Scarlett Undercover by Jennifer Latham

Title: Scarlett Undercover
Author: Jennifer Latham
Publisher: Little, Brown
Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
“Funny” on page 67 is missing a closing quote.

The last message on Jennifer Latham's website (as of this posting) is that she's here in Austin! Yeay! The website gives no clue as to where she is exactly, however; then I'm not a fan boy so I wouldn't go anyway, but I could have at least told you guys! Maybe it's hidden away on her website, but I sure don't have time to search for it.

Now this is an intriguing novel she's given to us. Scarlett is a smart (so we're told) and precocious 16 year old who graduated high school two years early, but has yet to take up college life. Judged by her bio (which we get about half-way through the novel), she hasn't always been so smart, but a good-hearted cop (or is he?) set her back on the straight and narrow, and that's how she got into the private detective business. In the meantime, she lives off...I have no idea who or what she lives off. Her parents are dead and she lives - nominally - with her older sister.

She seems to do very little with her life save for taking Muay Thai lessons, and those only half-heartedly. She holds down no job as far as I can see, unless you count the "job" of unpaid, part-time detective. Her new case is a nine-year-old girl who reports that her older brother is acting weird lately! Scarlett is inclined to take this report with a pinch or two of salt until she starts looking into it. An examination of the kid's room while he's not around, leads Scarlett to the discovery of a series of mysterious patterns scratched onto the back of his bedroom door.

Scarlett's "love" interest has the unfortunate name of Decker, and he equally unfortunately sports the young adult cliché of having gold flecks in his eyes. Seriously? He works part time in his mom's greasy-spoon restaurant, but the interesting thing here isn't the gold flecks; it's the fact that Decker is Jewish, whereas Scarlett is Muslim. They have more in common than you might think, as this story slowly reveals.

Given this knowledge of her origins, how the heck Scarlett ever got her name is a bit of a mystery. At first i thought she was Arabic, then I thought that maybe she's African American, then maybe she's Indian. The novel never says and ultimately it's not important except in that finally, we have a majorly kick-ass non-Anglo-Saxon protestant female main character. Why is it so hard for you female authors to come up with these characters?!!! Kudos to Jennifer Latham for introducing us to this one!

Decker informs Scarlett that the pattern which she's convinced she's seen before, but can't bring to mind, is called Solomon's Knot (although it's actually a link, not a knot). It's not only in her mosque, it's also in his synagogue, but neither place is where she's seen it. Decker's mom, who also waits at this restaurant which she runs, turned very nearly to stone when Scarlett showed her the image. She refused to discuss it and wouldn't say why. When Scarlett investigates, she gets drawn into an ancient web of danger and mystery that has her fighting - sometimes literally - to stay ahead of.

In addition to an interesting mystery, Scarlett seems to have picked up not one, but two tails, since she took this case. She managed to give both of these girls the slip (and not the kind you wear), but what the heck is she going to do when she meets a guy on a bridge, who is himself the size of a bridge and wanting to take her down hard?

As I mentioned, I have to wonder where Scarlett gets her money from. She takes taxis, eats breakfast and leaves ten dollars on the table, hands out five dollars to a homeless person. She has an office! Maybe she lives off her dead parent's insurance money? Her sister is a doctor doing a residency, which means she works long hours, is always tired, hardly home, and gets paid diddly for all this, so we know the money isn't coming from her, so this access to endless cash is a big plot hole, but that aside, I can't find any fault in this novel.

I do find fault in the cover. The flimsy child-model on it in now way, shape, or form even remotely represents the outstanding girl depicted inside. Why they ever let jackasses do the cover who quite evidently have never even read the novel is a complete mystery to me. It's the price you pay, however, for going the route of Big Publishing™. The cover is out of the author's hands, and while I don't blame her for this disaster, I do feel awful for her that she got saddled with a trashy cover like this for the superior novel she's written.

Please do completely ignore the cover when considering reading this one! I never judge a novel by the cover. it's a colossal mistake. This novel is beautifully told, expertly paced, has major action, danger, intrigue, and narrow escapes, all of which are believable, and it has a romance that's done to perfection - i.e. this is not a romance novel masquerading as a PI novel like one I reviewed quite recently, it's a serious private eye story with a pleasant - for once - dash of romance. It's told - perhaps tongue in cheek - with the best private dick story-telling technique (which I think some reviewers simply didn't get), and the romance is a minor side-shoot which neither dominates nor ruins the story. I praise Jennifer Latham for that and assure you she is a writer to watch.

Every Day by David Levithan

Rating: WARTY!

Read poorly by Alex McKenna.

I liked Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist which was co-written by this author, although I liked the movie better, but when I began listening to David Levithan's Every Day, I really had to wonder whether I would like it or not. I didn't in the end. It's first person PoV which is bad enough. It's narrated by a girl who sounds so young and clueless, but then the character is apparently sixteen, so I guess it's appropriate, but that doesn't make the voice any less obnoxious. I just didn't like it.

I'm not a fan of first person and this story was bordering precipitously on making me nauseous before it had even really got under way. The reader's voice sounded like everything in life was something of a surprise to her. Her voice had this tone like she couldn't even take herself seriously or that maybe she was joking and hoping you wouldn't figure it out before she reached the punch-line. her voice ended every sentence with a muted back-of-the-throat growl which was nauseating in it's metronomic routine, and made me think of nothing other than a little nasty dog which is still trying to decide if it can get away with biting you.

The premise is that this sixteen year old being (I don't know if it's male or female or even if it's human!) wakes up each morning in a different body, spends one day in it, and then moves on. The being appears to be human as far as I can tell, but I'm not sure. Perhaps it's a god or a ghost! On the morning the story begins, she (I'll call it she because of the narrator's voice) wakes up in Justin's body. He is also sixteen years old and in high school. Why everything - gender, skin color, etc, evidently can vary, but age apparently cannot was a bit of a mystery.

The narrator, who was nameless, seemed far too worldly for her age, although she had been around a bit and not in a promiscuous way, but in other ways she seemed absurdly naïve and juvenile. In the early part of the story, she apparently was oblivious to the fact at she was jumping genders. Nothing was mentioned of how she felt about that, or what adventures she had enjoying all these bodies of both genders it was like it was completely immaterial to her and I simply didn't buy that at all. Yes, maybe she became used to it when she was younger, but to offer absolutely no comments, observations, or reminiscences was just poor writing.

At school she (in Justin's body) runs into his girlfriend and takes a liking to her which she deduces Justin didn't really share. He was pretty much just employing Rhiannon as a utility. The narrator started to like her and contrary to her normal behavior - to not get involved - decided to cut class and spend the afternoon at the beach with this somewhat estranged girlfriend, even though it's the tail end of the summer and starting to get chilly.

As I indicated, the story was nauseating as this sixteen-year-old narrator relates things as though she's whatever age David Levithan is, with all these flowery existential and philosophical observations. It felt like reading a John Greene novel, which I've vowed I will never do again. Nor will I read any more David Levithan if they're like this. I am not a fan of writers who blurt out the most mundane pablum as though it's something which one ever conceived before.

It immediately looked like the narrator - whoever or whatever he, or she or it is - would end up with Rhiannon at the closing of the story. That was my wild guess, but it's exactly what happened. This a very short novel, only 7 disks, so I originally decided I could give it a try-out and maybe even finish it, even though it didn't immediately grab me. I failed. It really was tedious to have to listen to this everyday boring nonsense being related like it was a revelation, and it was especially tiresome to have to listen to it in Alex McKenna's grating voice. I cannot recommend this.

Cassidy's Guide to Everyday Etiquette (and Obfuscation) by Sue Stauffacher

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Title: Cassidy's Guide to Everyday Etiquette (and Obfuscation)
Author: Sue Stauffacher
Publisher: Random House
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!

This book was hilarious and I recommend it whole-heartedly. Yes, there was a more-than-minor character named Jack Taylor, which would normally cause me to jack this in, but he wasn't the main character so I was willing, in this one instance, to tolerate him in the small doses where he was present. I loved Cassidy's attitude to life, and her relationship with her sister.

The story here is that Cassidy's great grandmother has died and in her will she condemned (that's what it feels like to Cassidy) the poor girl to attend etiquette school two days a week during one month of her summer holiday. Cassidy bristles and rebels at this.

This story went from joy to joy. I completely adored the author's tone and voice - even though it was first person. Normally that's a voice I don't appreciate, but once in a while an author makes it work, and this is a sterling example of how to do it. The text is full of sly assessments, and astute and amusing remarks such as this observation from Cassidy: "I knew better than to say anything about the value of my time. Adults and kids have never seen eye to eye on that subject."

I don't know what it was, but Cassidy won me over from the off, and she kept on winning me over, although I have to admit, Livvy ran her a close thing. Cassidy was perhaps a bit more mature than you'd expect for her age, but I was willing to forgive her that in the same way I forgave Bill Watterson for the same thing in his totally awesome Calvin and Hobbes cartoons.

Cassidy is a smart, adventurous, curious, and self-possessed girl of eleven who is fearless and confident. She's not a bad person by any means, but her aggressive approach to life tends to land her in water that's decidedly, shall I say, too temperature-challenged for her taste? You can imagine then, the difficulties inherent in any attempt to teach her etiquette. It's precisely this ocean of endeavor upon which the author has chosen to launch Cassidy Corcoran.

Here's another joyous quotation: "Miss Melton-Mowry decided to ignore me. It's a normal developmental stage for every one of my teachers." And another from a conversation Cassidy has with another attendee of the etiquette class when they discover they have an acquaintance in common:

"What's the polite-conversation word for smart aleck?"
"High energy...original mind...future politician?" I replied, quoting my report cards from memory.

And one more for good measure:

"Nice to meet you, Dr. Bean."
"And you, Cassidy. Your reputation precedes you."
"That's usually how it works."

I'm not going to tell you how this goes, because it's a journey that you have to take for yourself - with Cassidy as your guide. Be prepared for a strenuous outing, though: it goes from height to height, but it's awesome terrain. I am totally on board with this and looking out for other books by this author now.

The Well's End by Seth Fishman

Title: The Well's End
Author: Seth Fishman
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WARTY!

Read a bit painfully by Katie Schorr.

I have to say up front that I've grown to detest novels that are told in the first person PoV because they all-too-often sound so self-obsessed: "Hey pay attention to me! I'm more important than anything! Lookit MEEEE! Lookit what I'm doing! Lissen to what I'm thinking!". They just really irritate me unless they're done really well, but typically, especially in YA stories, they aren’t.

This was one of the irritating ones, I'm sorry to say, and it wasn't helped by Katie Schorr's reading. She has a good voice, so I'm sure she'd be appropriate for some novels, but in this case it was just really annoying, especially to hear this voice, which sounded like it wasn't YA, read a first person story about a YA character who is endlessly rambling on about herself and her swim meets and boys.

The worst part about it was her completely flat reading - it was like listening to someone announcing flight cancellations at an airport, or the next stop on your train journey: no inflection, not a trace of emotion. Worse than that, the underlying story was boring as hell. Do I care about the minutiae of her life? Not unless it bears on the story. This was like listening to a thirteen-year-old talk about her school day thirty times in a row - the same day. It was awful. It just sounded wrong and boring.

There was an intrigue here, which made me force myself to keep listening initially, but it was almost immediately subjugated to the boring litany of the tedious details of Mia's thoroughly-uninteresting life. Mia is the main Character and her dad works in some secret government activity, literally underground. He drives down into a tunnel where there are doors almost like airlock doors - where only one set is opened at any one time. Mia has no idea what's in there and her dad rightly isn’t telling.

The well of the title appears, at least initially, to be one which mia fell down when she was four. The story is one of these metaphorical ones where the well becomes Mia's insulated life, from which she eventually escapes (at least that was the initial diagnosis). It might as well have been called The Womb's End or something. I'm not a fan of stories like this, but I admit I was intrigued by what her dad does and why a pushy news reporter was so obsessed with finding out. That I would have liked to have heard about, but the writer was just too obsessed with rolling out boring-as-all-hell high-school trivia to have any time to tell that infinitely more interesting story.

One big problem right off the bat was how this story began - with this business of Mia falling down this well. Even though she's now pretty much adult, she claims that the world is still obsessed with the well incident and that reporters are still beating a path to her door to talk about baby Mia and the well. I found this to be completely absurd.

Yes, a baby-in-a-well story is gripping, and very news-worthy as it happens, but after the child is freed, who cares any more? Can you remember the name of the last trapped child who was in the news? I can’t. I'm sure the family and close friends remember it well, but no one else does because it’s not news-worthy any more, so this rang truly false. It’s certainly not a news item a decade or two later, which is the conceit here, and it made the story inauthentic.

Plus the virus that ages you quickly made no sense - and it made less sense given that Mia was inexplicably thinking she could solve this problem by invading her father's electronics research facility. Electronics has nothing to do with biology, although there are places where they converge - but viruses? Maybe this was a computer virus that somehow attacks humans? Ridiculous! I didn't read that far, so I have no idea where this went. Maybe it made sense later, but I was too bored by it.

Also this is book one of the inevitable YA series, because why write one novel when you can split it into several and make people buy essentially the same story over and over again? other reviewers have warned of a cliff-hanger ending, so you don't even get a complete story here. I refuse to play that game.

So, to cut a boring story short which is exactly what I did! I quit listening to this. I cannot recommend it based on the portion I did hear, not when there are other stories which grip you from the beginning in an intelligent and mature fashion and simply refuse to let go.

Girl Defective by Simmone Howell

Title: Girl Defective
Author: Simmone Howell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

I'm not sure why, but it always amuses me when the author (or perhaps the publisher) announces that the novel is a novel by having the words "A Novel" appear on the front cover as some editions of this one do. It's not really novel or meaningful. This is the kind of novel that tries too hard to be hip, where authors mistakenly think that if they set it in a book store or a record store it will automatically be literary and brilliant. No, Virginia, it won't. Nor will tossing in musical or literary references. For me personally I tend to despise such novels precisely because they do come with this pretension to being "literary".

Skylark and her somewhat developmentally-impaired kid bother Seagull (who goes by "Gully") live over a vinyl record store with their father. Mom isn't in the picture having ditched her family to pursue a career in music. Since dad won't have an on-line presence, nor will he countenance CDs in his store, it looks like the business is on the home straight to going out of, which begs the question as to why dad hired Luke to help in the store.

I know vinyl is making something of a comeback as a music delivery medium, but it's never actually going to come back in any meaningful sense, and for me, I'm glad because people have forgotten how bloody awful vinyl actually was and how it is an oil derivative ultimately, but that's by-the-by. But this did make me feel this novel was a bit anachronistic rather than realistic. Now if the story had been set in a place which, I dunno, runs an indy MP3 download service or something, that might have at least been a bit less pretentious and rather different. But then the author wouldn't have been able to slip in a host of pretentious references to obscure bands of yesteryear, would she?

Obviously Luke is really hired so Luke and Sky can get together, so it's a bit ham-fisted. The legend we're offered is that Luke's sister, Mia, died some time before, so maybe dad is taking pity on him, but aside from being annoyingly attracted to Luke, Sky is a rather confused young woman, confused by her flibbertigibbet of a friend, and by this Goth girl from school who she runs into at unexpected times which always looks like it might be going somewhere, but which never does. Also, what's going on with the police officer of whom Sky is suspicious, but who seems to have known dad for years? Well there's nothing going on because none of this goes nowhere - not anywhere you don't expect for this kind of a novel.

Normally I Love stories set in Australia, but this one was a complete fail with me. It started out interestingly enough, but it quickly became clear that all this author had to offer was a litany of character quirks. There was no real plot. Nothing happened unless you count Sky's incessant mooning over Luke as an event, which I sure don't. Gully was quirky for quirk's sake which was interesting for about five minutes.

It was pretty obvious who the mystery vandals were from quite early on, so there really was no mystery to solve unless it was the mystery of how this author thought that if you sprinkle enough character quirks into the mix you'll somehow magically have a plot or a story. The problem with that plan is that these characters were nowhere near interesting enough to carry a book-length story. I cannot recommend this.

War Horse by Michael Morpugo

Title: War Horse
Author: Michael Morpugo
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WARTY!

Read perfectly well by John Keating.

Welcome to the foal-ie Berserk! I listened to this audio book because it was a story which has become popular and was made into a movie, although how they got a two hour movie from what is essentially a short story (4 disk CD audio) I don’t know. I haven't seen the movie, but I imagine it’s full of tear-jerking violins and swelling orchestral romps. I have to say up front that I was not impressed with this novel.

I can see the appeal of anthopomorphizing animals for young children who are charmingly undiscriminating up through a certain age, but to write one evidently aimed at older children which makes the horse appear to have every faculty a human does is misguided at best, and nonsensical at worst, especially when written in the maudlin way this was written. I mean, let’s face it, there is no mystery here. There are no surprises in store. We know how it’s going to end before we start.

The representation of the horse was so unrealistic it was almost a parody and I found myself laughing frequently. I should say here that the reading by John Keating was excellent. He has a charming voice, but the voice can’t actually change poor material, so I am sorry his effort was so inadequately supported by what he had to read.

The basic story is set in the early years of the 20th century, and is about a horse which is bought by a caricature-ish bad-guy farmer, who has an equally caricatured good-guy son who actually grows up with the young horse, and of course has a magical bond with it. Dad sells off this horse to the army when World War One breaks out, and off goes "Joey" the horse to show what a stud he is on the front lines, followed by the son's promise that they'll meet again. Joey endures charging the enemy, hauling the wounded, and on and one until the war is over, and he reunites with the lad.

I skipped the third disk out of boredom, so I can't speak to events there, but the ending was so trite as to be sickening. I cannot in good faith recommend this story unless you're deeply into totally artificial tear-jerkers.

The Doorknob Society by MJ Fletcher

Title: The Doorknob Society
Author: MJ Fletcher
Publisher: Draft2Digital
Rating: WARTY!

This is another classic example of a book cover design fail. The title is right there: the DOORKNOB Society, yet what takes center stage? Yep - the keys! Sometimes you have to wonder. Other times you have to really wonder....

This is obviously a rip-off of Harry Potter, and I know a lot of novels are these days, but usually they’re not quite so baldly derivative. When I was a kid, there was this phrase people used to indicate snobbery or something a cut above the rest, or somehow better than usual. It was rather in the mode of “dressed up like a dog’s dinner” but this merely involved adding “with knobs on” to some statement – like a drawer isn’t really useful or complete until it has the knobs fitted (kitchen storage designers I’m looking at you). I couldn’t help but think about that as I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Knobs, er, The Doorknob Society.

Sure, the author had done a reversal – making Harry into a girl (as Rowling had evidently considered, at one point, but in her case she stayed with the original gender), but she still goes to a special ed. School, and there are still four houses and on and on. Boring. That wasn’t even the worst part of this for me. The worst part was the appallingly clichéd “love” interest, in the form of a studly, muscled guy with a chiseled jaw – that’s what he was described as (the chiseled, not the studly!). It’s pathetic. Can authors not think for themselves and come up with something different?

It was at that point, right after that specific description, that I quit reading this. The novel had not been that great to begin with (and sentences like “I’m a legacy my parents went there.” didn't help, but that was the final straw for me. If a novel can't make a reasonable effort at getting away from the herd, or at the very least, at some originality, then why should I offer a reasonable attempt at reading it? Life is too short.

Adamant by Emma L Adams

Title: Adamant
Author: Emma L Adams
Publisher: <Emma L Adams
Rating: WORTHY!

This is book one of the ‘Alliance’ series. Maybe I’m just more finicky than most, but in my experience, series tend not to be that great. I see them as one really long novel, of which the first volume is the prologue (and I don’t do prologues!) and the rest of them very long and unfortunately rather repetitive chapters. It not only strikes me as tedious, but also as lazy in a way because rather than invent something new, the writer simply reuses the previous volume as a template for the next.

Of course, there are exceptions! There are some series which are wonderful, so it really depends on how the writer writes it. Having said that I further have to report that this is a first person PoV novel – my least favorite voice. I detest it because it’s very rarely done well, and it spoils the story for me. It limits what can be told, because everything has to be filtered through the mouth of the main character, for one thing. On top of that it’s become a complete and utter cliché in YA novels – particularly those featuring a female main protagonist.

I know that authors think that 1PoV gives the story immediacy, but if a writer is forced to tell it in first person merely to achieve that, then they’re doing it wrong! Besides, it actually loses immediacy because we know from the start that nothing truly bad can happen to the character because the character is telling the story! They’re obviously going to survive, and none of their pain and peril can have been very traumatic otherwise how could they recall all those details?! In fact, how do they recall them anyway?! There goes all hope for drama and peril. There goes immediacy! There goes credibility!

Having said all that, I have to report that this author impressed me on both counts. She wrote the first volume in a series and had not one, but two first person PoVs and I actually liked it! It's quite a feat for an author to get away with that in my reading experience! As a writer myself, I love words and what they can be made to do, and it's for this reason that I derived what’s probably a disproportionately large amount of amusement from an author named Adams who titles her novel Adamant. But that’s probably just me!

Down to details! This is a universe where a system of tunnels or passages connects multiple worlds. An Alliance has sprung up to police these worlds and prevent illegal transition between them, but there’s a rebel faction which smuggles people between worlds, and one of the two main characters is a part of that,having been smuggled herself a long time ago. The work is dangerous because in addition to being caught by the Alliance, there’s also the risk of running into strange alien “monsters” in the passages, as this girl does. She goes by the storied first name of Ada and the mutinous last name of Fletcher! I love an author who can put great names to their characters, and I think those two particular names were chosen wisely in Ada's case.

The chapters alternate between Ada and Kay Walker, on opposite sides of the legal fence. Ada is helping illegals to come to Earth to escape problems on their home world whereas Kay is a new graduate working for the alliance. Their first encounter is a very fleeting one as Kay sees Ada running fast from a storage area, from which Ada’s just lifted some bags of bloodstone – an alien substance useful for disguising illegals. And for other purposes as you shall discover if you read this!

Since this is a blog about writing, I love to bring up writing issues. Here’s a really good one. On page 6 Ada employs the phrase, “…ensure nobody but them…”. Now technically that should be “…ensure nobody but they…”, but since this is a first person PoV story, can we arguably ascribe this to the character’s personal vernacular? I think it depends upon what else the character’s been saying. This is only the second page of the story (it begins on page five for some reason), and the very top of the page as well, so we don’t have much to go on. While the main character’s speech patterns up until that point don’t suggest that she’d employ this particular phrase, it is a common form of speech, so it didn't jump out at me as being wrong - just as being interesting from a writer's PoV and worth keeping an eye on if you're writing yourself.

There's not only sci-fi here, but also magic. It's not supposed to work on Earth, but Ada finds that in certain circumstances, she can employ it. It's especially workable in the tunnels. Not that it's of much use against the magical creatures, which is why Ada is always well-armed. She and Kay start out as enemies, but they soon learn that in order to solve unexpected problems, they must work together. All the pieces of this story work together, believe it or not. I liked the originality, the strange new worlds, and the description of the deployment of magic. There's a heck of a lot to explore here and I'm sure the author plans on doing just that in the coming volumes.

But that's enough spoilers - except to ease you by advising you not to take anything at face value in this novel! I recommend it because it had interesting, intelligent, feisty, and motivated characters, because it did NOT have a silly love-triangle, because the relationship between the two main characters was handled responsibly and intelligently, and because it was interesting, original, and had an engrossing plot. The very minor quibbles I had were ones which other readers might well not even remark upon, such as one sentence which read: “A creeping feeling crawled up my spine…” which sounded odd and redundant to me. But those were very rare, and overall, this is a great adventure. I look forward to the next one in the series.

Ice kissed by Amanda Hocking

Title: Ice kissed
Author: Amanda Hocking
Publisher: MacMillan
Rating: WARTY!

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

Errata:
Page 11 “As we spoke, Mina pet the rabbit absently.” should be “As we spoke, Mina petted the rabbit absently.” or “As we spoke, Mina would pet the rabbit absently.”
Page 16 “…but we didn’t know where there were…” should be “…but we didn’t know where they were…”
Page 26 “…on the lowers shelves…” should be “…on the lower shelves…”
Page 104 “King Mikko refuses to undo his father changes…” should be “King Mikko refuses to undo his father’s changes…”

It was reading about Amanda Hocking’s experience that first got me into self-publishing. Of course I never for a moment expected (nor did I get!) the same success she has had, but when I began reviewing, I always thought it would be fun to review one of her books. My problem was that I never found one that I actually wanted to read until this one – and it’s in first person PoV! 1PoV is the voice I detest most for a variety of reasons, but it's not possible to find YA novels with a principal female character that isn't 1Pov these days. So anyway, there’s another strike against this novel. Given that the author tends to write romance disguised as fantasy, I was not confident I would even find this one to my liking, but I thought I’d give it a try. I’m sorry to say I wasn’t impressed.

Ice Kissed is book 2 in the Kanin Chronicles, consisting of Frostfire (which has to be one of the most over-used book titles ever!), Ice Kissed (a title which has nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the novel), and Crystal Kingdom. Note that I haven’t read book one in this series since it’s one more into which I came ‘in progress’ without realizing it was an ongoing series.

I think from this point onwards I’m going to simply assume that any YA book in which I may take an interest is part of an ongoing series because quite evidently no one in the entire YA world, it seems, can write a one-off any more. I’m not a fan of series because it’s just a lazy way to milk money from readers by expending no more effort than it takes to regurgitate essentially the same thing over and over (with a twist or two - if we’re lucky - to try to disguise the cookie-cutter marks). Either that or it involves merely padding a novel that should occupy one volume so that it stretches to two or three. I’m not into that.

In a story which seems to have been heavily painted with a Scandinavian brush, complete with snow (because without snow it would be neither complete nor Scandinavian, right?!) Bryn Aven is a “tracker”. I assume that this is explained in book one. I also assume it means just what it says – that she’s some sort of detective. It’s actually rather astounding, I find, how often ‘tracker’ is an actual occupation in fantasy fiction.

In book one Bryn had gone off searching for a missing queen and returned empty-handed. Why it was her job to find a queen missing from another country, I don't know. During that escapade, she and her tracking companion, Ridley, had become ‘romantically’ involved, so the first thing the writer of a trilogy has to do in book two is tear them apart. Here it’s done quite ham-fistedly by having Bryn keep something to herself – something she revealed only when questioned by the king. This allows Ridley to have a childish hissy-fit and treat Bryn like dirt so that she has to suck up to him like a whipped puppy because that’s Ya lot in life for female characters.

I have to say that my favorite character name is Bent Stum, which sounds like some sort of physical infirmity – and painful, too! Bryn hangs out with two girls named Tilda and Ember, both of whom behave as though they’re fifteen. Tilda has been impregnated by a fellow tracker and they’re planning on marrying. Bryn and Ridley are sleeping together and he’s her superior, which is completely inappropriate, yet neither of them think there’s any problem with this. So much for discipline in the ranks!

I have to say the writing quality left something to be desired – notably a good editor. I found several items of wrong word use or poor grammar, but to be fair, these were sometimes leavened by refreshingly correct constructs such as in the opening two sentences in chapter eighteen, where we read: “…took Kasper and me down…when Ridley and I had been…” But then we get odd sentences like “all kinds of books ranging from items of years to the latest novel…”. I don’t know what “items of years” means! Classics? Old tomes? Crappy looking?

In chapter thirty, we get this totally weird sentence; “The darkness of the water outside my window made it impossible to see if the sun had come up yet.” I have no idea whatsoever what that means; was she sleeping under water? In this novel that might be possible! Even if she meant something simple, like that the water wasn’t reflecting the sun yet, then surely the actual sky would give something away? Even if it was cloudy, the sky is routinely lighter in the daytime than at night (trust me on this), so the sentence was nonsensical. On page 170 we read this oddity: “Ilsa…opened the door with a quick knock…” which is actually intelligible, but awkward at best. Maybe the door wasn’t latched and sprung open when she knocked?!

By the time I was a third of the way through this novel, I had pretty much lost interest in it and began skimming rather than doing over-much detailed reading. The writing really isn’t very good, and by that I mean it’s nothing special: it’s not thrilling, it’s not particularly easy on the ears, and it really doesn’t grab the reader. It’s frankly a bit tedious.

On top of that, not a single one of the characters captured my interest, much less my imagination. There was no attempt at character building. Maybe that all got done in book one? There was nothing going on except for Bryn and some guy (Kasper, Ridley) traveling to one place or another, and back again. Bryn was never allowed out on her own (more on this anon), yet she’s supposed to be a strong female character. Pshaw! More interestingly, there never was another female accompanying her, so there was no female bonding notwithstanding her two friends and their wedding plans.

Bryn discovers Queen Linnea’s location through a psychic message which the queen sends her. They deliver her straight back to the very place from which she’d fled in fear of her safety. This made no sense. Bryn and Kasper are sent to guard her despite the kingdom having its own guards. How insulting is that? Bryn kills a guy who is apparently about to kill the king and the latter is arrested for treason – because he’s apparently plotting all of this himself (and faking the attempt on his life)! This is set in completely modern times in our own world (with SUVs and cell phones), yet the assassin uses a sword? It makes no sense.

Now for a bit more on how female characters are treated here. We’re told that the Queen has no say in her husband’s arrest because the two societies are patriarchal, with the laws applicable equally regardless of rank or position. No queen can rule of her own right, yet in this same society, they have female trackers and female officers How come there’s ‘emancipation’ in the military, but none in the nobility?! ? It makes no sense.

This diminution, if not infantilization, of females in this novel is further highlighted in an incident where Bryn is called to see the king, and Ridley protectively jumps up and tries to argue that he should go instead, since he’s her superior. But the fact is that the king summoned Bryn, no one else. Ridley’s behavior here is not only once again inappropriate (and insulting to the king!), it’s completely demeaning – like Bryn is no better than a weak child who needs protecting.

After the wedding, Bryn tries to talk to Ridley, and finds herself tongue-tied. This is supposedly a militarily trained tracker, supposedly a strong woman, who supposedly can act independently, and she’s completely lost for what to do? I don’t get why female authors, particularly those who write YA, so consistently and effectively neuter their main female characters like this. This is why I don’t read romance (not much anyway) and tend to find it distasteful when I do read it. Once in a while a worthy one comes along (which is why I read it once in a while!), but in general, it’s dreadful. What it says about women in how they're portrayed is unacceptable, but what really bothers me what it says about the readership these novels attract.

So why is Bryn summoned? We’re supposed to believe the Prince Kennet – now “acting king” came all the way from his own kingdom, leaving it at a time of trouble and uncertainty, to flirt with Bryn. Seriously? It was at this point that I really had had more than enough of this novel, but I read on to the end, which was, if you pay any attention at all to how the purported “villain” Konstantin is written about throughout this novel, entirely predictable, so no surprises there.

I cannot in good faith recommend a novel as lifeless and devoid of entertainment as this on is. For the passive misogyny alone I’d have to rate it negatively. I guess there’s a market for it if a publisher feels it can can offer a new author some two million dollars for four books, but no matter how inexplicably lucrative it might be for an author, I couldn’t write this stuff, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

Trust by Jodi Baker

Title: Trust (Could not find this novel on B&N or Amazon)
Author: Jodi Baker
Publisher: Between Lions Press (website not found)
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!

This is book one of the 'Between the Lions' series. I have to say up front that this is a first person PoV novel, a voice I detest because so few writers can carry it off, and it ends up being arrogant, self-absorbed and self-obsessed. In this case it wasn't too bad, but it was rather annoying. Why is it that young adult authors in particular seem utterly incapable of writing in third person?

One of the biggest problems with 1PoV is that it doesn’t work suspense-wise, because you know the story gets finished – so there's zero drama over whether the narrator will survive! For example when main character (and narrator) Anna gets imprisoned somewhere during this novel, it doesn't make for a chapter-ending cliff-hanger because there is no question of the outcome. We know she's going to escape and in this case the manner of her escape was so convenient that it was really rather sad.

Another problem with 1PoV is, of course, that you're stuck with you! The narrator can't relate anything that they don't experience personally, or the reader ends up with long info-dumps, or boring conversations where the reader has to sit and wait while someone relays what happened elsewhere. It's completely unnatural. Maybe some readers (and far too many writers, particularly those of the YA persuasion as I mentioned!) feel it brings more immediacy, but to me it brings irritation and annoyance. I routinely put books back on the shelf at the library or the book-store as soon as I discover that they're 1PoV, but it's a lot harder to do that with ebooks - and no book blurb ever gives you the PoV!

That aside, I was pleasantly impressed with this novel for the most part - the most part being the first 75% or so of it. After that it went somewhat downhill, but it still managed to stay this side of readable. It was a new and fresh story with some good ideas, and best of all, the main female character wasn't a complete loser who needed a guy to validate her which is another typically ailing of YA stories, so kudos to the author for that. There was a really nice (and slightly creepy) surprise in chapter two, which was most welcome.

Anna lives with an abusive mom - mentally abusive that is - who home-schools her and keeps her from the spotlight, drilling her mercilessly on the need to keep not so much a low profile, as a no-profile. It's obvious that Anna's being shielded for some reason, but she's never told why. This annoyed me somewhat because it's yet another example of the trope of a teen having special powers (of one kind or another) and being kept in the dark, and having no family, or one parent, or being raised by relatives, etc.

Frankly that was irritating, but the way it was done here as fresh enough that I got through it without developing hives. Unfortunately, this business of 'keep the orphan teen in the dark' was rather overdone, I'm sorry to say. Parts of it were good, but I really did become annoyed with it when it went on and on and on.

There were other minor issues. The author is one of those YA authors who thinks it's "bicep" and not "biceps" (Page 19). She disses nurses on page 48 by describing one running out of a hospital room "like a terrified kitten". I've worked in hospitals and it doesn't describe any nurse I've ever met. I know there must be some like that, they're only human after all, but when it comes to children in their care, nurses are as fierce and protective as a parent is, so I felt that slur was uncalled for.

There's also the sorry description that I've read in more than one YA novel: 'skin so black it was almost blue' (Page 135). I've read this in The Walled City by Ryan Graudin and the awful Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. In The Midnight Dress, Karen Foxlee takes in in the opposite direction: "…so blue it was almost black...".

This phrase makes absolutely no sense. The author is conflating hue, chroma, and brightness, which isn't a smart thing for a writer to do. There are very subtle ways like this in which we, as writers, can educate readers and bring them up with us instead of talking down to them. Cat Winters knows how to write this in In the Shadow of Blackbirds: "...navy blue so dark it was almost black.".

Anna finds she has a long, long family history (to a wonderful place as it happens - something which I loved and approved of), but her mom has sought to protect her from this history - foolishly as it always turns out in these novels. Now Anna's mom has disappeared, and she feels threatened, and suddenly a grandmother whom she thought had died turns out to be alive, and Anna is meeting strange people with curiously mythological names. And is she hearing voices?

So the story is for the most part quite gripping, and those quibbles I mentioned aside (and despite a bit of a falling-off of quality in the last quarter of the novel), I was impressed enough with this debut that I'm rating it as a worthy read.

All books to me are either worthy or unworthy of reading. It's a binary thing, not a one, two, three, four, or five star thing! Having said that I'm not a series fan, so I doubt I will pursue this series. It has to be a series of truly octopodally gripping power to get me to follow it! Otherwise it's just a prologue to a series of really long and repetitive chapters, and I don't do prologues! It's hard to see where this can actually go in a series and maintain my interest, but this one volume is worth a read and maybe you'll become addicted where I wasn't.

Material Girls by Elaine Dimopoulos

Title: Material Girls
Author: Elaine Dimopoulos
Publisher: Houghton Miflin Harcourt
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!

Normally I rail against, indeed, refuse to read, novels which are little more than a shopping list of the author’s favorite fashion items. Such snotty books deserve contempt, as does the fashion industry itself. What could be more arrogant and flatulent than an industry devoted to dictating to you that you must change your clothing styles with great frequency, or there’s something wrong with you? What could be more unjust than an industry which effectively tells you that if you’re rich, you’re fashionable and if you’re poor you’re tasteless? And what could be more appalling than an industry built upon the backs of slavishly laboring Asian women and children?

This novel is exceptional, in more ways than one. In the do or Dior world in this story, youth rules comprehensively. At thirteen, children are “tapped” for the success spotlight. If they have spent their school year doing the right thing on their websites, they could become the next pop sensation, the next fashion icon, or the next box-office dream. If they fail, they’re doomed to a life as “adequates” – in short, they’re just like you and me, but in this story, adequate is really understood to mean failure.

This story concerns two successes. One of these is Marla Klein, who hit the big time in the fashion industry, being quickly promoted to the superior court – a handful of teens who declare what’s fashion and what’s fashi-off for one of the five big design houses, Torro-LeBlanc. Marla’s problem is that she’s been disagreeing with the rest of her court appointees, and before she can say “tummy ill figure”, she’s been jettisoned to the basement, where a hoard of designers deemed not good enough for the fashion courts are desperately trying to come up with fashion ideas which will impress the junior courts and get them a shot at displaying their design before the superior court.

Meanwhile, Evangeline Vassiliotis, now reincarnated as ivy Wilde, the current rebel diva superstar, is seeing her position threatened by an upstart Tap. Worse, she’s forced to wear the newest fashion: torture (which features chains, fake blood, and points on the soles of your shoes – on the inside). Of course, these “fashions” are scarcely any more torturous than those which women have felt compelled to wear for centuries, but they’re new and different, of course, so don’t you dare criticize them. Valenteenhold and Shamel certainly wouldn't! Women have fashion guns with which they can scan their clothing labels. If the light stays green, the trend is still good. If it’s red, you’re dead - fashionably speaking, of course - and it’s time to buy a new wardrobe.

Marla finds herself on the “obsoloser” table in the basement – as debased as it gets, in fact. She’s almost “crustaceous” for goodness sakes, but slowly, she and her cohorts hatch a scheme to subvert this system which considers people antiquated by the time they turn twenty. It all goes horribly wrong, and Marla finds herself under the icy glare of Ivy Wilde’s entourage – with the emphasis on the ‘rage’ part. It’s then that things really begin to change. Quick! Alert the media. I'm sure Vain Infamy, Cosplaypolitan, Fugue, or Helle fashion magazines would be interested!

This author could have read my mind – or snuck a peak at chapter zero of my novel Baker Street, but I doubt it! I honestly doubt that she and I are the only ones who have had thoughts like this about the fashion business. It’s what this author does with this story though, and where she takes it, which is what makes this novel “prime” (in my lingo: worthy!). No, in this novel she runs with it and makes an engrossing story full of interesting characters and even more interesting motivations.

I have to say that in many ways, characters Marla and Ivy are very much alike. There’s not a lot to separate them into individual characters, but this is only to be expected from a system which pre-processes children and manufactures a salable product out of them. But if you think that, then read on. They're not!

This story – speculative, dystopian, both - is set in the future, but it’s not a future that’s so far off it can’t be seen. No, the seeds of that future have been enthusiastically sown by vested interests since the 1950s, especially in the USA. A conspicuous consumer/planned obsolescence machine has been working on hearts and minds for decades. We’re all fashion victims. The question is: Is there a cure?

The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer by Laxmi Hariharan

Title: The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer
Author: Laxmi Hariharan
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

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

Errata:
Page 30 "Once upon at time it was amongst set many similar..." should be "Once upon at time it was set amongst many similar..."
Page 36 "...it's both Panky and my choice..." should be "...it's both Panky's and my choice..."
Page 88 "...Vikram is turns around..." should be "...Vikram turns around..."
Page 133 "reincarnate" should be either "incarnate" or "reincarnated"

Ruby Is an Indian woman living in Mumbai (which the author insists upon naming Bombay in this story). Mumbai is the biggest city in India (and eighth in the world) in terms of population, and its average temperature year round, runs between 70 and 90 (21 and 33) degrees. It's hot in many ways, including being a boomtown and business center, as well as having a great deep-water port.

Ruby Iyer is a young professional who lives in a bungalow which she shares with a guy named Pankaj ("Panky"), her best friend. One day when heading in to work, Ruby is knocked off the platform onto the electric train tracks and has 10,000 volts run through her, which she survives with no more than a Lichtenburg tree (an electrical branching pattern, rather like a tattoo) on her shoulder to show for it - at least externally. Inside, it's a different matter. Inside, Ruby feels the power of electricity and anger which she can barely control at times.

Note in passing that people tend to confuse volts with amps. 10,000 volts all by itself means little without knowing the amperage and the resistance. Humans can survive high voltage, but anything above a few milliamps for very long, and you're doomed! But that's by-the-by. Ruby tries to go to work the next day (this is after three days had gone by when she was unconscious in the hospital), and she fails spectacularly.

At the station, waiting on the morning train, standing alongside a guy she shared an autocab with, she sees the same guy who pushed her onto the tracks pushing another young woman in the same way. Ruby saves her life and then not wanting to deal with the publicity (or the police officer heading her way), she runs - stealing someone's motorbike.

She gets an anonymous text message to go to the Sea Link ferry and against her better judgment, finds herself driving down there. She finds a guy high-up off the ground, looking like he's going to jump. Next thing she knows, she's climbing up there trying to talk him down, and then diving into the water after him when he slips and falls. Suddenly she's being pulled from the water by the same guy she shared the cab with. What's going on here?

I admit after some seventy pages of this I was intrigued - drawn in by the oddity of events and by the sheer feistiness of Ruby's character. Now here's a great potential for a strong female protagonist thinks I, but there's also a male interest. Is this going to continue to show her as a strong independent woman, or is it going to go right down hill faster than Ruby plummeted into the ocean? Are we going to see her buried under the protective mantle of a validating guy just as the ocean covered her? I hoped not, but unfortunately soon, there soon came signs of plot failings.

Here's a writing issues to consider; how do you approach pet names when writing a story set in a foreign culture? Can you just employ Americanisms and have it work? Or is that going to rudely throw people out of suspension of disbelief? I ask because this author had Ruby refer to her pal Panky as "Pankster" from time to time. In the US, we understand that, because it's a very American thing to do, but unless she's really saying "Pankster" in her own tongue along with whatever else she's saying, what does Pankster mean? It would sound exactly the same in Bambaiya, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, or whatever language she's speaking, but would it mean the same thing it means in the US?

Is there a local language equivalent, and if so, why didn't the author use that - because we wouldn't understand it? I don't buy that. In the first hundred pages or so, the author does a great job of bringing us into the culture without making it sound like a guidebook or a lecture, so why this? I don't know. English is widely spoken amongst professionals in Mumbai, so maybe they speak English to each other and there's no problem here?

Having said that, there were quite a few technical problems with the text, including instances of two words run together, such as at the bottom of page 91 where it says "Handis" rather than "Hand is". A run-through with a decent spell-checker would catch many of those errors. There are other errors a spell-checker won't catch, such as when an AK-47 is identified on page 108 as a machine gun it's not. It's an assault rifle.

What about those plot failings I mentioned? Well, without wanting to give too much away, the most outrageous one was an incident in a train station where Ruby had the opportunity to take down or even take out the bad guy and she failed to act. I have no idea what that was all about except, of course, that it permitted the bad guy to escape and the story to continue for another 150 pages!

Things went significantly downhill after that for me, though, and I couldn't finish this novel. It became far too cartoonish. Some random guy launches an attack on Ruby in her home, and immediately afterwards, she's invited to visit the bad guy at a nearby hotel. Now maybe the guy with the gun was merely going to escort her to the hotel, maybe not, but either way it made no sense. He never said he only wanted to take her there, and she went anyway. The only thing this accomplished was a bout of blood and gore.

Ruby arms herself with a machete, which she pretty much consistently refers to as a sword, from that point onwards. It made no sense, especially since Vikram the cop said he was going to stay with her so he could get the bad guy, and as soon as his back is turned she runs off alone, no back-up, to try and rescue Panky.

It's at this point that we're expected to believe that simultaneously with the city all-but shutting down from multiple bombings, and with the power out, there's a fashion show going on at the Hyatt??? People are packing into one of the stations which was blown up just a day or two before - to go to work?!! There's this chaos going on and the army isn't called in? There's no curfew imposed? It's like all this is going on, and yet life continues in the city unaffected. It made no sense.

The story was told in first person PoV which usually doesn't work. In this case it wasn't too bad to begin with but it did begin to grate on the nerves after a while, especially since Ruby was hardly a nice person. I wasn't rooting for her. I actually liked the bad guy better.

If Ruby had shown some smarts instead of being a dick who routinely steals other people's property (mostly transportation) and who has no idea how to call for or rely on back-up, and shows no evidence that she even understands what cooperation is, let alone how to engage in it, with the cop who saved her life more than once. She's just not a likable protagonist, and that coupled with the absurd events the further I read into this story, was enough to convince me that I cannot rate this as a worthy read.

It's very depressing, actually, because the author shows signs of a real writing ability, yet she has a character like this in a setting that is, for once, in some place other than the USA, and it just gets wasted and squandered. I felt very sad and disappointed in what seemed to me to be a badly wasted opportunity.

Cleo by Lucy Coats

Title: Cleo (no online outlet found)
Author: Lucy Coats
Publisher: Hachette
Rating: WARTY!

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

One huge kudos up front: this book uses paper from responsible sources! You go Hachette/Orchard! Maybe all publishers do this these days, and this one's the only one smart enough to trumpet it? I don't know, but credit where it's due!

The title for chapter one is very dramatic : Death comes to Alexandria - but then a brief description tells us we're in Alexandria, four years earlier - earlier than what? I don't know! There was no prologue, for which I am deeply grateful to the author! She puts it in chapter one, where it belongs, so this book got off to a good start for me, but then it rather went downhill I'm afraid.

Cleo's mother is dying. Cleo's father, one of the Ptolemys, has run away to Rome not long before, taking the entire family with him except for Cleo and her mom. Cleo has never felt so alone and was trying her best not to cry - not to show weakness - as she begged the god Isis to spare her mom. Isis, like every god, has a an un-amusing habit of simply not listening.

So yes, it's the story of Cleopatra, told for a middle grade audience. Cleo starts out at twelve years old, then jumps to sixteen, but the story-telling remained middle-grade, which was one of my problems with it. Cleopatra's name means 'father's glory', but this isn't her real glory or story - which was another of my problems with it. Cleopatra's real story is completely twisted around here, so please don't think you're learning any history. I don't understand why writers do this. If you're going to make up literally everything as was done here, then why use a real historical person? if you're going to write about a real person, why make it so fanciful that it bears no relation to her real life?

To be honest, the story is a complete mess. Cleo did have to flee from Alexandria, but it wasn't like Cinderella fleeing from her two evil stepsisters as is portrayed here. She had actually been ruling - at first along with her father, and then with her brothers, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, to each of which brothers she was married. When she fled, it was not after her mother's death, but after her father's (Ptolemy XII's) death. Her brother was the evil sibling, refusing to share power with his sister. Both Cleo and her younger sister Arsinoë (named after the mother of the first Ptolemy) - a sister Cleo later had assassinated - fled, and it was Arsinoë who went into a temple, not of Isis but of Artemis.

Arsinoë's story would have actually been more interesting. Tryphaena was not an evil stepsister but was actually Cleopatra's mother (as is thought - no one knows for sure), aka Cleopatra V. There was no Bere -nice or -nasty - not as a sister. There was a Cleopatra Berenice III, who was an aunt or possibly Cleo's mom (the Ptolemy family tree was as incestuous as you can get). In real life, Cleo was never the girl portrayed here!

At one point Cleo describes a scorpion as an insect. It’s not. It’s an arachnid, related to spiders. The ancient Egyptians wouldn’t necessarily make this distinction, but I think it’s misleading and unnecessary – and it makes her look dumb. The real Cleopatra made some bad decisions, but she was anything but dumb. At another point, Cleo refers to the Ptolemy side of her ancestry, which is amusing because there was really only a Ptolemy side to her ancestry! Her entire family was descended from two people and the bothers uncles, etc. intermarried repeatedly. As I mentioned, this was one of the most incestuous lineages ever!

So in a novel like this you have to decide how much you want it to represent history and/or how much you're willing to let it be fanciful. For a good story I could accept either route, so for me, it all comes down to how engrossing and intelligent the story ends up being, and there it failed for me because it was way too young for the intended audience, and apart from it not being accurate, it wasn't very engaging. Cleo wasn't likable. She was far too self-obsessed and self-absorbed. She cared nothing for anyone but herself and her slave-girl who was named Charm even though the actual slave who died with Cleo was named Charmion.

The supernatural elements might have made for an interesting story but were skimped on to the point where I wondered why they had even been included. To cut a (too) long story short, I gave up reading this one at about fifty percent in and I can't recommend it based on what I read.

The Secret Sky by Atia Abawi

Title: The Secret Sky
Author: Atia Abawi
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WARTY!

I picked this up at the library because it looked like it would be really interesting - and really different. It's set in Afghanistan and is a story of forbidden love between Fatima (of one tribe), and Samiullah (of another tribe) living under a brutal religious regime. The author has actually lived in Afghanistan, so I was hoping for a lot of local color and insights, but in the end all I got was a bog-standard American-style YA novel and I really didn't appreciate that.

We still hear much about Afghanistan - it seems like every alpha male in every TV show, movie, and novel is boringly a special forces soldier who did at least one or two tours in Afghanistan. I know it's awful there, particularly for women, which is why I thought that this story - written by an honorary Afghani woman who has lived in Kabul, would have something new and different to say, but the story was exactly the same as your typical trope story of this nature written by any other author. The big question for me was: why? This could have been so much more.

Rather than being tied to a time and place, It could have been set anywhere at any time (and I don't mean that as a compliment). It could have been written by anyone. Other than a reference here and there to a tandoor (oven), or a payron (smock), or some other such object, or an Afghani phrase dropped here and there, there was no reason for it to be set in Afghanistan. The setting was rendered into a mere gimmick instead of being an integral and enthralling part of the story. Worse than this, the author shows nothing, tells all.

I found it odd that every time mom or dad was referred to in this novel, we got the Afghani term of endearment for it, but when an aunt shows up, she's consistently referred to as 'Aunt'! Weird. Unless, of course, the Afghani word for aunt is aunt, which I somehow doubt. I'm not a fan of novels set in foreign places where the author's sole idea of creating a foreign atmosphere is merely to drop a local language word or phrase into the narrative and immediately afterwards translate it for us. It becomes irritating and metronomic, and it's a constant reminder that we're reading a story by someone who is hoping desperately to convince us that this is really taking place amidst a foreign culture whilst employing the laziest method of doing so.

We get the same fluttering heart (yawn), electric shocks from merely brushing against the object of your desire (yawn, yawn), square jaw (yawn), muscled chest (yawn, yawn) and so on, that we get in a really badly written YA novel from the US. I know that love has common elements no matter in which culture it arises, but can we not think of something new to describe attraction? Can we not get away from tired cliché and trope even in a novel set halfway around the world? Evidently not.

The villain (named Rashid, of course) is a laughable cardboard cut-out, an uncompromising fundamentalist who festers and fumes, and schemes and waits patiently to unleash his wrath, and chews-up the scenery every time we get the story told from his PoV, which was blessedly rare.

Yes, there are three PoVs in what amounts to a sort of warped love triangle. Each chapter is headed with the name of the character so we can't mistake one for another lol! Rashid is far more of a joke than ever he is a threat. Samiullah is such a Mary Sue that this is almost a lesbian affair. Given the upbringing of these three children, it makes no sense that two of them would suddenly abandon all rules and propriety and start meeting secretly. It makes no sense that Samiullah (we're told) loves and respects Fatima, yet puts her very life at risk every day by meeting with her unchaperoned. Yes, it's necessary for this sad effort at writing a "love" story, but please, do the work to make it seem possible that they would behave like this! Don't simply tell us this is the way it is merely because I want to tell a forbidden love story and can't be bothered to work at it.

I was hoping for a lot more, and got a lot less. I couldn't finish this novel, and I cannot recommend it based on what I read. Life is far too short to waste it reading ordinary stories.

Bleeding Earth by Kaitlin Ward

Title: Bleeding Earth
Author: Kaitlin Ward
Publisher: Egmont
Rating: WARTY!

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

I had problems with this novel right from the off. There were so many of them that it's hard to know where to start. It’s written in first person PoV which I detest because few writers can do it and make it readable without inducing nausea. There’s nothing more fingernails-on-a-chalk-board than someone constantly admonishing a reader to “Lookit ME! Lissen to ME! Nothing’s more important than what’s happening to MEEEEE!” Why so many writers choose this form is a mystery. I generally adore writers who do not and it seems so much more annoying in YA novels, probably because YA stories are all-too-often far more petty and frivolous than is literature aimed at a more mature readership, for reasons unknown.

This one begins with the narrator, Lea, trying to induce her friend Hillary to come into the graveyard with her, when it’s Hillary’s idea to go there in the first place! Hillary evidently has an irrational fear of graveyards which makes it problematic for her to do tracings of the gravestones for her family history project. Why she chose to trace rather than simply photograph was unexplained. Maybe her fear has grown because she’s lived directly across the street from the graveyard all her life? Familiarity breeds terror?

Lea sounds like a really needy person. She was responsible for Hillary’s breaking-up with her boyfriend because of this sorry neediness. What if Hillary’s boyfriend’s name had been Bill? Maybe history would be different?!

Anyway, as they’re leaving the cemetery, they walk right over a grave which is leaking blood – that’s how oblivious they are of their surroundings – and this is despite Lea’s ragging on Hillary, and despite Hillary’s supposed phobia. Neither of them notices until they step in it. Worse than this, they’re too stupid to grasp that a corpse isn’t going to leak blood, and even if it did, the blood isn’t going to come flooding up to the surface of the grave from six feet below. This creeping 'dumb-assery' problem becomes worse as the story goes on.

On the positive side, this isn’t your usual trope YA – Lea is lesbian, so there’s no bad-boy boyfriend around, and fortunately, Aracely (Lea’s girlfriend whose parents are French) isn't a “bad boy” who has hair falling into her eyes, and has gold flecks in her eyes, and is ripped, so it's not all bad! Lea is ‘out’ at school and at home, yet her best friend’s mother doesn’t know and apparently wouldn’t approve, so they keep her in the dark. Hmm! I wonder what the future of this relationship is going to be?

Well, on top of all that, Aracely isn’t out yet which is another inexplicable issue since…FRENCH! I know all French aren’t alike, but it seems to me there’d be a lot less judgment and opposition in French parents (actually one parent – her dad. Mom is not in the picture) than ever there would be with US parents, who tend to be much more conservative than Europeans.

The problem with Aracely is that Lea’s only attraction to her is that “She’s so, so pretty.” Seriously? Can you not think of a single thing to recommend her other than her skin? I don’t get why female writers so persistently do this to female characters. I don’t get why they don’t get that regardless of how the rest of the world objectively sees a person, they’re always beautiful to the person who loves them.

Hillary’s boyfriend is named after a brand of jeans and has “…the standard blond-haired, blue-eyed thing going on…”? What on Earth does that mean? That only Aryans are acceptable or that this is a standard because it’s the most common appearance? Both are so wrong that they couldn’t be more wrong without going around the other side and starting back towards right again. I don’t know what that phrase means, but blue-eyed boys are a common trope in YA written by white authors.

As she walks home, Lea passes “…an LED display with bright pink bulbs.” LEDs are not bulbs, so I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but we're conveniently distracted from that conundrum, because it’s right at that point that the earth starts bleeding – there is blood coming up from the side-walk, and for some reason this causes mass hysteria! Lea just goes home and watches TV like it’s any other day. Apparently the event is world-wide.

This blood “…doesn’t just drown the grass - it suffocates it.” I fail to see any real distinction here, but we can put that down to artistic license! The problem with the blood is that it’s rising everywhere and we’re told that it’s causing floods. It’s supposedly running down the streets like rain in a heavy rainstorm, but it’s not draining away, either, so it makes no sense.

Although it appears exactly like blood right down to the smell, apparently it’s not congealing like blood! How this welling of blood is causing society to break down is unexplained. We’re told that places like NYC have power outages, and that coastal areas are flooding, but there’s nothing offered to explain how, exactly, these things are actually occurring.

There seems to be this big deal about scientists not knowing whether it’s blood! Seriously? It would be the easiest thing in the world to identify whether it is or not, yet this is like a big mystery? It made no sense. Worse than this, after Lea informs us that Aracely wants to be a scientist, the latter remarks (after it starts raining blood) that blood is too thick to evaporate! Nonsense. The solid particles in blood won’t evaporate, of course, but the liquid – which is water (duhh!) will. But that’s not how it’s raining blood – it’s not like the blood is developing its own hydro-cycle! Once you have a story where blood is unaccountably welling-up from the earth itself, there’s no reason why it can’t magically precipitate from the sky, too.

At one point Aracely indicates that no one has yet determined what this red substance truly is, but only two pages later (and in the same time frame), Lea is saying that it’s been specifically identified as human blood, so there’s a big disconnect there (and Aracely’s scientific credentials take another hit!).

We read at one point: “…she smiles at me - I can tell by the crinkles at the corner of her eyes.” That's the only way to tall that someone is smiling?! I guess Aracely's so, so pretty lips don't do the trick? Or maybe the narrator, Lea, isn't very smart? There's a good case to be made for that. At one point, these idiot girls go out for a drive – in blood that’s a foot deep! Of course the car breaks down.

This blood flood is completely unrealistic - even within its own fictional framework. Despite this up-welling and raining of blood, life goes on pretty much as normal: everyone goes off to work, kids go off to school. What? There’s absolutely zero police presence. There is no national guard. There is no fire department. There's apparently no emergency! Worse than this, there's no fly problem! Flies swarm all over a bloody road-kill corpse yet here, when the entire world is covered in blood, there are no flies?

Lea’s mom is described as “firmly atheist”, but she’s later described as avidly reading the Bible? No, it's not going to happen! Not if she's an actual atheist as opposed to a fence sitter.<.p>

The blood is the only character that changes in this story! Or at least, it changes its character. First it’s not toxic, then it is, but only if drunk. It’s not airborne, then respirators are being handed out, but you have to go out in the blood to the courthouse to pick up your respirator? Despite there being shuttle buses to transport people around, Lea and Aracely choose to walk back home! In blood. A foot deep. That’s now supposedly toxic.

Later they go to a party in the park, in the toxic blood. That's a foot deep. That’s when I quit reading this nonsense. I will not recommend something as juvenile as this, not even to an undiscriminating YA audience.

The Executioner's Daughter by Jane Hardstaff

Title: The Executioner's Daughter
Author: Jane Hardstaff (no website found)
Publisher: Egmont
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!

Note: Not to be confused with The Executioner's Daughter by Laura E Williams (which I haven't read), not with The Executioner's Beautiful Daughter by Angela Carter (which I also haven't read), nor with The Executioner's Daughter by Miguel Conner (which I also haven't read). Note also that this novel has a sequel, River Daughter, which I haven't read either. Shame on me! What's wrong with me - all these novels I haven't read?!

This story is quite a bit different from a lot of what I've been reading lately, and it was as welcome as it was a charming read. It's 1532 (that's just after three-thirty for those of you not familiar with military time), and Henry 8.0 is on the throne of England. Young Moss is the daughter of the executioner at the Tower of London. Moss's job is to catch the heads of the beheaded in her little wicker basket when they fall off. She quite good at it, but she hates her life, and her father's job.

One day she learns from him that he's been lying to her about why they never leave the Tower! Moss is furious at this revelation. She's been held prisoner just as effectively as enemies of the state, and none of it was necessary. It turns out that her dad is hiding her from someone who is apparently coming to claim her on her upcoming birthday. The Tower, he believes, despite the fact that it's right on the banks of the Thames, is the only safe place safe for her. Yeah, that plot-point is a bit thin, but the story-telling was so good that I was willing to forgive the author this - and her portrayal of the Thames freezing over that winter (it didn't!). The Thames froze - or partially froze - in 1514 and 1537, but not 1532-3.

Moss, in her wanderings around her 'home' has found a secret route that leads outside, away from the eyes of the Tower guards. Now she takes to it with a vengeance, abandoning her father and eventually ending up with a guy who ferries people across the Thames for a coin here and there. He's also a scam artist who puts himself first and foremost, and Moss becomes very disillusioned with him. She strikes out on her own one frozen night determined to find the place where her mother gave birth to her.

Is the inexperienced Moss going to survive alone on one of the coldest nights of the winter? Will she find what she seeks? And what, exactly, is it she thinks she's been seeing following her around, but forever staying below the unforgiving waters of the great river, and snaking beneath the impassive ice? I'm not going to tell you!

This novel was very well written, original, entertaining and engrossing. I kept getting back to it every chance I got and it was a fast read. Most enjoyable. The only problem I had with it was in the Kindle, where every instance of "fi" was replaced by the letter À and every instance of "fl" was replaced by the letter Á. You can see an example of it in the illustration on my blog, where the offenders have been underlined in red. I did not have this same problem in Adobe Digital Editions or in Bluefire Reader on the iPad.

Despite that annoyance, I was able to read and enjoy it without any real problems (please note that this was an advance review copy and not a regularly purchased copy, so the problem may well have been fixed in the commercial version). I recommend this novel, and I am definitely interested in reading more by this author.