Unenchanted by Chanda Hahn

Rating: WARTY!

Rooted in the Grimm fairy tales, this story borrows a bit from the TV series named Grimm where this cop turns out to be a Grimm - that is not someone who is named Grimm, but someone who is hereditarily required to fight supernatural evil as it arises. Mina Grime is in a similar position. She's the rather nerdy unpopular girl at school, but of course in the way of YA trashy novels, she's gorgeous, yet only attracts the attention of the studLy trope school jock after she saves his life.

Mina has supposedly inherited the unfinished Grimm fairy tales whatever those are. This is so obviously the start of a series, which pretty much lets me out on the ground floor, not being much of a fan of series, in particular not of YA series which are far too often derivative and tedious. Predictably I grew tired of this very quickly, especially when I came across some clunkers in the writing, such as "just not one hypnotized Brody. His movements became slower, and he was transfixed by Claire's every movement" I think the 'one' should be 'on'. That was a relatively minor infraction.

Worse by far was "Mina watched as Claire's hand stroked Brody's bicep" - it's fricking biceps moron! I'm now dedicated to ditching dumb-ass books like this at the first mention of the singular bicep. That's probably what happened here although I really don't recall why exactly I quit this. It was probably because it was too dumb for words and the female supposed hero is really nothing without a guy to validate her as per usual in this kind of tripe.

So no - not a worthy read - a very warty one in fact.

Once Upon a Kiss by Various Authors

Rating: WARTY!

This was billed as seventeen romantic 'Faerie' tales. I detest those words: 'Fae' and 'Faerie', and I ought to take my own advice and refuse to read any more books that use it, since this one was rather less than satisfactory. Even 'Fairy Tales' doesn't technically cover these stories although some of them are.

My first problem with it was the content list. It was colored magenta. On a white background, this isn't a problem, but on a black background which I typically use to save power in my phone, which is where I read ebooks more often than not, it rendered the content list illegible. You could click from the list to go to the story but you could not click back to the content from a story, and if you're not careful, merely swiping to go to the second page of content would take you to a story instead of taking you to the next page, necessitating your having to pull up the slide bar at the bottom of the screen and slide all the way back if you accidentally hit the wrong story (something which is very easily done on a small screen where the list is very compact). So, too dark of a color and far too close together to tap accurately with a finger.

Clearly publishers still have a lot to learn about formatting ebooks. Some of these stories had a prologue, an epilogue, and chapter markers and all of these sub-headings were listed on the content page meaning it ran over three screens! This kind of crap is why I never put a content page in my own novels, but then those typically do not contain a variety of stories from an assortment of authors so I could see the point of one in this case. I just wish it had been better thought through; just a list of the author's names would have been quite sufficient and occupied much less space, meaning each name could have been bigger so it was easier to tap the name and go to the story on a small screen.

Anyway, here's the list below with my comments on each story:

• The Glass Mountain by Alethea Kontis
I didn't like this. It seemed pointless and went on far too long. It was a story of a woman being trapped in a glass mountain and working with a guy who was also trapped there to get out. It was supposed to be a love story but the guy was highly antagonistic and verbally abusive from the start, and the author failed to convince me that this relationship could possibly turn around, so a big no on this story. I have no better idea what it was based on than I do how a female author can write a story like this. Does she think she's Becca Fitzpatrick or something?! (No, that's not a compliment).
• The Bakers Grimm by Hailey Edwards
This was a story about two competing bakeries and the children of the bakers getting together, and it failed to move me at all. I barely even remember it.
• Galatea and Pygmalion by Kate Danley
This was about a sculptor named Galatea, who sculpted a guy named Pygmalion - in short, just the opposite of the myth. That really was the only twist and the story wasn't that good.
• Red by Sarra Cannon
This was about a witch, part of a coven, looking for a cure for her sister and meeting a guy held prisoner in a cottage in the woods, who in turn helps her. The coven isn't everything she thought it was. Again, it failed to move me. At one point I read, "The Order had expressly forbid me to go looking for any kind of cure for my sister." The author evidently doesn't understand the distinction between forbid and forbade.
• Princess Charming by Yasmine Galenorn
An epistolary story with the twist being that the 'Charming' is female. I have no time for tedious epistolary novels, and in my amateur opinion, I already wrote the definitive Princess Charming when I wrote Femarine, so this one fell on deaf ears. I read, "I think they were getting used to being in human form. I have no clue what, now that their gig is over." I have no idea whatsoever what that piece meant!
• Mad About You by Jennifer Blackstream
Based on Alice in Wonderland, this one was about Alice trying to repel the Mad Hatter (who was paying suit to her) by getting a charm from a witch, but then changing her mind (If I recall - which I may not). I wasn't interested in the story.
• The Sea King's Daughter by Anthea Sharp
Based on The Little Mermaid. I have a severe allergy to stories which are titled in this format - making the main female character an appendage of a guy instead of her own person: The So-And-So's Daughter, The So-and-So's Wife. You shouldn't have to tell female writers that words carry heft and weight, and remind them that diminishing women like this only prolongs a detestable historical precedent. I read "They would not provide cover any long, which meant she must seize her opportunity now." It should have read 'Any longer'. It's sad when you can't even grammer- and spell-check a short story properly, but I guess most of us have been there!
• Romeo and Juliet: The Afterlife by Julia Crane
This story carried Shakespeare's original over into the afterlife to see what happened there which is similar to an idea I had myself, but did nothing with. I wasn't impressed by this effort to explore that, os I guess the opportunity is still there if I wanted to pursue it!
• Soot and Stone: A Fae Tale of the Otherworld by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson
Any novel that uses 'fae' and 'faerie' instead of fairy is chickenshit as far as I'm concerned, and I have no time for that kind of cowardice and posy-footing around That's all I have to say about his one.
• The Huntsman's Snow by Mandy M Roth
This was a shifter story and I typically have no time for those, so no.
• RumpelIMPskin by Debra Dunbar
Based on Rumpelstiltskin of course, this was mildly entertaining, but nothing special. I read, "His smug looked changed to one of utter shock when he saw us" and it should have read, 'smug look'.
• The Glass Sky by Alexia Purdy
This was a short story and still it had a prologue and chapters - all of which were listed in the content page! Yuk! As soon as I saw it was first person and the main character's name was Star Rickton, I skipped it. No. Just no.
• Rush by C Gockel
This is a story about someone named Rush who, due to a transgression, is required to find true love in two weeks which is nonsensical, so no. I read, "...several octaves too loud" which is plain dumb. An octave isn't a measure of sonic volume!
• Perchance To Dream by Phaedra Weldon
This was about your usual female underdog in a magical world and it failed to leave an impression. I read, "The two waved as they approached and an matrons woman yelled at them from Rose's left." An matrons woman? Any grammar checker will find that, so this was a truly sloppy error in an unmemorable story. I can't even guess what she was trying to say with that nonsensical phrase.
• The Toad Prince by Nikki Jefford
So, I am tiring of going through each of these, especially when I really don't recall them. I think at some point I not only stopped reading each story before it was over, but I stopped even reading the next story because I honestly don't remember a thing about some of these. In this I read, "Isabel's best features were hidden beneath her bulky wool gown." So here we have a female writer, writing about a female character, and clearly stating that all she's worth is her body. Forget about her mind - forget about any qualities such as smarts, loyalty, integrity, grit, honesty, capability, or whatever. Her body is the only thing of utility. I'm sorry but writers who write like this are assholes, period. There's a difference between a character thinking something like that, and the author stating it in the narrative, and this one is a jerk for for doing so.
• Crafted With a Kiss by Shawntelle Madison
This one wasn't bad, and I do remember it, Pynnelope is a wooden warrior who seems invincible until in her last battle she's taken down by a guy who is more powerful. She's taken prisoner, but there is more to the story. I quite liked it. There was one mistake in it. At one point I read, "Either way, I had until dawn to force Pynnelope to do the unthinkable" and this came just two paragraphs before we're told he has only until midnight. Someone's not reading for continuity!
• A Small magic by Devon Monk
I've read at least one novel by Devon Monk and liked it, so I guess it wasn't surprising that I liked this one, based on Hans Andersen's The Princess and the Pea. It was an amusing and quirky story, but it's sad that there was only one really likable one in this whole collection.

So very little to engage me here, and overall I cannot recommend this as a worthy read, but at least it informed me of over a dozen authors I don't need to bother reading ever again from this point onward!

Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell

Rating: WORTHY!

This is something of a Cinderella story and it was also another of those audiobooks I seem to have been listening to lately which gets off to a great start, falls flat in the middle, but picks up again towards the end, so overall I consider it a worthy listen, but it had an issue or two here and there along the way. It was read by Bianca Amato who did a good job.

Wilhelmina Silver has had an amazing childhood in Zimbabwe, despite losing her mother at an early age. Her father was still around and she was allowed to run wild, learning all she needed to from her daily adventures and from the extensive library her father had in their ranch. But when he dies unexpectedly and his nurse movies in on the family and starts taking over, Wil suddenly finds herself on the outs and is eventually and summarily packed-off alone to an English boarding school while her home is sold.

To Wil, the people in her school are as cold as the weather and her spirits as dampened as the climate. Wil runs away from school and lives on her own on the streets (and in a zoo!) for a while before finally returning to the school and finding a place there. The novel tells a good and interesting story when it finds its pace, but there are times when it rather drags and you're wanting something to happen which doesn't. I'm not a big fan of school bully and cruelty stories, so I disliked that part. It wasn't so bad, but it was a bit overdone and too black and white for my taste. I found it hard to believe that girls of breeding who attended this school would have been so relentlessly, uniformly, and openly cruel as depicted here. It didn't seem realistic to me.

The worst part about this story is that Wil is presented in the early chapters as fearless, feisty, and indomitable, but in England she seems completely the opposite. Yes, she has some grit and some inventiveness, but she seems like a different character from the one we'd been introduced to earlier, and while I get that being torn from a comfortable and happy home and dropped unkindly into a new life for which they're completely unprepared can knock the stuffing out of a person, it felt a bit like a betrayal of Wil that she was so consistently and so interminably presented as weak and lost. It felt wrong and inauthentic, and did the character a disservice.

That said, she took charge and bounced back and that's where the story improved for me, so while it has its faults, it's not too bad of a story for an age-appropriate audience.

Juana & Lucas by Juana Medina

Rating: WORTHY!

I used to know someone by the last name of Medina with an amusingly rhyming first name! Marriage will sometimes do that to you but you gotta go with your heart, right?! This audiobook was read by someone with the feisty name of Almarie Guerra, and she read it well. It's a very simple and very short story for younger children that's in English, but which teaches some Spanish along the way by inserting the occasional Spanish word in place of an English one. Usually, but not always, you can guess what the word means by the context. I'm a big advocate of that in writing, so I approved of this teaching method. If you're going to use a foreign word, don't pedantically add the English translation right after it because it sounds stupid and it's both tedious to read and listen to. Instead, simply put it wisely in context and your reader should have little trouble if any, in understanding it.

The story simply tells of Juana and her friends during a school day, and the adventures and problems they have, and it was quite charming even for me who is way beyond the age at which this is aimed! I liked it, and I enjoyed the reading of it, so I commend it for age-appropriate audiences.

Frank Einstein and the Space-Time Zipper by John Scieszka

Rating: WARTY!

I have to say up front that this audiobook (read averagely by the author and Brian Biggs), was far too boring for my taste. Younger children might like it, but I am far from convinced. Maybe it'll put 'em to sleep which would be of some utility. There was just something off about the book, and I'm not sure I can really put my finger on it, but it was not a pleasant listen at all. It was just tedious and didn't seem like it had any ambition to go anywhere interesting.

The story is about a bunch of chimps in a primate facility who have apparently taken over the operation and are running it themselves. I have no idea what they story was actually about because I simply could not get into it, let alone follow it, and soon I started skimming. It did not improve or become any more intelligible. Maybe chimpanzees will understand it, but it didn't feel like it was of value to humans, and I cannot commend it as a worthy read.

There's No Place like Hell by Janis Hill

Rating: WORTHY!

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

I read an earlier novel by this author and liked it, so I was asked by the publisher if I would like to read another of her works for review and I accepted. Then I was shamefully lapse in getting to it, so this review is long overdue and I apologize for that, but I literally only just finished reading it. This is why it's first up on my June reviews.

The good news is that I commend the book as a worthy read! The bad news is that this is volume two of a series and I was not invited to read volume one, so I came into this blind. There are a lot of references to an earlier life in this novel, which made me think, even before I knew this was volume two, that there was a previous novel, but it wasn't necessary (at least not from my perspective) to have read that one in order to enjoy this one. It would have been nice had the cover at least mentioned it was part of a series though. Publishers seem almost abusively negligent of advising readers about that, and I have to say I resent it.

Overall, the novel was too long for my taste. I like 'em more pithy and I felt it could have been shortened and tightened, and would have made for a better read. There were also some grammatical errors which presumably will be removed next time the author gets to do a makeover of it. I list the ones I can remember below. Other than that, I enjoyed most of it. There were bits where it dragged, and I failed to see the point of resurrecting this character from the previous volume. For me he contributed nothing, but at least he wasn't a love interest, and I really appreciated that.

The main character, Stephanie Anders, is very much her own woman and not dependent upon some guy validating her, so I fully approve of a writer taking that approach. It's not that I object to a main female character having a love interest, or that I think it necessarily weakens the character to have one, but all-too-often this is what writers do to their women, especially in Young Adult novels. This author avoided that and I commend her for it. If the love interest is there solely to be the love interest, then lose him - or her. It spoils the novel for me; and if your main female character has a male character who smothers her, dominates her or otherwise detracts from her story, then I won't read your novel. I can't stand stories like that, so I'm glad this wasn't such a one.

In some ways this novel reminded me of Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston, not because the two novels are the same - they're very different - but because they share the same playful attitude and irreverence, and I like that, so even though this novel was first person - a voice I typically detest, it was very readable.

Stephanie works for the Egyptian deity Isis, helping protect souls from the dark side. Yes, this is one of those novels that insists there is and must be a balance between light and dark and also one in which humans have to do the work of gods and angels because apparently gods and angel aren't up to it. I never have understood why there had to be a balance (or why evil would agree to any such balance!), or why gods are so paradoxically weak and reliant on humans to do their dirty work, but in this case, again, the story was original enough and amusing enough that I was willing to let my loathing of this genre slide. So kudos to the author for drawing me in.

The main story here is that the man who instigated the split between Stephanie and her husband - something which still smarts - is now begging for her help after drunkenly selling his soul. It's a credit to Stephanie that she takes on this job rather than letting him slide into hell - and she seriously takes it on. Being the Protector of Souls she really can't refuse, but she goes into it full tilt and doesn't give up despite the odds being heavily stacked against her. She is deadly serious about her job.

I loved the humor, the original take on an old premise, and how inventive Stephanie is in doing her job. She's always skirting the edge of rule-breaking without technically going over the line, but being a woman what would she do but skirt? You can't trouser the rules! They're already trousered. This behavior naturally - or supernaturally - brings her grief and praise, but it also makes the reader a little nervous that maybe this time she's gone too far. I loved that - that she had a fine mind and it never stopped ticking, so this story was definitely a worthy read.

This book could have used a bit more proof-reading. Here are the errors I found:

"He is my weapon's instructor" - unless the guy was instructing the weapon rather than Stephanie, then he was her 'weapons' instructor - no apostrophe necessary!

"without the aid of Isis' Light I may add." Isis is a name, not a plural, so it needs an apostrophe s, not just the apostrophe: Isis's.

"who'd obviously heared all that stuff I'd not said out loud." 'Heard' has only one 'e'.

Demons do not breed to begat demons!" This was the wrong verb tense. It needs to read 'beget', not begat and don't you forgat it!.

But those didn't detract from enjoying the book at all, and I enjoyed it overall.

Scavenger Scout: Rock Hound by Shelby Wilde, Yana Popova

Rating: WARTY!

This was a children's book that was available for free in ebook format, so I got hold of it because it had a similar theme to a children's book I'm working on (over three-quarters the way through it!) and I was curious to see how another writer was doing on this topic, and I have to say I was not impressed. This book was rooted in fantasy - mermaids and space travel which is not my thing - not for my book anyway, and while this one started out rhyming, it soon devolved to prose text.

The book opened with a promise that this azurite rock would be on every page to give a child something to search for - make 'em feel part of the adventure, which is fine, but the rock wasn't on every page at all. It wasn't even on every double-page spread, so any kid taking that advice literally was going to be disappointed or frustrated; not a nice thing to do to a child.

That wasn't the worst part though, and I don't know if this is the author's fault or yet another example of Amazon's crappy, Kindle conversion process, so I'll blame both equally: the author for not checking how well or poorly this worked, and Amazon for adding another sick joke to its bloated mega-empire of such jokes. They're unapologetically listening in on you now! Did you know? If you run Alexa, Amazon employees can, without warning or permission, listen in on your conversations in your own home, ostensibly to help Alexa to comprehend you better. This is yet another reason why I will have no truck with Amazon or its publishing business.

But I digress. I typically read books on my phone, and this works great for text books, but for children's picture books, not so well. In the iPad it's better, although still unsatisfactory since most books are still created as print books with little thought given to the electronic format. That's what happened here. The book announces, proudly up front, that it contains "pop-up text" which is a feature that pops up a plain text box with the text in black and white so that on a phone or small tablet for example, you can read it without enlarging the page, which brings its own set of issues. The problem was that once you've triggered the pop-up box - which seemed to happen at the slightest touch of the page - you could not get rid of it, and it blocked the image, not just on that page but on every page after that, too.

There seemed to be no way at all to get rid of it! I tried swiping it away, tapping it away directly on the pop-up, and tapping off the pop-up elsewhere on the screen - which as often as not, swiped the page to the previous one or the next one. I tried a host of other ideas, but nothing worked. This rendered the entire reading experience as an exercise in irritation and aggravation. The only way to get rid of these text boxes that I could find was to go to the contents and tap the next page there, which seemed to remove the pop-up, but as soon as you accidentally tapped on the page again, that blessed sticky text box came right back. I tried spreading the page with a finger and thumb to enlarge the text so I could see it that way instead of having to use those annoying text boxes, but that failed and simply popped-up a text box. It was intensely annoying

That said the fantasy adventure itself wasn't bad, but I had lost interest in this book by that point. The illustrations by Popova were cute and colorful (she can pop-over and illustrate one of my books any time!), but the reading experience sucked. I cannot commend it for that reason.

The Mouse With the Question Mark Tail by Richard Peck

Rating: WORTHY!

Written in 2013 by an author who died almost exactly a year ago, this was a fun little audiobook which frankly dragged a bit for me towards the end, but given how short the book is and how much fun the first two-thirds of it was, I'm not about to mark it down for that, especially since it wasn't written for my age group!

This mouse not only has a question mark tail, he lacks a real name and is known as Mouse Minor for the most part - and he is minor - small for his age. It seemed so obvious that I don't see it as a spoiler to reveal that this mouse is royalty. He's sent to school but ends up getting in trouble over a caterpillars-in-lunch-boxes incident to which Mouse Minor neither confesses nor denies. He runs away instead and ends up on an adventure in which he's kidnapped by bats and eventually gets an audience with Queen Victoria herself who seems, I have to say, curiously unafraid of mice.

Richard Peck is an American and while he does for the most part get his 'Britishisms' right, there are times when he strays, but most Americans won't notice those, especially not children. Overall though, this was a fun romp and I commend it as a worthy listen, but I should warn you that this is an old style children's novel (Peck was in his late seventies when he wrote it) and so it contains some violent concepts which tend not to appear in children's books written by younger authors. These include a somewhat bloodthirsty discussion of the beheadings in the French revolution, which goes on a little bit too long, and also instances of Mouse Minor contemplating having his brains beaten to jelly by the school bullies - that sort of thing, so be mindful of that.

Yay! You're Gay! Now What? by Riyadh Khalaf

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Errata:
“...you’re going more than you’re sexuality“ that second one should be ‘your’.
“If you ignore the bully, and removing yourself from the situation...” 'Removing' should be 'Remove'.
“If you’ve already come out to friends at school, as if they have any LGBT+ pals” Ask if they have!
This isn't so much an error as a point of order, and it wasn't the author who said this, but Simon Anthony-Roden in his advice to his younger self, but there’s no evidence that it was Oscar Wilde who said “Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.“ People are misquoted or misattributed all the time, so no big deal.

This book is a complete guide to how to handle your discovery that you're gay - or at some other place on what's commonly referred to as 'the spectrum' but which I prefer to think of as a slide since a spectrum implies something that's fixed, and I think very few people are solidly fixed in whatever position they're in. Your orientation and preferences can change over your life and no, thats not the same as saying 'gayness can be cured' because there's nothing to cure.

There were times when it felt a little bit over the top for me, but you can't blame a guy for reveling in who he is, so that's no big deal. There were also times when I felt he went a little in the wrong direction - like seemingly implying right up front that gay guys don't play soccer (Justin Fashanu, Robbie Rogers, and and the entire amateur team of Paris Foot Gay would disagree, as would Eudy Simelane, had she not been raped and murdered in 2008), but usually when he seemed to be veering, it was for a reason.

The book covers pretty much anything a young person may want to know if they have perhaps been wrestling with identity and how to face what's becoming obvious to them, and deal with accepting it, and whether to come out and who to come out to. It doesn't matter what your question is, you will find valuable advice in this book, and not just from the author, but also from an assortment of others who have walked this same path.

it begins with asking if you think you might be gay, and moves on to coming out, finding friends and finding love, then appropriately gets to "all about bodies" and "Let's talk about sex," both of which contain excellent guidance and advice. Be warned, there are no punches pulled here. For a gay guy, the author tells it straight! Each of these sections is filled with personal anecdote, good advice and comments on their own sexuality and advice they would have given to their younger selves by some celebrities, the only two I'd heard of, I have to confess, were Stephen Fry, of whom I'm a fan, and Jin Yong, who I heard of only recently. Others are Clark Moore, Simon Anthony-Roden, Rory O'Neill, James Kavanagh, Matthew Todd, Shane Jenek, and Ranj Singh. That said, I'm not a big TV watcher. There is only a few shows that I tend to watch, and I've never been a fan of RuPaul Andre Charles, so I've never seen his Drag Race, but I have heard of Cortney Act, Jenek's alter-ego, a stage name I've long thought was choice!

The bottom of page 171 (page 86 on the iPad I was using) ended with “You don’t need an” but page 172 (87 on the tablet) was the start of a new chapter! I guess we’ll never know how that sentence ends!

This is yet another case of a print book farmed-out to reviewers as an ebook for convenience, but I often wonder if publishers ever consider what a poor impression one of these 'afterthought ebooks' leaves. As it happens, and apart from a very negative experience on my iPhone before I switched to a tablet, this book wasn’t so bad. There was an occasionally 'sticky page' (and no, not that kind of sticky - but sticky in the sense it wouldn't swipe easily tot he next or previous page, and took two or three times to move it. On the iPhone there were also times when pages came up on the wrong oder, so I wouldn't recommend reading it on a device that small.

This book wasn't so bad, but I’m honestly at the point now where I will negatively review a poorly conceived ebook regardless of its literary merit. Here’s why: the modern concept of an ebook was initiated almost half a century ago by Michael Hart who founded Project Gutenberg and even ePub books have been around for some two decades. There really is no excuse for substandard ebooks these days, and if authors/publishers are going to issue one to reviewers, they need to look at the thing in the e-version on one or two different devices to make sure it's worthy of issuing!

That said I commend this ebook for being a worthy read and a useful contribution to helping those in need of advice and a leg up here and there.

Silent Voice by Yoshitoki Oima

Rating: WARTY!

This was the second of two manga I looked at recently which featured a person with some sort of disability. In the other it was a person with a wheelchair. In this it was a girl who communicated by sign language. The main male character had been abusive to this girl when he was younger - making fun of her and so on, and now he was older he regretted it and sought to make up for his appalling behavior when he encountered her again, but the problem was that the girl still remained largely mute despite her sign language, and there really was no emotional content here. It was more like a comedy than a moving story and I couldn't stand it.

The girl was completely flat for me, with no emotion, and no fire. She never got annoyed, angry, upset, frustrated or anything. She was like this little magical paragon of Zen and so completely unrealistic that she was a nonentity - a hole in the story instead of a whole story. The guy was no more interesting, so I gave up on it in short order. Now, admittedly I came into this at volume three, but the thought of going back and trying to dig up volumes one and two to catch up was severely disabling for my psyche!

Besides, for a girl who was mute, having increasing volumes seemed painfully paradoxical to me! Certainly, I had no desire to go back and read the earlier volumes in this series when this one in particular had failed to stir me at all. I should say I've never been a fan of that style of Manga which features girls with such ridiculously large eyes, or in which all of the characters look decidedly western rather than Eastern. I do not know why they do this, but I don't like it. So in short I was disappointed in this and cannot commend it.

Real by Takehiko Inoue

Rating: WARTY!

I've not had a lot of success with Manga. Reading a book 'backwards' doesn't come naturally to me(!), but I've made it through one or two that have proven themselves to be worthy reads. This one wasn't. I'd thought it might be interesting given that it features a wheelchair-bound protagonist, but it's not a story about a person with a handicap. It's a story about basketball which happens to feature a person with a handicap. That's not the same thing and the book suffers for it.

Now I know you can argue that it should not be about the handicap - and I agree that far. You can argue that it should be about basketball, and I agree that far, but if you're going to write about basketball and just put one of your characters in a wheelchair and not write about that at all, then what have you done other than to gratuitously include a person with a disability merely for the sake of it? (And that's sayk, not saky! LOL!)

While the wheelchair shouldn't dominate the story unless there's really something weird going on, like a wheelchair version of Stephen King's Christine (which I haven't read), then the wheelchair has to have a role in the story just like any other character because it's either a character or it's a cynical and cheap attempt at diversity without having a thing to say about diversity. Aside from that issue, the story was boring. It didn't offer anything new and worse, it was hard to follow what the hell was actually going on here at times, so I ditched this pretty quickly, especially when skimming through more pages didn't offer me any hope that the story would improve.

Cinderella Screwed Me Over by Cindi Madsen

Rating: WARTY!

I'm not opposed to chick lit and I've read a bit of it myself although it's not my first choice of genre, but quite honestly this was the worst kind of chick lit - arguably anti-#MeToo. I didn't read much of it, but to me it looked like the only connection it had to Cinderella was that the girl met her tediously predictably hunky guy when her stiletto heel got stuck in a crack between floorboards in this restaurant she frequents and in which this guy is part owner.

Her shoe comes off of course and he hands it back to her, but instead of leaving it to her to put it on, he puts his hand on her hip - not her arm or shoulder, or offers her his own arm for balance, but uninvited, he puts his hand on her hip 'to steady her', and she gets the wilts and the vapors. I'm immediately thinking, "I'm outta here. This is not my literature!" so I gave up on it. At only a few pages in.

Despite having a professional job in an office, this girl did not come off as very smart to me. She automatically assumed this guy was a liar when he told her he was part owner of the restaurant, like she was an expert on the place just because she eats there often. Neither is she the impoverished stepsister, so what this had to do with Cinderella, I have no idea. All I had actually needed to know is whether it was trespassing on my Cinderella territory or I on its, and the answer to that was a resounding 'no!' The story's nothing like what I'm writing so I fortunately don't need to be concerned with it at all, which is great, because I certainly didn't want to continue reading it.

I don't get why so many female authors so frequently subject their main characters to manhandling by strange men and then instead of becoming annoyed at it, turn to Jell-O. It sucks and it needs to stop. These two 'girls' were in the restaurant at the time of the shoe incident, so it probably wouldn't have been hard for the guy to quickly grab a chair from a nearby table. If they'd done that and she'd sat down and asked him to put the shoe on for her, that might have brought it a bit more in line with Cinderella and certainly been more socially acceptable and even romantic, but this author doesn't get it, and that's a problem. It might have been better yet if the guy had been part owner of a shoe store rather than a restaurant so he'd be naturally helping her to try-on shoes.

I didn't get how being a part owner fo a restaurant made him any kind of a prince either, unless the restaurant was Burger King! LOL! But as it happens, I really don't care because this story was trashy pap and not worth anyone's time. Readers need to demand better. Much better. More original, better written, more intelligent, and with real people instead of antique Barbie and Ken dolls.

Who Laid the Egg? By Audrey Sauble

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a colorful little book for young children about eggs and the creatures that lay them. It poses a question at each egg illustration, and offers some possible solutions as to who laid it. Sometimes there are many suggestions, sometimes a few, sometimes only one! Children can have fun guessing who did what, and comparing the kinds of eggs to see if that can be used as a reliable clue. The animals include birds, turtles, dinosaurs, and even a mammal! This is a fun book for young children and I commend it.

The Secret Sisters of the Salty Sea by Lynn Rae Perkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Read by Brittany Presley, this audiobook was entertaining. I came to it after having really enjoyed the author's Nuts to You story. This isn't really aimed at males, and certainly not at men of my age, but it's still enjoyable in its sweet innocence, and it's definitely a worthy contender for an age-appropriate audience, female or male. It read (or listened!) more like a vacation diary than an actual story which didn't sound as odd as it might have. There was no 'Dear Dairy' affectation in it, but it still had that sort of a vibe, like maybe the author was recounting events from her own childhood rather than making up the story from scratch.

It was about two sisters, Alix and "Jools" Treffrey, and their week's vacation at the beach with their parents. Told form Alix's PoV, it talks about the long trip there, and the even longer trip home caused by three flat tires in a row, but most of the story is filled by Alix and Jools games, adventures, fanciful scenarios they invent, and their discoveries at the beach. It's sweet, innocent, playful and easy listening, and I commend it as a worthy title.

I am Amelia Earhart by Brad Metzler

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a very short book for young children which skipped a huge part of Earhart's life and harped a bit overmuch on her purportedly dedicated lifelong devotion to flight, which actually didn't happen in real life. She took something of a scattershot approach to her career, aiming vaguely toward medical service until she saw this guy fly an airplane at a show. He must have spotted her and her friend standing on the ground watching, and aimed the plane straight down at them before swooping by quite closely. It was at that point, when she was in her early twenties that she really decided she wanted to fly, not when she was a child, but it doesn't hurt to stir up kids' ambitions here and there, or encourage them to aim higher than they might otherwise do, so I wasn't too focused on that.

Other than that, the book was largely factual, amusingly and colorfully illustrated, and an enjoyable read, so I commend it as a worthy read for young children.

A Dark Inheritance by Chris D'Lacey

Rating: WARTY!

Read rather oddly by Raphael Corkhill, this was another audiobook which started out really well and then Le Stupide set in big time. I had thought I was going to get through it unscathed, but it was not to be. About two-thirds the way in, it went south with the ducks - and normally I like ducks. Some of my best friends are...not ducks, but anyway, to see them in the southbound lane was still rather sad. Duck asses are not the most engaging of sights.

The initial premise was an interesting one and the story changed up periodically so it did not quickly become boring, but the more I listened, the less the story seemed to have a plan to go anywhere. It wasn't until later that I discovered why. The main character was so passive as to be tedious, as was his momma! Worse than this, I discovered by skipping to the end after I'd given up on it, that this novel is part of a series, of which there is zero indication whatsoever on the book cover, so the publisher is outright lying to readers and I will not countenance that.

This explains why this novel never was interested in going anywhere. The author gave up that motivation when he decided to thinly-stretch material sufficient for one book into a trilogy or more. Michael learns nothing - not even how to control his ability, and he never does learn a damned thing about his father because this is not a novel, it's a prologue.

By accident, this semi-orphan with the uninventive name of Michael Malone discovers that he has the ability to not so much change reality as to be able to switch between realities in a multiverse. He can only do this at first when under stress, which is how he does it the first time. His new reality is always very similar to the old one with some minor changes, but the important thing is that he's supposed to be able to switch to one which conforms to some idea he has of the kind of reality he wants to live in.

Michael is seventeen. A kid of that age ought to be at a point in life where he has some self-motivation and some idea of what he wants out of life, along with a few grown-up thoughts here and there, but none of this is true with Michael who acts more like he's thirteen. He has no excitement or curiosity whatsoever about his magical power and shows no inclination at all to investigate it or to try to use it to put himself into a reality where his father is back with the family, and the villains are out of his life. He'd evidently much rather attend his own self-pity party.

These villains arrive suddenly in the form of a young French woman and an older German man by the name of Klimt. We never learn how they latched on to Michael, but apparently it's through his missing father who evidently had some of the same abilities as Michael does. Klimt wants to use Michael for some purpose of his own and holds the carrot of finding Michael's father and the stick of changing Michael's reality into something horrible. These people are from the "Unicorne" society and Michael at one point discovers he's been inducted into it while he was unconscious after an bike accident. Now he has a black Unicorne tattoo, which covers a spot in his skin where he has, he's informed, been injected with a microchip for the purpose of tracking him not only in this reality, but in others, too.

Michael shows zero anger at this, zero curiosity about how he can disable the chip (by changing his reality for exmaple!), and no amusement at how pathetic it is that this secret society blatantly advertises its existence with this unusual tattoo. This was my first adverse reaction to the story. If this had been a middle grade novel, then I could probably have countenanced this, but for a young adult novel it was pathetic at best. There are ways to write that do not make your characters look limp, or stupid, and your story amateur, but this author is apparently too lazy or unimaginative to think of them, hence his penchant for writing series with uninventive titles. That coupled with the laziness and lack of imagination inherent in writing a series is enough to avoid this author like the plague from now on. I expect a lot better from a university-educated writer. Or maybe that's the problem.

It got worse when the story began to drag with little-to-nothing happening. At one point Michael is hit by a car when riding his bicycle and ends up in a private hospital where the doctor is of course Klimt, and the nurse is this same French girl. On top of this there are two police detectives investigating the car accident, yet they are literally grilling Michael over matters that are totally irrelevant to what happened and neither Michael nor his mother objects to this line of questioning. That immediately said "Dumbasses" to me, and it's where I quit being interested in this purportedly young adult, but more like middle grade or younger story.

I skimmed to the end, and discovered that the book has no resolution whatsoever, and so is merely a prologue to volume two. I don't do prologues, and I do not accept books like this one. I would have rated this negatively for treating readers like mushrooms (keeping them in the dark and feeding them bullshit) if it hadn't already failed me. The book is poorly written and is a rip-off. I dis-recommend it.

Zachary and the Great Potato Catastrophe by Junia Wonders, Giulia Lombardo

Rating: WORTHY!

Junia Wonders sounds like a made-up name for a children's book writer, but apparently it isn't! So we have Junia and Giulia, who is the accomplished artist. This was a cute children's picture book based, purportedly, on a true story! This rat named Zachary in the story, lived under the wooden floor of a bakery, which is never a good thing. Anyone who's read any of my The Little Rattuses™ series can't fail to see that I love rats, but I'd wouldn't want to buy anything from a bakery that has rats living on the premises, pet or otherwise!

Anyway, Zachary was in the habit of coming out and taking just one cupcake or whatever, which he would sneak back to his lair and consume. He lived a solitary life and didn't want anyone else around. He wasn't into sharing, not even with his hosts, so when he found a large sack of potatoes, which were different from anything he'd tasted before, he brought one back with him, and discovered that they were so addictive, even without being chipped, fried, and salted! He started bringing all the potatoes home, until he had a bed of them under the floorboards.

Potatoes keep remarkably well, but they don't keep forever. Zachary discovered this when his supply began turning green and stinky. The smell even reached the baker who seems to have been extraordinarily lax with his stock-taking in that he never missed a whole sack of potatoes until a rotting smell alerted him. He uncovered the rat hole in the wall then, and a startled and terrified Zachary, who despite an attempted assault with a saucepan, managed to escape into the sewer where he gave up his solitary life and lived happily among friends - although this part of the story hasn't been officially confirmed yet.

I enjoyed this story and consider it a worthy read for kids of any age.

The Grown-Up's Guide to Making Art with Kids by Lee Foster-Wilson

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Subtitled "25+ fun and easy projects to inspire you and the little ones in your life" this book was just what it claimed to be, although I have to say this is an artist working here so she might well make many of the rest of us look less than stellar; that said, she does generously offer tips hints and shortcuts to improving our work.

The book has a clickable "Tables of Contents" but there's actually only one table. I never got 'table of Contents' although many books use it. It's really a list of contents, isn't it?! That's why I never bother with such a thing, but this one does offer an easy jump to any chosen chapter. You don't get that in a print book! LOL! There's no jump back to the content page though, in case you jump to the wrong chapter, but the slide bar at the bottom will get you into easy swiping distance.

The book charts a steady course between a drawing tutorial and then a connected project, and so on, and you don't need a professional set-up for this; just some inexpensive paints you can buy at any big store, and/or some colored markers or pencils, or even crayons, along with some paper or card stock you can get from cardboard food packaging if you want. The important thing isn't the high quality materials, but the creativity, fun, confidence-building and sense of accomplishment children will feel when you work though these projects with them. I'm behind that 100%.

The book opens with some discussion of colors and how to work with them and mix them. There's a glossary at the back which explains some terms, although I'd take issue with the comment about orientation - which merely means which way your painting surface lies - if it's wider than it is tall, then it's landscape - imagine a sweeping vista. If it's taller than it is wide, then it's portrait. You'll know this if you take pictures with your phone, and that's my point - the last sentence claims orientation has nothing to do with the subject of the painting, but I disagree with that. Perhaps children won't much care, but to me letting them see that the orientation of the finished image can contribute a lot to how that image is perceived when it's done isn't a wasted endeavor. Anyone who's tipped their phone to the side or held it straight-up to take that picture understands this. It's the same with a painting, but that's a quibble.

The book covers animals, people, flora (if you haven't met flora you have no business being an artist!), buildings, and robots! The projects are a delight, and includes pop-up image like you might find in some children's book, and a shadow puppet theater - and many more. Don't feel dissuaded when you see how easily this artist throws together a sweet image. With practice and following her instructions, you'll get there, and even if you don't your kids will be inspired to strive for the little bit better look to their own work. I commend this as a worthy read.

On a slight downer, just as an advisory, I think this was yet another book designed as a print version, but of which I only get to see the ebook version, and even on a medium-sized iPad, some of the image labels were dissociated from the image they discussed. I think this is because the label came before the image instead of after it and wasn't tied to it, so I'd read, for example, "A cow has a similar structure, with slightly different shapes" but this would appear underneath the sketch outline of the horse. I had to swipe to the next page to see a sketch of the cow. This potentially may offer some confusion when following the step-by-step instructions for some of the projects, but with diligence, you'll master them.

The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole by Michelle Cuevas

Rating: WORTHY!

And for my 3,000th review on this website in less than six years, I can't think of anything (my own novels and children's series excluded!) better than to give this one the honor!

Read delightfully by Laura Ortiz, this audiobook was a blast. It was sly and humorous, intelligent, but endearingly simple, and fully entertaining. It reminded me a bit of the old Calvin and Hobbes cartoons where the characters have rather more maturity than they would seem to merit at first glance.

Set in the mid-seventies, when Stella Rodriguez was eleven and still very much feeling the loss of her father, she decided during a school holiday to visit NASA and offer a tape recording of her father's laughter that she has. She hopes it will be added to the recording of Earth sounds and images that was included on a gold analog disk that is now flying outbound from the solar system on Voyager 1, which is headed for a rendezvous with the Oort 'cloud' in about 300 years, and will then will spend the next thirty-thousand years transiting that body, which is believed to be a repository for embryonic comets.

The guard at NASA wouldn't let her in, but due to an emergency she manages to sneak inside; then exits quickly followed by what turns out to be a black hole which has become attached to her. She names it Larry. Of course. Why not?

Hiding out in her bedroom, Larry promptly begins consuming assorted objects, including the school's pet hamster, Stinky Stew, which Stella was supposed to be taking care of over the holiday. She doesn't miss Stew very much, but objects when Larry devours a picture of her father, and really loses it when it swallows her new pet puppy, so she launches herself into the hole and begins sailing the Black Hole Sea in an old iron bathtub in search of the dog star...er, puppy star....

While I feel it lost a little momentum when she entered the black hole, the story in general was hilarious, fast-moving for the most part, and full of humorous asides and amusing events. I recommend this completely as a worthy read for any age, but particularly for young readers and listeners.

Ella the Slayer by AW Exley

Rating: WARTY!

"Let me give you a leg up then" says the young Duke to Ella at one point after they have just met at the beginning of this story, as she is about to mount her horse. His hands are all over her and her legs are jelly. Hell no! FUCK NO! What the hell is wrong with AW Exley that she thinks this is anything more than pure YA weak protagonist garbage? After the disastrous Nefertiti's Heart, I should have learned my lesson and never picked up another Exley as long as I lived, but there I went and here it goes, into the garbage. I guess I can at least say I got what I paid for, since this was a free offering in a book flyer and I was interested because I've had my own focus on Cinderella recently.

The blurb didn't make this clear, but this book is nothing but a Zombie apocalypse, written in the mold (take that word either way) of books like Jane Slayre and others. Ella, of course, is the femme fatale, and the Duke is the guy whom she needs to validate her because she's nothing but a princess in desperate need of a prince. Barf. It's young adult trash and it's not even worth the free price. Warty to the max. Plus it's not even a novel, it's a prologue to a series. Double barf.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec by Jacques Tardi

Rating: WORTHY!

I came to this via the Luc Besson movie. This first volume includes two stories: "Pterror over Paris," from which the movie was made, and "The Eiffel Tower Demon." The former is about a pterodactyl which magically pops out of a fossil egg in a museum in Paris, and begins to terrorize the city. The second involves the scary appearance of the demon Pazuzu, whom you might recall from The Exorcist. This demon is thought to have been conjured-up from the nether regions by a cult in the city of Paris which reaches into some of the highest levels of government, but all is not what it seems! In fact, I wouldn't mind meeting a demon like that! Oh wait, I did! And I married her! Adèle Blanc-Sec is equal to both challenges though.

The drawing is good and the script, set in and around 1911, is entertaining. While I enjoyed this particular volume, this is not a series I feel a huge compulsion to pursue. It was entertaining enough, but not completely engrossing and life is too short! Adèle Blanc-Sec is very much a female Indiana Jones, especially as rendered in the movie, so that was amusing and entertaining, and I do consider this graphic novel a worthy read.

Nifty Thrifty Music Crafts for Kids by Felicia Lowenstein Niven

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a great crafts book for kids because it allows them to make musical instruments (near enough!) out of household scraps. Stuff that would normally go into recycling can hereby be recycled into an instrument, and then when that's worn out, it can be recycled back to recycling!

The book gives illustrated instructions on how to make a xylophone, rhythm blocks, panpipes, finger cymbals (always fun!), a colonial drum (whatever that is! I suppose it's a drum that wants to take over and make you pay a tax on your tea imports?), American Indian clapper, tambourine, rain stick, maracas, and a rubber band ukulele! You could outfit a whole band with this book and each project gives you a double return because it offers a confidence-building activity for a child, and then a fun toy for that same child. Can't argue with that, unless you have rocks in your head instead of rock 'n' roll! Unless you have no soul! Unless you're tired of taking the rap! Unless you have a bad hip and can't hop! I commend this as an inventive and a fun book for children's activities.

Criss Cross by Lynn Rae Perkins

Rating: WARTY!

Having had success with two previous LRP novels, I ventured into this audiobook (read adequately by Danielle Ferland) with high hopes which were soon dashed. This novel won the 2006 Newbery Medal for excellence in children's literature, an assessment with which I beg to disagree. I normally void Newberys like the plague because - apart from one or two very rare exceptions, I've been almost consistently bored to tears with them, and this was no exception. It seems to me that Newberys are awarded based on how tediously boring a novel is, and from that perspective this one certainly earned it.

It's called Criss Cross because it's a mess. It makes you cross and then it makes you curse. Worse, it jumps around like a - what was the term that Elvis used in All Shook Up? Oh yeah, like a catfish pole-dancing (or something on those lines, I'm sure, but I;m fishing here...). Actually, the best version I've heard of that song was by Suzie Quatro who really knew which poles on a catfish to hook up to make it jump, and they're all positive. It was written by African-American song-writer Otis Blackwell, who also penned classics such as Fever (yes, that one!), Great Balls of Fire, and Don't be Cruel, which in my amateur opinion was best done by Billy Swan. But I digress.

This story jumped around between several characters which is almost, but not quite, guaranteed to annoy me. I like to read about a character I can invest in, but when all you get is julienned character cameos in this kind of a story, you really don't care about them that much - leastways I don't. If I'd known previously that Kirkussed Reviews had described this novel as a "tenderly existential work" I would have skipped it without hesitation. Since Kirkustomarily never has a criss cross word to say about any novel, their assessment is utterly worthless, so when they lard-up a review with this pretentious drivel, it's assuredly garbage.

So, in short, I can't recommend this because I couldn't commend it in the first place.

Hinges Book 1: Clockwork City by Meredith Mclaren

Rating: WARTY!

This graphic novel was a fail for me because it was unintelligible. I had no idea, for the most part, what the hell was going on because there was very little dialog, no narration, and the images while engagingly drawn, were far from crystal clear in terms of what exactly was supposed to be happening in any given frame.

It was supposed to be a clockwork city, but none of these characters ever seemed like they needed winding up. The author seemed more interested in winding up the reader. The characters had visible joints in some images, like they were mechanical, but none in others. This one girl out of the blue is put front and center with no explanation as to who she is, where she came from, or why she's there.

She's told she needs an 'Odd' with no explanation as to what exactly that is or why it's needed. It's a small character like a child's plush toy, but is alive. Why she picks the one she does and why that's a problem isn't explained. Why she even needs a job and why she's so wrong for the jobs available is a mystery. For that matter, everything is a mystery and I quickly lost interest, because the biggest mystery was why the author wasn't interested in telling an engaging story. I had zero investment in the characters or the story, and I ditched it DNF. Life's too short. I can't commend this gray-scale graphic story based on about fifty percent of it that I read.

Goslings by JD Beresford

Rating: WARTY!

Read rather awkwardly by Matthew Brenher, this audiobook was a quick fail. I am not one for these end-of-the-world survivor stories, but this particular one seemed interesting from the blurb, which means only that the blurb did its job in luring me into picking up the thing.

Once I started listening to it though, it was boring. It was really nothing different from any other apocalypse story, and the characters were completely uninteresting to me. The story was too lethargic; I made it through less than ten percent before I ditched it back to the library in favor of something which wouldn't make me fall asleep listening, which would be disastrous when driving a car! I can't commend it based on my admittedly limited experience of it, but life is far too short to waste on books that don't do it for you right out of the gate.