The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M Danforth

Title: The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Author: Emily M Danforth
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WORTHY!

In other reviews where I've railed against the use of first person PoV, I've always said that once in a while it works, because the writer knows what she's doing and can carry it off. This is one of those rare and welcome exceptions. I'm not saying that it couldn't have been done in third person. It could, but whether that would have been a different novel or pretty much the same, we'll never know. Just let me leave it here: that I'm grateful that this writer didn't screw-up a great story like this one turned out to be.

The other trick to successful novel-writing (aside from figuring out how to get the word out about your own effort when you've chosen not to sell-out your work to the mega-bucks of Big Publishing™) is how to grab your readers on page one. Unless you're a comfortably established writer, you usually cannot afford the risk of asking them to bear with you for a page or two, much less a chapter or two. You have to corral them fiercely on page one, and Emily Danforth did that with a vengeance with me. I don't know what it was. I wish I knew, but she did it and I was hooked.

A quick note on the cover: it has nothing to do with the novel, but this isn't the author's fault. It's one of those Big Publishing™ covers where the artist evidently either never read the novel, or simply didn't have any interest in truly representing it with any degree of industriousness or integrity. Don't judge this (or any book) by the cover. Judge it by the brilliance of the interior. On that score, also please note that this YA novel has mild drug and alcohol use, moderately explicit sexual situations, and bad language. It doesn't bother me because that's how people actually are, but it may bother those who like their stories sanitized.

Cameron Post is your every-day young teen on the threshold of entering high-school, finding her way in the world, enjoying her summer, when there's this almost-accidental-but-perhaps-not kiss between her and her best friend Irene. Since Irene is leaving town that fall, it never really goes anywhere other than another peck or two, but even though Irene isn't sure what she really wants at that point and later evidently decides to travel a different path in life, along comes Lyndsey shortly afterwards. She's a fellow competitive swimmer, but at a different school. This new relationship goes somewhat further, but not much beyond second base.

Living in a small Montana town, and having lost her parents to a motor vehicle accident, Cameron, Cammie, Cam falls under the wing of her religiously-deluded aunt Ruth. Ruth isn't a bad person. She's rather nice and decent, and obviously cares for Cam, but she's been cruelly blinded by theistic zealotry and evidently isn't smart enough to see through it, so Cam has every reason to hide her predilections from everyone, particularly those who can harm her or who control her life at that point, and she does fine at this until along comes Coley Taylor.

Unlike With Irene and Lyndsey, Coley makes no overt moves, so Cam is never sure if what's going on is all in her own mind, or if there's something in Coley that wants to express itself to Cam on a very personal and intimate level. Coley has a boyfriend and she makes Cam get one - her best friend Jamie - for the school prom. It's at the prom where Jamie confronts Cam about her attraction to Coley. There's an minor altercation, tears, and then Jamie kisses Cam and she responds, but as this pseudo-relationship continues, she learns that she's not deluding herself about her orientation at least, or about where her heart and mind is at.

This is where things really start to move, because Coley isn't shy about experimentation even as she appears to be freaked out about what her true orientation might just be. And all around them, the cold, small, lonely, distant, religiously-warped town is watching. Salvation/Damnation is at hand, however, when Coley gets her own apartment so she doesn't have a forty mile commute to school each day from her parents' ranch, and the two plan to spend the evening there.

This novel wasn't all plain sailing. I know! Aren't I cruel to say not a word about what went on in that apartment that night?! You gotta get the book to find out. I promise you that if you like this kind of novel at all, then you'll likely love this particular work. One of the great things about a story like this is that it's truly my idea of a romance - not necessarily a gay one, but a romance between two people - the gender is irrelevant. This kind of novel is far, far better and more deeply romantic than almost any novel which actually bills itself as a romance.

But I digress. As I mentioned, I had a couple of issues, which were really varieties of the same issue when you get down to it. I was reading this on my smart phone because Apple is doing its damnedest to keep me from reading anything that I actually want to read on its iPad! Until I figured it out with some timely help from a good friend (thanks, LL!), the so-called ease-of-use corporation was making me work my tail off to creatively get around something which Apple claims is designed to facilitate creativity. Trust me they LIED! The smart phone, huge as the screen is, is still quite small. Even at 12cm by 7cm (~4.75in by ~2.75in), it's too small to read some things which authors include in their books, and from a writing perspective in this multi-device, multi-media era, this is worth keeping in mind.

In this case, the things were: a letter written by Jamie to Cam and left in her room, a post card sent by Lyndsey from Alaska, and a tri-fold church leaflet which plays a part about half-way through the story. These things were included in the book in the form of images. The post card was just large enough to be legible, but neither the letter nor the tri-fold were, and they didn't really lend themselves to enlarging by the old finger-split maneuver wither, which is normally a really cool thing to be able to do. The letter enlarged some, but the tri-fold not at all. The issue was that the author assumed that both of these would be readable, and so never reproduced the text in the body of the novel.

This is one case where you need something the size of a pad (I checked the images on an iPad and they look good and are quite legible), or you need the actual print book in order to get everything there is from this novel. I've noticed this "image problem" in other things I've read on my phone and I find myself wondering how these images would look in another format. I'm not in a position to check that, but it's a pity our technology isn't quite where it needs to be, even after all these years.

I digress. Again. As you will know from the blurb, things come crashing down - in an interesting way, too - and Cam is sentenced to the gulag - a Christian fundie school where she will serve two terms at least, getting a brief parole only for the hols.

Despite my love for this story and many of the characters, there were still parts of it which I felt lacked oomph, or which in one way or another betrayed a character, or which were not as I'd thought they'd be (and don't confuse that with what sometimes I felt they ought to have been!). I was surprised, for instance, that it took fifty percent of the novel for Cam to get inducted into the "de-gaying" school (or is that gay-bashing school?). I'd thought that would swing by much earlier. This isn't a problem as it turned out, because the first fifty percent of the novel was really engrossing for me. This erroneous idea was something which I'd evidently derived from the blurb, but which wasn't actually in there to begin with.

In contrast, the part where she was in the deluded Christian cult induction facility, which is where I was expecting fireworks and fun, or at least some determined subversion going on, turned out to be completely flat. This was where the oomph was lacking for me. It was, however, interesting, and I can understand (and I support - for what it's worth!) the author's decision not to paint this story in broad sloppy strokes of black and white. That was way smart, but for her to tame Cammie, to effectively neuter her in fact, at this point was wrong. I didn't like that the school got to preach medieval and clueless diatribes about the gay community without any honest push-back at all.

The author tried to get around this by portraying the teens at the school as 'normal teens', very much aware of what was going on and what was supposed to be going on. They were depicted as feisty, smart-mouthed, joking, making sly remarks about the program, smoking pot once in a while when they were not being observed, making friends, having fun, and so on. There was even one unexpected and fun instance of a night-time rebellious interaction.

This didn't get it done for me though, because what happened was that the author came across almost as though she approved of these programs (pogroms?!). I don't believe that she does so approve which was why I was so surprised that there was so much smug and arrogant preaching going on with so little corrective action in return, especially when these ignorant myths and blind platitudes are so easily exposed and refuted.

The worst character at the school was the co-director, Lydia. She was a control-freak who was very nearly the only person there who was actually in need of sustained psychoanalysis and perhaps medication. She wouldn't even let Cam take off her sweater at one point, for example. Cam was too hot in the room where she was in a one-on-one with Lydia, and there was nothing wrong at all with what she was doing, but Lydia forbade it because, she asserted, Cam was acting-out and being disruptive! Good Lawd A'mighty! I thoroughly detested Lydia. No one like that should ever be in charge of children or teens. Or anyone. Having said that, it sure would have been interesting to learn what her back-story was.

One major betrayal for me was Cameron, who starts out as a rebel, but one who flies under the radar. She presents to the world as "normal" - the "normal" her closed-mind community expects from its teens - but underneath, she was up to all kinds of things, and she was steadfastly and resolutely pursuing her natural impulses. I know that the fundie Christian lie is that homosexuality is not natural, but the truth is that it's found throughout nature, not just in humans, so yes, it's perfectly natural and normal. That doesn't mean everyone should be gay, just like it doesn't mean that no one should be gay. It's a part of nature like everything else out there, and pursued with integrity and compassion, it harms no one. Some people seriously need to internalize that.

To see Cam become so subdued then, was a betrayal of her very core, to me. It's not like she became brainwashed. The author commendably showed her as rejecting some aspects of what she was taught, even as she appreciated the value of some of the other things, but she offered no real resistance! In my opinion, this was out-of-keeping with what we'd been learning about her for fifty percent of the novel thus far! Worse than this, not one of the teens who were in this school showed any real push-back. It was like all of them passively accepted the school's deluded premise that they were indeed sinful, abnormal, deviant, broken children in need of fixing. This complete passivity was hard to take and it was unrealistic, especially since none of them were there voluntarily.

I've seen some reviewers negatively rate this novel for this very reason, but I think they're just as guilty of misrepresenting what happens as are some Christian readers who've accused the author of universally bad-mouthing the Christian community - again, something which never happens. Yes, there should have been more push-back, but no, there wasn't a complete absence of it. Yes, Christian cluelessness over the nature of homosexuality is inexcusable, but the author doesn't bad-mouth Christians per se.

Instead, the author tells it like it is - some black and white and a heck of a lot of grey. She should know, having actually grown-up in the town in which she sets this novel. She authentically portrays the ignorant and misguided attitude which some people - real people in the real world - do have about gays. The fact that one person or even one group worships a god for which there's no evidence whatsoever doesn't give that person or group any right at all to dictate to every other law-abiding citizen how they should live their personal life, what they should think and believe, or what their morality must be. Period. They are quite entitled to practice their religion. They're not entitled to try to force it upon others.

In the end, I can do no other than rate this highly, despite a misgiving or two here and there. It was beautifully written and for a debut novel (or even one way beyond debut for that matter), expertly done. I loved Cameron, Lindsey, Jane, and Adam, and despite some problems I had with Coley's behavior, I really liked her, too, and I wished we could have heard her story. I really thought that we would. I felt strongly that there was unresolved material between the two of them that needed exploring, but realistically, real life doesn't always have a happy ending or offer closure either!

Some reviewers, I note, have chided this for its ending, but I thought it was perfect. It was not your standard trope romantic finale, but despite that (or perhaps because of it) it was perfect; however, it does leave the way open for a sequel, and whether there is one to come or not, I would love to read it. I volunteer right now as a beta reader!

The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood by Diana McLellan

Title: The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood
Author: Diana McLellan
Publisher: Libertary Co.
Rating: WORTHY!

This book is a deeply-researched look at the sometimes very (and sometimes not so) private lives of actors, directors, producers, screen writers and others throughout the 20th century, but focused quite tightly on a limited few in any detail, with a host of other names drifting in and out as the years pass. I highly recommend it because it is full of information about events and activities which too many people may not realize were taking place - even as early as the first decade of last century.

The dramas unfold around a select few well-known names, such as Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, and Greta Garbo, all of whom were bisexual with a marked preference for female companionship, and around the people closely associated with them, some of whose names are not well known at all. This list includes Josephine Baker, Joan Crawford, Mercedes De Acosta, Dolores Del Rio, Eva Le Gallienne, Katharine Hepburn, Billie Holiday, Ona Munson, Alla Nazimova, Natacha Rambova, Barbara Stanwyck, and Lilyan Tashman. Men aren't absent either, with names like Douglas Fairbanks, Henry Fonda, Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Rudolph Valentino, and even John Wayne being dropped into the mix.

Don’t expect it to be a titillating detailed erotica-fest. It’s not. It tells, artfully, humorously, perspicaciously, and unashamedly of the lives of women and men who were free to live the life which felt perfectly natural to them in a time which was far more closed than is ours today. But note that those times were not always tightly-closed. Indeed, some periods were surprisingly (at least to me!) liberal, but overall, it was a roller-coaster during which the lives of these people were easier, then harder, then easier, but never as free of condemnation and as free to live as they are today. It all depended upon which way the wind was blowing and what religiously-motivated government legislation sought to hand-cuff (and not in a nice way!) people at any given time.

In the earliest part of the century, and through the twenties, things were quite liberal, but legislation came down, and it sent people into hiding or certainly into two lives: their public and their private. Thus arose what are known as "lavender marriages" where a lesbian and a gay guy would marry to present a 'normal' public persona, from behind the somewhat precarious safety of which, they could live their separate natural lives without so much worry.

But the novel is far more than just that. There are spy stories here, fear of communism, intrigue over jewelry (specifically that of which Marlene Dietrich came into possession. There are stories of physical and emotional cruelty, of nyphomaniacal behavior, of stage politics, and of manipulative "friends" such as Sasha Viertel, who controlled Greta Garbo almost like a glove puppet, and became her sole voice to the world for years. There are also images, which look a lot better on an iPad than they do on a smartphone!

The stories are funny and sad, scary and heart-warming, easy and brutal. There are stories of German-born Dietrich offering to shoot Hitler, and of winning the Medal of Honor, of Swedish-born Garbo leading-on men while seducing and then casting off women, of those two women refusing to acknowledge they'd ever met when in fact they'd been in a film together in which they'd shared scenes (and perhaps more?), of devotion to the stars from subordinates and underlings, of life-long romances and disastrous break-ups. There are hilarious observations both from personalities like Noel Coward and from the author herself, and scary stories of obsessive pursuits and seductions.

The amount of almost incestuous interaction and partner-swapping amongst these stars, activities which over time tie all of them together in one way or another is quite dizzying! It’s a warning in some ways, that power corrupts, but it’s also sobering to know that these people are no different from anyone else except in that they had the money and freedom to be able to live the life they chose (or in the case of Garbo, as she evidently decided at the end, to live the life she wasted!), but still managed to be unhappy and frustrated a lot of the time. In the end, money can’t buy you love! Who knew?!

The book is long and detailed, so you might want to keep it to hand and dip into it periodically, with a visit to some other book in between, but it is very readable and entertaining. One thing I found most peculiar in perusing this is how private these people managed to keep their real lives, in an era when revelations about them would have been truly sensational and ruinous. Contrast that with today, when leading that same kind of life causes few eyebrows to be raised, yet the media is more obsessed than ever with pursuing "scandal". How huge of a Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot is that?! And what more will we learn when Dietrich's secret papers are finally released in 2022? I recommend this history for anyone who's interested in having their mind opened as wide as their jaw might drop!

White Like She by Bob Fingerman

Title: White Like She
Author: Bob Fingerman
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Rating: WORTHY!

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

This is a black & white line-drawing graphic novel about Luther Joyce, a middle-aged black guy who happens to be working as a janitor at a nuclear power plant when there's an incident, and he's exposed to radiation. The clean-up crew erases all his employment records from the computer, and essentially flushes him down the toilet, but Luther doesn’t die. Now having no employment history, and looking like The Thing (with a curiously Dr Manhattan-style symbol on his forehead), he resorts to begging on the streets, but he has little success.

Due to a really fortunate series of events (for him) Luther finds himself with the opportunity to have his brain transplanted into the teenage white-girl's body, that of Louella Schwartz. After he's recovered (which takes a remarkably short time) he heads "home" to Lou's place with her ID in his purse - and has to deal with her parents, and her lesbian best friend.

This novel is warped, but it was warped in a way which really appealed to me. It was out there enough that despite the rather lackluster artwork, I got into this right away and read it right through, in one sitting. There's some so-called 'bonus' material at the end, evidently covering a different aspect of this same story, but I didn’t bother reading that, so I won't comment on it.

I liked this story and the characters. It was engrossing and had some interesting things to say. The artwork, as I mentioned before, was really curious to me. All of the females (I say 'all', but there were really only three, not counting Lou's mom) looked preferentially masculine, and I'm still wondering why that was. This is the only Fingerman I've read, so I can't tell if he just routinely draws women that way, or if he had some purpose in depicting them in this manner on this occasion. It was also interesting that he showed the main female character completely nude or semi nude on several occasions, but never her best friend - she always had something restricting the view of her more personal parts, rather like those wispy gauze pieces in renaissance paintings! Neither were any guys depicted in the same way Lou was. I have no idea why this was.

There's no reason at all why all women (or any one of them) needs to look outstandingly feminine, by any means. Real live women (as opposed to fictionalized women!), look all kinds of different ways, and there's nothing remarkable about that, so maybe this was a reflection of real life (as opposed to a comic book version of real life). Perhaps it was in protest against comics which 'feminize' women to extremes - as superhero comics typically do. Maybe it was some sort of "butch lesbian" representation or commentary, or maybe it just means that this writer/artist simply can’t draw (or hates to draw) female characters. I don’t know. I couldn’t get a good impression of why this was the way it was, so I guess I'll just have to wonder about it - and maybe that's what the author wanted!

But overall, I have to report that I really enjoyed this comic and found it intriguing and entertaining, so I recommend it.

Venus in Love by Tina Michele

Title: Venus in Love
Author: Tina Michele
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Rating: WARTY!

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

There was a prologue for this novel, which I skipped as I always do. I've never regretted not reading a prologue! If the author doesn’t deem it important enough to put right there in chapter one, it’s not important enough for me to expend time in reading it.

This novel is about Ainsley ("Lee") Rae Dencourt and Morgan Blake, and their "romance". Frankly I wasn't impressed by Lee right from the first page. At least she wasn't telling us this story in first person, for which I thank the author whole-heartedly, but the way that Lee comes off towards the bottom of the first page (which is actually page 16, not page one) of chapter one, she seems to me like she's irritatingly weak and needy.

Lee's father died eighteen months previously, so there's an understandable raw-ness to her feelings, but the way the narrative goes on about how he was always there for her, even when she rudely interrupted his meetings, and she was always seeking his advice, made her look like a really spineless, inconsiderate, and whiny brat! As I turned the page and saw that she then became angry at her father for his making her feel dependent, I sincerely I hoped she wasn't going to continue in this vain vein…! Unfortunately, she did.

When we meet her, Lee is heading to her favorite place in the world, which is the Louvre in Paris. In college, she met a girl whose name she never knew, and whom she simply thought of as Venus. This person is Morgan, and the two of them of course meet up later, but the meetings and interactions are so artificial and stilted that they were not even remotely natural and they were not entertaining, either. There's also a massive chasm between what we're told that the characters are feeling in this novel, and how they behave, and we’re offered nothing to explain why there's such a huge discrepancy.

It so happens that Lee's fantasy girl is employed at the Louvre, but instead of Lee seizing the moment and immediately going over to her to re-introduce herself as soon as she spots her, Lee hides behind a statue! It's nonsensical. Shortly after this, Lee once again proves how selfish and self-centered she is by using her privileged status as a gallery big-wig to talk a senior staff member at the museum into forcing Morgan to give her a tour.

Morgan is temporarily employed at the Louvre and is working on setting up an art exhibition, so Lee's selfishness and stupidity here drags Morgan away from something which is very important to her. That's the message I kept on getting - that it's all about Lee and her manipulative behavior, and the hell with Morgan's needs. By this point I really did not like Lee in the slightest. Morgan deserves better than someone who thinks that money can buy anyone and privilege can get you anything.

In contrast with that cynical perspective, we're also treated to the stupid perspective whereby, and despite the fact that both of them (we're repeatedly told, not shown) have flutter,s and weak knees, and throbbing hearts, they fail to pursue the relationship with any of the passion they purportedly feel! that night! We keep on having it drilled into us what passion they have for each other, but they never pursue it! Instead, they go to dinner together the next evening and though they kiss, they still take it no further.

The next night is the opening of the exhibition, and the two are supposed to attend together, but Lee finds a way to screw even that up for Morgan. Lee's mom becomes ill, and even though her mom is nowhere near at death's door, Lee immediately charters a private jet and goes home. Never once does she make any effort whatsoever to contact poor Morgan and tell her what’s happened, or to leave her a message. The two of them are also apparently phone-shy in the extreme, because they evidently don't trade phone numbers. Morgan never even got Lee's last name. This was way too artificial for me.

Once back in the US, Lee discovers that her mom has decided to retire from running the Dencourt gallery, so Lee is put in charge, and she cooks up a scheme to get Morgan working there - again manipulating her without even trying to talk to her. Their whole interaction is completely brain-dead.

This wasn't even the worst part, believe it or not. Never once during their entire interaction during the portion which I read, was there any indication of any real feeling here or the remotest hint of developing respect and consideration for one another. The entire relationship was nothing but pure, unadulterated adolescent lust. That's all we got. If the novel had been about domination, then it would have fit the bill a lot better, because nothing here spoke of love at all. It wasn't a friendship. Friends do not treat people like Lee treated Morgan. It wasn't even erotic - it was just trivial, artificial, and ultimately boring.

So after some seventy pages of this novel I couldn't help but conclude that it was thoroughly ridiculous, with patently phony scenarios set-up to create fake excuses in place of naturally developed tension. It was entirely unrealistic, and what we got wasn't at all well done. Most of the writing was conversation or long expository paragraphs. There was no real attempt to create any kind of atmosphere or warmth, or chemistry between the characters.

Neither was there any attempt to create any sense of place and life. This began in Paris, and it was centered around art, but there was no feeling of atmosphere, of an exotic locale, or of scents, or sounds or joie de vivre. Despite the art premise for the story, even the art was given short shrift. It felt far more like stage props, literally littered around the place to fake a background than ever it did real live art.

I honestly cannot recommend this novel. Morgan deserved better and so did the readers.

Season's Meetings by Amy Dunne

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.