain, which I find hilarious, is a novel which has spawned several sequels and an anime as well as the inevitable video games. I checked out the anime which is available on Netflix (as of this writing) and it wasn't watchable. I can't stand those giant, mournful eyes, and the pointy noses and chins. They look creepy to me, and it's particularly obnoxious when they have physical interactions of an intimate nature because it's like seeing children have sex. No. Just no!

Worse, the thing was subtitled and that's a no for me. Video - as defined by its very name - is a visual art, and you can't focus on that if your eyes are almost one hundred percent glued to the bottom tenth of the image trying to understand what they're saying. Not that there's much action in these minimally animated anime shows. Anime is entirely the wrong name for it; it should be called minime! But if I want to watch it, I don't want to read it at the same time! Duhh! Get a clue movie makers! If I want to read it, I'll get the book, which is what I did in this case.

Dubbed versions are also sometimes laughable because they have these middle-grade kids speaking with gruff adult voices which is beyond ridiculous, and sometimes the female voices are so spastic they make you want to tear your ears off. Suffice to say I don't watch a heck of a lot of anime!

But back to our book in progress: set in 2022, with the trope of new technology available to totally immerse gamers in virtual reality, sixteen-year-old Kazuto Kirigaya, whose game name is "Kirito", is anxious to try out this new game: Sword Art Online, of which he was a beta tester. He, along with ten thousand other players (all in Japan) is shocked to discover that once the game begins, no one cannot log out.

All of the players have been trapped by psycho game developer Akihiko Kayaba, and the sad thing is even by the end of the novel we're never given any real reason (not even a 'reason' as seen by Kayaba) why this is being done. The only way to get out is to fight your way past super monsters to the one hundredth floor. Anyone who tries to exit by means of having someone remove their telemetry head cage, will have their brain zapped by microwaves. One more thing: if you die in the game, you die in real life.

Players find they have no choice. Some hunker down and do nothing, while others form guilds to try and make their way to the top. One groups forms a huge army. Some players, such as Kirito, go it alone. Time passes and the gamers progress floor by floor. Progress isn't achieved by anything like skill or intelligence - except skill in sword-fighting, but this is what the gaming world has reduced us to: conflict and bravado.

Just like the real world, we could render the virtual worlds into anything we want, but the males in power in both these worlds have decided that testosterone rules: the real world, the gaming world, and the comic book world, and all that's important is stealing and racing cars, fighting with swords, or fighting with guns. This is the world macho men have created for us all.

Large chunks of time are bypassed in this book in the space of a sentence as the novel progresses, and suddenly we've been gaming for two years, although who is keeping track of that isn't mentioned. Maybe it's the game itself, but since they're in a virtual reality, that reality could be lying to them with each passing minute! No one considers this.

There are one or two interludes, during which Kirito meets and partners with a guild member named Asuna Yuuki, the first name of which is pretty much 'anus' backwards, unfortunately. That said, the relationship between the two, while a bit on the precipitous side, isn't too badly done, and given the stress they're under, perhaps isn't even too quick. The end was a bit abrupt and unlikely. No one who has been confined to a hospital bed essentially in a coma for two years, not even with the best and most attentive care, which few of these many thousands of gamers will have had, is going to get out of bed and start walking around five minutes after waking up!

But, despite the weaknesses, I liked the story quite a lot. I consider it a worthy read, and I was thinking I might read volume two just out of curiosity, but then I discovered that volume two consists of Kirito going back into the game (a slightly different game) to rescue Asuna, who is trapped in it! What? How is she trapped in a different game? This is my problem with series - they are by definition derivative and unimaginative, and while some authors can make a go of them, most just make a goo of them. Clearly this author can't hack it, because he's simply telling the first story over again! Except that this time it's worse, because Asuna is a maiden in distress. I'm sorry, but no! You don't get to make her a victim like this and have the guy come in and rescue her like St George saving the maiden from the dragon (exactly like that!), so further reading in this series is definitely out for me.

Count Zero by William Gibson

Rating: WARTY!

This was another audiobook. I'd read and enjoyed Neuromancer a long time ago, and Gibson followed-up with this sequel, the second in his so-called 'sprawl trilogy' but even though I also read this one, I could not remember what happened in it! That ought to have warned me right there. This one started out well enough, but after the first ten percent or so, it devolved into the most tedious rambling imaginable, and I couldn't stand to listening to it any more.

I found myself phasing it out of my consciousness, and focusing on other things instead. Since I typically only listen to audiobooks when driving, I'm used to focusing on other things, namely traffic, but I always come back to the book - it's always there on the periphery even if I'm focused on some traffic situation, but in this case it disappeared and I didn't miss it! It was minutes later that I recalled I was supposed to be listening to it, which is a sure sign the author has lost me as an audience and it's time to return this to the library and let someone else suffer through it!

The sequel to this, and the closing volume of the trilogy is Mona Lisa Overdrive, which is an awesome name for a novel - as good as Neuromancer, so I will give that a try if the library has it. Again, I've read it before, but I barely remember it, so I'm not optimistic about liking that after this experience.

Gibson's problem is that his books now seem awfully dated. They're set in a high-tech future, but now have the same quaintness that those 'predictive' books of the nineteen-fifties had: so optimistic about technology, but so wrong about how it came to be and how it's been applied. Gibson's future is relentlessly negative, which hasn't come to be and most likely will not, unless climate changed brings us down badly. He thought we'd be getting our news by fax instead of through cell phones! His future hasn't heard of personal communication devices or anything like the world wide web.

He has medical science making huge leaps in body repair and enhancement, which is slowly coming to pass, but while he futuristically has people jacking into 'cyberspace' directly, instead of interfacing through keyboards and monitors, he has them completely unprotected against viruses and worms. This isn't credible. Neither is it credible that anyone would put their brain at risk like that unless they were nuts to begin with. On the other side of the coin, he does see corporate globalization as being troublesome, but I think Melissa Scott does a better job of visualizing the future in her Trouble and Her Friends than Gibson does in anything he's written (that I've read).

The story began interestingly enough with a mercenary by the name of Turner, being blown-up and rebuilt. He's recuperating with a fine girlfriend, but he doesn't realize she's been paid to nursemaid him until Conroy shows up. An old colleague, Conroy wants Turner's help in extracting a member of one global corporation and delivering him to work for a rival company. Meanwhile, the standard Gibson style hacker, Bobby Newmark, the Count Zero of the title, almost dies when trying out some new software. He's saved by the daughter of the man who Turner and Conroy are trying to extract. Her name is Angie Mitchell, and she has the ability to "jack in" to cyberspace without a jack.

As you can see, Gibson's work has heavily influenced what came afterwards, notably, the Matrix trilogy of movies, and the Thirteenth Floor movie which got very little traction, but which is a favorite of mine. The problem with him, for me, is that he's pretty much remained static, with his one-hit wonder, Neuromancer, the only thing to have honestly impressed me of all he's written, and a large part of that was Molly Millions, aka Sally Shears, who makes only the briefest of appearances in this middle volume before playing a larger role in the finale.

I can't recommend this one, though.

Emily The Strange: Rock Issue by Rob Reger, Jessica Gruner, Kitty Remington, Brian Brooks, Buzz Parker

Rating: WARTY!

I'm not even going to dignify this drivel with a significant review because it's not worth my valuable time, and it was so awful I pretty much skimmed the whole thing. The only rock references are to antique and irrelevant musicians in this modern world and to actual rocks. I am so disappointed in this whole mini-series. It's trite, tedious, and boring beyond hellish. Skip it. Avoid this series altogether, and read instead the four novels and the newer graphic novel about Emily's band: Emily and the Strangers.

Emily The Strange: Let There Be Darkby Rob Reger, Jessica Gruner, Brian Brooks, Kitty Remington, Buzz Parker

Rating: WARTY!

This is volume three of a seriously disappointing four-comic series.

After enjoying a previous graphic novel which was my first introduction to Emily, and then all four of the novels written about her, I was really looking forward to these, but they were not at all what I had hoped for. far form it.

The problem was that this set doesn't tell a story like the others do. The title of the volume sets the theme for the content, which is a set of mini-stories which are neither entertaining nor in any way satisfying.

God made Woman in My Own Image The forerunner to Emily's duplication of herself in the Stranger and Stranger novel. Read that instead.
Emily Created Creatures of the Night Totally boring.
Scarytale theater felt staged.
Go to the Dark overshadowed by later work.
Danger in the Dark
What's Darker Than Dark? Unintellidrivel.

That was it - hardly anything and what there was of anything wasn't worth reading.

Emily The Strange: This Cover Got Lost by Jessica Gruner, Rob Reger, Buffy Visick, Brian Brooks, Buzz Parker

Rating: WARTY!

This is volume two of a disappointing four comic series I requested from the library and the only thing to distinguish it, apart from the admittedly amusing title, is the delightfully named Buffy Visick joining the writing team (along with Brian Brooks). How four writers can come up with so little in the way of entertainment is the real entertainment here.

After enjoying a previous graphic novel which was my first introduction to Emily, and then all four of the novels written about her, I was really looking forward to these, but they were not at all what I had hoped for, and nothing like the previous material I'd read in terms of quality, inventiveness, or entertainment value. I was sorry to leave this character on such a sour note, but glad I read these last, because if I'd have read these first, I would likely never have read anything else and would have been poorer for it.

For me the problem was that this set doesn't really tell a story like the others do. Instead they consist of mediocre red and black illustrations (which could be called media ocher, I guess! LOL! as long as we're about to talk of bad punning), which tell mini tales all of which seem to often revolve around poor puns which really can't be stretched into a longer story. The title of the volume sets the theme for the content, and I found it amusing on this occasion especially since graphic novel cover artist has such a big (an unwarranted) deal made over it, but a lot of the references are to the pop culture of yesteryear, many of them antiques now, so the appeal is very limited. I recognized most of the names of the rocks stars of yesteryear featured in one story, but only one of the album covers, so that entire two page spread was lost on me. Lost is what I was in this, often, so again the title works if in a way unintended by the creators.

The stories in this volume were:
The Lost Art of was an empty frame.
Lost in Vision - blind pursuit of anything like entertainment value.
Lostco This was genuinely funny and entertaining, but the sad thing is that this is the only article out of all four comics that was worth reading.
Beauty is Lost Ugly.
Lost City Should have been included in the boring first volume.
Lost in Space Too spaced out.
Scarytale Theater Bring down the curtain.
Lost my Mind Agreed. Don't write anything else until you get it back!

Emily The Strange: Chairman of the Bored by Rob Reger, Brian Brooks, Jessica Gruner, Buzz Parker

Rating: WARTY!

This is volume one of a disappointing four comic series I requested from the library. After enjoying a previous graphic novel which was my first introduction to Emily, and then all four of the novels written about her, Emily, I was really looking forward to these, but they were not at all what I had hoped for and nothing like the previous material in terms of quality, inventiveness, or entertainment value. I was sorry to leave this character on such a sour note, but glad I read these last, because if I'd have read these first, I would likely never have read anything else and would have been poorer for it.

For me the problem was that this set doesn't really tell a story like the others do. Instead they consist of mediocre red and black illustrations (which could be called media ochre, I guess! LOL!), which tell mini tales all of which seem to revolve around bad puns which really don't make the transition to a longer story. The title of the volume sets the theme for the content, but a lot of the references are to the pop culture of yesteryear, many of them antiques now, so the appeal is very limited. I recognized most of the names of the rocks stars of yester year featured in one story, but only one of the album covers, so that entire two page spread was lost on me. Bored is what I was, so the title works, if in a way unintended by the creators.

It was written by Reger, Brooks, and Gruner, and largely illustrated poorly by Parker. The main stories in this volume were:
Strange sauce, where Emily flavors cafeteria food with a concoction o her own and turns everyone into monsters. Boring.
Thirteen other uses for wire hangers Lame.
head in the clouds Thin.
Bored to death Stuffing nonsense.
Croquet with the damned Laughable, and not in a good way.
Grow'n Up vegetative.

That was pretty much it. A complete bust. I do not recommend this. By all means do read the other works on Emily, but nothing from this series is worth your time.

Emily the Strange: Piece of Mind written by Rob Reger and Jessica Gruner, illustrated by Rob Reger and Buzz Parker

Rating: WORTHY!

After having fallen in love with Emily The Strange from a graphic novel I serendipitously happened upon at the worshipful local library, I discovered that there was a series of four novels on this same charming deviant, and I requested all four. This is the last of those.

Once again Emily is on a road trip. This seems to be her thing. She returns to the same town she visited in the 1790s, this time with all her cats, because she wishes to reclaim her inheritance: the power of Black Rock, which her arch nemesis is also seeking. Legend has it that this battle takes place every thirteenth generation, and Emily is not about to A. Lose and B. Let this power fall into the hands of her evil nemesis where it will stay for the next thirteen generations. With her golem, Raven at her side, and her four cats (Miles, Mystery, Neechee, and Sabbath) along for the trip, she heads out to do battle.

The problem is that Emily has no idea how to reclaim her inheritance, and neither does her arch nemesis. Worse than this, the town has changed rather a lot since she was last there (in 1790) so she has a hard time even figuring out where things are, particularly underground. Even worse, Her nemesis has a girl, Dottie, working for him and she can pull people's thoughts right out of their head just by touching them, leaving them at best, with holes in their memory, or at worst, with a mind almost as blank as Raven's is.

Emily steps up her game though, and of course she wins through as we knew she would. Another great story, the only bad part of which is that it was the last. I'm not a series fan generally speaking, but once in a while I'm lucky enough to happen upon one which breaks the mold in any sense of that word, and stands out above all others, and this is definitely one such series. "Are you there, black rock? It's Me, Emily" was one of many classic lines throughout the series that made this a joy to read.

Emily the Strange: Dark Times written by Rob Reger, illustrated by Rob Reger and Buzz Parker

Rating: WORTHY!

After having fallen in love with Emily The Strange from a graphic novel I serendipitously happened upon at the worshipful local library, I discovered that there was a series of four novels on this same charming deviant, and I requested all four.

In this, the third volume, which was the first I read in order, Emily perfects her Time Out Machine and is able to travel back to 1790 to investigate the demise of a distant relative, Lily, who apparently dies at the tender age of thirteen, at the hands of a 'Dark Girl'. Emily herself is a Dark Girl as was Lily, and so Emily is rather curious as to why one of them would kill one of her own, and wondering if she can somehow change history by preventing the death, and whether such a change would backfire and change Emily's own future so much that she would regret this intervention.

Once again she runs into her nemesis in the form of one of his ancestors, who are just as designing as he is in Emily's own time. She has to figure out why the supply of Black Rock (curiously the name of a location near my home town!) has dried up, and how it can be be set free again. Meanwhile the villain is holding Emily's ancestors prisoner to force them to confess the secret of the Black Rock so they can take it over. Apparently this fight for control of the substance takes place every thirteen generations - which happens to be Emily's favorite number.

And once again Emily is victorious. Those primitive 1790's locks cannot hold her in! Despite a few hair-raising scrapes which actually don't raise Emily's thick, dark locks, and despite at one point thinking she is trapped in the past, she wins through and all is well. A great story!

Emily the Strange: Stranger and Stranger written by Rob Reger and Jessica Gruner, illustrated by Rob Reger and Buzz Parker

Rating: WORTHY!

After having fallen in love with Emily The Strange from a graphic novel I serendipitously happened upon at the worshipful local library, I discovered that there was a series of four novels on this same charming deviant, and I requested all four, which was the maximum I could, given that I had one request pending already for something else. I wasn't sure what order the novels followed at first, so I ended-up reading this, the second book, first, before the first one was seconded.

In this book, Emily is bemoaning the need to move to yet another new town. The reason(s) for this move is or are obscure, but the cause is evidently tied to Emily's strange and often anti-social behavior eventually pissing-off the citizenry to the point where mobs and pitchforks might be called for. The first big clue to this is Emily's dire need to prank the whole town before she leaves. In her new home, Emily wastes no time in exploring everywhere, particular dumpsters and sewers, both of which figure large in her legend, and already considering a prank plan.

At one point early in the novel, Emily accidentally duplicates herself, and then discovers that her other self is actually the evil side of her, so it's really a riff on Jekyll and Hide, but is also hilarious as the two Emilys try to get along, and then slowly set about trying to sabotage each other. In the end, they have become mortal enemies, the only solution to which problem, seems to be Emily having to sew their bodies together, and then try to re-integrate their minds. In the end she succeeds, leaving only an empty husk of her alter ego, like a dried-up snakeskin, but the journey there is the real story.

The slow-burn of this perfectly titled adventure, filled with fear, suspicion, doubt, and paranoia, was magnificent to experience, and I highly recommend it.

Emily the Strange: The Lost Days written by Rob Reger and Jessica Gruner, illustrated by Rob Reger and Buzz Parker

Rating: WORTHY!

After having fallen in love with Emily The Strange from a graphic novel which I serendipitously happened upon at the worshipful local library, I discovered that there was a series of four novels on this same charming deviant, and I requested all four, which was the maximum I could, given that I had one request pending already for something else. I wasn't sure what order the novels followed at first, so I ended-up reading this, the first book out of those I requested, second, and the second one first.

This first one is about Emily giving herself amnesia because she has to go back to her ancestral town of Blackrock and fix a problem with her family arch-enemy, so it starts with her waking up on a park bench on this tiny town, and she has no idea who she is or how she got there. Always a great way to start a story if you can follow through, and this one certainly did. In some ways it was spoiled for me because I'd read the graphic novel first, which gave away secrets I would not have known had I read this without any introduction, but it was still a mystery and a great read, filled with fascinating characters and characteristically bizarre behaviors.

Emily is only thirteen, so her story is highly improbable, but it is funny. The scrapes she gets into and the thoughts and ideas she has running through her transom are deliciously warped. At some point prior to this story she had constructed what she refers to as a golem, but which is more like a Frankensteinian creature-cum-cyborg. Golems are Judaic mythical creatures, which are animated from clay figures. This character is flesh (with some electronics), and Emily put the finishing touch to her with the heart of a dying raven, so the golem is called Raven and can talk to birds. She's very strong and very pretty, but isn't very smart or communicative. She often answers with "Iono" which I found peculiarly endearing. She tends to take instructions very literally, so Emily has to be careful what she asks of Raven.

Not that she knows this, in this particular story, or that Raven is the one who drove her to the town in the first place prior to getting a job working as a barista at the podunk town's only café. For herself, Emily has to work out who she is and why she's there. In process of this, she encounters a host of locals, most of whom seem to spend inordinate amounts of time in the café when they're not working for the town's only real business - the junk mail factory. The totally corrupt police are a trip (Emily racks up $243 in fines without even trying, due to the local wacky bye-laws), as is the visiting circus of the weird, which seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time camped outside a town this small.

The map of the town which Emily conveniently draws for us in her diary (which is suspiciously missing pages) shows the junk mail factory issuing flames, but this never happens in the story (unless I missed it, I did read parts of it late at night!), so what that was all about, Iono. The story was awesome, fascinating, and lovable, as was Emily. There was an intriguing character named Molly who could almost be a clone of Emily's, but was not, and there were four cats which seemed much more intelligent than you'd normally expect. All in all, a great story which made me want only to read more about Emily.

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

Rating: WORTHY!

The compiled results of a web comic, Nimona is possibly the best graphic novel I've ever read. It's certainly up there in the top five. I was quite blown away by it, for the artwork, the humor, the plot and the story. It's brilliant! Noelle Stevenson is of Lumberjanes fame. I reviewed a volume of that unfavorably back in May, 2016. I'm happy to positively review something else she has done!

Nimona comes off as a young and ambitious girl who is ready to get her feet wet in the world of villainy. She volunteers to work with the evil Ballister Blackheart in his endeavors against his old friend, now arch-nemesis, Goldenloin, but in the course of this story, the question arises as to who is really a villain here and who is the golden hero.

Lord Blackheart isn't interested in having an assistant, but when he discovers that Nimona is a shape-shifter - and can shift into any shape - animal or person, he realizes she might have some value as a hench-man...woman...wench? The problem is that he has a code of conduct to which she evidently doesn't seem very interested in adhering. She's all for havoc and chaos, whereas his villainy is less brutal and more structured.

Nevertheless, they learn to work together and they discover the government is hoarding jaderoot, which is a deadly poisonous material and very dangerous to work with, even in small quantities. But how is Blackheart to get word out about the government's villainy in hoarding large quantities of a mateirla they themselves had banned, especially when he's a well-known villain himself? Maybe Nimona can help with that!

I dearly loved this story, and I consider it well worth the eighteen dollar asking price in the hardback print version I read. I recommend it highly.

Red Angel by CR Daems

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an interesting novel, and the start of a series which I'm not sure I want to follow even though I liked this volume. I'm not a huge fan of series. Once in a while I find one I like, but more often than not, series seem to me to be lazy, derivative, and unimaginative, essentially traveling over the same ground that's already been trampled free of all character. I prefer stories that take the road less traveled, which is impossible with a series, by its very nature. I'm especially not enamored of trilogies which everyone and their uncle seems intent upon writing, particularly in the YA world.

This novel had some issues. It could have used a good editor, because parts of it were repetitive, saying the same thing over that had just been said a couple of paragraphs before, but that didn't happen often. Additionally, the story had a juvenile feel to it - like fan fiction, but for me that wasn't really a problem. I'll forgive a writer a lot if they tell me a good story, and this was a good and original story.

Main character Anna has an interesting companion. Her entire family was dying of the Cacao virus when she was four, but this krait, a type of snake, latched onto her and bit her, and the venom held the virus at bay. It did not cure her, nor did it kill her. The rest of her family died, and had the snake left her, Anna would have died too, but for reasons unknown, the snake stayed with her into adulthood, living wrapped around her neck or on her arm or leg, biting her once in a while to feed on her blood, but keeping her alive in the process, so she learns to live with it and eventually considers it to be a friend and a pet. The friendship aspect is covered a lot more than the biting and blood-sucking aspect!

The snake is repeatedly described by the author as poisonous, but snakes tend not to be poisonous: you can eat them without dying! What the writer means is that the snake is venomous, and the venom in this case is usually deadly except to Anna. People avoid these kraits like they would avoid someone who has the virus, but once it gets known that this red-headed krait can 'cure' the virus, Anna becomes a target of desperate people who also want this 'cure', so it's hard to find her a secure location with a foster family.

After a bullying incident at a boarding school, Anna comes to the attention of a navy magistrate who ends up adopting her, and thus Anna is trained at a naval academy, and there she thrives. When she's eighteen, she's offered a job with an investigative division in the Navy and she accepts. The team begins to investigate a wide-spread smuggling operation and Anna is instrumental in the pursuit. It's never quite clear what they're smuggling, although drugs are mentioned a lot.

The only problem I have with this is my generic one with these space operas. Space is far too large and habitable planets too few and very far between to make any kind of commerce financially viable unless the products are considered extremely valuable. Why would anyone pay for something to be shipped from many light years away when the can fabricate the same thing on the planet where they need it? Most sci-fi writers gloss over this, and pretend it's not a problem, but it distracts me from the story, so unless the story is really very good, I can't take it seriously.

Other than that, the story wasn't bad at all. it moved quickly and was engaging. Once in a while it was annoying. For example, Anna was, we were repeatedly told, a very mature young woman, but she presented as a rather immature one most of the time. Fortunately this was not a killer for me. Neither was the occasional grammatical or spelling gaff. For example at one point I read, "he'll made admiral some day" when obviously it should have been 'make', not 'made' (and you can also argue that 'some day' should be rendered as a single word if you like), but I'm willing to forgive these too, if the story is a good one, so this one passes and I recommend it. I might even read volume two of the series should I ever come across it, but I don't feel compelled to rush out find it.

Lucifer Book Four by Mike Carey and assorted artists and colorists

Rating: WARTY!

I requested three graphic novels from the local library because I am not about to spend thirty dollars for a graphic novel i probably will not like! All three are going back one of them unread, the other two read only a quarter the way through in one case and half-way through in the other.

They're all tied (very loosely as it happens) to a TV series Lucifer which is based on the character from the Sandman comics, and which I really enjoy. I tried a couple of the Sandmans a while ago, and did not like them at all, but I thought maybe the dedicated Lucifer comics might be better. They were not. I looked at two of them. I made it only a quarter way through the mainstream one, and I was not impressed at all by either one I looked at, so I did not even open the third. I'll stick with the TV show.

In view of the comments I make below, I should mention here that the TV series has some racism about it in that the entire cast is nearly all white. There are two main characters: Amenadiel, played by D. B. Woodside who is black, and a Cape Colored South African-born actress Lesley-Ann Brandt, who plays Mazikeen. Both of these guys are are excellent, so people of color are not quite as underrepresented here as in the comic books, but are still shamefully absent. The difference though is that there is a far larger pool of people controlling the TV show than there is the comic book. While I readily admit it should not be so, it seems to me that it would be a lot easier to depict whoever you want in a graphic novel, including making a fair representation of people of all colors, and yet still they failed.

This volume (volume four, and I have not read the previous three, so I admit to coming into this in progress) was a fat tome, fully three-quarters of an inch across the spine, but there is no page numbering so I can't quote a page count. While saying again that I came into this in progress (the library did not have any earlier volumes), if I were to pick up any novel at random and start in on it half-way through, it would make some kind of sense. It might be missing key facts and important information, but at least the layout of the story would be coherent. Such was not the case here. I had no good idea what was going on or where it was supposed to be going.

Worse than this, was that what did come through with crystal clarity were some obnoxious themes running through this work, like rotted threads in a fabric, and which are evidently common to this series judged by what I've now seen of it. The worst of these is the racism. All the good-looking stand-up characters are white. All the obviously evil characters are people of color. That's truly sick and warped. Yes, 80% of the artists doing this volume are white (only Ronald Wimberly is black), but is this an excuse? No. Additionally, the male artists are as usual, squeamish about depicting male genitalia, but have no problem at all sexualizing woman.

That's not acceptable to me and I cannot recommend such a gory (again the gore was often of adults abusing children - what is wrong with these writers and artists?) and disjointed work where the sole purpose of it seems to be perpetuating a sick story instead of telling an engaging one.

Lucifer Cold Heaven by Holly Black, Lee Garbett, Stephanie Hans, Antonio Fabela

Rating: WARTY!

I really enjoy the TV series Lucifer based on the character from the Sandman comics. I tried a couple of those and did not like them at all, but I thought maybe the dedicated Lucifer comics might be better. They were not. I looked at two of them, and I made it only half way through this one and a quarter way through the mainstream one, and I was not impressed at all by either one. I'll stick with the TV show.

This particular edition collates six individual comics into one. The story here is that god has been killed and a disgraced Gabriel and Lucifer have to work together to solve the case. They evidently didn't get the news that god has long been dead for all thinking people who are not blind sheep! LOL!

Yes, the premise is utterly absurd, and I really have no time for the traditional trope angels and demons shtick, but I thought perhaps this might have some of the charm and humor of the TV show. It did not. The tow are completely unrelated. This whole graphic novel series of Lucifer is exactly that: graphic with gore, and rot and evil, and with nothing to leaven it or save it. The story made no sense. I mean, if god is in his Heaven and is surrounded by adoring dead Christians (or Jews or Muslims, or whatever), then how did anyone ever sneak by to murder him? What does it mean that a god is mortal? None of this is considered in the hell-bent rush to the gross-out.

The comics are obnoxious in ways other than the pointless gore, though. They're racist. There are no people of color here - everyone is white because, presumably, the main artist is white. Either that's racist because the artist doesn't consider non-whites - the overwhelmingly massive majority of people on Earth - to be worth representing, or it's racist because we're being shown that white people are overwhelmingly evil. While it's tempting, sometimes, to consider that, it is in fact not true, excepting our current government of course!

More than this, in this comic there was a fat-shaming episode in that the only person who was overweight who was depicted in the entire comic here was evil. Everyone else, even the evil people, were slim and good looking. Fat people are evil? Way to go, Lee Garbett! Being a male artist, Garbett is very squeamish about depicting male genitalia. In his favor, I perhaps should say that he doesn't pneumatically over-sex his female characters, but it's harder to judge that because there are almost none in the story, which is curious given the gender of the writer.

So, in short, I cannot recommend this story. It was trite, and predictable and amateur, and the artwork was the same. Worse, there was nothing new here at all.

Lyddie by Katherine Paterson

Rating: WORTHY!

I twice had mixed feelings about this novel, but both times in the end, it came through for me, and so I have no choice but to rate it a worthy read! That's my kind of author, despite the fact that she won a Newbery for some other novel she wrote. I started out int he first few chapters wondering if I could drop this at a quarter the way through, but as soon as Lyddie left her rural background and headed for the city, it picked-up and never stopped from there on out. That was when I began enjoying it.

This is the story of a young girl who lives on a farm with her mother and her younger siblings, but their father has left them and offers no hope that he's coming back. Their mother is weak and worn out, so it would seem that it's all up to Lyddie Worthen (come on - if she'd been named Worthy it could hardly be any closer!). She almost despairs when her mother announces that the family must be split-up in order to pay off the debt that's owed. Mother and the youngest are going to stay with relatives, but Lyddie and Charlie, despite their tender age, are to be let out as servants in order to start working down the crushing debt.

The paltry little farm will stand idle and Lyddie hates that. She isn't happy with her lot either although Charlie, in a luckier situation, flourishes. Lyddie hears about the money that's to be made up in Lowell, Massachusetts, working in the yarn-spinning factories, and she jumps ship.

The life in the factory pays well (by Lyddie's previous standards), but the work is long, long, long, and the conditions are awful. Get used to this folks because this is where the The Business President is aiming to take us all in the next four years. Lyddie struggles at first, but eventually becomes the best loom operator in the whole factory. It's piece-work which means that the workers have no peace, because they have to meet a quota and unfortunately, saving is slow and problems abound.

Some girls are talking of agitation for better conditions, and all the while the factory makes greater demands - running the looms faster, reducing pay and raising quotas. The horrible condition inside the factory are best exemplified in the BBC TV serialization of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South which stars Richard Armitage of The Hobbit fame. Several scenes in this show display in graphic detail how god-awful working conditions in a spinning factory were back then.

Lyddie has no time for agitation. She focuses on working hard, and being the best, so she can run four looms and make more money, but even as she almost literally slaves away, her family and farm situation deteriorate bit by bit. The ending seemed obvious and I was getting ready to down-rate it because it looked like this author was going to perform a YA weak, dependent, girl atrocity on her main character, but once again she turned it around and sent Lyddie in a different direction: one which returned control to Lyddie, and one of which I fully approved. It was this that really won me over, because the girl had not given-up. She had merely refocused her goal and went for it with a control-taking dedication which I admired and approved of. I fully recommend this read.

Gangster Women by Susan McNicoll

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a book about the women who hung out with the infamous mobsters and gangsters, mostly during their heyday in the early thirties, but also covering one from the fifties. it tells an unflinching tale of the ruthlessness and brutality, and of the love and loyalty. The book begins by covering the quartet of Billie Frechette, Marie Comforti, Jean Delaney Crompton, and Helen Gillis. Frechette was John Dillinger's girlfriend, and Delaney was one of three sisters, all of whom took up with gangsters. Helen Gillis was the wife of Lester "Baby-Face" Nelson, who died in her arms with nine bullets in his body after an insane shootout on a back country lane in late November 1934.

That turned out to be a banner year for renowned gangsters flaming out. It saw the deaths of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in May, Marie Curie and John Dillinger in July (one of those might not be an outlaw), and Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd in October. Ma and Fred Barker only just escaped that watershed year by 16 days, dying in a gunfight with police in mid-January 1935. There were lesser names, too, such as Ford Bradshaw, Robert Brady, Tommy Carroll who was an associate of Dillinger's and who was the boyfriend of Jean Crompton, Aussie Elliott, an associate of Floyd's, Fred "Shotgun" Goetz, of Valentine's Day Massacre fame, Joseph Moran, an associate of the Barker gang, and last but not least, Wilbur "Mad Dog" Underhill. Also on the list are five more associates of John Dillinger: Eddie Green, John Hamilton, Charles Makley, Harry Pierpont, and Homer Van Meter. Clearly it wasn't safe to be a member of the Dillinger crew!

The book covers Bonnie and Clyde, of course, and Clyde's brother Marvin Barrow aka Buck, who was wounded with his wife Blanche and died in July 1933. Blanche lived to a ripe old age. Bonnie and Clyde's career seemed like ti was laways on the downhill slope. They were petty thieves and violently resisted arrest. Their spree lasted only two years, all of it spent on the run, and often wounded. Bonnie was injured severely in a car accident and never recovered, spending the last year of her life in pain form an injured leg. They both die din their mid-twenties.

The last story in the book is of Bugsy Siegel's abused girlfriend Virginia Hill, who looked like a movie star and who evidently was a petulant and avaricious girl. She was apparently murdered in the mid-sixties, but she outlived a girl who as a kid, resolved to emulate her, and who ended up 'collateral damage' in a hit job on the guy she was traveling with, Little Augie Pisano. Janice Drake left behind a thirteen year old son.

It had to be infatuation. No one who wasn't blinded by love of some variety or another would be seen dead with these people. Or maybe they would....

Critical Mass by Steve Martini

Rating: WARTY!

This is my first and probably my last Steve Martini novel. Am I sure it wasn't Steve Martin and not Martini? No! This was a plodding, predictable, obvious novel with no thrills at all, which is hardly surprising given his background as first a journalist, then a layer. What was I thinking?! I read only a third of this four-hundred-some page novel because I couldn't stand to read any more when I have other books literally weighing down my shelves. Life is far too short!

The only conceivable reason to include a lawyer in this novel is Martini's history. She had no other purpose. In fact none of the chapters in which she was featured made a lick of sense. On top of this was the obvious: it was painfully obvious who was behind the theft of the nuclear weapons before the plodding Gideon figured it out. It was glaringly obvious that 'Belden' never died in the airplane explosion. Pathetic.

The story is about the theft of two nuclear missiles from Russia. We know from the off that they will be discovered and disarmed at the last minute, and that since we have "weak, gullible" female character Joselyn the Lawyer and love interest for Gideon, she will be imperiled before the story ends (probably by Belden), so there were no thrills here, and I have considerably better reads to do with my time.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Neil Babra

Rating: WORTHY!

No Fear Shakespeare is a collection of "translated" Shakespeare texts - in other words, delivered in modern English instead of in the antique lingo with which Shakespeare was familiar. A web version of Hamlet done in this way can be found here.

I'm familiar Hamlet from its general reputation, and from the Kenneth Branagh and Mel Gibson movie versions, but I've never read the original play. I will be setting that right at some point since reading this gave me an idea for a novel! Those who have no familiarity with this story (the full title of which is The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, but shorted merely to Hamlet for this book) might be surprised to discover how many quite well-known English catch-phrases were derived from this play. It seems like it's full of them. This was Shakespeare's longest work and was derived from the medieval Scandinavian legend of Amleth which in the beginning is very much like the Hamlet we know, although the ending is rather more convoluted (Amleth ends up with two wives!).

This graphic novel follows the 'No Fear' text, and the black and white line drawings are rudimentary (and predictably shaded dark in many places!), so the artwork was no great shakes (peer!), but overall I liked the way this was done. I found it eminently readable and easy follow (although frankly the text could have been more legibly printed, especially in the reversed panels where it was white text on a black background).

The story is of course that Hamlet's uncle, with the rather un-Danish name of Claudius, murdered Hamlet's father and took over the throne, but disguised the murder and got away with it. This never made any sense to me. Hamlet was old enough to be king, so if his father was king but died (whether murdered or through natural causes), why was Hamlet not king? I think Shakespeare screwed up!

Whether Hamlet was insane or merely faking it to achieve the end result of exposing his uncle is a much debated question. I think at first there is no doubt of his sanity, but certain later actions of his, such as his lack of remorse at slaying the father of the woman he purportedly loved, and his callous rejection of this same woman and lack of concern over her becoming unhinged suggest to me that while he wasn't exactly what I'd term missing a few planks from his stage, he was certainly a folio short of a play!

So in the end, as is the wont in Shakespeare's tragedies, there's a slaughter and, as Prince Escalus might have it, "all are punish'd." Denmark falls to Norway, the very nation which was lost a war with it before the play begins. This part made no sense to me either. Did Shakespeare not know his Europe? It made zero sense that Norwegian armies would need to March across Denmark to get to Poland! Why did they not go directly through Sweden (a country with which they had not been at war recently), or simply sail though the Baltic? That Shakespeare, I tell you! But let's take a page out of Shakespeare's book on this: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so"! So it's all good and I recommend this one.