Last Shot by Eve Gaddy

Title: Last Shot
Author: Eve Gaddy
Publisher: Belle Books
Rating: WARTY!

This author got on my good side in only the second paragraph when she wrote: "Brown hair, so dark it was almost black.". If you've read my reviews you'll realize that at times I've taken an author to task for writing something dumb like "black hair so black it was almost blue". It was nice not to see that here, but the novel still packed an awful lot of clichés and sadly formulaic writing, not least of which was the title. Last Shot? Barnes and Noble has three web pages of titles just like this, but I can't rate this positively because its biggest problem was positioning itself as a murder mystery when it's really just a tawdry romance.

I thought this was to be a murder mystery from the blurb, even as I realized that there would be romance "... and no matter how hot he is, she's not interested." I knew that was an outright lie! Della is obsessed with Studly Do-Right's body from the start - not his personality, not his integrity, not his decency, not his warmth, not his friendship, not his reliability, but his body from minute one, and she never lets it go, not for a minute. if a guy had been written with this same one-track mindset, the author would rightly have been pilloried for objectifying women. How is it any different here?

She's obsessing on his body non-stop despite witnessing a close friend get shot. Even when stud-muffin Nick is lying in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound after saving her life, she can't get her mind onto anything but his body. In short, Della Rose disgusted me every bit as much as a male character would if he were obsessing on a female in this same way, so why does Della get a bye for objectifying a guy? What, sauce for the goose is saucy for the gander? Is that it? I don't subscribe to that.

What makes this truly sad is that Della was an interesting character and this was a good set-up for a story. She's a single mom with a past. Her boss is shot. No one knows why. The Sheriff is dishonest, her only hope is a burned-out cop? How cool could that have been had it been handled properly, i.e. not put under the cookie cutter of trope romance?

Even her attraction to Nick wouldn't have been so bad had we not been treated to repeated descriptions of Nick's "beautifully rippling muscles" which really cheapened the story for me immensely. Can we not have a story about ordinary people? Do we have to dwell on buff carnality - which quite frankly destroys the artistry of romance with the caustic paint stripper of lust? I wish more authors would make the effort to grasp the crucial differences between the two. I could have liked Della and rooted for her, but after three chapters of her monotonously boundless lust, I was truly nauseated.

It only got worse when I realized that Eve Gaddy is yet another writer who doesn't know the difference between 'staunch' and 'stanch'. For me personally, I'm a staunch supporter of those who stanch blood running from open wounds. Too many writers are not!

I made it to page 75 in this story and it was just too boring and predictable to stay with it. There was nothing interesting going on, and the author was far more interested in rambling on and tediously on and endlessly on about how hot Della thought Nick looked and how hot he thought she looked. There was no mystery here, no thrills, no adventure, no danger. It was boring. I can't recommend this novel.

I have to issue a final warning on this, too. While this novel read fine in Adobe Digital Editions, and also in my Kindle, on my iPad, the novel read backwards. I am not kidding. It started on page 234 (or whatever the last page was - I forget), and to read it you had to swipe backwards to progress forwards through the novel, watching the page count go down instead of up! It was weird. I've never seen a novel do that before. I even downloaded it afresh, thinking it was just a bad download, but it wasn't. The iPad edition is screwed up.

Chiro by Hyekyung Baek

Title: Chiro
Author: Hyekyung Baek (no website found)
Publisher: NETCOMICS
Rating: WARTY!

This is one of the most boring graphic novels I've ever read. It;s done in that really annoying Japanese manga style, but I was willing to put up with it for a good story. Unfortunately, that never came. Instead I got mindless school girl antics which consisted exclusively of an obsession with clothes and boys. The main character is the vacuous Eun-Yo Song whose sole traits are beauty and popularity, because you know girls have nothing else to offer, right? Excuse me, I need to change my barf bag.

Evidently every boy in creation loves her except one, and of course that's the one she wants. What a startlingly original plot! I must remember to steal it for my next novel because it's never been done before. So what's her plan to get Chan-Gyeong? Does she plan on getting to know him, finding out his interests and seeing if they have anything in common? Nope. This genius's plan is to emulate rock star Nan Lee, who Eun-Yo purports to hate, and by this means win the boy who hitherto has shown zero interest in a girl whose sole claim to fame is her claim to fame. Brilliant! How can it fail?

While the art work wasn't bad, except that it was Japanese manga-style with giant eyes, and pointy noses and chins which I detest, the writing was of a level that suggested to me that it had been thrown together by a thirteen-year-old who had never been out of the house except to go to school, who had never seen any movie other than chick-click romance movies, who had read nothing other than romance books and fashion magazines. In other words, she's not interesting at all and neither is what she writes.

And neither was this. I couldn't even read it after the first couple of dozen pages when I saw where it was going and I realized that it never was coming back. I can't recommend this at all. Ah, that's the pharmacy calling with my renewed promethezine script. I'll be right back after these dosages.

The Australian by Lesley Young

Title: The Australian
Author: Lesley Young
Publisher: LAY Books (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with The Australian by Diana Palmer (BN has 494 pages of books with 'Australian' in the title!), this is one of a series titled "The ". Another one is "The Frenchman" and appears to feature the same guy in the cover! It's a romance novel and I need to warn you right up front that I was hoping for more than merely a romance novel because romance novels to me are unappealing. They really have nothing to do with romance and everything to do with some wiltingly weak female with little self control (or self respect for that matter) being overpowered by Mr Macho. To me, that's not a story, it's author wish-fulfillment and/or pure fantasy. I can neither like nor respect any novel which depicts women as nothing more than men's toys.

I thought and hoped that this one would be different because of the undercover (and not under those covers!) aspects of it, but in the end it turned out to be precisely what I feared it would be. In the story, Charlie Sykes is a young American woman who flees Florida in the wake of her mother's death from drugs, and heads to Australia on a whim. She seems to have had an inexplicably easy time in moving there and finding herself eligible for work. In the European Union you can jump from one country to another job-hunting as though you never left your home nation, but moving from one nation to another where there are no such international ties is not usually as easy as it's depicted here!

Charlie is looking for work and unexpectedly finds a $50,000 (Australian dollars = approximately $37,000 US) job dropped into her lap. She accepts this job despite being ogled and inappropriately treated by the boss, a international hotelier who is grossly misnamed as Mr Knight. His behavior is far from chivalrous, which makes me question Charlie's mentality when she accepts. Yes, she's desperate for a job, but seriously? She does lay down the law, but the very fact that she has to, ought to tell any self-respecting woman who has any integrity at all that this is not the place she needs to be working. It certainly isn't a romantic first meeting. But I was willing, for the sake of a good story, to let that one slide.

I love reading novels set in Australia. I've read some bad ones, but mostly my experience with Australian writers/stories has been positive. Unfortunately I was also a bit dissuaded from this novel by the fact that it was first person PoV, which is the worst voice for a novel, and by the trope romantic male depicted in Jace Knight. Yes, Jace. He was tall, manly, chiseled, etc, etc. Yawn. At least he didn't have blue eyes with gold flecks in them, but that was about the only trope button which wasn't pressed here.

I found myself asking, once again, why romance writers seem so utterly and irremediably incapable of breaking away from the herd and coming up with something new, and out of the ordinary? Do they really think so little of their female readership that they believe those readers are sheep, incapable of traversing new terrain, unable to follow that road less traveled? I hope the readers aren't like that. I hope the writers do not view their readers with such disdain.

What initially kept me reading was that I was intrigued by Charlie. She's not your usual romantic female in one regard at least. She's slightly dysfunctional and socially inept - borderline Asperger’s or something, so I warmed to her quickly, but my empathy for her which had been built-up in the first chapter began to wane significantly when Charlie started in on the wilting violet routine as soon as she was in Jace's presence. This did not augur well for a really good story. It did augur well if you like uninventive clichéd romances.

I had been hoping for something better this time. I had dared to hope for a real story. Would I get one? Only reading-on would tell. I don't have a problem with romance, but when the entire story consists of nothing more than blushing, and attacks of the wilts and the vapors, there is no story. There is only one more limp female character and they are of no interest whatsoever to me. I like strong female characters: women who are smart, self-motivated, independent, and who can take men or leave them. Such women rarely appear in romance novels. It amazes me that they're still of interest to anyone in 2015. This isn't an historical romance, which would make antiquated 'rules' a little bit more acceptable; it's a modern story in a modern country, and my feeling is that we deserve better.

I don't have a problem with attraction between people, with a heart-beat speeding up, and bit of fluster here, and a blush there once in a while, with a few furtive glances. What I do have a problem with is when women are consistently represented as being the ones to whom this happens while the male characters are all macho and studly, and apparently feel nothing like that in return. I have a problem with women being depicted as inferior, lesser, and weaker.

I have a problem with stories which indicate that it's fine for women to be attracted to men who clearly have no respect for them, or who neglect, abuse or otherwise ill-treat them. I have a problem with novels depicting men as consistently strong and alpha, and women as weak and slavish. We all of us - men and women - deserve a whole hell of a lot better than that in 2015 and I hoped, by the time chapter three began, that this wouldn't be a novel like that. I wanted to like it, not despise it.

That said, there were also other issues. For instance, I don't get Charlie's obsession with how hot it was. She's from New York state which has a comparable temperature range with Sydney in the summer. Obviously they are in the opposite end of the year from we in the northern hemisphere, so if the transition took place in a New York winter it would be noticeable, but unless Sydney was suffering a major heat wave, it wouldn't be anything dramatically outside of the range Charlie was used to.

One thing which became annoying was Charlie's inability to employ contractions. For example, she would say "I hope you are right" Instead of saying, "I hope you're right". This seemed odd at first and became annoying quite quickly. She reminded me of Commander Data from the Star Trek: Next Generation TV series, and it made her seem far more robotic than ever it did human-but-dysfunctional. I would have liked her better without that.

At the point right before Charlie learns of the true identity of the improbably-named Sullivan Blaise, she panics over his behavior, thinking he's a psycho killer or something, and tries to flee her apartment, but he manhandles her to the bed, and the way this is described isn't done horrifically, which is how it would have been, but rather sexually. I didn't think that this was appropriate at all and I didn't appreciate the way it was described. I am not a fan of sanitizing violence in this way, much less of trying to make it titillating.

Obviously, I can't speak for women (I don't even play one on TV!), but my best guess is that most of them would not at all appreciate being grabbed, their mouth covered, and thrown face down on the bed under the weight of an attacker who towers a foot over their head. Even if they'd been role-playing it would be scary, but that's not what was going on here. It was at this point I really started to wonder if this author would win me back over to enjoying this novel and how, exactly, she planned on doing it.

Charlie requests more than once that Blaise leave, but he refuses. When she threatens to call the police he claims he owns the police. When she stands up he orders her to sit down. This guy is a complete jerk. Then he asks this woman (who has worked for Jace for a day or so) what she knows about him! You know, if he wanted her to spy, all he had to do was to meet with her professionally. This business of lying to her to get into her apartment and then physically restraining her is hardly the best way to go about recruiting someone who is inexplicably, but evidently vital to your operation, so he's not only a jerk, he's also an idiot!

She does have the presence of mind to demand he prove his identity to her, but all he does is show her a business card. That's hardly proof given that anyone can have a business card printed up showing anything they want on it. This jerk tells her: "Here's the thing, Charlie. I don't need your buy-in. And I don't give a shit about Interpol. You just need to do what I ask, when I ask. This is my show." Seriously? From the minute he man-handled Charlie I took a dislike to this guy. He then proceeds to blackmail her, threatening to throw her out of the country if she refuses to help.

The Charlie that I met in chapter one would have gone right ahead and said, "Go ahead and throw me out, and see if I care!", but this one cowers under the threat and gives in. I don't know this Charlie, and I don't like her either. Obviously she has to give in, in order for the story to proceed, but it seems to me the author might have gone about this in a better way - one which doesn't leave her main character looking weak and easily manipulated.

So without checking-up on Blaise to independently verify his story, Charlie takes him completely at face value, and agrees to do this spying job. She concludes, "It was fairly evident that Sullivan was who he said he was...." That's not a smart conclusion and again it seemed out of character given what we'd been told of Charlie so far.

The inevitable trope of getting any two of our three main characters undressed occurs when Jace offers Charlie an opportunity to learn how to swim. Apparently her school never taught this activity, but it does require a state of semi undress and physical proximity, so it will do. I figured that this was also where the requisite trope 'accidental' falling of female into male's arms would take place. And it did, exactly as I predicted.

Charlie gives us a detailed description of Jace's penis, ensconced as it was inside his swim trunks. She also describes herself. Again. Not only does she have an hourglass figure, she also has unusually smooth skin, lean legs, a flat stomach, and above average sized breasts. At this point I realized that Charlie really ought to have been named Mary Sue and asked myself yet again why it appears not even remotely possible to get a good story about regular people? Must they all be outstandingly beautiful, or studly, or curvaceous, or chiseled? Seriously? This is when despair set in.

Er no, Virginia - sorry, Charlie - hot water doesn't freeze more quickly than cold (not in that bald and simply-stated fashion at least). This is called the Mpemba effect. Water that has been boiled may well freeze quicker than un-boiled water (which has more air in it), but consider this: in order to reach freezing point, the hot water has to first cool down to the same temperature as the cooler water before it can then further cool down to freeze. How is it going to freeze more quickly when it first has to catch up? In some circumstances, it can, but there's a lot of issues and disagreements here so the bald claim is wrong. And no, water has neither memory nor consciousness. Now I not only dislike Charlie, I have zero respect for her intellect. I guess that just leaves the body, which is fine isn't it, because the body on the cover will match that perfectly? I mean, who needs a head (with a mind) when you can have any body?

The swimming lesson puts Charlie in her place finally - the subservient, submissive woman. Which man wouldn't want one of these toys in the closet, so they can pull it (not her) out, and play with it whenever they choose? It's said that men do not play with dolls, but they do. Those dolls are women like Charlie. Chapter six ends with the telling phrase, "...and his word was my command." It was at this point that I quit reading this novel. I cannot stand to read another novel which turns women into slaves and toys and dolls. I expected better from this and it was not delivering. I cannot in good faith recommend this novel. The liberation of women evidently still has a heck of a long way to go, I'm sorry to report.

World After by Susan Ee

Title: World After
Author: Susan Ee
Publisher: Amazon - Skyscape
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 enough reward aplenty!

Erratum:
On page 90 there’s an editorial note at the top of the page: “JARRING TEXT OF DIFFERENT SIZES]~~Ok as set - I'm guessing this shouldn't be there!

This is book two in the ‘Penryn & The End of Days’ series. I’m not a fan of series unless they’re done especially well, but I liked the first book, Angelfall which I reviewed in June, 2014, so I was quite pleased to have an opportunity to review the second. Unfortunately this sequel volume wasn't anywhere near as appealing. It felt like it was written by a different author. I could make it only half way through before I had to give up, having run out of Promethazine.

A big part of my nausea was caused by the first person PoV voice. It's far too self-important and self-obsessed unless it's done really well, and it was not done well here, not with this character, Penryn. You should read A Girl Called Al for an exemplary story in which this voice is used. Why authors - particularly YA authors - are so irremediably addicted to it is a complete and utter mystery to me, but I sincerely wish they would grow out of it.

The biggest problem with this novel is that it was boring. It went nowhere and offered nothing new - quite the contrary in fact since we were treated to a host of flashbacks via Penryn's magical video record and playback sword. I am not kidding you. Her angelic sword is a camcorder. It was bizarre, and I took to skipping entire sections which were nothing more than a rehash of book one, but told from the angel, Raffe's PoV. I care. Another filler employed here was 'Penryn dream world'. There was chapter after chapter offering nothing more than a simple recounting of Penryn's dreams, which were tedious. I took to skipping those, also. If these two things had been omitted the novel would probably have been only seventy-five percent the size it is.

Even when we weren't watching Sword Armchair Theater re-runs, or How Dream is My Valley, there was nothing of interest happening here, not for page after page after bleak page. The first seventy pages could have been half that long and still conveyed as much while saving precious trees. Penryn has literally come back from the dead courtesy of her friendly neighborhood angel Raffe, but life goes on as usual! Huh?

She now carries an angel sword, which only she can lift, but which she has no idea how to employ as a weapon. She’s been reunited with her slightly loopy mother and her kid sister Paige, but Paige is now some sort of zombie, having been experimented upon by the angels. She’s diminutive, yet very dangerous and threatening – like an attack dog, with her razor sharp teeth. Paige used to be a vegetarian, but now she’s hungry for meat, the raw and bloody kind, yet her sister sees nothing wrong with her, being devoted – so we’re told, not shown – to her mom and sister. Keep this in mind.

If you examine this story too closely, you'll realize it makes no sense, and in that it's not alone amongst angel stories. The reason for this is that most writers of angel stories have never actually read the Bible – or they've conveniently forgotten it or chosen to remember only tiny portions of it. They know neither what it is that angels do, nor what they’re actually there for. Essentially angels are errand boys. In naval terms, they would be an XO – an executive officer, carrying out the commands of the ship’s captain.

The problem with angel stories is that these characters are consistently depicted as soldiers fighting evil, a thing which they never were. They’re also uniformly endowed with wings. Typically these are white wings like swans have, but this is also a pure invention. They’re never described as having wings in the Bible. The winged ones are cherubim (the plural of cherub), but none of these YA writers ever talk about that! Cherub just doesn't quite carry the weight does it?

Now you recall where I told you that the author tells us how devoted Penryn is to her family? Well at one point, about eighty pages in, the community she’s with is attacked by the mutant scorpion creatures, first seen at the end of the previous volume. Flying mutant scorpion creatures which evidently buzz like bees. And have shaggy hair and lion’s teeth. And which drool and growl. Is there anything else with which we can lard them? No, I guess that’s all. Why these creatures are even needed is never revealed - at least not in the portion of this book I read. Maybe it was mentioned at the end of volume one, and I forgot.

Penryn’s young sister Paige – the one who is actually best equipped to fight enemies and to protect her family - runs off into the nearby forest. Her mom chases after Paige. Penryn, instead of automatically following them actually stands and debates whether she should stay with her family – the one to which she’s supposedly devoted - or run to the safety of the community and hide there. She chooses the latter. That was pretty much it for me. Penryn is not an heroic figure, not even mildly so. Please tell me, then, why I should care about her or root for her? I can't think of a single reason.

There’s a really oddball incident around page ninety after a scorpion attack where Penryn is trying to tell a doctor that these people who have been stung might not be dead. The Doctor is assuring her that if they don’t have a pulse they’re dead. This is in a world which has been devastated by an angelic insurgency, which has demons running around, and after an attack by mutant scorpion people, and this doctor thinks the old rules still apply? This is either bad writing, or this doctor is the biggest dick-head in history. As the comedian said (I forget this name, but it was probably Steven Wright): somewhere in the world is the world’s worst doctor. And you might have an appointment with him (or her!) tomorrow! I think we just met him.

The final straw, for me, came on page 142 where I read: “…three unarmed women surrounded by monsters…”. Why does it matter that they’re women? I have a real problem with what I can only view as misogyny, especially when it;s penned by a female writer. Is this really what we want to teach our young women - that if you're a woman you're somehow more threatened by these monsters than you would be if you were a guy? Because this is no different from telling girls that women are weak, that they're helpless, that they're prey in need of a guardian angel. It's pathetic, particularly from a female author, and I refuse to subscribe to abuses like that. I will not recommend this novel.

Ice kissed by Amanda Hocking

Title: Ice kissed
Author: Amanda Hocking
Publisher: MacMillan
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 enough reward aplenty!

Errata:
Page 11 “As we spoke, Mina pet the rabbit absently.” should be “As we spoke, Mina petted the rabbit absently.” or “As we spoke, Mina would pet the rabbit absently.”
Page 16 “…but we didn’t know where there were…” should be “…but we didn’t know where they were…”
Page 26 “…on the lowers shelves…” should be “…on the lower shelves…”
Page 104 “King Mikko refuses to undo his father changes…” should be “King Mikko refuses to undo his father’s changes…”

It was reading about Amanda Hocking’s experience that first got me into self-publishing. Of course I never for a moment expected (nor did I get!) the same success she has had, but when I began reviewing, I always thought it would be fun to review one of her books. My problem was that I never found one that I actually wanted to read until this one – and it’s in first person PoV! 1PoV is the voice I detest most for a variety of reasons, but it's not possible to find YA novels with a principal female character that isn't 1Pov these days. So anyway, there’s another strike against this novel. Given that the author tends to write romance disguised as fantasy, I was not confident I would even find this one to my liking, but I thought I’d give it a try. I’m sorry to say I wasn’t impressed.

Ice Kissed is book 2 in the Kanin Chronicles, consisting of Frostfire (which has to be one of the most over-used book titles ever!), Ice Kissed (a title which has nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the novel), and Crystal Kingdom. Note that I haven’t read book one in this series since it’s one more into which I came ‘in progress’ without realizing it was an ongoing series.

I think from this point onwards I’m going to simply assume that any YA book in which I may take an interest is part of an ongoing series because quite evidently no one in the entire YA world, it seems, can write a one-off any more. I’m not a fan of series because it’s just a lazy way to milk money from readers by expending no more effort than it takes to regurgitate essentially the same thing over and over (with a twist or two - if we’re lucky - to try to disguise the cookie-cutter marks). Either that or it involves merely padding a novel that should occupy one volume so that it stretches to two or three. I’m not into that.

In a story which seems to have been heavily painted with a Scandinavian brush, complete with snow (because without snow it would be neither complete nor Scandinavian, right?!) Bryn Aven is a “tracker”. I assume that this is explained in book one. I also assume it means just what it says – that she’s some sort of detective. It’s actually rather astounding, I find, how often ‘tracker’ is an actual occupation in fantasy fiction.

In book one Bryn had gone off searching for a missing queen and returned empty-handed. Why it was her job to find a queen missing from another country, I don't know. During that escapade, she and her tracking companion, Ridley, had become ‘romantically’ involved, so the first thing the writer of a trilogy has to do in book two is tear them apart. Here it’s done quite ham-fistedly by having Bryn keep something to herself – something she revealed only when questioned by the king. This allows Ridley to have a childish hissy-fit and treat Bryn like dirt so that she has to suck up to him like a whipped puppy because that’s Ya lot in life for female characters.

I have to say that my favorite character name is Bent Stum, which sounds like some sort of physical infirmity – and painful, too! Bryn hangs out with two girls named Tilda and Ember, both of whom behave as though they’re fifteen. Tilda has been impregnated by a fellow tracker and they’re planning on marrying. Bryn and Ridley are sleeping together and he’s her superior, which is completely inappropriate, yet neither of them think there’s any problem with this. So much for discipline in the ranks!

I have to say the writing quality left something to be desired – notably a good editor. I found several items of wrong word use or poor grammar, but to be fair, these were sometimes leavened by refreshingly correct constructs such as in the opening two sentences in chapter eighteen, where we read: “…took Kasper and me down…when Ridley and I had been…” But then we get odd sentences like “all kinds of books ranging from items of years to the latest novel…”. I don’t know what “items of years” means! Classics? Old tomes? Crappy looking?

In chapter thirty, we get this totally weird sentence; “The darkness of the water outside my window made it impossible to see if the sun had come up yet.” I have no idea whatsoever what that means; was she sleeping under water? In this novel that might be possible! Even if she meant something simple, like that the water wasn’t reflecting the sun yet, then surely the actual sky would give something away? Even if it was cloudy, the sky is routinely lighter in the daytime than at night (trust me on this), so the sentence was nonsensical. On page 170 we read this oddity: “Ilsa…opened the door with a quick knock…” which is actually intelligible, but awkward at best. Maybe the door wasn’t latched and sprung open when she knocked?!

By the time I was a third of the way through this novel, I had pretty much lost interest in it and began skimming rather than doing over-much detailed reading. The writing really isn’t very good, and by that I mean it’s nothing special: it’s not thrilling, it’s not particularly easy on the ears, and it really doesn’t grab the reader. It’s frankly a bit tedious.

On top of that, not a single one of the characters captured my interest, much less my imagination. There was no attempt at character building. Maybe that all got done in book one? There was nothing going on except for Bryn and some guy (Kasper, Ridley) traveling to one place or another, and back again. Bryn was never allowed out on her own (more on this anon), yet she’s supposed to be a strong female character. Pshaw! More interestingly, there never was another female accompanying her, so there was no female bonding notwithstanding her two friends and their wedding plans.

Bryn discovers Queen Linnea’s location through a psychic message which the queen sends her. They deliver her straight back to the very place from which she’d fled in fear of her safety. This made no sense. Bryn and Kasper are sent to guard her despite the kingdom having its own guards. How insulting is that? Bryn kills a guy who is apparently about to kill the king and the latter is arrested for treason – because he’s apparently plotting all of this himself (and faking the attempt on his life)! This is set in completely modern times in our own world (with SUVs and cell phones), yet the assassin uses a sword? It makes no sense.

Now for a bit more on how female characters are treated here. We’re told that the Queen has no say in her husband’s arrest because the two societies are patriarchal, with the laws applicable equally regardless of rank or position. No queen can rule of her own right, yet in this same society, they have female trackers and female officers How come there’s ‘emancipation’ in the military, but none in the nobility?! ? It makes no sense.

This diminution, if not infantilization, of females in this novel is further highlighted in an incident where Bryn is called to see the king, and Ridley protectively jumps up and tries to argue that he should go instead, since he’s her superior. But the fact is that the king summoned Bryn, no one else. Ridley’s behavior here is not only once again inappropriate (and insulting to the king!), it’s completely demeaning – like Bryn is no better than a weak child who needs protecting.

After the wedding, Bryn tries to talk to Ridley, and finds herself tongue-tied. This is supposedly a militarily trained tracker, supposedly a strong woman, who supposedly can act independently, and she’s completely lost for what to do? I don’t get why female authors, particularly those who write YA, so consistently and effectively neuter their main female characters like this. This is why I don’t read romance (not much anyway) and tend to find it distasteful when I do read it. Once in a while a worthy one comes along (which is why I read it once in a while!), but in general, it’s dreadful. What it says about women in how they're portrayed is unacceptable, but what really bothers me what it says about the readership these novels attract.

So why is Bryn summoned? We’re supposed to believe the Prince Kennet – now “acting king” came all the way from his own kingdom, leaving it at a time of trouble and uncertainty, to flirt with Bryn. Seriously? It was at this point that I really had had more than enough of this novel, but I read on to the end, which was, if you pay any attention at all to how the purported “villain” Konstantin is written about throughout this novel, entirely predictable, so no surprises there.

I cannot in good faith recommend a novel as lifeless and devoid of entertainment as this on is. For the passive misogyny alone I’d have to rate it negatively. I guess there’s a market for it if a publisher feels it can can offer a new author some two million dollars for four books, but no matter how inexplicably lucrative it might be for an author, I couldn’t write this stuff, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

The Academy: Introductions by CL Stone

Title: The Academy: Introductions
Author: CL Stone
Publisher: Arcato Publishing (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!

I recently took a decision to read no more YA novels with the word 'Academy' in the title and this book is the reason why - this and a score of other books with that word in the title which turned out to be truly, nay stupendously, bad. I except Vampire Academy from this list - I reviewed it favorably back in May of 2014 - but few if any others are worth my time!

This novel dived deeply into YA trope and cliché from the off, and it turned my stomach. The two main characters have ridiculous names to begin with: Kota (the guy!) and Sang (the girl). Sang runs away from home one dark and stormy night because her mother cares for her too much. I kind you not. Her mom keeps telling her stories of girls who were killed, or raped, or abducted because they were incautious, and so Sang impetuously and incautiously runs out late one evening to spend the night in a nearby empty house in the newly-built neighborhood they've moved to, just to prove she can do it.

She is knocked over be the neighbor's dog, and the neighbor - a nicely-muscled tall guy, of course - takes her not only into his house, but upstairs into his bedroom, has her put on his clothes because her own are wet, and then bathes her minuscule 'wounds'. Meanwhile, this supposedly tough, independent girl is having the wilts and the vapors just because his knee is close to her on the bed. I kid you not.

This novel is the very worst kind of YA trash and I ditched it at 9 percent in when this guy, who's pretty much man-handled her so far, puts his finger on her lips to shut her up. This is so trope-ridden as to be thoroughly disgusting and it's an insult to women everywhere. I recommend for anyone who's into binging and purging, because this garbage will make you throw up without question.

The Apollo Academy by Kimberly P Chase

Title: The Apollo Academy
Author: Kimberly P Chase
Publisher: Escape Publishing
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 enough reward aplenty!

Erratum:
Page 40 "...upmost importance..." should be "...utmost importance..."

I had a really good experience with Escape publishing ("A novel approach" lol! from Australia) with The Lost Souls Dating Agency, and although this one isn't by the same author, I had hoped that it would be written to the same much-appreciated standard. Unfortunately, it wasn't. If I'd known that the author's history was in writing the kind of novel which sports a shamefully objectified, naked-chested, body-shaved man on the front cover, I would never have picked this up in the first place.

I also have to admit a certain amount of reticence in voluntarily reading a novel with the word 'Academy' in the title! To me that's starting to feel like like nails on a chalk-board, so I was hoping this wasn't trope à la max. Unfortunately, it was. Given the main character's names are Aurora and Zane, we were already knee deep in trope - indeed, we literally have the A-Z of trope right there - and it didn't improve. The book runs to 246 pages but it starts on page ten (page one is the front cover!) and there's some advertising in back so it's not much more than 200 or so pages in practice.

This is one of those novels which has character names as chapter titles and bounces back and forth between them, but it's told in third person (many thanks to the author for that!), so I'm not sure what the deal was with the chapter titles. It does represent a huge give-away that this is going to be primarily a love story rather than the sci-fi action adventure which we were promised - and which was what I'd been hoping for. Somewhere in there is a chapter titled 'Sky' which was funny for a novel about flying. I'd assumed this was another female but it wasn't. I'd also hoped that this wasn't a love-triangle in the making. Having learned that Sky = guy, I became much more convinced that it was.

Aurora Titon is a pilot. She's also the heiress to some huge corporation. Not heir, heiress, so we're already stuffing her firmly into a gender-role pigeon-hole. She's been in training for the astronaut program for some time. We're told that she hopes to be the first female pilot ever to train as an astronaut in the exclusive Apollo Academy. Excuse me? The Academy has never had a female astronaut? I don't buy that. Is this the dark ages or the future? Aurora's best friend is Kaylana, also in the astronaut program and Aurora is of course, a spoiled-rotten rich kid, whereas Zane is the clichéd bad boy from the sticks, so this story was looking worse and worse the more paragraphs I waded through.

It deteriorated even further when Zane and Aurora first met on the dance floor of a club they both happened to be at. They inevitably bumped into each other, and Zane's only thought was how sexy she looked - not even how pretty (!), but how sexy! - so we have here yet another female author who's bringing objectification immediately into play and not even presenting it in a negative way, but in a way that makes it look hot and exciting, and appropriate! That's not acceptable.

In order to get into the academy, the trainees have to pass an initiation test! Yep, that's how juvenile this is. Their previous training evidently counts for nothing if they can't pass a one-time test designed solely to show that they can overcome fear. Fear of what? Well rumor has it the last group had to swim with sharks. I may be wrong, but I'm guessing you don't encounter many of those in space. This year's group has to sky-dive from 15,000 feet. Not much chance of that happening in space either. Space is where no one can hear you using a parachute.... Those who fail this lone, solitary test, no matter how good they are, are immediately cut from the trainee induction. I'm sorry, but at this point I'd given up on any hopes of getting a decent story and was reduced to itemizing how juvenile and dumb things were in this novel.

The biggest problem here though, was Aurora's almost kissing Zane and then speculating over what it would have been like. She has no idea who this guy is or where he's been, yet she's ready to mak on him at first sight - and not metaphorically, but practically?! She marvels at how "...he had truly seen the real her", yet we know his only thought was that she was sexy. Is that it? Is that the real her? Is that all she is? Nausea was creeping over me at this point and I'd read only 5% of the story!

This is supposed to be a "sexy new adult science fiction series', but unfortunately it appears to be written in such a way that makes it looks like it's aimed at middle-graders or young teens. The only concessions to sci-fi seem to be virtual reality eyeglasses (which we already have), a "techniwatch" (which we already have - and they're still just called 'a watch'), a "hoverbus" (which we already have if you think of it as a hover craft), and an astronaut training program which we've had for decades and which had the first woman in it in 1963! In other words, you could have set this story anywhere and anywhen, since it really has nothing whatsoever to do with sci-fi and everything to do with a really bad adolescent "love" story.

The author gushes that this the best book she ever wrote, which if true, is truly sad. I can't recommend it based upon what I could stand to read.

Charmed Deception by Eilis O'Neal

Title: Charmed Deception
Author: Eilis O'Neal
Publisher: Egmont
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 enough reward aplenty!

I started this one thinking I wouldn't be able to finish it - it seemed far too larded with trope and cliché to be appealing to a reader like me, but as I read on and despite the presence of rather too much cliché for my taste, I found myself initially warming to the story. Sadly, it was not to last. I was able to stomach only about half of this novel, and I'll tell you why.

The main character is young woman by the highly unlikely name of Sable Wildcross who lives a very pampered existence and sees nothing amiss with it. Her only problem is that in her world (actually in her country), only men are allowed to practice magic. Women used to be killed if they developed the 'resonance' and were caught employing it. As it is, now they're "only" imprisoned for life, but not many women seem to have this resonance - which is what they would feel were they men, and were in close proximity to their favored 'element'.

Yes, this is another novel where compounds and substances are mislabeled 'elements', and of course they're the standard clichéd four: earth, wind, fire, and water, with an added bonus of animals! How animals class as elements is unexplained - or at least it was as far as I read. There is one more resonance, however, and it's no spoiler that this is the one which Sable has. It wouldn't be a YA novel were it otherwise! Her resonance is that she can 'siphon-off' the magic of others and use it for whatever - in other words, if she siphons fire magic, she doesn't have to use it to control fire, she can instead control water with it.

Sable first learns she's special from Never - a girl who appears to her one night in her library and looks like a ghost, but who turns out to be a remote presence projected by a woman of Sable's age who is very much the same as Sable - having magic as her resonance. Sable first contacts her when she accidentally breaks her heart charm - a necklace she's worn for years, which supposedly gives her magic protection for her weak heart.

Given that this necklace was given to her by a magician from one of the lands where magic is freely practiced by both genders, it's no surprise to anyone but Sable that the guy who gave it to her knew of her condition, and supplied her with the necklace purely to protect her and keep her power hidden.

Every chapter ends in a bit of a cliff-hanger here, which is kind of fun, although some of them fall a bit flat. Despite the fact that it's a lengthy book (almost 450 pages) it's a very fast read. Sable has a best friend, Laurel, who doesn't know about her resonance, a nice guy named Mason who is her life-long friend - the resident good guy, and Lord Lockton, the resident bad guy, forming a nice trope triangle.

My immediate feeling - having read this far (~25%) - was that maybe Lockton was a good guy in disguise, and that the ghostly Never was actually a trap set up by the wizards who were supposedly holding her prisoner for a scheme of their own. I suspected that it’s Sable they want, and Never is a fiction used as bait. I'm not going to tell you if I was right about that, only that I'm usually wrong in my wild guesses - but not always!

Lockton didn't assume quite the role of 'bad boy' I'd initially thought. The 'bad boy', it turns out, is Reason Midnight. Yes, the names are profoundly stupid. Sable's dad's first name is "Venerable"! I am not making this up - the author is! The king's name is Dauntless, and no doubt there's a Prince Amity, a Princess Candor, and a Queen Abnegation.... Reason, as it happens, is the third leg of the inevitable YA trope love triangle

We're told that there's a level of excitement in the house at Reason's arrival, but this makes no sense. The character is merely the son of one of the guests at the house, and he's not considered a paragon of anything. He's juvenile, and he has neither accomplishments nor anything to recommend him, so there's no reason at all for anyone to be excited that he's coming.

The fact that the author, and through her, the main character, who is laughably babbling on about him in first person PoV, makes such a huge deal out of his visit tells me the character, if not the author, is way overdoing this visit, and therefore is a completely unreliable narrator, which in turn calls into question everything we've read so far. This is an example of rather short-sighted writing and poor editing.

The author has evidently forgotten that all of this isn't taking place in the Midnight household, but at the Wildcross home! There's no reason at all why that family should celebrate Reason's arrival as though someone of nobility or royalty is coming. If it were in the Midnight household, it would be rather different - although still excessive given how Lady Crescent speaks about him, but to have this non-event supposedly taking control of Sable's home and everyone in it is patently ridiculous and purest bullshit. The novel, which I'd been largely enjoying up to this point, took a serious hit because of this and made me wonder if this was the start of a lamentable downhill slide.

And downward slide it did. It was inevitable, when Sable decided to take a walk by herself rather than take a mid-day nap with everyone else, that she would go out into the grounds to walk, that she would go to the wildest most untamed part of the grounds, that she would run into Reason there, that Reason would be the trope YA male - with a woman's eyes (startlingly blue in this case, but with the clichéd super-thick lashes), a woman's full red lips, and that he would be well-dressed, and muscular.

I'm surprised his name wasn't Androgyne Midnight instead of 'Reason', because there wasn't any reason for him to be the way he was except that this is YA fiction and the author is cynically taking it the road most trampled by the herding instincts of desperate YA writers. I managed to refrain from vomiting only with extreme fortitude, but Sable's heart was less restrained: it began thudding at sad things like the proximity of Reason's magnificent knee. Pathetic.

Next out comes some appalling grammar: "You've air resonance aren't you?" she asks. What does that mean exactly? It means that author screwed up. It should be "You have air resonance, haven't you?" or "You're air resonant, aren't you?", but not a mix of both! Right after they've introduced themselves, part one ends. What this tells me is that this novel isn't about Sable at all, but about a magical super-hero, the manly man Reason Midnight. What a thorough and complete betrayal of the main character - and once again by a female author, too! Now, instead of being a strong woman, a rebel, and someone worth reading about, Sable is nothing more than an irritatingly swooning appendage of a male character, and I've lost all interest in this novel.

Reason turned out to be about as shallow as they come. These people have magic at their disposal, and yet Reason's only interests, in his own words, are: music, art, riding, picnics, the time to visit as many shops and tailors as he wishes, travel, dances, and young ladies. Not a single word about improving the quality of life for anyone. What a complete and total jerk.

Right after that we got the inevitable clichéd horse race between Sable and Reason which took place "scandalously" as the family went riding the next day. Yet no matter what Sable does, no matter how indiscreet, no matter how inappropriate, no matter how shameful in such a society, she's never censured, and she pays no penalty for her behavior no matter what it is! Meanwhile, Reason is snooping around Sable's home at night, but she doesn't have the guts to challenge him and when finally, accidentally, they encounter each other, Reason, and not Sable, takes charge and demands she tell him everything before he utters a word to her. Naturally this wilting violet acquiesces.

This was roughly half-way though this story, and by this time I'd had quite enough nonsense for one novel. I don't normally say anything about the cover of the books I review because this blog is about writing, not about cynically garnering sales, and the author typically has nothing to do with the cover unless they're smart enough to self publish, but in this case the cover was - accidentally, I'm sure - spot on. The novel and the cover are in sync in that they both advise us to pay no attention to this girl's mind - it's not important at all. Pay attention instead, we're obviously being told, only to her body because that's clearly all any woman has to offer.

There had been the makings of a great story here, but it was amateurishly, if not downright foolishly, frittered away on trashy YA clichés. I can't in all decency and honesty recommend this novel.

Edged Blade by JC Daniels

Title: Edged Blade
Author: JC Daniels
Publisher: Shiloh Walker
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 enough reward aplenty!

This is volume 4 in an ongoing series, but there was nothing in the blurb or on the cover to let potential readers know this, so here's yet another series which I came into in progress without having read any of the earlier volumes!

I'm not a fan of series because they're rarely done well and seem to me to be just a cynical way of milking money from hapless readers by means of a second-hand idea rather than making the effort to come up with something really new. This particular story smacked far more of authorial wish-fulfillment and fanfic than ever it did of anything which looked like it wanted to tell an original or interesting story.

Once in a while, an author can make a series work and work well, but more often than not we get something boring, and readers facilitate this by continuing to follow the series even when they really don't like it! I've seen reviewers rate a novel two stars and then announce in the same dismissive review that they cant wait to read the next one in the series! I don't get that mentality. I guess people do this because they just can't stand to leave something unfinished, or they absolutely have to know what happens next even if it's going to be boring or irritating! They become attached to unlikeable or dysfunctional characters because they know no better, or because they cannot adapt to a new genre or author. It's sad.

Some people might argue that it's inappropriate to write a review if you haven't followed the series, but I disagree. Usually series volumes come out once per year or even less frequently, so in addition to revisiting what's essentially the same story, the reader needs to revisit what's already happened either by means of written notes taken when reading the previous volume, or they must simply re-read said previous volume(s). The only other alternative is to rely on the author to give some back-story to help us out. This is a recipe for disaster if it's not done well. Otherwise the reader goes into the volume pretty much as blind as I did with this one!

Be warned that this author gives no back-story whatsoever here! We hit the ground running and there's no guidance at all as to recent events or any character history. It's just blandly assumed that readers have eidetic memory. The main character, Kit (appropriately named, as we shall see) is so shallow that she has only two things on her mind: fighting and sex. At least that's quite literally all that ever crossed her transom in the part that I read. I couldn't make up my mind if it was more boring than pathetic, or the other way around.

Kit isn't an appealing character at all. She lives in a world of shape-shifters, werewolves, and vampires, all of whom are evidently on such a hair-trigger that they're ready to tear out each other's throats in a heartbeat, yet they all happily romp off to a testosterone-slathered Halloween party? Seriously? In short, it's nothing more than the same clichéd quiche of a fantasy that we've read a baker's dozen times before.

Is it needless to say that Kit dresses like a hooker (she's supposed to be Tinkerbell!) and every single male figure at the party lusts after her and tells her she's beautiful? She in turn lusts after her erstwhile date, a were-cat predictably named Damon, who is predictably tall, and predictably strong, and predictably muscular, and predictably insanely protective of her. This is why she's named Kit - she's treated like a fragile kitten and the property of any male who is near enough to put his protective masculine arm around what surely must be her needy, frail, wilting, female body.

We're expected to believe she puts up with this patriarchal crap - indeed, is deemed to need it - even as she's so deadly that she kills a were-cat female effortlessly at this same party! Whiplash much? That particular female was also the property of a guy. All the clans: the witches, the vamps, the weres, live in packs and have an alpha male in control of them. This is not a book that's good for, or complimentary of, or complementary to women. It's a novel which for whatever reason has an inescapable need to categorize women firmly as secondary to, and hand-maidens of, men. I was turned off it at the party and I couldn't stand to read any more.

Whisper by Crystal Green

Title: Whisper
Author: Crystal Green
Publisher: Penguin
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 enough reward aplenty!

Whisper is a prequel which takes place before a subsequent volume titled Honey which I have not read. It's published next month. Whisper is very short: 39 pages which makes it rather like a prologue which I typically don't read. I had no idea this was the case, but since I did commit to writing an honest review, here goes! (Why would I write a dishonest one?!)

My first impression wasn't good. The text is very small with wide spaces between lines, making it hard to read, and I was reading it in Adobe Digital Editions on a full-sized screen. I'd hate to try this on my smart phone! The spacing of the lines suggests that 39 pages is an over-estimate of how long this is by about a third, maybe, were it printed in a normal font with regular spacing.

The story begins with Carley Rios receiving a text message on a new phone app called "TellTale". The TellTale messages can come from anywhere, but you can set the radius so that it limits which ones you see. Carley set hers for ten miles - when she lives in a tiny town she just moved to three months ago and where she knows almost no one. Why ten miles? It makes no sense!

The message states "I do anything to have Carley, but she doesn't know I exist". Carley is so clueless that despite the rather ominous wording, she thinks this is a secret admirer. This guy (who includes a background silhouette of himself and lives within ten miles of Carley) doesn't declare his love or admiration. He outright states he wants to have her. Whether that means he wants to own her or to have sex with her isn't clear, but either way it's inappropriate, not admiring.

Carley sends the 'admirer' a message on TellTale which includes a picture of her open bedroom door. She's dumb enough to think this will tell the guy that she's willing to step out of her comfort zone. It never occurs to her that it's telling him she wants to invite him into her bed - a guy she's never met who sends creepy texts and wants to meet her in dark, anonymous places.

Carley's biggest problem isn't taking stupid risks. It's that she's so shallow that she's incapable of having anything whatsoever running through her mind that isn't boys. Not even men, but boys, and it's pathetic. I can't recommend this and have no intention of reading Honey.

Big Girls Do It Better by Jasinda Wilder

Title: Big Girls Do It Better
Author: Jasinda Wilder
Publisher: Seth Clarke (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!

This author is supposed to have (according to her website) "...a penchant for titillating tales about sexy men and strong women" but none of that was evident in this novel, which was sad for me because I originally liked this idea: of a novel written for younger adults, but with a realistic female main character - i.e. instead of one who looks like a runway model and gets no boyfriends and thinks she's plain-looking, we get a realistic one who is plus-sized and thinks she's okay, and does get boyfriends. The problem for me began very early on when after her stint DJ-ing at a bar, main character Anna stops in a coffee bar and runs into (literally) a hot guy who asks if he can sit with her. This is Chase.

You;re right, of course! I should have known from the cover that this didn't have a hope in hell of actually offering any kind of a story, but I was so surprised by the appearance of a real woman on the cover as opposed to some anorexic teen-wannabe that I guess I just let my hopes trip up my reality again! Besides, this was part of a four-book (read: novella) set on sale at Amazon, and it looked like it might be a disaster or it might be really good reading, but the price made it worth taking a chance. The chance blew.

The story is about Anna and Chase - a curiously appropriate name for a stalker-ish guy. The book was part of a four-book set, but I didn't even finish the first and I'm certainly not going to read the others. The two talk for only a minute, and feeling shy, Anna quickly bolts for the door, but then it falls quickly apart and its true colors show.

As she's about to drive out of the parking lot, Chase wrenches open her car door, all but demands her phone number, and then kisses her without any pre-amble. I know this is meant to be dramatic and romantic, but in reality, it was really creepy and stalker-ish. It speaks badly of the integrity and decency of the guy - who is inevitably tall and muscular, of course - who would do a scary thing like this. It's something which, it seems to me, would freak-out any self-respecting woman, and it speaks badly of the mentality of a woman who would react to this behavior only in positive ways. I sincerely hoped at that point that this event wasn't going to set the tone for the whole story, but that hope was quickly dashed; it only went further downhill.

The guy shows up at the bar where Anna DJs, and he's dressed in leather pants and a T-shirt with no sleeves, showing off his heavily clichéd muscles and tats. He sings beautifully, of course. Indeed, there isn't a single thing wrong with this guy - except that he ogles her like she's meat, makes inappropriate remarks, and then he stalks her in back of the bar where she goes to take a quiet break between sets. She rewards this by going down on him.

What does it say about either of these people that they're having unprotected sex when they've "known" each other for a grand total of about ten minutes? It's not a love story. It's not a romance. It's adolescent lust! It's dumb-ass, unprotected sex, and not even in a place of comfort, warmth, and safety, but in the alley behind a bar next to the garbage skip! It's the least erotic erotica I've ever read.

And she's dumb enough that she's constantly unbelieving: "He can't want me! He can't find me attractive! He can't be drawn to me! O woe is me, maiden that I am!" How can she not be aware that there is a heck of a lot of guys will willingly have sex with pretty much any girl who's dumb enough to put out at the drop of a zipper? Dress size is immaterial because all they want is to get her out of the dress.

I'm sorry but that's the end of this story as far as I'm concerned. I not only cannot recommend it, but I actively dis-recommend it unless you enjoy print versions of porn movies under the absurd pretence that there's even so much as a story here, much less a romance.

Since You've Been Gone by Mary Jennifer Payne

Title: Since You've Been Gone
Author: Mary Jennifer Payne
Publisher: Dundurn
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 enough reward aplenty!

Since You've Been Gone isn't the wisest choice of title for a novel since it's so common. I counted twelve on BN, and the title doesn't really describe the novel very well. It's another first person PoV novel, which typically don't work for me, but in some cases the writer carries it and it does offer a rewarding read. In this case, I have to say that I became really intrigued by the very first sentence: "Today I punched Ranice James in the face." You can’t get a more alluring start to a novel than that! And by that I mean not to condone violence, but to point out that this sentence immediately forces questions into your brain: Who the heck is Ranice James? Why was this narrator punching her (or him)? And if this is all true, why is the narrator 'fessing up to us readers? And why am I asking you? (You can read that first chapter on the author's website - or could at the time of posting this review.

The problem was that it went downhill after that first sentence! We never did learn anything about Ranice James (not in the part of this novel which I read). The narrator clearly has anger management issues, but that's actually not the worst of her problems. She and mom are apparently on the run from a violent father and husband, and have a habit of changing address rather frequently. How they finance this is a mystery, particularly the last move, since it’s a huge change, all the way from Toronto to London. And it gets worse.

Edie's mom all-too-quickly finds work cleaning an office on the night shift, getting paid under the table, but then she vanishes without a trace - or almost without one. Instead of immediately going to the police, Edie decides to become a detective and partners up with the bad boy of the class. My stomach was turning at this point because of an overdose of cliché. The bad boy of the class, really? Why not take a few steps off the path most taken and have her partner with a geek or a goody-goody - just for a change? Why even assign her a male partner? Must every girl have a guy to validate her?

This - not the partnering up, but the failure to go to the police - was the first of many bad decisions Edie takes. I have no doubt that she will find her mom, but the story was so predictable at this point that it held no interest for me whatsoever, so I gave up on it and moved on - to something I hoped would be a lot more rewarding than this one promised to be.

A Star Called Lucky by Bapsy Jain

Title: A Star Called Lucky
Author: Bapsy Jain
Publisher: Vook, Inc.
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!

Erratum:
p49 "…before you insinuate me…" should be "…before you implicate me…"
p58 "Chater 4" should be "Chapter 4"

This novel is a sequel to Lucky Everyday which I have to say up front I have not read. It's yet another novel where I came into it unaware that it was a sequel either through my own inattention/forgetfulness or through poor descriptive prose in the novel's blurb, but as it happens, it seems that didn't require that you have to have read volume one in order to read this one.

The novel begins with about twelve pages of description titled "The Players" - all of which I skipped. I don’t do prologues of any kind and if the author is not up to incorporating these info-dumps into the text and in a much less intrusive manner, I'm not up to reading page after page of character descriptions. That just struck me as weird.

In addition to his, the typeface in my Adobe Digital Editions version was also not a pleasant one to read. All the lower case i's looked like number 1's. The word 'but' looked weird and made me keep thinking of 'butt' because of the way the 'u' and the 't' looked so similar at the peaks and seemed to run into each other! There were other weird-looking words. For example, 'home' looked like 'hotne', 'some' looks like 'sorne', and so on That's a relatively minor concern, but it does impact the reading experience.

The story is about Lucky Boyce, an employee of the department of corrections who is a shameless advocate of yoga as the solution to all our ills. I've done yoga and got nothing from it. It didn’t strike me as being as effective 9or anywhere near as much fun!) as pursuing your favorite sport, or as simply jogging or running a treadmill or something, but that's a personal preference.

This story began with Lucky visiting a prison where she acts as a yoga instructor, a position which has become increasingly threatened lately. Why it began this way, I don’t know. It could have begun equally well a few pages later where she boards the subway to ride downtown to her office, or later still when a politician comes to visit her. It’s not altogether clear what she does at work (she's an accountant) when she eventually gets there, either!

Lucky is very adept with her computer and a people-tracking application called 'Bloodhound' which can be employed to find someone via facial recognition, and which also incorporates a host of database and surveillance camera information to dig-up everything about the subject, but how fast she finds this stuff and how much she finds seemed rather improbable. Yes, if you had access to government records and a lot of time, I'm sure you could find a lot, but to pull down detailed data in quite literally a minute or two was too big of a stretch to me.

The author is wrong in claiming that the 1918 flu outbreak was the first epidemic. I think she's confused between the terms epidemic and pandemic, but even so, the first pandemic we’ve recorded wasn't in 1918 - it was at the end of the nineteenth century. The 1918 pandemic was virulent and deadly, however. Flu is nothing to sniff at!

A politician who's apparently obsessed with establishing universal health-care and purveying life-prolonging medicine to everyone adopts her as his side-kick in his quest to investigate some lama dude in India, never mind that lamas are Tibetan! In India he would be known as a guru. No explanation is given for why Lucky should be the one to go on this quest rather than some FBI agents. Yes, she's Indian, but there are doubtlessly FBI personnel who are Indian, too, so why her? Well, for no other reason than that the story is about her. It wasn't convincing.

The deal, supposedly, is that this guy, Lobsang, has access to a fungus called an 'ice mushroom' which supposedly confers long life upon those who are treated with it, evidently by means of boosting the immune system to counteract pretty much every known disease and ailment. Lucky is evidently supposed to get her hands on this mushroom so its properties can be duplicated. How a politician has the authority to walk into a corrections office and 'head-hunt' a government employee, tasking her with traveling internationally in pursuit of something that's well outside of her job description (as well as doubling her salary to boot) is another unexplained mystery here.

I read this to just over fifty percent of the way through, and quite literally nothing happened. It was nothing more than - pretty much - a dear diary of Lucky's every-day activities! Trust me, her life is no more eventful or entertaining than is mine, or any account, or any regular person's every-day activities. I don’t read novels to read about people who are just like me! I read for entertainment and for a chance to get outside of my life and into someone else's!

If you're going to give me 'me' in your novel, then at least change the world around! Please add some sci-fi or fantasy, or make something thrilling or out-of-the-ordinary happen! Please don't detail your doing of laundry, or cooking, or your issue with your browser, or your uneventful interactions in the coffee bar or with your every-day ordinary friends. Why would I want to get into someone else's life if hers is essentially no different from mine? I wouldn’t. I don’t.

One really absurd thing which Lucky does is to leave her computer with a sixteen-year-old to fix a problem. It doesn’t matter if it’s her own computer or the government's. Either way something is seriously wrong here. If it's her own, she should neither be using it for, nor allowed to use it for government work, and if it isn’t, then she's clueless. The only 'malfunction' it appears to have is that her browser defaults to Hulu as the home page even when she changes the page - but we’re told that Lucky doesn't know how to set the browser default page, so this made no sense at all!

It made even less sense that she would turn it over to a sixteen-year-old hacker when her own IT department at work should deal with this issue. It made less sense still that she should turn over a computer to someone who's a known hacker and who isn't even remotely authorized to access her government computer containing government data and the Bloodhound application. Lucky is either profoundly stupid, or she's appallingly gullible and ignorant. Either way I don’t like her, and she should be fired for being so utterly irresponsible. And this is the dumb-ass they want to send on an important mission? Sheesh!

Despite having issues with this out-of-the-blue assignment to India, I at least wanted Lucky to actually get on the airplane and go, but she never did (not to the half-way point anyway). I became so tired of nothing going on that, curious as I might be about this oddball guy in India with his purported fountain-of-youth mushroom, I couldn’t stand to read any more. I couldn't bear the thought of wading through mondo mundane to get to what might have been extraordinary, but for which I had no guarantee, and nothing to imbue me with any faith that it would be any better than the fifty percent I’d already read. Life is too short for rambling stories which go nowhere when there are other enticing and seductive stories inviting me to sample their charms instead.

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins by Irvine Welsh

Title: The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
Author: Irvine Welsh
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday
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 enough reward aplenty!

This is the very first Irvine Welsh I've ever read, and rest assured that it's also the very last. The story focuses on Lucy Brennan who is a Miami Beach personal-fitness trainer who hates women, hates overweight people, hates down-on-their-luck people, well, pretty much hates everyone she feels is lower on the social ladder than Lucy is herself which means, well, she hates everyone.

So naturally she has some upside, to make us - if not identify with the main character, at least be interested in what she has to say and where she's going, right? Well, er, no. There's absolutely nothing whatsoever to like, to love, to admire, to envy, nor is there anything to suggest that we can learn something from this character. She's horrible, relentlessly horrible, hatefully horrible. She's self-centered, blindly arrogant, superior, and thinks the world ought to be brushing its collective teeth with whatever she excretes from her spite-ridden ass.

I detested her pretty much from the off, and detested her more with each passing chapter until I reached a point where I couldn't stand to read another screen of this novel.

I'd foolishly thought this story might actually be about the sex lives of Siamese twins - a story which would have been fascinating and fun, but the Siamese twins are nothing but a background news story used as a really amateur and ham-fisted metaphor for the relationship of Lucy with an overweight - sorry, I mean fat (because in Lucy's world that's all there is: you're either a gorgeous babe or you're a fat, worthless bitch) - woman she encounters by the name of Lena Sorensen.

It's painfully obvious from the start that these two will hook up (Lucy is bi), so there is no mystery here, nor is there anything to look forward to. All we have is page after page of Pushy-Lucy, judgmental (if not simply mental) as hell, and promoting herself to maximize the fifteen minutes of fame she stumbles into as the novel begins.

Well this novel had its fifteen minutes and now it's toothpaste - or at least it would be in Lucy's opinion!

Witch-Hunt by Wendy Scott

Title: Witch-Hunt
Author: Wendy Scott
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

This is book one in the Lodestone series, because why publish one book and then create something brand new when you can milk the same tedious topic for an entire series? I am not a fan of series, as you can guess. They are, with very few and treasured exceptions, boring, and they are abusive in that they actively prey on reader addiction. I've seen readers review a book negatively and then admit that they're going to read the next in the series because they have to know what happens! How wrong-headed is that? People who write series are no different, on the bottom line, than drug pushers, and publishers and writers are okay with this and indulge themselves in it mercilessly. I am not on-board with that, and I am not an addict!

The title is about as unoriginal as you can get. Sometimes the publisher rips the right to title their own novel right out of the author's hands, so maybe it's not her fault, but BN lists thirteen pages of books when you type this title into their search engine, and the first page consists almost entirely of books sharing almost this exact title! As I quickly discovered, originality is not this novel's forte.

This book started out just fine - minor issues, but otherwise quite engrossing, until the shirtless guy showed up with his muscles rippling. Seriously? It was actually funny because he was brushing down a horse which had just arrived in the stable, and his own eyes were exactly like a horse's - brown with long lashes! Since this is a book of witchcraft, maybe the guy's a horse? Of course this begs the question as to what other traits he has and whether this is really a young adult novel about witchcraft or if it's simply YA erotica. I'm guessing it’s the former even as I continue to wonder about the wrong-headedness of this stuck-in-a-rut approach to stories about young girls (and I use the word 'rut' deliberately).

Seriously, though, the problem is that this is yet another in a long, long, way-too-long, line of books with a female main character who is presented as heroic, yet right up front the author starts telling us loudly that this girl is actually quite useless without a macho guy to validate her. Why would an author - especially a female author - do this to a girl? I have to say that this put me right off this book. Fortunately for the author, it had been interesting enough until that point for me to want to continue reading it, but I was definitely not pleased.

It certainly didn’t help at one point in chapter 4, we were explicitly told that, "Women are nature's sacred carriers, holding the precious seeds of future life, and are far closer to spiritual perfection than a man could ever be." Seriously? Please, get it right. Women carry half a seed of life; men carry the other half. Let’s not get disgustingly genderist about this. Women do carry that life in their bodies for nine months, and pay a hefty price for that. I don’t get this kind of writing: one which on the one hand puts women on a pedestal like this, and then on the other, renders them as air-headed, blushing, giggling, flibbertigibbets as soon as His Royal Majesty King Shirtless o' the Rippling Muscles shows up. A woman cannot intelligently be both a strong female character and a man's 'bit of skirt'.

What's almost as bad is that this is yet another Harry Potter clone: it's a school for witchcraft, with an orphaned child who is *special*. On top of that, it really bothers me that writers take up a fantastical and boundless topic like witchcraft, full of adventure and promise, and then hobble it by placing it into a rigidly mundane setting. Just like in Harry Potter, there's a council (like the Ministry of Magic) which controls the witches. Seriously? I don’t get the mentality whereby an author can take the supernatural and then treat it as the ordinary, with schools, and controls, and councils and - well in short, make it exactly like the mundane world. How unimaginative is that? The supernatural deserves better!

As if that's not bad enough, Sir Shirtless is suddenly man-handling Sabrina - the main character (Sabrina? Seriously? Let’s get some originality, please!). Instead of approaching her respectfully and standing away from her, advising her as to how to brush this particular horse, this creep is all over her, grabbing her hand like she's a little child - but then that's how this kind of jerk views women, isn’t it?

We read: "…strong fingers radiating warmth slipped over hers, and a musk-laden voice, breathed into her ear." It’s not even good punctuation. A musk-laden voice? What does that even mean? Is the author confusing husky and musky? There's clearly no concept of chivalry in this novel, so why not set as an example that it's okay to grab and manipulate women without even considering a need for permission, let alone actually asking for it. Clearly women don’t deserve that kind of respect in this world, any novel which doesn't respect women likewise doesn't deserve my time in reading it.

I rate this novel misogynistic. You can see from the covers of some of her other novels (such as Ferrasium, Golden Scarab, and Pyramidion), that either the author or her publisher is very much into the objectification of women. I'm starting to become convinced that such novels should be reviewed negatively without even reading them, based on the cover alone.