The Fifth Day of Christmas

Rating: WARTY!

So today we're looking at five books I've read in the last couple of months - or tried to anyway. Not a one of them pleased me! First up is:

Fairy Metal Thunder by JL Bryan

This started out well enough except that the idiot main character was clueless. He didn't seem to exist beyond his evidently unrequited yearning for another character, which not only made him creepy, it also made him very shallow frankly. And if that's all he is, it doesn't endear me to him at all. It was far too YA for my taste.

The story then abruptly switched from being a tale about a garage band to being one about fairies. At least the author had the guts to call 'em what they are instead of trying to hide their embarrassment under this pussy-footing chickenshit 'fae' euphemism. But the fairy world was boringly trope and less than thrilling. When this idiot main character, despite multiple warnings, stole magical fairy instruments for no apparent reason and without any establishment of any credible motive, it not only made no sense, but it also made him seem like a jerk, and a bigger loser than he already was. It was at that point that I just went off the story irretrievably and DNF'd it. I can't commend it based on what I read.

It Ain't Flat by Karl Beckstrand

I've had such mixed luck with this author that I think this is the last of his efforts that I shall try reading, and this was another failure. The book is ridiculously short, and appallingly formatted, since it went through the Amazon Kindle conversion process and ended up - predictably so, for anything that's not the plainest vanilla text - as kindling. Amazon sucks and so does its Kindle system which is yet another reason I will have nothing to do with those assholes.

As far as this "book" is concerned, all it was was a rhyming list of all the nations of the world - intended, supposedly, to be a way of memorizing them. Why anyone would want to do that, I do not know, but this isn't the best way to do it, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with flatness or otherwise of the globe and the formatting was so bad that it was barely readable, so I can't commend this - not even a little bit.

Wizard in a Witchy World by Jamie McFarlane

This Jim Butcher wannabe was far too trope for my taste and involved such a hail of antagonism and violence that it turned me off from the beginning. I'm no fan of Jim Butcher's wizard series by any stretch of the imagination, although I loved his Alera Furies pentalogy, so anything that smacks of that bullshit is a non-starter for me and this did! This idea of 'witch councils' and territories and so on just makes me laugh out loud. It's so tired, and so were the magical practices described here. And what the fuck is up with the idea that if you're a guy you're a wizard, but if you're female, you're a witch? I hated that genderist horseshit in Harry Potter, and it's no less detestable here. There's nothing new in this book, and it bored me. I DNF'd it in short order and I cannot commend it based on what I did read.

The Origins of Heartbreak by Cara Malone

This is the start of a loosely connected series of stand-alones called "Lakeside Hospital" which is nowhere near as bad as an actual series, but I still could not get with this, because the writing was really poor in a variety of ways.

The story is about a woman who is training to be a a paramedic and her lesbian crush who is training to be a doctor. I liked the idea of this which is what drew me in, but when I started seeing how poorly it was written I decided enough is enough. At one point, for example, I read: "...then she’d walk from the hospital to campus and spent the rest of the morning" Wrong verb tense: it needed 'Spend'. Next I came across this: "...but he died shortly thereafter...." Who talks like that? Nobody! Later, I read, "...dic-in-training would cross paths again, at least not until Megan stared her rotations...." 'Started' was needed there.

I don't think anyone knows better than I how a misspelled word or a bad grammar choice, or an oddball bizarre mistake can crop up in your text. When you're a one-person operation, it's easy, and I don't normally care about such mistakes, but when there is a high frequency, and a consistency to them, it makes me think the author doesn't care either, and I lose faith in them. Those issues were not the only ones though. I read, for example, when one character had a moment of vulnerability, the other character was trying to "...work up the courage to kiss Megan while they were sitting alone on that bench." Is the author having one of her two main characters seriously take advantage of a person in a moment of insecurity and weakness? That's really bad and very creepy and anti-romantic.

Another error arose from the author pushing her story so much that she apparently forgot it's supposed to be set in a real (if fictional) world where things are happening and time is passing. I read, "In the five minutes or so that they were alone together...." Now this five minutes was apparently all the time it took to do a complete autopsy in this fictional world! Sorry but no! A real autopsy tales an hour or so. Maybe a bit shorter, often longer, and there's no way in hell its going to get done in five minutes no matter how experienced the coroner is! This was seriously bad writing. Later I read, "After a few minutes, during which she noted gratefully that no tears were threatening to rise in her throat...." Nope. Tears come from tear ducts, not from the throat. Maybe something was coming from her throat: difficulty swallowing, dryness, something, but never tears. That's just sloppy writing.

So the problem with this was that I had the impression that the author was so intent upon getting these two characters into bed that she honestly didn't care how unrealistically she achieved that, and that she really wasn't interested much in creating a story around then or having them behave naturally, or having the romance arise organically from the relationship. That's why I DNF'd this and why I won't be reading any more of this author's work.

Magenta Mine by Janet Elizabeth Henderson

I am honestly at a loss as to how this novel ever got onto my reading list. Seriously. I began reading it and halted with a screech at four percent. The screech was from my mouth when I read this obnoxious part where Harry is quite literally harassing Magenta. There's no other word for it. She works, of course, in a lingerie shop despite this being - from what we've read of her character to that point - the very last place she'd ever work.

She's previously made it clear she has zero interest in him. Another woman, Harry's trusted business partner, has warned him off bugging her, yet he goes right into the store and starts trying to get her to date him despite having been rebuffed before. She clearly tells him no, and does it no less than four times. Then the idiot author has her hand Harry some lingerie to sort, "as long as he's there." Seriously? He takes a look at one of the thongs and says to Magenta, the girl who had just made it clear she wants nothing to do with him, "These would look good on you."

It's fucking obnoxious and this author needs to be thoroughly ashamed, if not thoroughly shamed for writing this abusive trash. I not only do not commend this, I actively condemn it.

Sleepwalking by Cara Malone

Rating: WARTY!

The blurb describes this as a novella, but at only 15,000 words, it's actually a novelette. For me, I'd call it a prologue and had I known that's all it was I would never have embarked upon it. I don't do prologues. It was only some sixty screens on my phone where I do most of my ebook reading, so it's a fast read, but that's usually not a good recommendation for me!

The problem with a story like this is that you know exactly how it's going to end, so what the author has to offer you is an interesting way to get there, and this author seemed like she was dedicatedly pursuing the most predictably plodding route she could map. On top of that, there were multiple grammatical and other problems. If the story had been enthralling, I would have not paid so much attention to them, but in so short a story, it bothered me that there were so many silly errors.

I read, for example, what's turning out to be an increasingly common goof in YA stories. One character had a "geometric deer skull tattooed on her bicep." Nope! It's biceps, unless the vperson seeing this has weird x-ray vision and could see through the skin to an actual bicep, which is one of two attachments that the biceps muscle has to the scapula. Each bicep joins to form the biceps which is the bulge we see when the arm is flexed.

Later I read, "Okay, fine. If that's your criteria." Criteria is a plural. In this case what was needed was the singular: 'criterion'. These two main characters are a senior college student and a college graduate, and both are English majors, so this ineptitude in employing the English language is not only inexcusable, it's laughable. Unfortunately, standards are definitely falling.

In another variety of problem, I read, "Morgan righted the coffee table and set the empty glass down..." This is the same empty glass that Morgan had already placed in the sink a few paragraphs before. Another such issue was when I read, "That's when the term 'bipolar' first came into their lives." Nope! Morgan mentions that term twice before, so it had already been in their lives prior to this!

Right after the bipolar, there was about three paragraphs where Morgan begins by taking out her phone and doing a search for something, and ends by closing her laptop! I want a phone that morphs effortlessly into a laptop! Again, really sloppy writing. This author takes no pride in her craft.

Later, I read, "Leah took her outstretched hand and it was like electricity was firing between their palms" Ri-ght.... Seriously? This sounded far too ridiculous even as a figure of speech. Further on, I read, "What was so special about Leah that it could make Morgan cast aside six years of happiness for an illicit kiss in a coffee shop?" Nope. Morgan had already said it had been some three years of relative bliss before things had begun to go downhill, so there was no such six years, and that certainly applies to their recent history. In fact, it's Morgan's miserable relationship that triggered her interest in Leah. It was like the author had repeated instances where she couldn't remember what she'd written just a short time before - either that or she simply didn't care about what she was writing, and if she doesn't, why the hell should I?

Anyone can make a goof-up or even several, but when there are so many in such a short space in a story that's already dropping below being so-so, it's too many for me. But let's look at the quality of the story itself rather than the actual text it was written in. The first of the two main characters is college senior Leah McAllister, who is apparently pursuing an English degree, but has no clue what she will do with it once she graduates. This doesn't make her look too smart.

I mean, she's had three years of college already, yet not once in those years has she really had any inspiration about what she'll do after her senior year or, given she has no idea, why she's still doggedly pursuing this English major instead of trying something new and of more utility to her. This doesn't make her at all appealing to me as someone I want to read about unless something truly weird and wonderful is going to happen, and I don't include falling in lust in such a list. This is also a problem with this story - as so often happens in these 'romance' tales. The author badly confuses lust with love and it makes the story shallow, stupid, and unappealing.

Further rendering Leah stupid is her ridiculous and persistent denial that she's at least bisexual and more likely, an out-and-not-out lesbian. If she were in high-school, this confusion over her sexual leaning might be understandable, and even as a college freshman you can probably get away with it, but as a senior after three years or more of college? No. I don't buy it this at all, especially when virtually the first thing she does in this story is have a totally random hookup with a female named Christy, who is pretty much a complete stranger, in an alley behind a bar. I mean, seriously?

Leah allows Christy to digitally bring her to an orgasm - apparently the most powerful she's ever had - and afterwards the two part and never see each other again (not in this prolog anyway), and Leah is still having doubts? She's a frigging moron, period! And worse, she exhibits zero capacity to learn and no smarts about delving into a potential partner's sexual history before engaging in sex with them. Christy doesn't even wash her hands before taking her out into the alley and fingering her for fuck's sake!

Morgan, the other main character is in her mid-twenties and has been in a relationship for six years with this girl Ali, with whom she lives. Ali is undiagnosed bipolar sufferer - as far as Morgan can tell from scrolling on her morphing phone. Apparently she's tried to talk Ali into getting medical help but Ali reacts badly to that, yet not once has Morgan thrown down the gauntlet and said let's get help before we break up this relationship for good, nor has she suggested couples therapy so she shares that burden with Ali.

It's like Ali's sole purpose in this story is to be an albatross around Morgan's neck; an artificial impediment to her getting it on with Leah right from the off. Or getting off with Leah right from the on! LOL! Despite Morgan supposedly caring for Ali, she doesn't authentically behave at all like she cares. She never tries to sit and talk with Ali or to discuss this situation to maybe figure out what changed or how - like did something in their environment cause this change? Was it something in her diet?? Is it age related or tied to some past viral infection? She considers none of this. Her entire effort seems to be repeatedly looking up the online definition of bipolar and then closing her laptop that used to be a phone. It's pathetic. She never has even considered going to her own doctor or to a support group to ask her how she can best approach dealing with Ali.

The worst thing about this relationship is that Ali had been (with Morgan's knowledge and cooperation) trying to get pregnant through implants. This despite that the last three years (as far as I can tell - the text is vague) not exactly being a bed of roses, and despite Morgan having this bipolar suspicion - which is especially relevant to any attempt to get pregnant and ought to have been raised with the implant doctor, but evidently wasn't. So Morgan is a moron too.

In short there were far too many issues, too little authenticity and a plethora of poor writing techniques and choices. I cannot commend this at all.

Cinders by Cara Malone

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum
“She leaned against the hood and worried at a hangnail on her pointy finger”
Surely she means 'pointer finger'?! This is why I have a problem with that term. OTOH, maybe she does have a pointy finger....

Well I made it almost 60% of the way through this before I had to run from it gagging. It started out pretty decently - a female firefighter, an arsonist, a love interest who wasn't yet a love interest but was quietly in the wings. Even when Marigold and Cynthia aka Cinder, aka Cyn, start to hook up, it still made for an entertaining story, although from that point on it became much more of a YA love story than ever it was an investigation into an arsonist. That I could even handle.

The problem came for me when the story made its nod and a wink to the Cinderella story. Marigold, who always complains about the amount of work she has to do, but all she seems to do is be a socialite, invites Cyn to a social event and Cyn comes dressed up, but gets called away to a fire. She changes shoes while talking to Mari in the parking area (for no apparent reason!), and accidentally leaves one of her loafers behind, which Mari then returns to her at the station house.

That part was fine, but as soon as these two began making out and going into a full blown sex session right there in the bunk room of the station house that was too much for me. It just felt wrong and sordid, and juvenile. If the author had made the fire alarm go off so they were interrupted when they began to make out, that for me would have made for a much more entertaining story! But this author went obvious on me and rather gross and immature as well, and that was far too much for my taste. That's when the romance felt fake and forced, like the author was faking it rather than feeling it, and I lost all interest.

I can't commend this based on the 60% or so that I read.