Bumbling Into Body Hair by Everett Maroon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky

Title: Gracefully Grayson
Author: Ami Polonsky
Publisher: Disney
Rating: WORTHY!

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

This is a novel which I decided would be fun to blog along with Bumbling Into Body hair by Everett Maroon. The two stories, one fiction (this one) and one factual, are like bookends to the entire spectrum of gender identity, which is a lot more complex than most people realize. Gender isn't black & white. It's not a binary thing, despite popular misconception. It's a sliding scale and there's no guarantee at conception where any of us will end up along it. Gender isn't a congenital disease, and to pretend that there's something bad, or abnormal, or immoral about people who end up outside the two most common ranges and behave as nature intended them to, is simply wrong, and that's all there is to it.

Bumbling Into Body Hair is a true story about a man who was born in a woman's body and underwent a painful, amusing, rewarding, and educational transition to 'normalize' himself. The fictional work reviewed here alongside this today is the opposite of this in many ways: it's about a young boy who identifies more as a female than ever he does as a male. I invite you to read both my reviews, which are tied together in some ways, but still very different, even though I rated both books worthy reading.

There's no sex in this novel which is a good thing, because it's not about sex, it's about gender identification - a different thing altogether. That's why I employ the term 'genderism' instead of the more common 'sexism'. It's not about sex. This novel is beautifully titled and just as beautifully written. It's really good, and I recommend it. That doesn't mean I didn't have an issue or two (I always do!).

Grayson is twelve, and has a secret life fantasizing about being dressed as a girl. He's so secretive that he even disguises his doodles (of princesses) as geometric shapes to avoid anyone learning of his predilection. One of my initial issues with this was that the novel never gets down to the nitty-gritty of exactly what is going on with Grayson. Grayson evidently isn't gay, but is he simply (simply, hah!) a transvestite, or is he truly a female in a male body? The two are not the same, but it didn't take me long (yah, I maybe slow, but I get there in the end!) to realize that this doesn't matter, because it's not about what he/she is, it's about his/her freedom to be whatever it is that he/she is, and the obstacles which society places squarely in the way of people who honestly try to inhabit themselves.

One reviewer pointed out that the author does nothing to answer this question or to help Grayson's case with her choice of personal pronouns, consistently employing the masculine form to refer to Grayson (from which I take my cue for this review), and the ending to the novel doesn't reveal anything either. In the final analysis (which I just did, with a report in triplicate, with lots of graphs and diagrams and complicated sums on my desk!) and in the end, that's just fine. I have to say I did wonder, at one point, if the author was going to bring-up Grayson's hidden history and reveal that he is intersexed and had a gender forced upon him by some mindless meddling medico, but this wasn't how it played out - at least not unless Polonsky has a sequel in mind which might be more forthcoming!

The isolation of Grayson is so great that he has no friends, not even amongst his siblings, which technically aren't his siblings since he's living with his aunt and uncle (his mom and dad died in a accident when he was four). He does end-up falling into a friendship with Amelia, a new girl in school, who is slightly overweight, and who ends up hanging out with Grayson almost by default. The two start to have fun and go on shopping trips together to the thrift store to buy clothes, but the one time Grayson bravely tries on a skirt, he's seen by Amelia, and that pretty much kills off their friendship. But that's not even the biggest event in his life so far.

Much more momentous is the staging of a play about Persephone, and Grayson reads for the female lead. The play's director, Mr Finnegan (about whom there are rumors), and who is universally known as Finn amongst teachers and students alike, allows this. Grayson so inhabits the role during his trial read that he's given the part. None of the other actors have any issues with this (apart from one temporary resentment) thereby showing what consummate professionals they are. I was thrilled by this aspect of the story, but of course, choices have consequences, and they come thick and fast now.

The real issue I had with the story is about this play. Grayson is thrilled to have the part, and has to suffer the slings and arrows attendant with it, including brutal bullying, but he never wavers because his eye is on the prize of being able to dress as a woman in public. The bulk of the novel is taken up with his anticipation of, and participation in, rehearsals. It fills so much of his life - and the story - that I was really let-down when none of the actual performance was included. Instead, all we got was what quite literally looked like the author's sketchy notes for the writing - a list without any elaboration, no talking, no lines read, no action, no reaction. The performance of the play was essentially skipped in its entirety. This play was so important to Grayson that I felt robbed of it, and cheated out of it.

In many regards, this story is a dedicated replica of the movie Shakespeare in Love which was brilliant. That, of course, featured rather the reverse of this: a woman posing as a boy - and a straight woman at that, and it included a tragic love story which would have been out of place here, but the point is that it all came together on the night, during the play, and it was truly magical. I was hoping for the same thing here, and I never got it. The play's the thing, but that doesn't mean I like to be played - or played with.

However, I'm willing to forgive that, and rate this highly because in all other respects it did exactly what it needed to do. It's an important story and well told, and I recommend it.

Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott

Title: Trouble and Her Friends
Author: Melissa Scott
Publisher: Tom Doherty
Rating: WORTHY!

India Carless, who used to go by the handle of 'Trouble' in her hacking days, is now retired and running the e-network for a group of artists. She's been forcibly retired: the heat became too much with a new law (the Evans-Tindale Act) aimed directly at cyber-crime, and it just wasn't worth the risk to her anymore. The only problem is, someone has begun using her handle and her code on the Nets and it's up to Trouble to uncover who it is before she goes down for the trouble the fake Trouble is creating.

Trouble walked out on her partner and lover, and her entire cyber life, when she retired, without a word to anyone, which has left bad blood between herself and Cerise, who has since become a cyber-cop for big business. Now this new trouble has caused both of them to seek the other out, Trouble to clear her name, Cerise to find who hacked her employer. Once again, they're a team.

Trouble has an illegal 'brain worm' installed in her head which allows her a much more sensual experience of the net. How this works, Scott shrinks from attempting to describe. It's just as well, because the idea is impractical. If the net doesn't support this (which it currently doesn't), then you would need some software installed which would translate signals from the net into sensations, and which would slow the whole thing down - a big no-no for a hacker.

Even in the future, when this novel is set, retrieving and processing data in this way would still be slower than ordinary text input. Trouble isn't a very practical hacker and doesn't behave like real hackers do, unless your idea of a hacker is that depicted in the movie of the same name (which I happened to really like). Scott does anticipate The Matrix with her writing, but no one in their right mind would have a brain worm implanted that could kill its owner if things went wrong, let alone upgrade it as Trouble does by going to her wet-work friend Michelina!

Another impracticality is that Scott turns cyberspace into a shopping mall, where you walk from place to place and meet people, and explore stores, but this, again, and for a hacker in particular is entirely ridiculous. When you "move" from web site A to web site B you don't actually move - you don't "walk" anywhere. It's almost instant - although sometimes it runs very slowly. This would be entirely impractical for a hacker since you would have to actually slow down your data input rate to represent it the way Scott does.

Those impracticalities aside, and forgiving her shameless lifting of some cyber ideas and terms ( such as Intrusion Countermeasures (Electronic) - IC(E) ) from other novels in the genre, I really loved this novel because it's so solid and real and practical overall. Yes, it's very dated now, but I didn't read this for the hi-tech. I read it for the relationships, which Scott does extremely well. She's very prescient and warm in her depictions, and the interaction between Trouble and Cerise was priceless. I love the kind of person India is, and how she and Cerise slide back into a relationship together. I like their joint hacking attempt at the end, despite how impractical (and impossibly slow!) it is.

I liked that fact that Seahaven was both a fictional place on the web, and a real place by the sea, in this novel, a place where hackers and geeks hang out. By having such a place, Scott is able to have Trouble move around in both virtual and real space.

I don't claim that this novel is brilliant. I don't actually require that a novel be brilliant. I don't even care if it has flaws. All I require is that it tells a story which engages me, in a language which speaks to me, and this one did very much. I've read many of Scott's novels, but none of them carried the same power that this one did, so if you like LGBTQ novels which have somewhere to go other than (or at least in addition to) the purely carnal, then this one might just drive your bus as nicely as it did mine.

The Best Boy Ever Made by Rachel Eliason

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liesmith by Alis Franklin

Title: Liesmith
Author: Alis Franklin
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!

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

This novel is about IT guy Sigmund, a somewhat overweight, rather nerdy geek who falls for Lain, your standard Norse god character - who actually is a Norse god. So good so far, but in the end I could not keep reading this and cannot recommend it based on the first ten chapters which is as far as I got before giving up.

My issues with it were several, not least of which was that it bored me. It wasn't so much that it was slowly going nowhere as it was that it didn't even look like it was going anywhere. The pacing was painfully slow, slow, slow, with nothing of real note happening for page after page.

Sigmund was a bit of a caricature of your standard nerd/geek. I know there are people like that, but in a novel I really want to read about someone who has at least something to recommend him (or her) and there was nothing here - nothing to make him stand out as someone I would like to get to know better. He quite literally was a cliché, which did not make him attractive to me. This effect was deepened by the fact that he was so unmotivated and so backward for someone who is supposed to be smart.

I get that people can be genuinely conflicted about sexuality, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. It's normal for most people regardless of what gender or orientation they feel they have or might have. The problem with Sigmund was that he was so utterly clueless that I honestly started wondering how on Earth he'd managed to live this long, let alone get through college, and secure and hold down a job. That doesn't make him appealing at all, especially since he doesn't even seem to be moving towards a change after around a third of the novel has gone by.

That's actually not even the most problematical part of this novel. The problem is Lain, the love interest. And yes, I get that he has gorgeously glowing golden/copper hair. Enough already! To begin with, it's not even remotely apparent why Lain - who also is the head of the very corporation for which Sigmund works in the IT department - has chosen to "go undercover" as the new guy in IT, with whom Sigmund happens to be buddied, and it doesn't become apparent at least one third the way through. Enough with the mystery - I want to learn at least something about motive or agenda by this point.

I kept expecting something to happen, or some revelation to pop up, but nothing actually did. Not in ten chapters. The two main characters slow-danced around each other without touching and with neither seeming to have any purpose, drive, or direction. It was like they hardly even registered on each other's radar despite being buddied together. Ponderous!

It was really hard for me to see why Lain would even do this. In the first ten chapters there were really no hints. I kept waiting for his inner god to show, and to reveal some purpose for his elaborate deception of Sigmund, but things seemed far more likely to expire than transpire. I saw no purpose to him impersonating an IT guy or why he would facilitate partnering Sigmund on the annual corporate camping trip either - where again nothing happened other than that the two of them got lost briefly. Lain's motives are completely obscure. He just hanging around and saying things like "Sounds fun!" when he's asked to go to the coffee shop. Sounds fun? Honestly? A trip for a cup of coffee is his idea of a riotous time? It was at that point where I quit, because it wasn't fun, nor did this novel feel to me like it ever would be.

Selume Proferre by EE Ottoman

Title: Selume Proferre
Author: EE Ottoman
Publisher: Less Than Three 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. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!

Erratum:
p16 "...t-shirt with a button-up shirt open over it a much-worn leather jacket over that and her black cowboy hat firmly on her head." was really hard to read on first pass. It needs some commas. I'd have written it: "...t-shirt with a button-up shirt open over it, a much-worn leather jacket over that, and her black cowboy hat firmly on her head."
p23 "I think you're logic is faulty." should be "I think your logic is faulty."
p23 "While some geeks wear sweater vest..." should be "While some geeks wear sweater vests..."
p40 "The house they finally pulled up to was huge, white, and new-looking, surrounded by a gate." doesn't sound right. Maybe, "The house they finally pulled up to was huge, white, and new-looking, surrounded by a gate and a fence." or "...a gated fence"?
p41 "...as if for conformation..." should be "...as if for confirmation..."
(EE ottoman, I volunteer to be a beta reader any time you need one!)

I am not a Latin student by any means although I did do a couple of years of it in high school. The title, if it's intended to be a Latin phrase, is wrong. I think it should be Se Lumen Proferre which means roughly, "Allow illumination to prevail" or "to be brought out" - or tritely, "Let there be light" (although the Biblical version of that is actually Fiat lux).

And now to the novel itself! An-An Li-Johnson is not only a mouthful of a name, it's an intriguing character which may or may not be modeled on the author, who if anyone does, has the proverbial 300 watt smile. An-An is a lesbian who works part time at a book store (cool name of 'Bookfall', and who also temps as a scribe at a spell-craft firm called Simon and Davidson which is about to embark upon an exorcism. If that doesn't grab you for a starter, nothing will!

I should say right up front (if you can call four paragraphs in "right up front"!) that I flatly do not believe in demons and angels, gods and devils, etc (and you can include ghosts, flying saucers, and the Loch Ness monster in there, too! I wrote a novel about the Loch Ness "monster" myself, so I can't pretend to be completely disgusted with this!).

I can't get with the ludicrous ritual - the power of chalk? The so-called 'holy' water, the Latin incantations! Why is Latin supposedly a language of power - really?! I do, however, recognize that these tropes are required in this kind of a novel, and I do love a good story about these things: and this one was definitely a good story.

An-An is called in to work with MC Anderson (no, that's not a DJ!), a senior employee at S&D, who's in charge of the upcoming exorcism. She's supposedly difficult to work with, which is how An-An ended up hired for the job, but An-An doesn't view MC that way. And so it begins, both the exorcism and the wonderful, dancing interplay between 'acolyte' and 'master'....

I have to say I fell in love (in a nice, manly, platonic way, of course!) with MC as soon as I learned that she watches Doctor Who and Mythbusters! Hopefully she's a bit more satisfied with this season's Doctor Who than I've been (although it did pick up commendably in episode three). I loved An-An, too, although I found her name a bit annoying. Sorry! But kudos to the author for stepping well outside pathetic YA socio-normative tedium to deliver something very different and powerful. I loved this novel!

I also have to say I had a concern about the guns which the security guards were so readily brandishing - did they really think they could shoot a demon? From a writing perspective, the guns themselves weren't the issue; that MC said nothing about them was what bothered me. A word would have been nice.

Note that this novel/novella/novelette/short story (I didn't count the words, I just read them as they went by!) is really, really short - fifty pages or so, so it's a very fast and engaging read. In fact, go read it now. I'll wait. Take your time.