Amelia's Notebook by Marissa Moss

Title: Amelia's Notebook
Author: Marissa Moss
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Marissa Moss.

This one I picked up on close-out because it was so hilarious and so irreverent that I couldn't leave it sitting there unloved.

Amelia is a young kid who has to move away from her school and friends, starting over in a new locale. She makes random notes about her experience and about anything and everything she deems worthy of a note in hardback notebooks. You know the ones: those with the cover looking like it already has ink-blots galore on it. In some ways, she's rather like a modern, much more funny, and far less creepy .

I love the way she draws a lot to illustrate her text, and the way she's completely unafraid to tell it how it is. She rambles on about her sister, her friends - old and new - and her teachers. In some ways she actually reminds me of me when I was so young. In particular it's really funny the way she illustrates various noses she's encountered, and the way that she tinkers with the 'useful information' - you know, those obscure weights and measures - inside the back cover of the book. This particualrly reminds me of how much I loved to re-write such things.

I found this book to be completely hilarious. Hopefully that's not just me, and children of the right age will find it entertaining too. There's a host of similar material written by Moss which is worth pursuing if you liked this one.

1066 And All That by WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman

Title: 1066 And All That
Author: WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated amusingly by John Reynolds.

This is a parody of British history textbooks written along the lines of Monty Python (but predating that by several decades). It was first published in 1931, and is tied to that era. This doesn't mean it has nothing to day about textbooks of more recent vintage. I went to school in Britain and I can tell you that this definitely spoke to me the first time I read it, but that was a while ago. Who knows - maybe history's changed since then!

It really helps if you have some experience of British life and know some details of British history, otherwise you'll get very little out of this, but how charming and satisfying is it that even getting on for a century ago, there were crazy people in Britain who predated The Goon Show (by twenty years) and Monthy Python's Flying Circus by almost half a century?! It's a fine tradition of insanity of which all Brits are justifiably proud.

This book covers all important history from 55BC through World War One. What a startling thought it is that that when this was written, it was still a handful of years before World War Two was even a cloud on the horizon and Anne Frank was barely two years old.

Walter Sellar was a Scots writer who penned humorous articles for the British journal Punch which specialized in humor and satire. He fought in World War One and was a teacher during WW2. Robert Yeatman had a very similar history.

The book promises to deliver "...all the parts [of history] you can remember including one hundred and three good things, five bad kings, and two genuine dates" and proceeds to take history apart at the seams. It features bizarre quizzes, and "important notes" along the lines of this one on page eight:

The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).

The questions in the "test papers" are completely nuts. Here are some random examples:

12. Would you say that Ethelread the Unready was directly responsible for the French Revolution? If so, what would you say? (p16)
2. How did any one of the following differ from any one of the other?
    1. Henry IV, Part I
    2. Henry IV, Part II (p58)
10. Describe in excessive detail:
    (a) The advantages of the Black Death
    (b) The fate of the Duke of Clarence
    (c) A surfeit (p58)
1. Stigmatize cursorily (a) Queen Mary (b) Judge Jeffrey's Asides. (p77)
5. In what ways was Queen Elizabeth a Bad Man but a Good Queen? (p77)
10. Why on earth was William of Orange? (Seriously, though). (p78)

I highly recommend this if you're into British history or if you think you're up to it, but please don't try to read both sides of the page at once....

Steel Beach by John Varley

Title: Steel Beach
Author: John Varley
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WORTHY!

In Steel Beach, a novel in Varley's "Eight Worlds" series, humans have been displaced from Earth by aliens. Earth and Jupiter are no-go zones, but humans are allowed to live anywhere else in the solar system.

The main character is Hildy Johnson, who is modeled after Rosalind Russell's role in the Howard Hawks 'screwball comedy' His Girl Friday. That role in the movie was originally written for a guy, but was given to Russell who took it and ran with it. Hildy is just as self-destructive as every other human, all of whom are living in overcrowded conditions and who are generally unhappy with the state of their existence. Hildy commits suicide several times and is fortuitously (from the perspective of others) revived. He/she also undergoes gender reassignments more than once.

After a lengthy and amusing introduction to existence in this solar system, Hildy finds a new interest in life after accidentally discovering someone wearing nothing - quite literally nothing, walking on the surface of the Moon - a person who then completely disappears as if by magic. Eventually this apparition leads to the uncovering of a group of people who have found the means to travel in space without protective craft or suits.

These people are in hiding, for obvious reasons, from the civilization's central computer system which it turns out, has been performing experiments on people, including Hildy, who learns that the computer has been cloning people in order to maintain population levels, which raises the question as to whether Hildy was actually saved from suicide, or was merely cloned (impractical as that is when you think about it).

This novel was highly inventive and entertaining. I loved the Hildy character and the cool ideas being freely tossed out like they were going out of style. The ending was kinda trite, but aceptable given the quality of the lead up to it.

Moranthology by Caitlin Moran

Rating: WARTY!

After reading and loving Moran's How to be a Woman which I reviewed recently, I ventured into this volume with a sense of warm expectancy, but I quickly came to discover that there is at least two ways of pronouncing Moran, and the second isn't very complimentary.

I discovered to my dismay that this book is nowhere near as entertaining and engrossing as the previous volume. This one is nothing more than a collection - as its title suggests - of largely unimpressive newspaper puff-pieces, and after feeling like my time's been wasted with nothing more than boring gossip, I'm pretty much done reading anything by this Moran now.

Some of the pieces were interesting, and one or two were mildly amusing, but some were just boring or plainly dumb, and some were directly contradictory of one another. For example, on page 116, she bemoans the sorry state of the sluggish rise to true equality for women, which I also bemoan, but unlike me, Moran doesn't wonder, not even for a minute, if it's high time for women to be taking the reins into their own hands after several decades of "liberation" instead of sitting back and writing newspaper pieces bemoaning the lack of hand-outs as Moran seems to think is appropriate in this article. Equality isn't a one-sided coin.

Yes, I do know that women are excluded far too often by one means or another, from various avenues, but not all avenues are closed. Some of them are simply not interesting to women otherwise they would have - one assumes - taken a stroll down them. Moran seems incapable of grasping that whilst men and women should unarguably be both perceived and treated as equals for all practical purposes, the two genders (and indeed all those in between) are not, in fact, equal at their most fundamental level. If they were, we would all be women - or we'd all be men.

The bottom line is that no matter how equal we're treated, we're neither genetically nor biochemically equal, and therefore we will not have one hundred percent coincidental aims, interests, goals and attractions. Moran's hypocrisy becomes starkly highlighted as we move to the very next article on page 118 where, after just getting done complaining that women aren't yet equal, next bemoans the loss of chivalry in society whereby men for example, stand-up when a woman enters the room, or give up their seat on a crowded bus rather than let a woman stand.

Excuse me? Do you want equality or not? If not, then by all means men can stand for you and give up their seat, but if you want equality, then men don't stand for women demanding extra benefits. It's really that simple, as indeed is Moran if she believes otherwise. You cannot redefine equal just because you're a woman who demands to be "first amongst equals"!

On page 109, Moran complains about burqas and blames everything on men. Seriously? Burqas aren't so much about men per se as about religion, because, in every religion women come off badly. It's always been that way. Now you can waste time arguing that men start religions, but if you want equality, you'd be a lot wiser to quit harping on about dress codes, and focus upon severing the stranglehold which organized religion has upon women. The simple act of conflating these two major, but separate issues isn't going to fix anything.

The rest of the anthology wasn't that impressive at all. A goodly chunk of it was boring. She writes like no one has ever thought of the things she writes about, or has experienced them, or has been thrilled or disgusted by them. The most irritating trait is that she writes like she was, is, and always will be poor yet drops designer fashion names into her writing at every opportunity. It's not adequate for her to simply say, "She was wearing four-inch heels." No, she has to say, "She was wearing four-inch Manolos." If there's one thing I can't stand it's snobbery.

Some of the stuff is retreaded. For example, there's an article about Lady Gaga which is pretty much exactly the same thing as appeared in How to be a Woman. Too much of it is so boring that once I'd read the first couple of sentences I yawned and moved on the the next article.

I still recommend reading How to be a Woman because that was genuinely original, funny, and completely engrossing, but this one? Give it a pass - of the wind variety.

The Pleasure Dial by Jeremy Edwards

Title: The Pleasure Dial
Author: Jeremy Edwards
Publisher: 1001 Nights Press
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.

Erratum:
p118 "bicep" - it's biceps. And triceps.

I'm not a big fan of erotic literature per se. I'd much rather indulge in it than sit and read about it, but done the right way, in the right context - that of a real story rather than inauthentic titillation for mere titillation's sake - I'm perfectly happy with it. What I find truly sad is that we live in a very effective theocracy under the dictates of which, children are at liberty to read or to watch endless scenes of people being mean and brutal towards one another, but must be "protected" fiercely from anything which depicts people enjoying and loving one another in physical ways.

How sad is it that the church, an 'authority' which is itself rooted in the absurdest of fictions, insists that intimacy is so evil, even in fiction, that not even adults ought to be exposed to it no matter how educationally, fleetingly, cursorily, or tangentially. The United States of America is one of the most fundamentalist societies on the planet, giving feared places like Iran a run for its mullah. Is it any surprise that in such a closeted society, people end-up hobbled by the worst sex-education it's possible to get?

Is it any surprise that in such a society people who 'deviate' from "the norm" however slightly, however naturally, however much in the privacy of their own homes still run a grave risk of being (metaphorically if not literally) pilloried? Is it any surprise that as a direct result of allowing such a blinkered society to propagate and fester, that same society then pays a hefty price in unwanted pregnancy and sexual inappropriateness which runs the huge gamut from annoying, through abusive, to outright criminal? Not to me it isn't.

I do enjoy a well-written comedy, which explains why I was actually interested in this novel: it's a humorous story which neither flinches nor baulks at following people into the bedroom (or wherever!) rather than shyly panning over to a roaring fire which ineffectually seeks to simulate sexual passion whilst stimulating nothing but laughter.

This story is set in the 1930's when radio listener-ship more than doubled to almost 30 million people in the US. Radio shows were for several decades directly sponsored - indeed, effectively owned - by corporations which advertised freely throughout the show, and for which the show's stars became spokes-people. This comedy of erogenous follows the machinations and lubrications of various characters as they duel and fool with each other to reach their assorted and diverse goals.

Artie Plask is a comedy writer, newly arrived in LA to join the team for Sydney Heffernan's radio show. Under the name Syd Heffy, this guy acts himself: a buffoon who barely has a competent grasp of the nuances of the English language, but who is nonetheless considered to be one of the best and biggest comedians in the country. Artie's immediate problem is that after one day on the job he discovers that the entire writing team has been fired as 'Syd Heffy' decides to abandon comedy, and relaunch himself in serious drama show.

This writing team is exclusively white of course, because writers nearly always were back then, and it's almost exclusively male for the same reason, but it's actually headed by a woman, Mariel Fenton, who also writes for the show. Here's where I first became honestly impressed. Jeremy Edwards knows how to write strong female characters, and this one saves the show - literally.

Mariel is a self-possessed, self-made woman, who holds her own (in whatever way she feels like) quite effortlessly in a man's world, and who is not only a genuinely funny person, which makes her perfect for this gig, but who is also extremely smart and astute. And of course, as required by the novel's very tone, gorgeous. Indeed, she's the real mover and shaker here, with Artie really just along for the ride (whether the ride be sexual or not!).

I have no idea who the girl on the cover of this novel is, either in real life or as representative of a character. She could be generic or she could be intended as Elyse Heffernan, Syd Heffy's pan-sexual and nympho-maniacal daughter. She certainly isn't Mariel, and she really doesn't appear to be Elyse, either, but the photograph is undeniably erotic. The feet seem a little bit large for the image to be perfect, but that may just be a perspective distortion (or my bias towards smaller feet!).

That said, I have to admit that this near-perfect picture is what initially caught my eye with this novel. I would never have launched into reading it on that cover image though, no matter how exciting it may be. The novel could have actually had any cover, because it was the novel's premise which sold it to me, recalling screwball comedies of the forties, and madcap comedies of the fifties. But kudos to the cover designer and photographer(s). For once in a blue moon, they really, er, nailed it.

If you think the cover model is Elyse, then you really need to read the novel, because you simply don't get her at all. Elyse is the second powerful female character in this novel. Her liberal sexuality is misleading, for there's a strength to this young woman which far-too-many young-adult writers, for example - even female ones - fail to understand, much less employ in a world where the main female lead, after being sold to us as strong, independent, and capable, is all-too-often immediately subjugated to an even stronger male.

Neither of these women is subject to anyone. Artie's first introduction to Elyse is when he sees her naked at the swimming pool at her father's house (what daddy doesn't know...well, she can get away with, including having sex with every one of the writers except the gay one). The patio is where all the writing gets done, and Elyse gets wet from just being around these creative, smart, and funny people before she ever enters the pool. His second introduction to her is in bed shortly afterwards, but it's just that one time, because once Artie and Mariel start becoming better acquainted, they become much better acquainted and indeed, inseparable - often quite literally.

The thing which really turns Artie on most about Mariel is, quite appropriately, a woman's most overwhelming sex organ: her mind. He gets off on her thoughts, and she returns the appreciation in equal measure. This is what makes this organ of entertainment, as the rabbi said after the circumcision, a cut above the rest. I just wish more female writers - especially writers of so-called romance novels and YA novels - would get this fact as well as Jeremy Edwards does in his own genre.

This novel follows a host of amusing twists, turns, and delectable diversions. The dialog is snappy, entertaining, and more often than not, rib-ticklingly funny. I'd love to meet someone like Mariel just to have that kind of mind to interact with, or better yet to co-write with - and the hell with the sex! It wasn't all smooth surfing for me, but the only real issue I had with this is the author's descriptions of the many supposedly erotic encounters. To me there's a marked difference between eroticism and crudity, and this novel strayed over the line once in a while.

Note that the language is ribald at best and in the gutter at worst when it comes to depicting the intimate encounters here, so please do not venture into this if you're readily offended. Personally I don't care what language is used as long as it's appropriate to the story or to the character, and there's the, er, rub! Edwards was a bit too fond of using a certain four-letter word to describe a certain defining part of the feminine anatomy, but in this context - one of eroticism - it seemed too abusive to me to find a home here.

I can see it showing up in a novel about abuse or in one relating a story of BDSM even, but in erotica? To me erotica tells a different and very special story, and this jarred too much. Usually, the erotic scenes were deliciously erotic, but unfortunately often they kicked me out of suspension of disbelief because it felt like the author was trying much too hard to use every word he could conjure up to describe events and anatomy. You may have a different crudity scale from me, of course, and consequently your denier may differ.

That aside, I loved this novel and I recommend it erotically! Personally I'm going ot be looking for more by this author.

The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider

Title: The Beginning of Everything
Author: Robyn Schneider
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WARTY!

For about 90% of this novel I was convinced I would rate it positively, but that last ten percent or so killed it for me. The ending was not only unbelievable given what we'd been told of the main two characters, it was just ridiculous.

Some people have compared this novel with the work of John Green, who I can't stand, so I am glad I didn't read any of that before I picked this up otherwise I would never have read it. This novel succeeds where the absurdly pretentious and laughably ethereal Green fails so catastrophically. Despite how bad this was in some critical parts, it still made Green's writing look like a series of bumper stickers, but in the end, the good writing wasn't nearly enough to make up for the poor plotting.

This novel began its life titled Severed Heads, Broken Hearts. I guess that's what happens when Big Publishing™ gets its grasping fingers on your title, because the original summed it up perfectly: there actually is a severed head and a (metaphorical) broken heart, but the real severing and breaking all takes place on the plot. I think a lot of people might presume that the new title refers to the main female character showing up in the main male character's life, but the beginning of the title is really where this novel ends.

I normally detest first person PoV novels, but this one was so well-written generally speaking, and so un-pretentious (aside from a paragraph here and there) that for the most part, I didn't even notice the 1PoV, much less become annoyed by it, so kudos and thanks to the author for that.

Ezra Faulkner and his best friend Toby Ellicot are on a roller-coaster ride at Disneyland when the guy in front of them stands up right before a low overhang, resulting in his head (sans his body) ending up in Toby's startled hands. The result of this - of the infamy that will not leave Toby alone - is a major cause in the two best friends drifting apart between the ages of twelve and seventeen, when another major event - this time affecting only Ezra, brings them back together.

In the intervening five years, Ezra has progressed (if you want to think of it that way) to become a jock (after a fashion) and a really popular guy, hanging out with other jocks and getting whatever dates he wants. He's dating cheerleader Charlotte, until he discovers her in flagrante de-dick-do with some random guy in a bedroom at a party. How Ezra can even give her the time of day after this is a mystery, but despite what she has done to him and the despicable way she had treated him when they had been dating, he never turns his back on her - although he is smart enough not to be seduced by her again, so I guess he isn't completely dumb.

Because he leaves the party early as a result of Charlotte's appalling betrayal of him, Ezra ends-up being in his car when a big Jeep SUV, which ran a stop sign, slams into him - although how the stop sign is relevant is a mystery. Ezra's knee is shattered, effectively terminating his budding tennis career, which he wasn't sure he really wanted anyway, but it means that he's now out of the rut he was in, and feeling at a loose end - if not several of them.

It's not only the rut, though. Ezra is out of things altogether for the entire summer, and he feels like an outsider when he returns to school. His old friends don't seem to want to exclude him because of his injury, but he feels excluded nonetheless, and since he's signed up for the debate team, he finds himself hanging with the artsy, nerdy crowd, which includes his old friend Toby. who adopts him without any problem during an hilarious scene at the school's pep rally.

As soon as we see mention of Cassidy Thorpe, the new, quirky girl in school, it's obvious that she's going to be Ezra's love interest, and it soon becomes obvious what her 'dark secret' is - its not dark, just obvious. The fact that there's no mention whatsoever of the name of the guy driving that jeep SUV ought to clue you in to what the nature of this secret is.

This was what was the least realistic and least believable for me and what began to sour the story. It makes no sense at all that Ezra wouldn't realize who Cassidy might be or how she might connect to his past, and it makes no sense that someone as smart as she supposedly is wouldn't put two and two together, so the big break-up at the end was disingenuous and way too forced for my taste.

Another issue I took was with Ezra's exalted jock status. He was on the tennis team for goodness sakes! That doesn't mean that he was a nobody, but I found it hard to believe, given the tight focus in college and high school on football and basketball (and everything else be damned), that he would be the star jock we're expected to believe he is. I detest the mentality that these two sports are everything and nothing else matters in schools. It's primitive and pathetic, so kudos to Schneider for not going the most traveled path here and making him a football or basketball star, but it didn't seem realistic to me that he would have the status he'd had when he was 'merely' a tennis player - and the team wasn't doing that great anyway.

Nor did it make any sense that Ezra would not have one friend among the entire team that he would hang with or talk to on the phone! Nor did it make any sense that none of his jock friends would visit him in the hospital after his accident. Nor, given what we learn of him in school that year after the accident, did it make any sense that he would have a whole heck of a lot in common with those jocks to begin with. So, for me there were a lot of twisted issues here which spelled bad writing - at least in terms of plotting.

on the positive side, I really, really liked the way this was written with regard to the repartee between the main characters. It played out so easily. It was literate, witty, funny, and engaging. I felt tempted to give it five stars just for its Doctor Who references alone, but of course, that would be very naughty of me. Had I not run into issues like the ones outlined above (and more below), I would definitely have rated this positively. What tipped the balance irretrievably into the negative was the trashy and unbelievable ending.

I don't believe a novel has to have a happy ending, although I would argue it has to have some sort of resolution at the end, so it wasn't that this ended the way it did which bothered me per se; it was that it ended the way it did despite this ending not even remotely jiving with what we'd been told about the characters for ninety percent of the novel.

As exhibit one, let's take the two main female characters in Ezra's life: Charlotte the ex and Cassidy the next. I submit to you, members of the jury, that there was - for all practical purposes - no difference between the two despite Schneider's ham-fisted effort to try and starkly differentiate them for us. I submit that despite being encouraged to believe that Cassidy was streets ahead of Charlotte for being smart, and deep, and caring, she actually was worse than Charlotte.

At least with Charlotte, what you saw was what you got. Cassidy, on the other hand, we're expected to believe, could be so shallow and blind as to betray Ezra, treat him like dirt, keep him in the dark, refuse to talk to him about a critical issue, and be so dumb that she could see no way out of their supposed dilemma than to break up with him and avoid him like the proverbial plague.

What a bunch of coyote shit.

We're expected to believe that the reason she keeps him out of her home is because of her brother and conflict with her parents, yet she's already doing this long before she knows for sure who Ezra is. It makes no sense.

I could not credit that she would totally cut Ezra off without explanation, and with outright lies given everything we'd been told about her up to that point, and given their feelings for each other. No, That does not work. I can't believe she was so dumb she never figured out what had happened - and no, confusing Ezra with a tree doesn't get you out of that jail free.

I can't believe he was so dumb that he believed her lie. I can't believe he was so dumb that he didn't figure out what was going on. OTOH, he did continue to date Charlotte despite her treating him like dirt - at least until that fateful party, so maybe he really was as dumb as he looks. Talking of which, I can't believe the driver would get away with a hit and run like that either. Yeah, it can happen, but no, it's not really credible.

Oh, and Schneider really needs to look up coyotes in wikipedia or somewhere before she starts trying to pretend that they're five feet long (yeah, if you include the tail, but that's dishonest in the context of this novel). Coyotes are only about three feet long in the body, and two feet tall. In short, they're the same size as a standard poodle, give or take.

She kept harping on the coyotes for no good reason, and the reason she mistakenly thought was good was pure bullshit. Coyotes do not behave like the one she depicted. They're not serial killers and they do not randomly approach humans with canicide in mind. And where were Ezra and Cassidy? They were right there and neither one lifted a finger, so their sadness afterwards is nonsensical.

I can't recommend this novel - not unless you're just going to read the first ninety percent of it and skip the lame ending, and even then you'd have to contend with Le Stupide.

If by David J Smith

Title: If
Author: David J Smith
Publisher: Kids Can Press
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.

Illustrated by Steve Adams

This book is exactly as advertised: A mind-bending new way of looking at big ideas and numbers. Well - apart form the 'new' bit. This kind of thing has been done before, for example in the Cosmos TV series, but not quite so extensively. It is a remarkable and amazing book which not only reminded me of things I'd all-but-forgotten (to my shame!), it also educated me about some things of which everyone ought really to be aware, so this isn't just a really attention-grabbing and educational book for children (written by a teacher). Everyone can benefit from its successful effort to tame out-sized numbers and bring facts down to a level where we can really see and appreciate them for what they are.

The chapter headers (the chapters are really short and copiously illustrated) are quite arresting enough as it is:

• If
  
• Our Galaxy



• The Planets


• History of Earth


• Life on Earth



• Events of the last 3000 Years


• Inventions Through Time


• Inventions of the Last 1000 Years


• The Continents


• Water


• Species of Living things


• Money


• Energy



• Life Expectancy


• Population


• Food


• Your Life


• A Note for Parents and Teachers


• Sources

Some of this book's content might seem fantastical or counter-intuitive at first glance, but as far as I could tell (without trying to run down every single thing that was in the book!), the author is right on the money. When it comes to information like this, it's not the facts that are in error. What's in error is our inability to appreciate them for what they mean, and for what they can teach us about this world upon which we're so completely dependent. The fossil fuel reliance fact alone is shocking.

I recommend this book for children - that way you can buy it for them, but sneak a quick read without having to feel embarrassed. Better yet, volunteer to read through it with them and thereby misdirect everyone from your ulterior motive! And I won't even charge you for sending that sneaky scheme your way...!

The Trials of Nikki Hill by Christopher Darden and Dick Lochte

Title: The Trials of Nikki Hill
Author: Christopher Darden (and Dick Lochte)
Publisher: Hachette
Rating: WARTY!

Dick Lochte? Seriously? That sounds like a medical condition. I get that you don't get to chose the name you're given when you're born, but you do get to choose the name that goes on your novels. He didn't like Richard Lochte? Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he thinks it's funny, but the problem with chanting "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" is that there have to be torpedoes in the first place....

So why do I get to make fun of a writer's name? Well, I get to do that because of the writing in this novel. At one point, at the start of chapter 30 on page 149, we learn that a character looks like Rock Hudson "in his healthier days". Now there are two ways of using that description. One was to go the AIDS reference route, the other was to simply say "looked like a younger Rock Hudson" - or even omit the reference altogether. It wasn't necessary to make an arguably derogatory reference, yet the writer chose purposefully to go that route. That's my justification.

Clearly this guy, who has published several crime thrillers of his own, was hired to "punch up" Darden's writing since he's less of a novelist than he is the prosecuting counsel in the disastrous OJ Simpson murder trial. I read his In Contempt about that trial. I reviewed (unfavorably) Guilt by Degrees by his co-counsel, Marcia Clarke (whose Without a Doubt - about that same trial, I also read), so I figured it's only fair if I give him the same chance.

I have to say I wasn't favorably impressed by the first two pages (numbered 5 & 6, not 1 & 2 for some reason. I guess that numbering scheme is because there was a prologue, which I skipped as I usually do. If the writer thinks it's not worth putting in chapter one or later, I don't think it's worth reading.

So what didn't impress me? The rampant racism shown by the main character on the first two pages. She uses the term 'white-bread' on the first page and describes a murder victim as "whiter than rice" on the next page. There was absolutely no need to go there for either of these comments. She didn't know at that point that this was a murder victim, but this doesn't excuse unrestrained racism on two consecutive pages.

The black and white references are rampant in this novel, even when it's clearly quite unnecessary to reference what race the character is. I started to wonder if there was some abolitionist throw-back going on here, since when the character was identified as black or "Afro-American" or whatever, it always seemed to be a character who was employed in a subservient role - a security guard for example - someone who serves someone else. It made no difference what color the person was, so why specifically reference it?

Yes I get that there are real racists in society and that therefore it's fine to represent them in your novels if your plot or even verisimilitude requires it, but that's an entirely different thing than having your main character routinely espouse racist phrases. If a white writer had written these same kinds of derogatory phrases about a black person, they would have been called on it and rightly so. So why isn't anyone calling Darden on it? Or Lochte, whichever of the two of them came up with this?

There was also genderism here, and this was by the author, not the characters. The authors reference all female characters by their first name, all male characters by their last - like an abusive private school. Why? I have no idea, but genderism, like racism, cuts both ways. Just like it's not only whites who can be racist, it's also not only men who can be genderist, and it's not always in obvious ways that genderism rears its ugly head as we see here.

The way to fix a problem - like racism, and like male chauvinism - which has been characterized by the pendulum of justice swinging way-the-hell too far in one direction - isn't to force it to swing an equal amount in the opposite direction, it's to nail it dead in the middle and never let it move again.

I suspect this is more a Lochte novel with input from Darden than it is a Darden novel with guidance from Lochte, but that's just a guess. Since I've never read a Lochte novel I have no comparison to make - it's just a feeling I get from the way this is worded - and wordy it is. You could skip the first four chapters and not miss anything, and this same text-stuffing was rife throughout this novel (at least as far as I could stand to read it.

I wanted to read this because of the police investigation, to follow how the crime was solved, not because I wanted a detailed report of the main character's social life. I took to skipping chapters where the 'action' had nothing to do with the case - and that was a lot of chapters. This begs the question, of course, as to how to rate the writing where you deem only certain examples of it readable, and find yourself constantly irritated by the endless digressions. Is it worthy because of the crime story, or is it warty because of the mindless and pointlessly trivial babble?

Chapter one is pretty much all about how the main character, Nikki Hill (Nikki Heat rip-off, much?) getting out of bed, and the life history of her dog (I kid you not). Barf. Chapter two I had to go back and look at because I'd forgotten it by the time I reached chapter eight already. It's Hill's bad history over a case where evidence was mishandled. Objection: irrelevant, your honor. Chapters three and four are a pointless look at the limp interrogation of the guy who is the prime suspect - so we know for a fact that he didn't do it. It contributes nothing to the novel. Five and six are a look at the crime scene, so you may as well start there. You'll miss nothing.

This is your typical celebrity murder with lowlife suspect who's innocent story. TV personality Maddie Gray is found murdered and dumped in a dumpster. Jamal Deschamps is found close by with her ring in his pocket - yet later we're expected to believe she wore no jewelry! Naturally he's arrested despite the fact that other than his theft and failure to report a dead body, there's no evidence he committed any such thing as murder.

This marks the first failure of the enjoyable part of this novel - the murder investigation. We, the readers, know that Jamal is innocent, but the detectives are supposedly convinced that he's the perp, yet despite the fact that they're running out of time for holding him without charging him, they never once charge him with theft (of that ring) or of interfering with a crime scene, or failure to report the murder. They could have easily nailed him on something and held him longer, but they never even consider it. Bad writing. They also end up opening themselves up to a lawsuit for wrongful arrest because of this. These people are morons.

Given that a prosecutor was at least involved in writing this, I expected that procedures would be spot on, but there are failures all along, and this is what tipped the balance for me. For example, at one point we learn that the murder victim's computer is still in her house - the police never seized it, which means an assistant to the victim can get on it and do whatever he wants. Bad writing.

In another instance, they get a report of a car seen in the vicinity of the murder at about the time of the murder, and the first thing they think of in trying to track it down is to contact car dealerships in the area? What they don't have a department of motor vehicles in LA?! Bad writing.

There's also a curious piece of writing when discussing Jewelry. Gold is referred to by karat with a 'K' whereas diamonds are referred to using carat with a 'C'. The fact is that while the term has a different meaning when used for gold than it does when used for gems, the spelling isn't fixed in stone, precious or otherwise. To suggest that the 'K' form can only be used for gold and the 'C' form for gem stones is nonsensical.

But the bottom line is the characters. While I found the crime story engaging to a certain extent (when it wasn't being interrupted with commercials for Nikki's private life), I found I had no interest whatsoever in any of the characters, least of all the main one. I found her to be a prosecutor who was completely without appeal, and I really didn't care whodunit. In the end, that was my objection, and coincidentally the only motive I needed to kill-off this novel.

Rebel McKenzie by Candice Ransom

Title: Rebel McKenzie
Author: Candice Ransom
Publisher: Disney
Rating: WORTHY!

Rebel McKenzie is a kick-ass female character. Candice Ransom is a writer who gets that a strong female character doesn't have to be muscular and kick everyone's ass to be strong. She just has to be 'not weak', even if 'not weak' is defined as someone who is strong enough to overcome whatever weaknesses she has. It's that simple. So why is it that more authors simply don't get it?

Rebel is a twelve-year-old who wants to be a paleontologist specializing in extinct mammalian mega-fauna. Candice Ransom puts a girl with science - the first strong move, and one that's neglected far too often in middle-grade literature, and almost exclusively in YA lit. Unfortunately, her parents aren't well-off, and they can't afford to send her to paleontology camp - which is why this novel begins with an angry and frustrated Rebel living up to her name and running away from home! First page - conflict. Candice Ransom gets it right.

Rebel runs into the local jail clean-up crew - and one old lag advises her to turn around and go home. Again - a character acting out of stereotypical character territory. Candice Ransom gets it. There are no clichéd tropes here, which is how Rebel ends up making a bet with the lag and paying-up when she loses!

More conflict: for her crime of running-away, Rebel is 'sentenced' to spend the summer babysitting Rudy, her much older sister's young child, while her sister attends beauty college. Her sister lives in a trailer park which she insists is actually a mobile home community. She rents the trailer and part of the rental agreement insists that she take care of the significantly overweight cat known as Doublewide, who lives there, and who uses the toilet and rings the doorbell. Again: different. It's hardly surprising that I was captivated by the first page and held captive by every page that followed.

The writing is brilliant. The activities and events normal and realistic, but fascinating and highly entertaining. Amusement lies in wait in every paragraph. When Rebel finds Lacy (the girl-next-door, who is Rebel's own age), bullying young Rudy, there isn't a cat-fight, but a brief conflict, followed by a discussion, followed by a budding friendship, followed by a plan!

It's through Lacy that Rebel meets the antagonist - a prissy professional beauty queen named Bambi, and the battle liens are drawn! Bambi is the same age as the other two and so full of herself that she cannot accommodate anyone else. Once she antagonizes Rebel, and Rebel discovers she can get $250 and fund her week at the paleontology dig herself, she's all on-board to enter a beauty contest, and therein lies a tale.

I adored this novel and I highly recommend it. It's an easy and fast read, and every page has something to engross the reader.

Perfection by JL Spelbring

Title: Perfection
Author: JL Spelbring
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
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.

Errata:
p36 "Because of her position as head of the Kripo unit held..." makes no sense. It should be "Because of the position she held..." or something like that.
p60 "bicep". Nope. It's biceps. And triceps.
p161 About two-thirds down this page, there's a transition between two completely different scenes with nothing to mark it: no chapter break, no extra space between paragraphs, no triple asterisk or something along those lines.

How freaking cool of a name is 'Spelbring'?! It's the best author name ever, and it's curiously apropos in a novel that despite its thin veneer of purported sci-fi and dystopia, is really a romance disguised as a magical fantasy novel.

Spelbring is a fellow Texan (not that I'm really a Texan, but my kids are!) and a fellow blogspotter, so I was actually biased towards her to begin with. My problem was that while I kept on really wanting to like this, and wanting to rate it highly because it did draw me in and carry me along at first, I found myself stumbling over one problem after another, each of which ruined my suspension of disbelief. It transitioned from a page-turner to a stomach-turner about two-thirds the way through, and in the end I could not finish the novel for the tired trope of a teen romance into which it morphed.

At times, it really felt like the author was deliberately trying to provoke me to see how much taunting she could get away with before I threw up my hands - or just threw up! On a positive note, this novel is blessedly free of first person PoV, which I appreciated immensely and for which I was tempted to award the author five stars right there and then, but I mustn't. I mustn't! Must. Wait. Until. I've Read it....

This is a story about Ellyssa aka subject 62, who has escaped from The Center for Genetic Research and Eugenics (such institutions are never a good thing). She was genetically engineered as a super-soldier, but that's as far as this novel went when it came to building an impressive and strong female character. From that description onwards, she's just another troubled high-school teenager with nothing to recommend her.

We begin with Ellyssa planning on taking a train from Chicago to Kansas, like Dorothy trying to escape from Oz, but here, Oz is a place where the Nazis won, and they're now endeavoring to engender a master race which embodies so-called Aryan 'perfection' - and then some. The problem I had with this scenario is that there's absolutely no history given at all - not in an info dump at the start (thankfully!), and not even as snippets passed out in bits and pieces during the rest of the tale. How the world got like this is a complete blank and the novel suffers for that.

The state of the world is just a given with no background - like the 'wizard' behind the curtain, in fact - so the world-building was a bit thin to say the least (which is exactly what was said on the topic, as it happens). The fact that the Nazis are running the USA makes zero sense. The Germans never did attack the USA per se during World War Two. The entire war was confined (apart from some sea battles) to Europe and North Africa (and apart from the Japanese conflict, of course). It never impinged upon the US mainland, so even if the Nazis had won, how did it happen that they're now occupying the USA? There's no explanation offered at all.

In World War 2, there were several 'axis' powers - the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians, and a sprinkling of others, including some Arab tribes in the North Africa conflict, yet none of this is mentioned. Since Japan was the only axis power to actually attack US territory, how come it's the Nazis in control in the US and not the Japanese? Again, no explanation. This would actually have helped to explain the fact that Aryan paragons are learning Japanese martial arts rather than German fighting techniques. To my knowledge no one has ever done a 'The Japanese Won' scenario. There - a free premise for your next novel, and I won't even ask for a credit!

But I digress. Ellyssa is a paragon of this Aryan dream, not only genetically engineered, but raised under the callous, if not brutal, oversight of her own father to be an emotionless highly-skilled fighting machine, yet we see absolutely zero evidence of this when she's in 'action'! Yeah, we get a couple of roundhouse kicks, but nothing to lead us to believe that she actually is a super-soldier of any kind. Nor do we see a lack of emotion amongst her incubated siblings, for that matter.

These 'experimental children' were all created by Dr Hirch, their genetic father. He's a villain who is so awfully one-dimensional and melodramatic that I was disappointed when he didn't actually twirl his mustache in his fingertips and laugh maniacally with a "Mwa-ha-ha!" from time to time. Why such a man would raise a girl like this is left unexplained. The problem is not that girls cannot step up to be such a thing, but that it struck me as completely out of character for this dedicated Nazi to want to elevate a female to such a position. The Nazis were hardly known for their struggle for gender equality (amongst a hoard of other things for which they weren't known, either). "Good Aryan" women in Nazi Germany were a baby farm for men, not an equal of men.

Unknown to her sad dad, Ellyssa has emotional content which she has inexplicably managed to hide, but the rest of her abilities - her peak of physical perfection, her fitness, strength, skill, and smarts are very well known to him, including the fact that she can read minds. Yet even with this sterling background, even when she was on-board with her father's scheme, she discovered something which only made her want to run. Now she's fleeing The Center and heading for Kansas, a destination based solely on her reading the mind of one of her father's victims. Again, this was a bit thin to say the least.

Hot in pursuit of Ellyssa is Angela. She's not one of the elite, but she feels in her bones that she's every bit their equal, if not better. During her escape, Ellyssa had knocked her out and given her the slip, and Angela was not one to suffer such an embarrassment lightly. Despite strict orders to return Ellyssa alive, Angela got her gun, and took off after the escapee with a vengeance, yet all she's actually capable of from that point onwards, is chewing-up the scenery and growling. We really see nothing of her other than this, which was a waste of a potentially good character.

I have to say that while I was drawn-in and very much felt on Ellyssa's side to begin with, her flight to freedom wasn't very well depicted. It dragged somewhat, and the character's supposed background started showing some holes. Far from being military perfection, Ellyssa is depicted here as being weak, not too smart, prone to infection, and incapable of really busting loose and taking on the enemy.

There's no date supplied (that I noticed) to set the period for this novel. Judged by the state of genetic engineering, the use of satellites, (and the mention of a Taurus PT145 hand gun), this is a contemporary story, yet when it comes to tracking down an important escapee like Elyssa, on the run in open country, all we get is men and dogs - no drones! I found that rather hard to believe, and this lack of credibility continued to grow as I read on.

It's at this point that I have to express a huge gag reflex at the loudly trumpeted arrival of the trope male. His absurd name is Rein (which is curiously appropriate given how he tries to put reins on Ellyssa, rains on her parade, and tries to reign over her). He's so antagonistic towards Ellyssa that you know they'll be jumping each other's bones first chance they get. No surprises there.

Why does a woman have to be completely incomplete until a cliché of a male arrives on the scene with, yes, his hair in his eyes in these novels? It serves only to make the main female character weak, clingy, dependent, and deficient, which completely negates all the things we've been told about how strong and powerful Ellyssa supposedly is. I really don't get why writers - and female writers in particular - insist upon routinely hobbling their female characters like this. It's truly sickening at how frequently Ellyssa's heart quickens, or patters, or hammers. Every. Single. Time. He's. Close. What is she, thirteen?! It honestly makes me nauseous. Could you slam a reader over the head any more brutally with their instant "love"?

Can writers not see the massive paradox between the beauty of real, sweet, honest love and the violence of trying to force this trashy, amateur, young-adult-quality 'instadore' into readers' minds? I was, despite some irritations, enjoying this novel until it became clogged to the pores with this. Fortunately for my sanity and the contents of my stomach, the author managed not to go completely insane with it, but what we got was far too much, far too fast, and far, far too juvenile. These two characters had no chemistry, and no reason to fall for each other (other than Rein's naked lust for the 'hot chick', which is hardly a recommendation).

This whole situation, in fact, made no sense. When Ellyssa is inevitably captured by the rebels, their initial reaction is murderous, yet despite the fact that she violently attacks them, they nonetheless take her to their 'hospital' and fix her up for no valid reason whatsoever. Suddenly she's part of the resistance? That had no credibility at all for me.

It was like she waved a magic wand, which was curiously appropriate given how this story segues from sci-fi to fantasy. Could we not have been given some reason for this change of heart? Maybe she gasped something crucial as she passed out from blood-loss perhaps, or something to justify bringing the enemy into their secret encampment? Anything but this!

There's a really weird bit on page 102 where Ellyssa is trying to explain to Rein how she came into being. She was a product of in vitro fertilization, gestation taking place in a surrogate mother, but the way the author words it is wrong: "He then used In Vitro Fertilization to impregnate the female." I have no idea why the initial caps were employed here, but the sentence make no sense whatsoever. The whole business of fertilization outside the womb was the 'in vitro' part. Once that was over with, the rest was the impregnation. The one isn't the same as the other, and it just sounded weird, worded like that.

This is another YA novel where beauty is ranked far too highly. Yes, I get that it's an Aryan ideal in this case, so the fact that Ellyssa is attractive isn't the issue; the issue is Rein's constant use of her beauty as a referent as to how much utility she has to him. The only thing I kept thinking of, every time I read yet another of his tedious observations as to what a paragon she was in the stunning looks department, was how he was far more Aryan than ever she was in his attitude! The hell with what kind of person she was - how sweet, how personable, how easy to get along with, how decent, how much integrity she had, how loyal, how friendly, how skilled, how resourceful, how whatever, it was all about and only about sheer beauty for him. For my money, he was the real villain here.

Rein has no concept of propriety, personal space, or of boundaries. His hands are all over Ellyssa. He's holding her hand unnecessarily, like she's a child, he's squeezing her hand, he's cupping her face, he's wiping a tear with his thumb. Even when she lay on the verge of death when he found her, his only thought was not one of compassion, or of urgency in helping her, or even of finishing her off as an enemy, it was solely of how beautiful she was! How many people actually think like that? Other than poets on absinthe, how many people look at someone in pain, injured, bloody, probably dying, and think "My god she's beautiful!"?

The inappropriateness doesn't end there, either. At one point, when Rein is supposedly distraught over the loss of a parent figure, the only thing going through his mind is - yes, again - how beautiful she is! It's not how much of a comfort she is to him (or how little for that matter), nor is it of how warm of a person (or how cold) she is, but how beautiful, because you know that's the only important thing to ponder when someone you love dies. Rein is not only irrationally inconsistent, he's a complete jerk and poor, clueless Ellyssa sees nothing wrong with any of his conduct in complete disavowal of her life-long habituation.

That felt really false to me, but it wasn't as bad as when he miraculously 'comes to her rescue' when she's threatened with rape - another out-of-left-field scene. Instead of giving her room to recover, Rein starts flooding her personal space and man-handling her. What a completely jackass! I'm not a woman and I've never been raped, but that struck me as entirely the wrong behavior on his part. OTOH, he's never shown himself to be in control of his behavior around Ellyssa so I guess it was completely in character for him.

There were other irritations, too. The endless use of der vater in The Center, employed in addressing Ellyssa's father by his offspring was really annoying. It doesn't even make sense; it means, literally, 'the father', so unless they were addressing this man as god almighty (which is possible, I guess, but it was never asserted as such an appellation), they should have simply said 'vater' or 'papa'.

But that wasn't the biggest problem here. I know that we're supposed to see this as use of the 'superior' German language, but it's nearly all written in English, and der vater is always in German. It made no sense because this language switch-back was so inconsistent that it stuck out like a sore thumb. It's like Ellyssa knowing Asian martial arts with no Asians in view. I mentioned this before, but it's a good question: why would Aryans obsessed with racial purity embrace a fighting system from another race?

Again I have to risk another spoiler for the purpose of explaining what was wrong with the writing here. Let me try to keep it vague: the rifle experiment was so impractical as to be completely nuts. The muzzle velocity of any given rifle is a fixed value that's tied to the immutable laws of physics, and it can vary widely, but two or three thousand feet per second is far from uncommon.

Even an air gun fires a pellet or a BB at the speed of sound, which is over a thousand feet per second (in standard conditions). How many rooms do you know of that are over a thousand feet long? This means that even if your room is the length of three football fields and you stand at one wall and fire at the wall furthest from you, the bullet is going to reach the other wall in a second or less. The human nervous system is very fast, but your brain cannot get a signal to your foot to tell it to start running at a speed greater than 1/60th of a second. So if your room is twelve feet long or less, you're dead before the signal ever gets your first foot in motion! Mythbusters busted this myth.

No matter how finely-tuned a person is, no matter how good their genes are, there is a physical limit proscribed by these laws, which is unsurpassable. If you transcend that limit, you're no longer in the realm of sci-fi, but down the block and two streets over into pure fantasy-land. That's where this novel quickly went before it essentially dumped all of that into the back seat and simply became a couple of teens holding hands in the front seat of a 1957 Chevy at a drive-in movie.

In other news, and without wanting to give too many spoilers away, let me ask you to consider two things: the function of the human eye, and the invisible man. In order to see, our eyes have to intercept photons, thereby causing a chemical change in the retina, which is conveyed in a signal to the brain, where it's assembled into the 'picture that we see'. How can an invisible man see when he has eyes that permit light to pass completely through the retina, thereby failing to trigger any receptors? It's impossible. Any truly invisible person would be blind, because they'd be incapable of intercepting any light to see by!

But let's move on. I don't get why Rein is so angry when he learns more about Ellyssa (I do get that it's all about creating conflict between them, but it's so artificial that it's pathetic). He knew she was a danger from the start. Even though she was scared and un-trusting, she did warn them, yet he's still a jerk about it. Worse than this, he and others indulge themselves in night-time jaunts in an old truck to pick up supplies. They did this one night when they knew that people were out there searching for Ellyssa. In short, they're idiots, and they're hypocrites to talk of her 'betrayal' when they're so effectively betraying themselves!

It's this latter activity which suggest a plan to Angela to track down the rebels (and Ellyssa), yet even now, in this supposed sci-fi, technology fails to enter the picture. Instead of planting a tracker on their suspected courier's transportation, they simply put him under surveillance, and not satellite surveillance, but human surveillance. I didn't get why technology - in a novel where highly advanced technology in the form of genetic engineering, has created super-soldiers - is forced into repeatedly taking a back seat in this novel.

Here's another reason why this is more fantasy than ever it is sci-fi: when you can have someone 'reading' a blood sample and describing the 'donor' as being red haired, not very pretty, small, forthright, and angry, there's no science there. There's no sci-fi. There is only magic. And what does it matter whether she's pretty or not, for goodness sakes?! There is no gene, nor gene network, which can bestow these powers upon a person. You can't even determine if someone is angry from a blood sample using the most advanced scientific equipment in the world, under supervision by the smartest and most able scientists. It's nonsense.

The truly weird thing about the character who is doing this reading is that his name is Micah - a Judaic name. How, exactly, in this new fatherland where Aryan purity reigns supreme, did that happen?!!! It completely betrays the novel's very premise. He wasn't the only one with a non-Aryan name. There are several others in positions of power, or created as super-soldiers, who also have non-Aryan names: Aalexis (Russian origin), Ahron (Hebrew!!), Leland (English), Xaver (Latin). None of these names any sense in the context of this novel.

Despite all of this I pushed on and pushed on, but the absurd insta-romance came to dominate everything, and it was as ridiculous and unrealistic as it was boring. At that point, around chapter thirty, I honestly couldn't make myself read any more, and I cannot in good conscience recommend this novel. I don't really blame writers for writing these novels because they sell. I do fear greatly for the mentality of a readership which is willing not only to consume so much of this kind of writing, but also to pay good money for it.

I think Judy Spelbring has a future as a writer because she does have a talent for story-telling. I just wish this particular example had been 'rein'ed-in a lot more tightly than it was. It had the feeling to it that it hadn't been properly thought-out and edited, and it showed in the telling. This volume was made available for review because the second volume in the series has just been released, but given the quality of this opener, I'm certainly not interested in pursuing further installments. I would be open to reading something else by this author should she ever tire of the series and move on to something new, different, and much more mature.

All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry

Title: All the Truth That's in Me
Author: Julie Berry
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Rating: WARTY!

Read on average by Kathleen McInerney

This is quite possible the worst novel that I've ever heard. It's most certainly one of the most mind-numbingly boring, pointless, tedious, vague and vacuous drivel-laden stories that it's ever been my misfortune to encounter.

The story takes place in Puritan times (which explains a lot, but nowhere near enough) four years after Judith disappeared with her best friend. The bad news is that Judith has now returned, sans tongue but with her obsessive-compulsive disorder in order. Now she's a stalker, spying on this guy over whom she constantly obsesses, like a paranoid queen cat with only one kitten.

Juditz is so shallow, weak, boring, and vacuous that her every and only thought is about him and only him, her not-so-beau aka Lukewarm. Worse than that, it's addressed to him, as though she's yelling, "Luke at me! I have something unimportant to say!" It's a story he quite obviously already knows for the most part. How flatulent is that? Can you imagine how tedious it would be to have to sit next to a love-struck thirteen-year-old on the subway and all she can do is bend your tired ear with her plans to stalk this guy with whom she's become irremediably obsessed? Yeah, like that. Does Julie Berry not know how much the diametric opposite of romantic it is to have one person stalk another? I guess not.

First person PoV is a tired trope that needs to die a long-deserved and way-the-hell overdue death, and with precious few exceptions. Some writers can carry it, but Berry cannot, unless by 'carry it' you mean hike it onto your shoulder and bounce it until its back is comprehensively broken. She makes a bad story worse by writing in this way, so it;s hardly a surprise that it was nominated for a butt-load of pretentious 'literature' medals.

The book's blurb (and we all know how much they love to lie) says, "This startlingly original novel will shock and disturb you". Well yeah, it did, in how bad it is. The blurb says, "it will fill you with Judith’s passion and longing". Well no, it turned me right off so quickly that I was skipping track after track on disk one (which makes it potentially dangerous if you're listening to it in the car!), trying to find something to which you can listen whilst still keeping your breakfast down.

Stalking doesn't fill me with passion. Dysfunctional doesn't endear me. The blurb says, "its mysteries will keep you feverishly turning the pages until the very last". Well I was feverishly 'turning pages" but only because each one in turn was so brain-deadeningly tedious that I couldn't stand to listen to it! WARTY!

Dirty Wings by Sarah McCarry

Title: Dirty Wings
Author: Sarah McCarry
Publisher: Macmillan
Rating: WORTHY!

This is supposed to be a retelling of the myth of Persephone, although I saw no resemblance. I did, however, discover that it's the most pointless and boring story I've read in a long time. It's the second in the 'All Our Pretty Songs' series, which I didn't know when I picked it up since there is - yes, you've guessed it - absolutely no indication whatsoever on the cover that this is a sequel! Way to go Big Publishing™ - you screwed up yet again!

As it happens, and despite being number two - or perhaps because it was quite evidently a big number two - this novel goes nowhere and nothing of note happens. If you like reading about the drug-abusing and thievery conducted by a couple of boring lowlife's, then this one might please you. If you have taste and a desire for an interesting story, you might want to look elsewhere for your reading fulfillment.

The story is about Maia, a piano prodigy, an adoptee from Vietnam by white American parents. When her "mom" discovers that Maia can play the piano with exceptional dexterity, Maia ends up being all piano all the time which is pretty much child-abuse. She's also home-schooled (something she's forced to take care of herself since her parents are pretty much absent in in her life). In fact, her mother is a complete dick, so it's nothing more than a tired cliché that she would cut loose when she meets street urchin Cass(andra).

The two of them take off for a month traveling in a car that Maia stole form her parents. Nothing of what these two perpetrate has any consequence whatsoever. I do find it amusing when YA writers who are not actually YA themselves, put their own musical tastes into the hearts and minds of their YA characters, thereby rendering the characters completely unrealistic. Since when have seventeen-year-olds ever seen music videos on MTV, for example?! MTV hasn't routinely transmitted music videos in pretty much a decade - that's almost half of Cass and Maia's lifetime. It's hardly likely that it would be a point of reference for either Maia, who was effectively banned from watching TV, or Cass, who is living on the street and has been for some considerable time!

Like I said, this story goes nowhere and is boring as hell. It has nothing to offer, nothing interesting or new to say, and no point whatsoever to it. I rate it Wartius maximus.

How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

Title: The Dragon Business
Author: Caitlin Moran
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WORTHY!

My blog is nearly all about fiction - writing it, reading it, watching it, but once in a while I blog non-fiction. In this case, I'm assuming that this is mostly non-fiction, but I admit that sometimes I wondered, because this novel/biography has the same issues that I have with first person PoV fiction: how can the narrator possibly recall all these events in such detail?

It's not possible for someone to recall conversations not only word-for-word, but also the nuances attached to those words. At best you can have an impression, which may not even be accurate, of an exchange, and that's what I'm assuming went on here. Even if you keep a detailed diary, it's never that detailed! Even if you wrote the conversation down shortly after it occurred, you can't recall it that precisely. That said, this book was endlessly entertaining, enlightening in some parts, and LoL hilarious at times.

There were some portions which fell flat for me, but very few. It helped that Moran is British so I had many common reference points with her which may be lost on American readers, although some of her writing is surprisingly mid-Atlantic. Maybe the UK has gone over to the American side a lot more than it had when I lived there.

Essentially, this story is highlights (or low-lights if you like) from Caitlin's (real name Catherine, pronounced Catlin - you'll have to read it to figure that out!) youth to the present (present when it was written, of course!), but with the focus tightly on feminine issues. She begins with her period making her see red, followed closely by public hair (well, it was pubic, but it's not now she's written a best-selling book about it...), and from there she rants on about breasts, feminism, bras, panties, obesity, genderism, love, marriage, abortion, role models, and fashion.

I highly recommend this. It beats anything else that I've ever read on feminism, and it has some new and interesting points of view to share.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Title: The Handmaid's Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday
Rating: WARTY!

Audio book sadly read by Betty Harris.

This is, according to Atwood, speculative fiction, but I don't think she knows the difference between dystopian, speculative, and sci-fi. Either that or I don't! It's about a future USA where life has changed dramatically after a terrorist attack which kills the president and congress. The attack is carried out by a group of religious nut-jobs which then allows another group of religious nut-jobs, calling themselves 'the Sons of Jacob' to take over. This of course would never happen, not even in the USA, but that's the premise we're dealing with here.

The SoJ quickly takes over, suspending the constitution, and removing all women's rights by confiscating their financial records. This is the part that couldn't happen. Most women would never let this happen, and neither would most men.

The biggest problem I had was with how very quickly this occurs. The narrator, the main character, is a woman in her early thirties, and she remembers very well what things were like before, which means she must have been in high school (or older), which in turn means that this all not only took place, but became solidly cemented in place, in twenty years or less, which isn't feasible.

Yes, Atwood does represent life as an ongoing war between the Republic of Gilead (how did that name change ever come about and why?) and 'the rebels', but we're never really told anything about the rebels, nor is the complete absence of Islamic forces addressed. If the Islamic terrorists conducted this hugely successful attack in the first place, then why are there not insurgents flocking to the USA as they did to Iraq? Why aren't they flocking there anyway? The secret is that this novel was written and published thirty years ago, so a lot gets lost in the translation of the years.

So the premise of the story is weak, but if you're willing to let that go, it becomes a bit more interesting, and some of the things she writes are prescient. She doesn't include anything that isn't happening, or that hasn't happened as a result of ridiculous religion.

That said, I felt that Atwood rambled far too much about unimportant details at the beginning, larding the novel with a rather amateurish info-dump, which keeps on giving. There is far too much tedious detail. I read this some time back and decided to give it another try for a review, but I simply could not stay with it the second time around, and the mediocre reading of Betty Harris didn't help at all.

On top of that, I've never been a fan of first-person PoV novels, as this one is. Some are enjoyable, but most of them, for me, kick me right out of suspension of disbelief because it's far too absurd to me to credit that a narrator can tell a story in such detail, especially if they're supposedly telling it as it happens. It's ridiculous and unnatural. It's also extraordinarily limiting on the writer, but that's not even the worst problem here.

The conceit of this novel is that this story was recovered from audio tape after the Republic of Gilead had been overturned. What better opportunity could there have been than to make this dramatic as though it was really and truly the actual audio tape we were listening to? But no - it was wasted, which I think is a crying shame and a huge black mark against this audio version for me.

The main character is Offred (Of Fred - meaning owned by Fred). While I thought this was a cool name, I did wonder, if the commander had two such handmaidens, what the second one would be called. Perhaps they're permitted only one at a time. She's kept only for two years, and solely for reproductive purposes, and as such is in some ways privileged, but in other ways is disparaged as little more than a prostitute.

Offred is in the unenviable position of wishing that she will become impregnated by her rapist quickly because this will in effect maintain her 'market price' by demonstrating that she's fertile. If she fails, she could lose her 'privileged' position. I mean: what use could a woman possibly be, if she cannot have children, we're asked to accept here, and indeed, this has been a fundamental motivation of fundamentalism ever since religion began. This is one of those cases where humanity is supposedly largely sterile - in this case due to pollution and STDs, which is not really credible either, but that's what we have.

This is Offred's third such two-year 'assignment'. If she fails to become pregnant this time, then she will be classed as an 'unwoman' and be forced to the colonies to clean up nuclear pollution and die an early death. This time, her experience is different in that while The Commander is supposed only to have sex with her during The Ceremony (with his own wife present as a witness (lying underneath the handmaiden as the commander labors over her to try and bring on labor nine months hence), he wants Offred much more than this, and bribes her with illicit materials such as magazines, cosmetics, and the chance to read.

The bizarre thing is that The Commander's wife, Serena Joy, is also plying Offred with inducements to get pregnant by encouraging her to have sex with The Commander's driver, Nick - so yes, it's quite literally a cluster-fuck, especially when The Commander's wife discovers Offred's extended relationship with The Commander, and Nick tells Offred that he can facilitate her escape - if she trusts him.

So it could have been a really great novel, but it failed because there was too much tedium between the interesting bits (and limited bits they were). Atwood is a great fan of telling; not so much with the showing. I can't recommend this. Go read Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman if you want a truly feminist PoV.