The Middle of Somewhere by Sonja Yoerg

Rating: WORTHY!

Liz is twenty-nine and feels that her life is somehow becoming derailed. She has long wanted to hike the two-hundred and twenty mile JMT (John Muir Trail) in California, and has never done it. After the first seven miles, the trail runs above 7,000 feet for its entire length. Now she has the chance to do this, and is looking forward to a wilderness experience to help get her mind right, but live-in boyfriend Dante, about whom Liz has mixed feelings, has talked her into bringing him along. I was interested in reading this novel having recently been in Yosemite (all too briefly!) myself.

There were some formatting issues with this book as I read it - on a smart phone in a Kindle app. For example, this sentence, at 2% in, had a line break right before the last word, which would have been fine except that the line break didn’t occur at the end of the line but in the middle of a line where it dropped to the next line and the sentence finished with the last word. It looked like this:
How could she be psyched when this wasn’t the trip she’d
planned?

There were other such issues. Some screens had the text finish about two thirds the way across the screen, like the text had been indented from the right. I suspect this was caused by hard carriage returns which didn't translate into Kindle format. In other instances, there were words run together such as 'performanceenhancing'. Any spell-checker would catch that. In at least one instances a hyphen was missed such as: 'selfrecrimination' and “Or thenot-confess-your-most-shameful-moments..." A spell-checker would catch that, too.

There were other cases where speech from two different people was run together such as: He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me.”“I’m sorry.” (the last speech was from Dante's girlfriend Liz, and should have appeared on a separate line). Another instance was: “It’s freezing. I’m hiking in my leggings until it warms up.”“I’m hiking in everything.” Again a line break was missing. Spell-checkers won't catch these problems, and maybe they were caused by the translation to kindle format rather than anything the author did. I don't know.

This was an advance review copy, so I am hopeful that the formatting issues will be resolved before it gets into its final form, but this wasn't the only such issue. This one is on the author: she wrote "wracking her brain" when it ought to be "racking her brain" There were problems with the chapter starting points, too. For example, both chapters one and two begin with a capital letter T, although this has nothing to do with the text. The first one begins "T Liz..." and the second chapter begins "T At...". I found myself wondering if this was the result of a drop-cap not being translated into the Kindle format properly. The second chapter also had a problem with the word "Chapter" rendering it as "Ch apte r Two".

Meanwhile, back at the story, Liz has issues with Dante of which he's unaware. These are not helped by his delaying her trip. She had to wait two weeks past her planned date so that Dante could also get a permit to hike, and then on the day they arrived at their starting point, she had to wait on his chatting with some people in the visitor's center before they actually began it. Having hiked up really steep and demanding slopes for half a day or so at the start of the trail, they encountered two guys, evidently brothers, who were evidently to be the bad guys here, and I found myself hoping this would not turn into a bad teen B movie!

By day two, Liz is so tired of Dante antics that she's all-but ready to ditch him and strike out on her own. This could have gone either of two ways here: she does ditch him and finds herself ready for a new life, or the trip will bond them. At that point, I was leaning towards the second even though the story looked like it was heading towards the first, but there was a third option, where he decides to turn back leaving Liz alone as she had originally wanted.

At one point in the novel, we're told that the next leg of the journey is a rise of three thousand feet over a instance of twelve miles which sounds amusing on the face of it, since it's only a one in 21 gradient, but of course, the gradient isn't that gradual. Some parts are evidently flat, or nearly so, whereas other parts are extremely steep. It just seemed to me less impressive than perhaps the author thought it was when she wrote it!

Liz, it turns out is rather like a Chinese nesting doll set, in that as we read through this, we find that what was on the outside concealed something different underneath. In some ways, it was annoying to me that I kept on thinking I knew what was going on, only to find that being undermined by another layer underneath. I don't know why it annoyed me. Clearly this was the way to do it, rather than front-load the novel with all her baggage in the same way she was loaded with baggage as she began her hike. Or worse, put a prologue in. God forbid that crappy method of writing, and kudos to the author for avoiding it.

In the end, as irritating as it was in some ways to lift the ragged jute rug of Liz's personality and find dirt swept underneath it, it was quite realistic - not so much in how she was revealing herself to us, but in how she was keeping the ragged edges of her life hidden, where she wouldn't see them for what they were. Liz is carrying far more weight on this trip than she needs to, but most of it isn't in her backpack.

My blog is about writing, and I found an example of the word 'entitled' being misused. I know this is becoming more common but that doesn't make it right - not until it's totally common! It's sad to see words being misused and losing their meaning. It's reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984 where words can mean two different things - like flammable and inflammable! In this case we're told that a Georgia O'Keeffe painting was entitled "Above the Clouds I" when it was really simply titled "Above the Clouds I". It's a pretty picture and you can argue that it was entitled to be admired, but that's as far as that goes!

Without wanting to give too much away, there is one section of the book where Liz confesses something to Dante and his reaction is to hike alone the next day, leaving her behind. This behavior, to me seemed no better than Gabriel's behavior - the very thing which Liz is so obsessing over, yet she never once thinks there's anything wrong with Dante's abandoning her (on three occasions no less!) when she most needed support. For me his behavior was unforgivable.

The portion which deals with the suspension bridge over Woods Creek misled me. The story indicates that the bridge is a lot higher than it appears from images on the web, which makes the events there rather suspect! Note that Woods Creek isn't named after me even though I've reached the point where I have actually started creaking...! From the text I imagined the bridge higher and with rocky terrain on either side, whereas it is actually in a rather forested area. Note that I've never seen it, so I'm judging from images on the web, and I guess it's possible there's more than one suspension bridge over it, but it's no big deal.

What bothered me most of all was that Liz, who started out strong an independent, was disappointingly slowly morphed into a rather more childlike version of herself in the last fifteen percent of the novel, and reduced to irritating internal monologue about how sorry she was (I'm not telling what for!), and how certain she was she had lost Dante. This was way overdone. I got the message. I didn't need to be hit over the head with it every few pages! Liz is also an experienced hiker, so when I read, "...and he and Joe assisted Dante in helping Liz down tricky sections" it made her seem inept or like a maiden in distress, and I reacted badly to it. Liz deserved a lot better than that.

It was at that point that I wondered if my rating for this novel was going to end-up in the toilet, but it regrouped at the end and made for a decent ending and overall, a very worthy read, whic was a welcome and pleasant surprise for me! I recommend this one.

Dress Shop of Dreams by Menna van Praag

Title: The Dress Shop of Dreams
Author: Menna van Praag
Publisher:
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

The title to this novel was what drew me in. It's so frivolous! In this story, Etta Sparks owns a rather magical dress shop which seems almost to repel many customers for no obvious reason, but once in a while, the right customer comes in, and Etta knows she can help them find that missing piece of themselves. The dresses tell her so. Plus she has a magical thread!

After we've met Etta, we're introduced to her granddaughter Cora. Almost a polar opposite, Cora leads a very mundane, if regimented life, following her mathematical mind's dictates, working at the lab, visiting the book store, counting things to an OCD level, early to bed, early to rise. Today, however, is her birthday and she's having a meal with her grandmother followed by a special cherry pie baked with love by Walt, at the nearby book store cum pie shop. Walt seems completely lost around Cora, who in turn seems completely unaware of him as a member of the opposite sex.

Here's a precious quote: "Then Walt stops pacing. He has an idea. An idea so different, so startling and wild, it makes him sneeze with shock." LOL! I loved that. The problem is that Walt's idea has nothing to do with Cora - whose name isn't really Cora....

One thing which felt a bit pretentious to me was the inclusion of a book store. Writers tend to do this as a substitute for intellect. 'Oh, she works in a book store, she must be smart!' or 'Oh, he reads books, he must be a treasure!" Book stores are wonderful, and librarians are every bit the figures which Evelyn Carnahan declares them to be in The Mummy, but it's almost a cliché now to include a book store in this kind of novel.

That said, the novel turned out to be pleasantly surprising. It was very layered and rather complex, with one new item after another being offered for consideration as each chapter flew by. Each of the main characters has a background which is carefully exposed and explored. I liked it a lot and I recommend it.

Season's Meetings by Amy Dunne

Title: Season's Meetings
Author: Amy Dunne
Publisher: Bold Strokes
Rating: WORTHY!

This novel is not to be confused with Season's Meetings by Catherine Winchester, which I haven't read.

Errata:
P209 "...batter an eyelid..." should be "...bat an eyelid..." unless they're really going to be coating eyelids with flour and eggs...!

P213 "...whatever funny antidote Sky was reeling off..." should be "...whatever funny anecdote Sky was reeling off..." unless relations between Cat and Holly have really become so bad that they're poisoning each other!

Author Amy Dunne (not the same one as the one in Amy Dunn Quits School) is from my own home county of Derbyshire in England, so yes, I'm completely biased, but since I didn't learn this until after I'd finished this novel and concluded it an excellent and highly worthy read, I don't care about bias! I'd thought this was Amy Dunne's debut novel when I read it, but it isn't. It turns out that she has another one Secret Lies which, despite the bizarre title, I'm now looking for. Hopefully there will be more after this one, too.

This is my Xmas novel review for today (I can't promise an Xmas novel every day this month, but I will be doing more). This one is a romance, but it's a little bit different from your usual affair: it’s a lesbian romance. That helped me to forgive the author for making the beginner's mistake of having a character look in a mirror so we can get a description of them. The author also impressed me by not writing in the first person, which is a voice I typically detest. On top of all that, the novel is set in Britain, so worth a look there, too. Yes, America, there are places east of the Atlantic, and west of the Pacific, and south of Texas, and north of Minnesota. And the main character is an atheist! How often do we get that? So we're off to a good start thinks I.

Cat Birch is still stinging over the demise of her live-in relationship with a girl called Paula which ended very unhappily and she's not dealing with it very well at all. She has no interest in life save for work, which isn’t exactly going brilliantly, and she isn’t eating well. She apparently has a drinking problem as well if we’re to judge her by the fact that she pours herself the dregs of a bottle of wine and "gulps" it down, followed by opening yet another bottle and pouring herself a "large glass". On the bright side, she does volunteer work for children's literacy, so it’s not all downhill.

Cat is looking at another Xmas alone until her secretary and her close friend trick her into going to spend Xmas with a goddaughter to whom she can’t say no, but even that seems like it’s falling apart when her flight has to be canceled so Cat can get some last minute work caught up. But at least she doesn’t have to go visiting over Xmas, does she? Well, Beth took care of even that. Now Cat has to travel with someone who's driving up to Scotland. The last traveling companion she expects is Holly - young, feisty, confident, playful, and as optimistic and positive as Cat is the opposite.

The drive in the car (which has a bonnet, a boot, and tyres!) was written well and was quite entertaining. Not that it would do me any good, but I fell in love with Holly during the trip! They're not making the journey in one run because of the weather, so they stop at a hotel half-way through the journey - and the weather goes sour on them. This bit really didn't make sense! It would have been smarter to keep driving, but Holly was tired and Cat doesn't drive, so we can let that slide.

The descriptive prose went a bit sour here. Cat notes that Holly has gold flecks in her eyes. Seriously? The number of times I've read that exact description in YA literature (not that this is YA) is nauseating. It would honestly be a really nice surprise to read a story where the love interest actually doesn’t have gold flecks. Plus Cat is a bit like a cat in heat by this point, which is also not very endearing. I would have preferred it if her responsiveness was more in keeping with what we'd read about her earlier.

I have to say that there were parts of this story that came off as rather false, too. I know it's important to put some chop in the waves so the relationship isn't a plain-sailing Mary Sue boring story, but if it's not done well, then it simply takes the reader out of the story and reminds then that they are, in fact, reading a story. One such instance was Cat's intransigence over telling her friend Beth about her blossoming relationship with Holly.

Cat does have reason to avoid this revelation: long ago she and Beth had vowed to each other that they would never get involved with each other's close friends or family, so now she doesn't want to tell Beth that she fell in love with a cousin. As a result, she and Holly have a fight and it looks like everything is in trouble. Then Beth decides she should bring blind dates to dinner one each for Cat and Holly! Eek!

The thing which immediately crossed my mind was that Holly had set-up Cat, or the both of them were set up by Beth with these blind dates, both of whom seemed too much like caricatures to be taken seriously. Whether this is true or not isn't something I'm going to tell you, because I've given way more spoilers than I like to for a new novel. The reason for doing that is of course that there were some issues I felt needed addressing.

The only other real problem was with the ease of travel. The two of them had been stranded in two feet of snow, with more falling. In those circumstances, I would have expected power lines to be down, and travel to be all but impossible except on major roads, yet there were no power outages, and within a day or two, travel was apparently completely unrestricted, even out in the middle of nowhere. This seemed unrealistic to me! The two travelers had no trouble getting out to Beth and Katie's completely-out-in-the-wilds residence, and there seemed to be no problem in not only finding blind dates, but also in the dates getting there too. It made little logical sense, but I was willing to forgive it because the story, overall, was really entertaining.

It also made little sense that Holly, who had presented as impressively mature, suddenly had a childish hissy fit and viciously announced that "It's over" at one point in the story. This seemed to come completely out of the blue, to say nothing about it being out of character, and turned me off her somewhat, although she won me around again later! OTOH, Holly had been given a heck of lot of provocation (and not in a good way!) by Cat's cowardice, dithering, indecision, a sorry lack of support, and general absence of backbone, but again, she had her reasons, too.

But it's time to be done with all this rambling and conclude the review. My conclusion is that this novel is excellent! It made my eyes water because of the ending. No, I wasn't crying...my eyes were just watering, okay? OKAY? It happens. Deal with it! In short I loved this novel and really became as engrossed as I was enamored by it. This is a couple I would be honored to know in real life. It's rather sad that they're only fictional. This is a wonderful Christmas read which I whole-heartedly recommend.

Mabel the Lovelorn Dwarf by Sherry Peters

Title: Mabel the Lovelorn Dwarf
Author: Sherry Peters
Publisher: Sherry Peters
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!

This novel had such an absurd title that I couldn't resist it and I'm happy to report that resistance would have been futile anyway. This novel is adorable. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s perfect, but it is a real charmer that won me over very quickly. Plus, if you like it, then you'll be happy to know it’s the first of a series: the Ballad of Mabel Goldenaxe. I have to say I am not a huge fan of serial novels, but this one was good enough that I'm actually tempted to follow this series!

Mabel is the youngest of a small dwarf family - and no, that's not a tautology. The family is a bunch of dwarfs, and the family size is small: there's only a dozen or so of them. She's the only daughter and it's her first day in the mines. Her family is very supportive. Her father is distinctly over-bearing, but her brothers love her and give her all kinds of encouragement, even though she feels slightly under-dwarfed: she's rather on the slender side, not stout like your ideal dwarf, and her beard is only thin, but hey, she's very young - only 75 years, so there's plenty of time for her to become a real broad and hirsute herself.

Mabel has a knack for mining (she's a dwarf, after all), and on her first day she manages to instinctively find an emerald, which is quite a novelty. Most dwarfs find them, but not on their first day on the job. Naturally she heads to the bar to celebrate with her brothers and friends after the shift is over by downing a gallon or two of good ale. Everything seems perfect, doesn't it?

It’s not.

Mabel's mom, she's long been told, stole the family fortune and fled the mountain when Mabel was but a dwarfling, bringing down disgrace upon the family which they're only just now out-growing. Mabel's so-called best friend, whom she's known since childhood, is actually subtly - and then not-so-subtly - undermining Mabel every chance she gets. Her father seems to be growing ever more obsessed with finding Mabel a mate, and Mabel - bless her little plaited beard - is developing a growing interest in axe-throwing as a sport.

Naturally her father tries to stanch this un-dwarfish activity, but he can hardly hold her back since she's really good at it, and one of her brothers was a champion who supports her ambition to compete in the dwarf games. As if that's not bad enough, Mabel starts developing an interest in another un-dwarf-like activity: going to the movies. It’s bad enough she does that, but these movies have elves in them. Her father barely tolerates this, so how can Mabel possibly tell anyone that she's fallen in love with Aramis - the star of the elver screen?

This story is an adventure story, a mystery, a coming of age, a YA romance, and a bloody good piece of fiction. It’s funny, without being farcical or a parody. It’s moving to see how badly put-upon poor Mabel is, and how resilient she is. It’s inspiring to see how dedicated and loyal she is. And it’s amazing to see such a strong female character come out of what I originally thought was going to be a rather juvenile fantasy.

I'm one hundred percent behind this novel, which was a real pleasure to read.

The Book of Ivy by Amy Engel

Title: The Book of Ivy
Author/Editor: Amy Engel
Publisher: Entangled
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is reward aplenty!

I have to say, right up front, that this novel was a real roller-coaster ride, and not in a good way. I had so many issues with it, and I was thinking right up until about the half-way point that I wasn't going to finish it, let alone rate it positively, but I managed to read it all the way through to its inevitable cliff-hanger finale, and in the end I decided it was a worthy read! Weird huh?

Maybe it's my co-dependent relationship with Entangled, or maybe I was bemused by the fact that the author's name, Amy Engel is vaguely like an anagram of Entangled. Maybe it's because I have an adorable niece named Amy, or because my favorite nurse was named Amy. but there it is. And yes, though neither the front cover nor the back-cover blurb will tell you this, it's book one of a series. Judging by current YA trends, I'm guessing it's going to be a trilogy.

Here's the real mystery: why do they publish a "Praise for..." page in an ebook? In a print book I can see some theoretical merit if you lift it off the shelf at the library, or in a bookstore (are there still bookstores?), you can read what people you don't know, have never met, and have no means by which to gage their opinion, thought about this novel. It doesn't work with me, but maybe it works for others. But in an ebook? You already have the book. You already bought it based on the blurb or the recommendation of someone you do know and trust, so pray tell me what exactly is the point of a recommendation for a book you already own? I have no idea.

Here's something else I have no idea about: what's the deal with the cover image? I've now read this book, and still I have no idea what the image on the cover is supposed to represent. There is no knife involved in any way in the plot to murder Bishop Lattimer, so why the knife?! The locale in this story is a small town. There are no skyscrapers. I don't do covers because my blog is all about writing, not strutting and preening, and I understand that writers don't get any real say in their cover (unless they self-publish). Normally I pay little attention to them, but once in a while one comes along and demands a whisky-foxtrot-tango expression of complete disbelief. Such a one is this. Enjoy!

OK, enough rambling. So what's it all about, Amy? The basis of this story is the same one as is employed in employed in Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge, where Nyx has to kill her newly betrothed: a demon who rules the land. She fails to carry it out, too, but she at least tries initially. Ivy doesn't even progress that far.

The Book of Ivy is also really Matched (with which I'm familiar, but haven't read). Ivy Westfall's match is Bishop Lattimer, who is not actually a bishop, but then Ivy isn't actually a plant...! There are two sides (this is of a town, not a nation or a continent: Westfall and Eastglen), but there are two sides: the winners and the losers. The losers have to offer up their daughters to the sons of the winners for brides, and it's Ivy's turn to be offered up, but she has an agenda.

So far so good, but I kept running into minor irritations, which if they are few and far between don't bother me much. It's when there are too many of them that the novel has to really deliver to get me to keep reading it and not give up in sheer frustration. The book of Ivy came very close! I mean there are the usual irritations which I hardly even notice any more: like the use of "bicep" when it's "biceps". I don't think this author "stepped foot" into that one, but she did use "two choices" when it's really one choice between two options. One amusing issue was that the town had a summer camp! This tiny town sent kids to summer camp? Where? Round the corner? In the meadow in the back yard? This made no sense, but it was as amusing as hell.

Those were nowhere near as bad as things which made me stop and think about how "X" managed to exist in Ivy's world where 'X' represents one of a slightly bewildering variety of things. So let's talk about that. In 2022, there was a global nuclear war, where EMPs apparently rendered all electrical devices, including motor vehicles, useless. So in this novel, we're conveniently back in Victorian times, yet Ivy seems to have everything she needs: electricity, clean running water, a shower, soap, and so on. Apparently no one was left alive who could do anything to fix the cars, but they fixed everything else?

After the nuclear war, Ivy's grandfather started a new town in Missouri. Apparently there was nothing there worth bombing and nuclear fallout miraculously didn't reach there! This is the town over which the war with the Lattimer faction was fought. Why the Westfalls didn't simply leave after they lost goes unexplained. What the war was actually fought over goes largely unexplained.

What I don't get is how solar panels are working just fine, but nothing else electrical seems to be! It makes no sense. People wear jeans and t-shirts presumably made from the cotton they grow, but there's no word on who makes them or how. They have candles and meat and milk and butter (and guns), but the population is only supposed to be some 8,000 (as far as I could tell), and the entire town is ringed by a fence, so where are the crops grown, and by whom? Where are they raising the livestock? Who is making all these cool things they still have? Who generates the electricity and how? None of this is explained. The world-building in Ivy's world is awful.

Maybe this will all be explained in one of the sequels, but I didn't really get why this was set in the future instead of back in the nineteenth century. The very same story (with some minor adjustments for technology) could have been told just as well in 1880. Or 1780. It's not consistent, either, as the solar panel issue revealed. Another example of this is that there's talk of testing something for fingerprints. Now fingerprinting has been around a lot longer than modern technology (in fact a lot longer than most people would guess), and it was started down the path to modern formalization back in 1880, but in a town of some 8,000 random survivors, would there really be anyone who could read fingerprints and make comparisons competently enough to identify a perp? It's questionable at best.

It was really quite annoying that every personal color was described in terms of food: "toffee-haired" (ugh!), "brown sugar" freckles, "chocolate eyes and dark chestnut hair", "coffee-brown strands" of hair, "cocoa-colored skin". It became tedious after a while and then actually really amusing.

I also had a problem with how this society randomly married-off people. They were supposed to be "matched", but clearly the system wasn't working. Any society which pursued this bizarre scheme would be doomed to failure, which tells me right up front that these people are lead by morons. In the real world, in the past, the winners typically raped the daughters of the losers, and this isn't any different. Kings did seek to marry the daughters of their vanquished foes to 'cement an alliance', but the marriage was forgotten after a couple of generations, and the alliances died with the memory, leading to another war. It's pointless.

That's the story here, but it's only been going on for a couple of generations, and it makes no sense, because it's not a one-way street. Not only do the males from the winning side marry the females from the losing side, the same thing happens in reverse, so how is this a punishment for the losers and a benefit for the winners? I don't know, but it's what we're expected to believe!

There's no explanation, either, for how this society not only retrogressed technologically, but also socially, so that women now are now viewed, in only two generations, as nothing but baby machines, with no life of their own, nor is it explained how come there are so many sixteen-year-olds available for marrying off this year, given how hard life is and how small the town is.

As I said, Ivy's "mission" is to kill Bishop. Why, we're not immediately told, but at least a part of it is in revenge for his father's murder (so we're told) of her mother. We know that she won't do it, because this is an Entangled romance and they have to fall in love, but it's not at all clear why she doesn't simply go ahead that first night and take him out. It's not until almost page fifty that we learn that there's a three month 'window' during which this mission must be completed. Obviously the real reason for this is solely so that the two of them can fall in love so she won't kill him, but it's never satisfactorily explained why there's this delay, only that irreversible and unspecified steps are now being taken and she cannot fail.

I was thinking it would have made more sense had her mission been to kill the president, Bishop's dad, but no, it's Bishop. Evidently the president will also be 'taken care of'. This initially made even less sense when she thinks there's a problem after she discovers that they're not going to live in the presidential mansion, but in a cozy little home for just the two of them. It's not until, again, around page fifty that we learn that she needs to be in the presidential mansion because there's something there she must find. It would have been nice to have known this a little earlier so the story made more sense and flowed better. I don't like mystery for no other reason than being mysterious.

So Bishop predictably doesn't touch her that first night - he sleeps on the couch offering no explanation for his unexpected and (supposedly) out-of-keeping behavior. This seems to throw a huge wrench in the works for Ivy - again, no reason specified. Bishop is predictably and tediously the trope male lead: tall, muscled, good looking, green-eyed, and white. No problem there, is there? Inevitably there's the "awkward' scene where she espies him half naked and despite the fact that she's supposedly hates him, she's all a-flutter and having hot flashes. It's pathetic how weak Ivy truly is at this point. This was actually about the time where I almost ditched this novel and moved on to something else. Fortunately, it got a lot better after that!

I was curious as to why there was pretty much zero curiosity amongst the people of the town as to what exactly was happening outside the town walls (which are literal walls of steel designed to keep out intruders and beyond which to banish offenders from the town). In this regard, it's very much like Erin Bowman's sad trilogy starting with Taken, but at least Bowman as the townspeople take an interest in the possibility of something going on outside the walls. Nothing like that happens in this novel, which seemed highly unlikely to me. The town's kids alone would have had dares about going outside the walls, and there would be, in two generations, a hoard of people contacting them from outside. None of this is satisfactorily addressed. Again, the world-building is lacking.

I found it really disturbing that Ivy finds Barbie dolls to be the "point of perfection" when they're actually anorexic and plastic in more ways than one. That speaks volumes about how shallow she is and betrays every word she utters and every thought she supposedly harbors with regard to feminist ideals. I guess even in the future, a woman's image of herself is grotesquely annexed and distorted by capitalistic designs on what a woman should be, promulgated largely by men. It doesn't help that the society in this novel has pretty much abolished women's rights - no word on how that ever got put in place, but all of this is strongly indicative of Ivy's lack of spine.

Chapter nine makes no sense at all. Evidently we enter some kind of a time warp. Ivy and Bishop take a walk on Saturday. He's taking her for a picnic. They get up at eight and set off, and have hardly walked anywhere when we learn that the sun is "high in the sky". When they arrive at their destination after walking only for a short time, Ivy is talking about the midday sun. It took them four hours to get there??? Weird! After they jump into the pond a couple of times from a bluff, Ivy reflects that "This has been one of the most carefree afternoons of my life"! Wait, it was midday, they jump into the pond twice, and suddenly the afternoon's gone and she's reflecting upon what a fun time it's been? Where is all this time going?! Weird!

Ivy has a passion for books bestowed upon her by the author in this novel. The book trope is a really lazy method employed by an author to make a character - usually a female - seem smart and deep, but in this novel, Ivy's every action betrays that image. She isn't very smart, and she isn't very wise, and she is shallow. Fortunately, this improves, otherwise I never would have been able to complete this novel. I thoroughly detest weak female main characters if they persist in being weak throughout the story.

So what turned it around for me? Ivy changed. She behaved in a way I did not expect and showed that she had become strong and self-determined. It took way too long to get there, but it did happen! That, I admired, and it's really the sole reason I'm rating this positively despite the numerous issues I had with the story, the plot, and the sad trope YA romance. Even that worked out better than I'd feared when I reached that abysmally clichéd bare, muscled,chest scene!

So, surprisingly, and after all's griped and done, I consider this a worthy read! That doesn't mean I want to read volume two, because I can already tell exactly what's going to happen there!

Drawing Amanda by Stephanie Feuer

Title: Drawing Amanda
Author: Stephanie Feuer
Publisher: Hipsomedia
Rating: WORTHY!

Ably illustrated by SY Lee

I like that the title of the novel has two meanings here. It reminds me of my own novel Tears in Time, which can be understood in two different ways.

Michael 'Inky' Kahn missed a chance at art school, where all his friends went, because he became a chronic slacker after his father died. Now he has a chance to sign-up with a video-game start-up and get in on the ground floor designing a new online game. The interface is creepy, but Inky is young, naïve, and foolish, and still grieving over the death of his father eighteen months before. He doesn’t think twice. He doesn’t even think once.

Inky has a best friend still remaining at the New York international school which he attends, but his friend simply doesn't work for me. "Rungs" (an abbreviation of his long Thai family name) is too much. I found myself asking why didn’t this author make the Asian the main character instead of the trope YAWASP which we get - a trope augmented by a clichéd 'foreign' and 'cool' friend? The sad attempt to have Rungs speak in hip abbreviations is a fail, too, especially since each time he uses one, it’s followed by an immediate translation which is just an admission that this isn't working. It looks stupid and amateur.

That aside, the plot was different. The online game is, of course a complete fraud. It's merely a front for a psycho to get his hands on teen-aged girls, but I don’t get why he chooses online gaming, which is typically not the purview of young girls. Yes, they do play games, but they tend not to favor the same games which boys do, and this premise is that the game is in development - it’s not actually up and running - so why would teenage girls (as opposed to boys) flock to this site? It makes no sense.

Having said that, the story and writing in general wasn't too bad at all, and the female love interest here, Amanda Valdez Bates, who is also disaffected, but for reasons different from Inky's, does show up at this site and starts interacting with the psycho guy. She also begins interacting with Inky at school, so the story was quite nicely woven at this point. Inky starts sending sketches to the guy "Woody" behind the Megaland game, and one of these is of Amanda. Inky doesn't realize that he's putting his new acquaintance directly into harm's way by using her as his muse.

That's all I'm telling you! I liked this despite those issues I described, because it was in general, well written, it contained a scattering of artwork to fit the story (this is not a graphic novel, just a novel with some graphics!), which was unusual and appreciated, and apart from the ridiculous best friend which Inky had, the characters were decently fleshed out and believable. I liked the premise and the novel overall, so I recommend this one.

The Love Match by Lily Maxton

Title: The Love Match
Author: Lily Maxton
Publisher: Entangled
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!

I've had really mixed success with novels released by Entangled Publishing, but I keep coming back because once in a while I'm richly rewarded, and this novel was such a case, even though it was a bit of a roller-coaster ride for me.

I've seen several reviewers describe this as a novella, but it seemed to me to be much more like a short story or a novelette, not a novella. It’s all down to word-count and I don't know the word-count here, so I can't say for certain. Short stories are under 7,500 words, so this was undoubtedly longer than that even though it felt short. Novelettes are less than 17,500 words. A novella is over 17,500, but less than 40,000. Who made up these limits, I don’t know, but it seems to me that this was shorter than that latter range, but that's just a wild guess.

I started out loving this story (notice how I deftly avoided giving it a word-count label?), despite the fact that this title is way over-used. I loved it until the two main characters, Olivia Middleton (not Kate?!), and William Cross (not William of Windsor?!) actually met; then it went a bit downhill. First it became mildly annoying, migrating to outright annoying as the two became…entangled. This sounds like a weather forecast, doesn't it? It was actually more of a 'whether' forecast - whether I could finish it or not!

Frankly, I may not have been able to had it been a longer tale, so perhaps its brevity played into the author's favor here, because at that point I thought I was going to rate it poorly. The interaction between the two main characters was unrealistic, clichéd, and wildly inappropriate even for a 'scandalous' novel. It was the ending which saved it for me because it was so well done.

One thing I didn’t know when I read this was that it's the final volume in a trilogy. The Affaire, and The Wager are the first two, neither of which I've read, although I confess I'm now interested! This seems to be a determined habit with me, since I find myself stumbling into such "middle stories" almost routinely without realizing that more went before. In this case it wasn't an issue because this story blessedly wasn't dependent upon the previous two (and even more blessedly, it was not written in first person point of view! Thank you Lily Maxton!). This one is easily enjoyed as a stand-alone, but I do find myself wondering why the author didn’t simply combine the three into one story, making a complete novel out of it.

The basic story here is that is that the third and youngest daughter of the Middleton family, Olivia, is likely to be the hardest to marry off. In this regard, it reminded me of a trilogy I've been reading by Susan Kaye Quinn, the first two volumes of which I reviewed on my blog this month: Third Daughter and Second Daughter. Note that these are very different stories - young adult, with a steam-punk theme, set in an alternate world reminiscent of India. There is romance, but there's a lot more, as well, although despite the titles, all three of that trilogy seem to be primarily about the third daughter.

But I digress! Olivia's mom has successfully dispatched her two older daughters, and marrying off Olivia is her only remaining goal in life. The problem is that Olivia is considered the plainest of the three daughters and additionally, she's feisty, opinionated, cynical, and refuses to marry for money or title, only for love, which is the diametric opposite of her mother's goal, of course.

The thing which really won me over to Olivia's camp was her sense of humor. Like Cross, I have the opinion that, frankly my dears, I don’t give a damn if a girl is considered 'plain', as long as she's good company and preferably amusing to be with. Olivia could have been devoid of pretty much all of the other things for me as long as she has the sense of humor with which the author endowed her. It was delightful and refreshing, and a rarity in far too many romance and YA novels through which I've waded lately.

Who says female leads can’t be funny or have a good sense of humor? Not me, and this brings me to my first problem: Olivia's humor rather disappeared when Cross arrived on the scene. This made me cross! It was one of the things which turned me off during the middle bit of the novel. I would have really liked this a lot more if we had been allowed to enjoy more time with Olivia before Cross showed up - perhaps seeing her see-off a couple of suitors in the process, with her sharp humor.

And on that score, my other problem is with Cross himself. I've seen other reviewers describe him as a rake-in-the-making or a wannabe rake, or words to that effect, but 'rake' really doesn’t describe him accurately. He's much more of a damnable cad, or in more modern terms and as Britney Spears so admirably iterated, he's a womanizer.

But to be precisely accurate, I'd have to say that he's a coward with a really poor moral compass, and this is why I really disliked him. Because of his own broken family background, he has resolved never to fall in love, but this doesn’t mean that he also has to shed all of his integrity, and wantonly despoil one young woman after another with zero regard for consequences, yet he does, and he shows no sign of learning from his stupidity. In short, he's despicable.

The fact that he's a jerk is made abundantly clear in his interaction with Olivia. From the very beginning, all he was interested in was getting into her pants. He had no regard whatsoever for the more-than-likely irreparable damage he could do to her, or for the potential for her to contract some sort of disease from him, given his sluttish history.

He didn’t strike me as a hero at all, but in the end, he came through. For me this didn’t wipe out his appalling abuse of the much younger and rather naïve Olivia, but it did resolve the story admirably from her PoV, and this is why I was willing to accept it at that. Again here, I would have much preferred a longer story with a relationship arc which seemed realistic and not the "insta-dore" which is really what we had here. Maybe I would even have bought that it was really love if the focus had been less on her behind and more on her mind. I think this was a wasted opportunity.

As to the writing, in general it was well done. The story was very readable. The text flowed comfortably and I found no spelling errors or grammatical mistakes, so the author is evidently very competent in that department, which is really nice to know, should I read more of her work. For an American to tell such an engaging story about early nineteenth century Britain is an admirable accomplishment. Not that I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but her reference to Byron was appropriate, so I'm guessing she got other parts right too.

One thing which struck me as particularly odd from a writing perspective was the genderism involved here - and it was genderism in a highly-restricted and very personal manner! Lily Maxton has no hesitation in employing a certain four-letter word to describe the male phallus, writing 'cock' at one point, but she seemed remarkably inhibited in approaching the emissions from said phallus, and also in describing the female genitalia with the same abandon! Instead, we were treated to all manner of circumlocution and euphemism. I found that peculiar, and in some ways quite endearing, but I really feel that I must insist upon equality of the sexes for genital descriptions: what’s good for the gander is good for the goose after all!

That said, I enjoyed this overall and have no problem in rating it highly since the story as a whole is a worth read it even if, I felt, some parts let it down a bit.

Bumbling Into Body Hair by Everett Maroon

Title: Bumbling Into Body Hair
Author: Everett Maroon (no dedicated website found)
Publisher: Libertary Co.
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!

This is a review that is, in some ways, tied in with another book I read during this time. The two are not related except in that they're about gender identification. I thought it would be fun to review them both together (but separately!), so while the reviews cross-reference a bit, they're different (although both books are worthy reads), and I invite you to read both. On my blog, the reviews were both posted next to each other on the same day, but if you're reading this at some other venue you may have to dig around to find the other review.

So this is a book which I decided would be fun to blog along with Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky. The two stories, one factual (this one) and one fictional, are like bookends to the entire spectrum of gender identity, which is a lot more complex than most people realize. Unlike the novel, which is middle-grade, this book deals with mature adults (or not so mature in some cases as the author testifies!), and additionally, carries the messy complexity of real life.

While Gracefully Grayson was fictional, it was the opposite of this story in many ways: it was about a young boy who identified more as a female than ever he did as a male whereas this one is of a very real journey from female to male. Indeed, this is almost a guidebook on what to do and not to do to make that journey successful and as painless as possible. For that alone, it's important and well worth the reading.

I have to say up front that I would have liked the author to have said a word or two (okay, Picky-Picky, some paragraphs!) about how this novel came to be - particularly about how it came to be so detailed. No one short of those with eidetic memories (and their attendant problems) can remember exact conversations and sequences of events, especially from several years ago, yet we read them detailed here, so clearly there is some sort of creative writing going on, even though the events and conversations depicted are, I have no doubt, real ones. I would have liked to have learned how this was done - how the author filled in the gaps (and the gaps in memory) since there's no mention of a detailed diary being kept.

Bumbling Into Body Hair is a true story about a man who was born in a woman's body and underwent a painful, amusing, rewarding, and educational transition to 'normalize' himself. The blurb for this book exaggerates the humor somewhat, and sadly underplays the trauma, but both are included in the story and are equally engaging. This story is very well written and very poignant. Sometimes it made me angry (ditch Pat already!), and sometimes it made me laugh, but mostly it made me feel for what Everett had to go through, and the fortitude and good humor with which he girded (yes, girded, I shall have it no other way) his, er loins!

Everett began life as Jenifer (one n), growing-up with a sister in a loving family home, and ending-up in a decent, although perhaps a somewhat monotonous job, but with great co-workers. Some might call it a comfortable rut. That's pretty much when the story begins for us, the readers, although of course it began long before this for Everett, trapped inside Jenifer and not even fully cognizant that there was indeed an escape route that didn't involve lying in a bath of warm water with a sharp knife.

Everett, as Jenifer, had long been identified as a lesbian, and I was intrigued that this author seemed to accept this label. I've read other accounts where a significant distinction is drawn between an XX person who identifies as a heterosexual male, and one who identifies as a gay female. I guess there's some dissent even among those who are more intimately familiar with all of this than am I!

The real hero of this story is the woman who plays a somewhat secondary role to us as readers, but who no doubt fulfilled a very primary role to the author: Susanne, who met Everett when he was very much an overt female, still struggling over what to do about his feelings, and who fell in love with him and stayed with him all the way through surgery and on into a marriage. That takes love, dedication, and courage, and I salute her.

It's actually because of Susanne that I had another - not so much 'issue', as 'bout of sheer curiosity' - over why so much painful detail was relayed about everything in Everett's life - which takes guts and a commendable commitment towards bravely informing others of what's truly involved in a literal life-changing pursuit such as this - and yet we're robbed of a lot of the intimacy of this remarkable relationship between his self and Susanne.

I don't know if this is because of personal privacy concerns, and I certainly wouldn't want an important story like this to spill over into pandering to salacious or prurient interests, but it struck me that a really critical part of this transition was the love and affection between these two, and yet we get not a hint of any joys or problems experienced as the two of them interacted physically, one very much a woman, the other transitioning from a woman to a man.

I would have liked to have read something about how they felt, how they perceived it, how their physical intimacy changed (or didn't) as this transition took place - or at least a word or two as to why Everett (and perhaps Susanne) chose not to share this! Yes, of course it's their life and they're entitled to share as little or as much as they wish, but given that he's already sharing such intimate details, a word or two about the nature of the relationship and how it grew and changed would not have been out of place, and would have been appreciated by me, at least.

In short, I recommend this story. I loved the detail, and the endless parade of things which cropped up - surprising things which might never occur to someone who had not undergone this change no matter how deeply they might have gone into it as a thought exercise. I loved the humor and the endless battle with bureaucracy as Everett gamely began to solidify these changes in terms of endless paperwork. It was all the more funny, I felt, because he worked in government, so in some ways he was getting a taste of his own medicine!

Most of all I loved this for the courage, honesty, and equanimity with which he pursued this dream, this need, and his sharing of this necessary course correction in his life. It's a warming message to us all, no matter what our own circumstances are - a heartening siren song telling us all that we can get there if we're willing to make the journey, no matter what our own personal journey is.

Note that Everett Maroon also has a novel out: The Unintentional Time Traveler. Note also that if you liked this story or Gracefully Grayson you might also like to read The Greatest Boy Ever Made a work of fiction which curiously has a lot in common with both of these books, and which I reviewed back in September.

Second Daughter by Susan Kaye Quinn

Title: Second Daughter
Author: Susan Kaye Quinn
Publisher: Susan Kaye Quinn
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!

This is the sequel to Third Daughter which I reviewed positively today. I have to say I was a bit surprised, since I'd had the impression (wrongly, it seems!) that each of the three novels in the trilogy would be told from the perspective of the particular daughter to which the title referred, but it does not seem to be that way since this novel opens not with Seledri, the second daughter to the queen, and her adventures, but with Aniri (the third daughter) focused on her imminent wedding to Prince Malik. Indeed, the second daughter plays very little part in the story although she's the trigger for some major events.

This novel takes off from pretty much where the previous one ended, and is told from Aniri's PoV (again, not first person thankfully!). At the end of the previous novel it looked like there was a second sky ship out there which could still threaten Dharia, Aniri's homeland. In addition to that, Seledri has long been married to a Samiran lord, and living in that nation. If the two countries go to war, then her life - or at least her welfare - may be at risk.

With regard to the proposed wedding, I have a hard time believing that in Victorian times, there was a 'wedding rehearsal dinner'. Yes, they had a wedding rehearsal if they were wealthy enough, but this was a very private thing, quite literally to rehearse the wedding itself. The author here has created her own world, and she can do whatever she wants, but this rehearsal with a huge number of people in attendance struck a really false note for me. Of course, if she had not written this, then it would have been impossible to interrupt it with the dramatic news of an attempt on the life of Aniri's sister, the second sister of the title, Seledri.

This is where the novel (and the series) took a downturn for me. I was already soured with all the frivolous pomp of the 'wedding rehearsal', but to have Aniri take a big step backwards in her development, and to be dithering and fretting and panicking, and then to decide to postpone the wedding (scheduled for the very next day), and thereby failing to cement the alliance with Jungali, for no reason other than to hie herself to Samir to find out what happened to her sister was just plain stupid! It was foolish in the extreme and not at all in line with what we had learned to expect from Aniri in the previous volume, so for me it was a really poor start to this novel.

Aniri was taken prisoner and her life threatened by the Samir ambassador, and now she's going to voluntarily put herself at the mercy of these people, traveling pretty much alone into the heart of the enemy territory and give them a second hostage? This behavior is moronic. Clearly it was only done to elevate the drama between herself and Malik, but it was done badly, falsely, and amateurishly, and this wasn’t to be the first time. Things seemed to go determinedly downhill with one farcical daytime TV melodrama after another cropping up.

About half-way through this I was getting ready to ditch it and down-rate it, but it turned itself around somewhat - at least sufficiently fro me not to be able to rate it badly! I have to say I was disappointed in it. Aniri was nowhere near as good as she was in the first one, and the novel quite literally went around in circles ending-up at pretty much the same point as it began. It definitely had MTV (Mid-Trilogy Vexation) syndrome.

That said, there were sufficient good parts, particularly when Aniri gets her head out of her gaand and starts trying to make good on her deficits, that I felt I could uprate it in the hope that the third volume would be truly a worthy read like the first volume was.

Third Daughter by Susan Kaye Quinn

Title: Third Daughter
Author: Susan Kaye Quinn
Publisher: Susan Kaye Quinn
Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
P65 ""…secret us away…" should be "…secrete us away…"
p212 "...you have been the one to secret me to the sky ship's hiding place..." makes no sense. "secrete me in"? "spirit me away to"?
P332 "She threw him and arched look..." should be "She threw him and arch look..."

Third Daughter is part of a trilogy which features the exploits of a young princess from a nation (Dharia) modeled loosely on India, but set in a purely fictional world and sprinkled lightly with elements of steam punk.

I love exotic India, so this drew me in immediately and effortlessly, but it would have just as easily kicked me out again, had the main character, Aniri, been a wet blanket or a wilting violet. She isn't! Kudos to the author for providing a non-white strong female character! These are very rare! Treasure them!

Aniri is the third daughter of the queen, so not in line for any throne, and not laden with expectations. We meet her climbing down the palace wall via a rope of knotted sheets to visit her boyfriend Devesh in the palace gardens, and she's a feisty, independent, rather love-struck young girl, but her plans this evening are thwarted by Janak, the queen's bodyguard, who is there to tell her that she must attend upon the queen.

Aniri resentfully visits with her mom only to learn that she has been put forward as a marriage candidate for Prince Malik, ruler of the rugged, northern, purportedly barbaric Jungali nation. Aniri wants no part of this, but when she realizes that her withdrawal from this pledge might mean war, she agrees to go, under the pretence that she will marry Prince Malik after a month's courtship, but really acting as a spy to discover if rumors of the Jungalis developing a flying machine are true.

Now how this works - sending a young girl with only two attendants into what’s considered to be a primitive and dangerous territory remains quietly unexplained, but Aniri doesn’t see Prince Malik as a threat. He seems reasonable, and decent, and she can get along with him. He is understanding that there is no love here, and that this relationship is purely for promotion of peace both across and within borders. He tells her outright that this will be platonic and that if she wishes to have a secret lover after they are married, she's most welcome to do so.

They board the train and begin their journey to the border. Aniri has only Priya, her young personal attendant, and Janak, the queen's most trusted bodyguard with her. Now why Janak is abandoning the queen to protect the daughter goes unexplained.

There was a really poorly written and very YA attempt to get the two of them into each other's arms by having Aniri get so close to a fire that she sets her cloak on fire, and then having Malik not even notice this until it's burning, whereupon he doesn't simply warn her that her cloak is on fire or tear it off, but grabs her and holds her to him, and then beats at the flame with his hand? Weird! And badly written! But not as bad as it might have been.

After that things really take off, with Aniri turning out to be very much the strong female character I was hoping she would be. That alone, for me, is sufficient to rate this as a worthy read. The love story ultimately turns out to be very natural and not forced or amateurish at all, and Aniri turns out to be a smart and capable lead character, and an admirable adventurer, with some foibles of youth haunting her, but not hobbling her, which is exactly how it ought to be.

One thing I did have a huge problem with is Janak. I already mentioned him as Aniri's mom's bodyguard, which makes it inexplicable how he comes to be traveling with Aniri, rather than guarding the queen, but the real problem is that his attitude sucks. "Off with his head!" I say! I don't have any respect for royalty myself in real life, but I do not go around insulting them. In a novel like this, it's inconceivable that a bodyguard would get away with being outright disrespectful to a princess as Janak does routinely.

This did not sound at all realistic to me, nor did Aniri's putting-up with his forceful, insulting, and domineering attitude towards her. I'm serious, his attitude and behavior is intolerable; I don't care what secrets he knows about Aniri's father, it's no excuse for his behavior whatsoever, yet he repeatedly gets away with it. That was bad writing and makes Aniri look weak, ineffectual, and juvenile, which is the very last thing she needed heaped on her after she'd shown herself to be a sterling main character in the previous chapter.

One thing which made no sense was this focus on the 'flying machine'. I can see how it would be considered a weapon of war, but Prince Malik's assertions that it would be a tool for trade between Dharia and Jungali made no sense given that they already have railways. It's far more economical to send goods and materials by train than ever it is by 'sky ship'. Yes, the sky ships can access the mountainous regions in Jungali where trains might not be able to reach, or where it might be difficulty or expensive to lay tracks, but in terms of trade between the two nations, I didn't see the value of it.

There were a couple of other issues where the writing was nonsensical. For example, at one point, Aniri is on an airship which is described as being thousands of feet in the air. She has already exhibited some instances of being short of breath because of the thin air in the high mountain region, yet we're expected to believe that she's clambering (yes, clambering!) around outside the airship - at thousands of feet, without even remotely becoming light-headed? Not credible!

But these are relatively minor points in comparison with how well, and how engagingly, the rest of this novel was written. The only oddball exception to this of which a mention still seems required, is that of the clothing Aniri wears. It was a really good idea to set a steam-punk novel in a place other than London, but if you're going to move it all the way to India (or more accurately, a setting rooted in India) - a move of which I approve, I have to say - then why would you drag Victorian clothing along with you? I don't get the point of having women in a nation strongly reminiscent of India dressed in corsets and stays when they could have saris and Punjabis. Why make the location exotic if you're not planning on doing anything with it? It seemed like the author was afraid to stray too far from steam-punk convention, which ironically makes her lurk rather timidly in comparison with the main character she's created!

But in conclusion, I have to say that this novel was truly remarkable and very addictive. I loved the setting, the characters in general, and specifically the main character Aniri who is a kick-ass strong female character. I loved that the love was in no way overdone and that it fit in with, but did not high-jack or derail the main story. Apart from a trope or two, it was normal, ordinary, and natural, like real love is.

So I fully recommend this novel. It has some issues, but overall the story is wonderful and refreshing. I was less thrilled with the sequel, a review of which I'm also posting today.

Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence

Title: Lady Chatterley's Lover
Author: DH Lawrence
Publisher: Tipografia Giuntina
Rating: WORTHY!

Read impeccably by Margaret Hilton.

This novel was surprising. Coming into it knowing nothing more about it than what gossip, reputation, and rumor would have you believe, it was quite an eye-opener, but not in the way you might think! The setting is pretty much where I grew up, in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, so in some ways it felt very familiar to me (my home town, Matlock, is mentioned!). Of course, I wasn't around when this novel was written - not even as a twinkle in someone's eye!

Lady Chatterley's Lover is a study in duality: upper class versus lower, human society vs. nature, healthy v. sick, decency v. vulgarity, mind v. body, male v. female, Clifford's wealth v. his impotence, Lady Chatterley's in-two-minds view of life, the gamekeeper's apparent inability to decide which language dialect he wants to speak, but it’s also about similarity. Both of the main protagonists, Connie Chatterley and Oliver Mellors, are married unhappily, although it takes Connie a lot longer to figure this out, and both want the same thing.

While being mindful that it was written and published in the 1920's, in a different era, the story is very ordinary and conventional, particularly by modern standards. It’s about a real love affair between a woman and a man who is of what was then considered a markedly lower social class, but it’s not rife with debauchery and carnality. Far from it. Most of it is ordinary social interaction - which is of course the problem for Lady Constance Chatterley.

And most of it has not seen the sight of four-letter words. On the contrary: it's beautifully written, even in the parts which do contain such words. I honestly don’t care if bad language is used in a novel, if it fits with the story and the characters. Bad things, bad language, bad events, and bad people occur in real life so there's no reason at all why they cannot be realistically depicted in fiction if you have a good story to tell about them.

My biggest problem with this novel was that parts of it were downright boring! It was too long. A good editor would have seriously cropped the sections where Lawrence rambles pointlessly on about social mores and philosophical issues. They don't move the story nor do they contribute to it. The sexual parts of the novel were few and far between, and very tame, especially by modern standards. The philosophical parts were at best mildly interesting, at worse, tedious. On the other hand, there was a lot of humor in the novel, which quite surprised me.

The story itself is about Constance Reid who marries Clifford Chatterley, a man who is a rung or two above her on the social ladder. He is soon called to war (1914-18) and comes back paralyzed from the waist down, having to move himself around in a motorized wheelchair, and needing his wife's assistance with dressing and some other activities.

Connie frequently has contradictory views of her life: feeling that she's in the right place and the wrong place, feeling that things are comfortable and that they're ridiculous, feeling at ease and on edge, feeling that she's happy with her husband, and that she's not. She takes a lover but is ultimately dissatisfied with him. At one point, Clifford suggests that it would be fine with him if she became pregnant by another man, and then the two of them would raise the child as their own, giving Clifford an heir, but Connie cannot think of anyone in their social circle with whom she would wish to make a baby.

The last thing Mrs Chatterley expects is to fall in love with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. He's also a war veteran, having risen above his own class status to the rank of lieutenant. Separated from his wayward wife, he's hired as a gamekeeper for Clifford's estate - one through which Connie is in the habit of walking daily. It’s many months before she first encounters him, and a while longer before they end up in bed together. When it does happen it’s almost like a rape. There is no violence or force involved, and Connie does not refuse or struggle, but neither does she enter into it with any animation at all - she simply lies there, almost in a state of catatonia letting it happen to her. Later though, she determines that she wants more, and becomes a very willing, even proactive participant.

Connie comes to fully realize that there are two sides to her life - the mental and the physical, and the latter has withered, bringing down the mental along with it. She realizes that she needs the physical even as she acknowledges the ridiculousness of the act of physical love. Indeed, her observations on it, both as it happens and in retrospect, are quite entertaining.

It’s the physical which she gets from Mellors, becoming slowly appreciative and then addicted to it after starting out indifferently. Eventually, when she's on vacation with her close and supportive older sister, Hilda, and her father, she realizes two things: that she is in love with Oliver, and that she is pregnant by him. It’s their attempts to find out how they can be together and how they can navigate society's hypocritical and contradictory perspectives on their situation which drives the closing act.

This novel is far from perfect (then which novel is?!), but overall I enjoyed it a lot, found it entertaining and rewarding, and was glad (for once!) that I chose to add this to my reviews of classics. It helped significantly that Margaret Hilton the reader of the audio book version, seemed perfectly suited to reading this. I recommend it.

Froggy Dearest by Scott Gordon

Title: Froggy Dearest
Author: Scott Gordon
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Rating: WORTHY!

Delightfully illustrated by Sebastien Kaulitzki.

If ever a playful book was written for Valentine's day, this is it. The author has taken a fairy tale and then ran with it to places you probably never thought it could - or even should, go! The result is an amusing series of really attractive images and humorous captions.

Obviously the deal is that you're supposed to kiss the frog, but really, who would? What on Earth possessed a writer to have the princess kiss the frog in the first place - the first place you might even think of kissing it?

A grim and bear it fairy tale indeed, but that wasn't even in the original story. The original had the princess toss the poor frog into a wall in disgust, whereupon he transformed! Quite evidently she hadn't the froggiest idea what to do with it....

But this story is a lot more palatable - and relatable - than the original, and I enjoyed it immensely.

The Best Boy Ever Made by Rachel Eliason

Title: The Best Boy Ever Made
Author: Rachel Eliason
Publisher: Create Space Independent Publishing Platform
Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
71% in "Sam meets every single criteria..." should be "Sam meets every single criterion..." to be technically correct. Of course, a social worker might not know that.
"Who'd of thought" in Brittney's speech should be "Who'd have thought?" (sorry, I didn't note the position in the book)
85% "...using there proximity..." should be "...using their proximity..."
"...down right..." should be "...downright ..." (sorry, I didn't note the position)
"...everyday..." should be "...every day..." (sorry, I didn't note the position)
92% "...catching site..." should be "...catching sight..." (it's rendered correctly further along on that same line).

This is a novel about a trans-gender person, Sam, who was born technically a girl, but who is actually a boy for all practical purposes. Rachel Eliason is herself trans-gendered (mtf), so she knows what she's writing about. The novel is told in first person by Sam's best friend Alecia.

I don't normally do book covers because my blog is all about writing, not selling, and unless they self publish, the writer really has no choice in their cover: they get whatever cover Big Publishing™ deems fit - which is all-too-often an ill-fit at best. In this case (which isn't Big Publishing™), I have to raise an issue that involves some fence-sitting, and it ain't comfortable, let me tell you, but it is country! Maybe this discomfort is appropriate, too, because for far too many people transgendering is an uncomfortable issue, so perhaps the cover artist is smarter than your typical cover designer?

Here's the rub: the arm on the left looks very masculine, yet we know that it's supposed to represent a transgender male. It's not that trans (ftm) males can't look masculine for goodness sakes, that's what they are, after all, but the question I have is more subtle than that: is this the best cover design? Do we want to use an actual male, which really betrays the story, because the subject of the story isn't a biological male, but an XX who identifies as a male. Do we want to use a female so the arm looks feminine - which to me betrays the story even more than using a male arm, because the trans character isn't feminine except in a birth sense? Do we try to find a real ftm transgender person to pose?

To me, that would have been ideal, and perhaps that was what was actually done here - I don't know - but this cover made me ask questions, so maybe it's not a bad thing the way it is. Maybe the masculine arm is a statement, and not simply eye candy. I do think it's worth some serious thought though, especially in a novel dealing with a topic as important and as misunderstood as this one is.

The story takes place in Iowa, where I've actually lived and have never ever felt the need to go back there again! Iowa winters will do that to a person. Here's a song which I dedicated to Iowa, sung to the tune of Do They Know It's Christmas?:

It's winter time, and there's some need to be afraid.
In Iowa, where ice storms break and blizzards rage,
And in this cold and darkness, you can warm a heart with joy:
As the topside freezes-up this winter time!

But say a prayer: pray for the Iowans
At winter time, it's hard, but when you're having sun
There's a world outside your window and it's a world of frozen feet
Where the heat bills reach a total that's impossible to meet
And the only bells that ring there are the icicles of doom
Well tonight thank god it's us instead of you!

Oh there won't be cold in Africa this winter time
That's the greatest gift they'll get: to stay so warm
oh-oh where nothing ever snows
No blizzards, no ice floes
Do they know what it's like to freeze your butt?

Here's to you staying warm in Africa
Fresh from those freezing tail in Iowa
Do you know what it's like to freeze your butt?

Heat the world!
Heat the world!
Heat the world! Let them know it's cold up here!
Heat the world! Let them know it's cold up here!
Heat the world! Let them know it's cold up here!
Heat the world! Let them know it's cold up here!
Heat the world! Let them know it's cold up here!
Heat the world! Let them know it's cold up here!
Heat the world! Let them know it's cold up here!
Heat the world! Let them know it's cold up here!
(Original music and words to Do They Know It's Christmas? by Bob Geldof & Midge Ure, released on Phonogram and Columbia. New words by Ian Wood)

If you liked this parody, please consider a donation to http://www.aidforafrica.org/Donate OR http://www.savethechildren.org OR to whichever charity you think can do most good, including your local food bank. There are hungry children everywhere.

But I digress! The novel is narrated by Alecia, a very sheltered young woman of seventeen, who often comes off as younger than she really is. You can blame this on her life under the iron-yoke of her Catholic parents. They're a pair of the most blinkered people imaginable, but organized religion often does that. By its very nature religion is divisive and intolerant, bifurcating populations into us (the saved, good, people), and them (the sinners who will go to hell). Bring it on, I say. I'd rather be in hell than spend eternity with bigots and pompous holier-than-thou blow-hards, quite frankly. Can you imagine spending eternity with those guys?!

Alecia's best friend since forever is Samantha, who insists on "Sam" and no substitutes, and who is a tomboy - pretty much since Alecia has known her. Alecia 'gets' Sam, but she cannot understand what it is which has made Sam so distant over the last few months, until Sam finally comes clean with her and tells Alecia that she's not truly a female. She's a male who happens to have been born, unfortunately, in a female body - and she wants to correct that post-haste. This feeling isn't a rarity in nature as Joan Roughgarden reveals in her book Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender and Sexuality in Nature and People, which I highly recommend.

Sheltered as she is, Alecia struggles with all of this because she doesn't quite get that there's a big difference between a tomboy, a lesbian, and an XX female who feels in her every cell and neuron that she's an XY boy, has done so for years, and now wants the world to accept it the same way she has done. Alecia is a trooper though, and never once does she lose sight of the importance of friendship and loyalty, a commitment which means supporting her friend in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, as long as they both shall live.

Together, they embark upon this journey, and damn the warped parents. Actually damn Alecia's parents, who are completely negative about Sam - quite the opposite of Sam's own parents. In this spirit (the only spirit which matters), Alecia accompanies Sam to a gay bar on teen night. Sam has to go there to satisfy her social worker that she's not merely a confused lesbian - that she really doesn't want to be a girl who loves girls, but a male who loves females. Alecia goes along with her and finds herself - what is that feeling? Jealous? - of the attention Sam gets from out lesbian Emma, who is very much a girl.

Alecia has a father and a brother, but these males figure very little into the story. More involved is her mom, and younger sister Brittney, who isn't quite the good Catholic girl that Alecia is. I have to ask, since this family is so Catholic, how come the girls ended-up with names like Alecia and Brittney rather than, say, Esther and Ruth or something Biblical like that. Obviously not all such parents go that route, but it seemed to me that if Mom & dad were so rigid and devout they would be far more likely to chose Biblical names for their children than to choose the ones we get. Maybe that's just me.

One thing which seemed weird in this novel, to me, was the use of "I am". Despite employing all kinds of other contractions, such as "I'd", and "we've", there was never an "I'm" that I noticed. It struck me as odd, and it made for rather stilted conversation. Other than that, I enjoyed the way this was written. It was perhaps a bit simplistic in places, with very little descriptive prose, but for me it was an easy, comfortable, and compelling read. Once I began, I did not want to put it down, and I want to read more by this writer - perhaps even more about these two characters if a good sequel suggests itself.

I normally detest first person PoV novels, but this one seemed perfectly fine. Some writers, a few, a happy few, a band of brothers and sisters, can carry it off, and Rachel Eliason is quite obviously one of these. I think it helped that she had Alecia come right out and embrace this format from the off, introducing herself like we'd just met and she was about to answer some questions for me to clear up some lack of understanding I had! That approach worked for me, and from that point on it seemed normal and ordinary, rather than artifice, so kudos and gratitude for that!

I'm not sure that Sam's social worker was entirely appropriate in answering Alecia's questions to the extent that she did, but this was a minor issue. A bigger issue was whether or not Sam would be seeing a social worker or seeing some kind of psychologist or psychiatrist. I don't know, I've never been there, but it seems to me that she would need someone with a bit more academic and medical muscle behind them if she were going to start gender reassignment as a minor. OTOH, as I mentioned, the author is transgendered herself, so I bow to her greater expertise on this topic. Sam had evidently talked a lot about Alecia, and the social worker wasn't exactly blabbing all her secrets. Plus Alecia's motives were pure - she wanted to put herself in the best possible position to support Sam - and perhaps get some reassurance herself.

If I had a complaint or two, what would they be? I guess the first would be that while the novel talks a heck of a lot about the significant difference between a lesbian and a transgendered female to male, it never really went into what those differences were. I think it would have benefited from including that as a discussion between Sam and Alecia. And no, that doesn't mean one of them yelling "Penis!" and running!

I actually worked in the burn center in a hospital where female to male transgendering was performed. It was done in the burn center because they were the experts on cosmetic surgery (in a medical, rather than a purely cosmetic) sense and they had some very skilled doctors and nurses working there, and yes, a penis is an option.

Another complaint would be about raising the issue of prejudice against gays and transgendered people while rather hypocritically exhibiting prejudice in other areas! Alecia frequently chanted a refrain championing "country folk" over "city slickers" - like country was somehow more wholesome and smarter than city folks, who were somehow backward for never having seen a tree or touched a goat. This merely made Alecia seem backward, shallow, bigoted and hypocritical to me.

Besides, it isn't the black and white issue Alecia blindly pretends it is. Not everyone lives either deep in the city or way out in the back of beyond. There are very many people (I am one) who live on the fringe between the two. Besides, who would pay the farm subsidies if it were not for the urban taxpayers? Alecia's attitude and her strident spouting of this supposed dichotomy was annoying and uncalled for, and was the most obnoxious thing about her for me.

About 42% in, Alecia makes what could be taken as a derogatory comment about vegetarians, too. This was in context of her being country and therefore loving nature and animals - yet she has no problem slaughtering them and eating them wholesale. She doesn't seem to grasp that it consumes massive quantities of grain to feed cattle so people can, in turn, eat the meat. She doesn't know that if meat eaters of the western 'civilized' world gave up maybe a twentieth of their meat consumption it would release enough grain to feed the world's starving populations. To me this made Alecia seem ignorant instead of wise about the world. It made her provincial and way younger than her seventeen years.

There were some technical issues with the novel, too, that some serious editing would have cured. One thing which really jumps out is the scarcity of chaptering. Text runs on from one unrelated event to another with little more than a sharp sign (#) to indicate a break, and sometimes not even that. This makes for crude interruptions in reading while the reader tries to figure out if they turned more than one page/swiped more than one screen. A few more chapter breaks to divide-up the narrative would have improved reading flow for me.

Having said all of that, this novel was definitely worth reading. Aside from the issues I've raised, it was well-written in a very engaging style, it fearlessly broached sensitive and important topics, and I was one hundred percent on-board with it.

If Rachel Eliason is looking for beta readers for future projects, I volunteer right now!