Chi Running by Danny Dreyer, Katherine Dreyer

Rating: WARTY!

I'm not a runner although I do really need to get back to exercising more this year, but I was intrigued by what this author had to say and in the end I have to report disappointment. My version (more on this anon) is 320 pages of largely fluff, with occasional interesting bits sown throughout, but you have to read very closely and pay attention to catch those bits as they fly by in what seems like nothing but an endless prologue. I've never read a book that seemed so intent upon disguising the very topic it claims to promote.

Let me say up front that all this business about 'chi' and 'prana' and so on is patent bullshit. There is no such thing. If there were, scientists would have found it by now. The author claims early in the book that "Chi...generates movement in the physical world and is that which animates life." If by 'chi' the author means adenosine triphosphate then they're correct. If not, then this is pure nonsense! What's really confusing though is that the B&N website has two print versions of this book, each with a different cover, one having 320 pages, the other having only 288 pages. The one with fewer pages costs two dollars more. Why? It's chi! Don't question it!

None of this necessarily that the author has nothing valuable to say about improving your running technique. For e, the problem was that even when the book confined itself purely to that, it often made no sense. The author at one point was talking about two forces that are claimed to be at play when you run: gravity, and the road! I'm sorry, but these are the same thing. To be more specific, there is only gravity (and yes, there's your kinetic energy as you move forward, but that's not what's being talked about). Gravity is what pulls you to the road, your legs are what propel you up from it. The force of the road is no more than the resistance of it to gravity trying to pull you down to the center of the globe!

Worse, the examples serve only to obfuscate, not clarify. One of the important points that is made is that you should move your feet to support your body, so you land with your foot flat underneath your center of mass, rather than stretch it out to land on your heel or your toe. This is the main secret to preventing leg injuries such as shin splints and knee problems we're told, but the example used here to illustrate it is the Warner Brothers cartoon Road Runner about which the author says "He had a great lean, while his feet are spinning behind him." Now I personally claim no great insight into the Road Runner's gender. The author seems quite certain, but I'll let that go.

The thing is that this idea of the feet behind the body is precisely the opposite of the technique we're supposedly being taught, which insists that your feet land directly under you. That's the chi running technique in a nutshell, FYI: let your body lead, pulling you forward, and as gravity pulls it down to the ground, place your feet directly under your center of mass to keep your body from falling. In this way you can, we're assured, improve your running and avoid injury.

The problem is that you're still moving your legs forward and pushing off the ground and you can only do this with your toes. You do have a certain amount of momentum once you get going, but without that propelling leverage off the ground with your toes on each stride, you will stop! Or fall flat on your face if you quit putting your feet under you. One or the other. The explanation we're given claims that you really don't need to call upon your leg muscles to run, which is nonsensical throughout, and you cannot run without injury if you're trying to propel yourself forward while your foot is flat on the ground. That for sure will injure tendons.

The author doesn't quite get the first law of motion as expressed by Isaac Newton. It's really the definition of inertia, which people too often mistake for a couch potato, but inertia doesn't mean unmoving, it means unchanging in terms of motion: not only things which are sitting still remaining at rest, but also things which are in motion remaining in motion until and unless they're acted on by an unbalanced force. So the author's right in that your body will not move unless you employ your legs to move it (in this scenario), but this is in direct contradiction to claims at other points in the book that you don't need to hit the ground with your feet to propel yourself forward!

There are pictures in the book aimed at illustrating the techniques discussed, but those often are unclear. One of them which was clear refutes this claim about landing on the flat of your foot rather than your heel, because the third picture in the sequence (figure 57) shows the heel of the foot hitting the ground first! Figure 59 of this same sequence of six photos, shows the leg pushing-off with the toes, so the images that supposedly show the correct technique show the very thing we're purportedly being warned against! Either that or the explanation we're being given is, again, obfuscatory rather than explanatory.

Some of the illustrations themselves are problematical in another way because, as for example in figure 42, the illustration has light text on a light background which is impossible to read. Another (figure 41) which supposedly shows correct technique, has a circular diagram at the lower legs, showing (we're expected to believe) the circular motion of the feet, but feet do not move in a circular motion when running. The foot that's in the air in this image isn't going any higher. It will not complete a circle before hitting the ground again! It's going to swing back and hit the ground in the shortest way possible. The feet therefore move much more like a pendulum below the clock, not like the hands on the clock face! If the author had something else in mind, it was not clear from the writing.

So I have to say I cannot recommend this book at all. Maybe if you're really interested and can get it for free or at a close-out, it may offer useful tips for you, but for my money, I pass. The book does not.

Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt

Rating: WARTY!

I used to be a big fan of McDevitt, but lately I haven't liked his new material. Maybe if I went back and re-read some of his older stuff, such as the Academy Series or the Alex Benedict stories, which I loved, I might not like them so well any more, but the last book of his that I read was not entertaining at all. When I saw this audiobook come up on special offer, I jumped at the chance to read something else of his, but I was disappointed in it, too.

Paul Boehmer's narration did not help one bit. I don't know what he was trying to do, but he was making everything seem so dramatic that nothing actually was dramatic, and he put weird inflections on things. He also doesn't seem to realize that coupon does not have the letter 'U' as the second letter, so it's really pronounced coo-pon, Kew-pon. Seriously. That was annoying because it was used often. More on this anon (can I just abbreviate that to moron?!).

Even had I read this as a print or ebook though, I think I would have lost interest in it, because the main protagonist is so profoundly stupid, and events are so predictable that I could barely stand to listen to portions of it. It sounded slow, forced, and pedantic. One of the problems is that McDevitt writes this novel, set in contemporary times (it was published in 2009 based on a novella from 1997), as though no one has ever heard of time travel - not even in fiction.

The main character is Adrian Shelborne, who absurdly goes by "Shel." His father, Michael, has disappeared from a locked house, and no one can figure it out. How they figure he disappeared from the locked house as opposed to just having gone out and locked the door behind him was somehow lost on me. Maybe I missed it because I listen to this while driving and when I need to completely focus on the road, maybe i miss bits, but anyway it's this big mystery.

Adrian's dad has left behind three electronic devices which he inexplcably refers to as 'coupons'. It's like a little Chromebook from what I gathered, and you open it up and set times, dates, and locations, and it whisks you away to whatever you set. There's also a return button, but Adrian is too stupid to figure that button out. His first trip takes him to rural Pennsylvania, which isn't far from his home, but his time-travel visit takes him to the next day and he has no phone or wallet with him. He does this without thinking about what he's doing, like he's booking a trip online. Instead of trying out the return button, he borrows a phone and calls a friend to come pick him up.

When they arrive back at his house later at night, he thinks he sees someone in an upstairs window, but rather than come in with him and check out the house, his friend leaves him there alone and he doesn't even check out the house himself! It was obvious to me that he had seen himself, and this is confirmed later. This is after he spends a totally stupid day at work, not once realizing that he's time-traveled and this explains everything he encounters at work. This man is profoundly stupid. The next thing he does is take a trip back to witness himself and his friend arriving home, thereby confirming my suspicion that he saw his own face in the window.

This read far more like a badly-written middle-grade book than ever it did a grown-up work, and I couldn't stand to listen to any more of it. I can't commend writing like this, and after many wonderful years together, I guess I'm finally realizing that it's time for me and Jack to part ways. I wish him all the best.

The Seven Wonders by Steven Saylor

Rating: WARTY!

Set against the growing conflict between the might of Rome and that of Pontus in 92 BC, this story is of teenager Gordianus who embarks upon a journey with Antipater of Sidon to enjoy the seven wonders of the ancient world. Supposedly he encounters a mystery at each one, and this was what interested me. Unfortunately the author was so intent upon showing us how much research he'd done that he forgot he was supposed to be telling an entertaining story, and I became bored to tears and gave up on it in short order. Maybe a print version would be less galling than this audiobook, but I doubt it. Based on the portion I heard, I can't commend this one. If a story doesn't grab you from the off, give it up and find something that does. Life is too short to read a list of authorial research notes.

Eve by Patti Larsen

Rating: WARTY!

This was your standard uninteresting, first person voice, dumb, disaffected girl saved by a boy novel. Nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing worth reading. I was very disappointed, although I kind of half-expected that going into it, but nonetheless, I was hoping for something better. I was disappointed, but unsurprised. For the most part, YA authors are so homogenous that 'bland' is far too vivid a word to cover what they do. How this author can write so badly and yet be "a multiple award-winning author" (her own words), is a complete mystery to me. This is why I have zero trust in awards and would flatly refuse any I was offered rather than be tainted by them.

The fact that this novel was written so badly really intrigues me because I read here: https://medium.com/intellogo/award-winning-writer-patti-larsen-shares-her-experiences-using-intellogos-author-tools-c93fea28338 that the author had used some sort of software at both draft and final stage to assess her work. I'd never heard of "Intellogo" before, but it seems that it's supposed to advise an author as to whether they're hitting the standard test marks for a YA novel. How robotic is that? Seriously? The article about this was badly written too. I read at one point, "how present women are in a central role are" and later, "Was the book moving at a fast enough clip to maintain the intensity for a face-paced page turner." Yes, in this era of Facebook control of your life, you definitely need a face-paced page turner.

But this article also tells us that the author “has a degree in journalism, a background in English, history, and screen writing, and offers courses on story writing and outlining. Patti’s strengths lie not only in her mad writing process but also in her tireless work in self promotion." If she put as much effort into writing as she apparently does into self-promotion, and ditched the artificial intelligence, she might have a book that feels far less artificial and actually intelligent - and focused on telling original, imaginative, and inventive stories instead of writing by numbers and copying what everyone else is doing, which is quite clearly what this novel is.

And that tireless self-promotion really turned me off her. I am not a self-promoter which probably means I will never have a book take off, but I don't care. I'm not going to try to force myself on people. If they want to read me, they will choose to find me and do so. It’s their choice, not mine.

This story sounded like it might be interesting which is why I was foolish enough to pick it up to read, and it probably could have been engaging in more capable hands, but all this author proves is that journalists are not necessarily great novel writers. The blurb informs us that 16-year-old Eve (she should have been named Heave, she's so sickening to read about) is the unholy offspring of Death and Life, and

Her unique parentage ensures Eve isn’t like her angel siblings. She brings Death at the beginning of Life and Life to those meant to die. Her continuing failures create constant disaster for her parents and the mortals she tries so hard to serve. But when Eve accidentally interferes with the Loom of Creation, she sets off a chain of events that leads her to finally understand who she really is.

Yes, she's a special snowflake just like every other YA character in nearly every one of these dull, predictable, boring, unimaginative YA garbage novels. How special is that?! The description had one of those little clickers where you could select more of the blurb or less, but it was less of books like this which I would have truly appreciated. There is no clicker for that unfortunately. No click, only colic.

The writing was average to poor from the off. It was, as I mentioned, worst-person voice, which is the most tedious voice of all for me to read. I am so sick of it that I recently went through my shelf of unread print books and deliberately ditched every last one of them that was in first person, so sick am I of reading this tedious and nauseating voice. Now those books are in the local library, so someone else will have to suffer them, not me! Am I evil or what? Mwah-ha-ha!

Anyway, after Eve screws up yet again, by reviving an old man who was at death's door, she goes into this maudlin introspection. Eve whines that everyone hates her, and her life isn't worth living until of course she's rescued by this guy. I ditched the book right there. I am so sick of reading YA novels about some wretched girl who has to be validated and rescued by a boy. For fuck's sake YA authors, stop it with this shit already! Find something better to do with your life - something that doesn’t involve running your own gender into the ground. This book is shit and that's it.

The Mozart Conspiracy by Susanne Dunlap

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is volume two in an amateur detective series. I did not read volume one, which is titled The Musician's Daughter. I don't recall ever seeing volume one, but if I had, I would have rejected it for the precise reason that I refuse to read any novel that subjugates a woman to the position of being someone else's "thing": musician's daughter, time-traveler's wife, and so on. It makes the woman a piece of property rather than an actor in her own right and I'm not in favor of such titles.

I'm not a fan of the amateur detective story in general, for that matter, but this title appealed to me because it was set in Austria and in the time of Mozart. I had hoped it would be different from the usual amateur detective story, but the problem with it is that in the end, it was not at all different. In fact, it was exactly the same: first person, featuring a detective with a quirk, and in trying to add that quirk to make her detective different from the hoard of amateur detective stories that now flood bookstores, the author made her detective precisely the same as all the others: first person voice with a quirk!

For me, first person is worst person because it makes the main protagonist so annoying. It's always about him or her. In the words of George Harrison, "I, me, mine, I, me, mine, I, me, mine." It's tedious to read such a self-centered book like that, which is why I recently cleansed my print library of every such book. I'm in process of doing the same with my ebooks. It's very limiting to write this way because nothing can happen unless the main character is there to witness it. Everything else comes from hearsay and is therefore suspect. It's irritating. As it happens this particular one wasn't too bad to begin with, but over the time I read it, it became more annoying.

There was an element of racism in the story too. The racism existed in the time period (as it does today) against the Jewish people, and against the Romany people. This was a fact of history, but because the author harped on it so much, it distracted from the detective's story. In trying to make her seem completely accepting of all people, it made her stand out like a sore thumb, when in fact, the likelihood was that pretty much everyone back then was racist.

Not having read book one in this series, perhaps I missed where Theresa started out prejudiced and learned acceptance over the course of the first volume, or maybe she didn't, but it felt odd that she was so open. It was unrealistic. It would have felt more real to me had she harbored the same prejudices most everyone had back then, and was learning to work around them.

The predictable detective's quirk in this series is that she loves to play the violin, but we're told that she could not play in orchestras because women were not allowed in that era, so she had to disguise herself as a man to play. The thing is that although women were not allowed in men's orchestras (the first woman in a male orchestra was not recorded until the early twentieth century), they were allowed to play in all-female orchestras, but this gets no mention in this novel. So in a sense this was an artificial problem.

Ironically, it became a real problem for this story because then the story became about her problems rather than about solving a murder, which to me was the whole point of the story. The murder became secondary to the soap opera of Theresa's activities, and it was boring because her activities were always the same: dress as a guy, sneak around, play in an orchestra, risk being discovered, sneak back home, change back to female attire. This was repeated over and over and it became tedious to read so often.

Worse than this though was the problem of Theresa's failure to honestly report the crime. Yes, she reported that she had witnessed a man being murdered, but she didn't tell the whole story, and then the body disappeared. Repeatedly she refused to give details to those who wished to help her when she had no valid reason for refusing to share her information, and she continued to investigate the murder, without us being offered any real motive for her to do so.

She did not know the murdered man; indeed, for a while she had no idea even of his name, but when she discovered his name she didn't report this back to the police to whom she'd made her initial report. In short, as is often the case in amateur detective stories, the detective actively withholds information from the police for no good reason, and in doing so is hampering a police inquiry and perverting the curse of justice! It makes no sense, but it does explain why amateur detectives in these stories so routinely beat the police in solving the mysteries! This author isn't the only one who does this; even luminaries like Agatha Christie had their detectives, like Poirot, actively conceal things from the police. I'd dearly love to read a realistic detective story where the detective is arrested and thrown into jail for hampering the police investigation! LOL!

But I digress! Anyways, she'd spoken to the murdered guy before he died (of course!), but instead of trying to recover information from him about who had done this to him, or what motive there might have been, or even ask the guy's name, she just crouched there with him, and all she got was one word, 'Mozart' - or at least something that sounded like Mozart. This was unrealistic and far too invented to sound real.

Experience available to us all these days via news stories, has shown that overwhelmingly, when people are dying or expecting to die, they're going to say something about a loved one: "Tell my wife I love her" or something along those lines. We do not routinely hear of dying people uttering mysterious words or phrases. It's not realistic and in this case the mystery word was so artlessly injected into the story that it sounded quite ridiculous. It took me out of the suspension of disbelief because it felt like such an artificially-created mystery where there was no realistic reason for one, instead of having the mystery develop organically.

The novel is set in Austria, the land of Mozart, but we get no German (or Bavarian) words interjected into the story to create atmosphere. Bizarrely, the word 'madame' is used frequently instead of frau or fräulein. It made zero sense. There's nothing more tedious in a story than putting in a foreign word or phrase and immediately pedantically following it with the English translation, even where such translation isn't at all necessary, but in this case, it would not have hurt, once in a while, to use a German word to describe something where it's obvious what the thing is.

Instead, we got puns that made sense in English, but would not have made any sense in German, such as when a woman is talking of finding a treat for a young girl and she says, "...let's see if I can find some sweets here for the sweet." In English that makes sense, but the Austrian word meaning 'sweets' is 'nachtisch' which sounds nothing like 'süß' (pronounced rather like Zeus and meaning sweet as in 'nice' or 'sweetheart'). In German, the pun doesn't work the way it works in English. It's like the author forgot where the story was set.

So, for these reasons and similar ones I've not mentioned, I quit reading this around the forty-percent mark. It was doing nothing for me and the story appeared to have stagnated, so I lost all interest in it and in the main character, who had started coming off as rather clueless to me. I wish the author all the best in her career, but I cannot commend this novel based on my experience of it.

The Coldest Winter by Antony Johnston, Steven Perkins

Rating: WARTY!

I got this because it's purportedly related to the movie Atomic Blonde which is a really good movie. The problem is that this book, despite having Charlize Theron's image on the front, has nothing whatsoever to do with the movie, which is based on The Coldest City not The Coldest Winter. This is why I have nothing to do with Big Publishing because they're so shamelessly dishonest, it's disgraceful.

Nevertheless, I tried to give this a read and it was boring. The art is thick, ugly, smudgy black and white, and the book was unappealing in every way except that I could close it and return it to the library and pretend I never had it in my hands. That was the best part about it by far.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by A Conan Doyle

Rating: WARTY!

It's important to note that this is The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by A Conan Doyle, not by the Conan Doyle. Just kidding. Seriously, I came back to this through the British TV series Sherlock penned by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, and wondering whether they would ever get around to a fifth season. It's looking rather like they won't, and maybe that's not such a bad thing after season four. But I got to wondering if they did, what would it be like: would they continue into season arcs like they had, or simply get back to basic mystery solving like the show was when it first began. This led me to the original stories and to this volume which contains a dozen adventures:

1. A Scandal in Bohemia
   This is the only story featuring the absurdly overrated Irene Adler, who is trumpeted today as Holmes's equal, when in reality, all she doe sis protect her property. The sad thing about this story is that Adler's "brilliance" is only visible because all other women in the Holmes canon are treated as cannon fodder, so be shot out as needed to display empty headedness, a predilection to fainting away, and other traditional feminine traits. The fact that Adler is none of these things makes her stand out, but it does not make her a mastermind. Holmes isn't even a mastermind in this story, so it's hardly an act of genius to bea thima t his own game. She just knew what she wanted and succeeded in protecting something that was valuable to her. It had nothing to do with smarts, only with determination if not outright desperation. That's it. The story isn't that good.
2. The Red-Headed League
   A story about a redhead who is tricked into leaving his place of work every day so the villains can dig through to the bank using a basement under his store.
3. A Case of Identity
   In which a money-grubbing stepdad hatches a bizarre scheme to keep his step-daughter;'s income in the family.
4. The Boscombe Valley Mystery
   Two Australians at war in rural England.
5. The Five Orange Pips
   Improbable tale of the KKK
6. The Man with the Twisted Lip
   A married man begging to keep a secret.
7. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
   A stolen blue diamond is added to the crop
8. The Adventure of the Speckled Band
   No one, and I do mean quite literally no one has ever called a snake a 'speckled band" except Doyle in this story! The whole story sucks. Snakes are effectively deaf to airborne sounds; they hear by resting their jawbone on the ground, so the idea of training a snake to respond to a relatively high-pitched whistle is for the birds. Holmes wasn't so smart after all, was he?!
9. The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb
   Counterfeiting in the English countryside isn't something to thumb your nose at.
10. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
    Twice toiled tail.
11. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
    Doyle gave us the six Napoleons, Moffat gave us the six Thatchers, this story gives us the three beryls.
12. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
    An Unwelcome fiancé is made to rue the castle.

Can't commend this based on the average stories inlcude din this collection. Perhaps retirement Holmes rather than Sherlock?

Extreme Medical Services by Jamie Davis

Rating: WARTY!

This was a seriously disappointing audiobook both the story and the reading of it. I should say up front that I'm not a fan of vampire, werewolf, or other shifter stories. I have read one or two that were worthwhile, but those were few and very far between. As for the vast majority of them, they vary only between laughably unimaginative and downright brain-dead stupid, but this one seemed like it offered a new angle: that of a med tech who caters to this supernatural crowd, and I made the beyond the grave mistake of deciding to give it a try. I sure learned my lesson.

The biggest problem is that this story felt like it was written by an author who was not painting by numbers, but writing by numbers, trying to get the 'right' concepts in the publisher-approved spaces, and he became so focused on that, that he forgot he was supposed to be relating an original and engaging story. So while his writing-by-numbers was perfect, in those latter categories, this story was an abject failure. It was so unrealistic - even within its own framework - that it constantly kicked me out of any suspension of disbelief by reminding me far too often of how profoundly stupid it was.

So we start the story with the predictable in the middle of a crisis situation, then we immediately revert to flashback mode, which brings the story to a screeching, jarring halt. Even that might have been survivable had it not been for the brain-dead writing. The author expects us to believe that a med tech who graduated with a great track record in his academic life, and thereby earned himself an unexpected berth in the supernatural med-tech world, would be thrown into a service about which he was profoundly ignorant, never even heard of, let alone knows anything professionally, and in this state of dangerous ignorance, be sent out on emergency calls with absolutely zero preparation and training.

Yes, if your goal is to slaughter your patients through sheer incompetence, then by all means go right ahead and do that. If you're serious about your work though, and intent upon saving lives, then you tell your proby up-front what he's going to be doing, you'll ascertain with certitude if he's okay with that, and you'll train him as to the special needs of the supernatural clientele so he can actually be of use instead of floundering from the off! You don't toss him into it in the dark without a word that his patients will all be supernatural, and that his first call is going to be a werewolf in the middle of a diabetes-induced transition. Wait a minute, a werewolf with diabetes? No, not a werewolf - a lycan! I'm sorry, but this was all horse-shit, and did I mention stupid? As much as I would have liked to have read an intelligent take using this plot, I could not stand to read any more of this absurd garbage.

One of the warning signs, which I ought to have heeded was the EMT lecturing the new guy on the fact that werewolves prefer to be called lycans - a term shamelessly lifted straight from the Underworld movie series. Why would these alien creatures prefer to use a human-invented, if venerable, term for a disease? Like I said, the author was so intent upon conforming to established standards, that he rendered his book into a boring joke instead of an engrossing read. I ditched it very quickly. This is precisely why I don't read this genre: it's boring as hell! It would be nice to find something new and different, but in a way it's quite reassuring and even encouraging to know that nothing has changed. Now I know I don't need to waste any more of my time on this tedious crap for a couple more years at least.

The Lilac Princess by Wanda Luthman

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I realize this book isn't aimed at me, but from my perspective, even taking into account the audience it's intended for, this book was wrong from the very start. For a book supposedly about values, this story places entirely the wrong value on a child when, on only the second line, we learn that the princess is "young and beautiful," as though nothing else matters in a woman: not smarts, not integrity, not loyalty, not good behavior, not helpfulness, not friendliness, not the ability to listen and learn, not hard work, not thoughtfulness, but beauty. I'm sorry, but no. I cannot support a book this shallow, even a very short one aimed at young children, and for that very reason that this is the wrong message to give to young children or any children.

It would have been bad enough if that was the only faux pas, but it got worse. This is your traditional - read: antiquated - story of a damsel in distress who needs a manly man to rescue her. Maybe for this particular princess, beauty is the only thing she actually does have going for her, because she certainly exhibited none of the qualities I listed above. She talks to strangers and doesn't even get kidnapped by one, but voluntarily goes off with him, whereupon of course, she's held prisoner until a boy rescues her. She can't do a this for herself as you know, because she's 'only a poor helpless girl'.

For a moment or two I wondered if this book had been published in 1919 rather than the 21st century, but no, it was originally published in 2014. How it got published I do not know, but I cannot commend a story so far out of touch with modern womanhood.

And Then There Were Nun by Dakota Cassidy

Rating: WARTY!

For purposes of my own, I've recently been taking a look at some of these detective stories that I quite honestly despise, especially the ones that make a pun out of something - typically the main character's name - in every title. It blows, and this story was predictably yet another fail, despite the premise being a lot more interesting than most.

I liked the idea of the detective being an excommunicated nun, and her 'Watson' being a demon, but after a short time the story became cloying and one-note. It was too extreme and inauthentic even within the premise we're given. Having written a novel myself which features an incarnate demon, I was hoping this would entertain me, but that hope was dashed with disturbing rapidity.

The novel became annoying, in particular at one point where the inevitable body was inevitably found, and the police were called in, and the detective outright asked the main character if her name, Trixie Lavender, was her stripper name. I'm like "WTF?" I seriously do not get why female writers seem to enjoy going out of their way to marginalize, slut-shame, or otherwise denigrate their female characters, and it was at that point that I quit reading this one. I can't commend a novel that has a female cop gratuitously insult a female witness at a crime scene and there's no pushback from anyone, not even the author.

Gate of Air by Resa Nelson

Rating: WARTY!

Errata:
"...and her faith never waived." I think she meant 'wavered'.
"Like all Northlanders (other than Frayka), men and women alike had long blonde hair, pale skin, and blue eyes." Not really.
"No sense in getting all sentimental." That last word didn't exist in Viking times. It comes from Latin sentire - to feel, but the Vikings didn't know it as a word. I get that you can't write a novel like this in the original language, but you can try, as an author, to make it sound somewhat like it's from another era, and not middle-America mall-speak!
Another example is the old guy who said things like: "Njall ain't hating you." And "It be you and Njall!" Seriously?! This is an abject lesson in how to write Northlanders and make them sound American! LOL!
Again with the Aryan cult: "Although he had the height and pale features of all other Northlanders" The truth is that Vikings were no taller than other peoples, and shorter than today's average, women being about 5 feet, men about 5.5 feet. In today's world, the Danes are 4th in line in terms of average height, and Icelanders are 10th so...still not towering.

This novel irked me pretty much from the start and it soon became too nauseating to read. It didn't sound remotely authentic, and much of it was misleading, ill-conceived, or far too American to sound remotely like an ancient people from Scandinavia! One of the early sentences revolved around the fact that main character Frayka (really? Frayka?!), who had just returned from an extended voyage, wasn't wearing her Sunday best or pristine and clean. As if.

I read: "Didn't you hear me ask if she'd ever laundered them? Think of how long she's been wearing them!" Laundered? The Norse peoples were hygienic, but it's highly unlikely someone welcoming back people who had been on a long voyage would make a comment like this! This was nothing more than high-school bullying! It felt so inauthentic and was the first big problem with this novel - the young adult outside who becomes the heroic femme. It's been done to death. Please! Get a new shtick already!

The writing was so clunky and amateurish that I gave up on it quickly and ditched the novel. I can't commend it based on what I read.

Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

Rating: WARTY!

Perhaps it isn't a coincidence that the initials for this book title are BS! Again this is a middle-grade book and I'm far from middle-grade, but I've ready many middle-grade novels that have entertained me well. This one did not, and I quit it about three-quarters of the way through, in disappointment.

The premise here is that there is a book publisher based in San Francisco, which fortuitously is the city to which the major character has just moved with her family. This publisher likes to create book games, and one of them is the eponymous scavenging, by which used books are secreted in places around town, and clues to their location are left online. The finder of the book gets to read it, and gets finder points, and then gets to hide it again themselves. It sounds like fun, and while I can see problems with that practice, it's likely to become a dying art with mega corporations like Amazon forcibly moving everyone to ebooks and all that entails, and forcing authors to sell their work for less than a dollar for the most part, or even offer it for free just to get a foot in the door.

The basic plot here, is that this publisher is about to launch a new game, and is off to the launch when he's assaulted by two low-lives who are evidently in the employ of someone who wants the specific book this publisher is going to use to launch the game. Because they're idiots, they fail to secure the novel (The Gold-Bug - a prize winning short story by Poe, which was probably his best-read work during his lifetime).

Instead, the book falls into the hands of the main character, whose name I've completely forgotten at this point, but it's really not important when you get down to it. Instead of trying to get the book back into the right hands, the main character decides to hold onto it and to try and solve the puzzle herself, thereby causing all kinds of horrors, and putting children at risk, including herself, which would never have happened had she acted responsibly. I think this novel could have been written a lot better.

One major problem with it is that it moved appallingly slowly, and would have made for a better read had it been shorter and consequently better paced. Another problem was the fact that young children were put in harm's way and the last thing they think of doing is alerting the police. For me this is a serious problem with the writing. Yes, to have a 'fun' adventure, children often have to be placed in fictional peril, but if you're going to do that, at least have the writing chops to make it work: make there be a reason why the authorities can't help. Don't go writing the idea into children's heads that the best way to deal with an adult threat is go it alone as this author seems intent upon doing!

For these reasons I cannot commend this as a worthy read.

Keara's Raven Escape by Mindy Klasky

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum: "for the entire three days that the titheman ad stayed on the green" 'Had stayed' was required there.

Previously published as Darkbeast, this novel evidently failed its first time out, and was renamed and re-released for a second try. For me it failed that time, too. There were several problems with it. The first was that it was worst-person voice, which I am actively now trying to avoid in novels having pro-actively weeded out my entire aging print book collection of first person voice titles and ditched them unread. I'm slowly doing the same with my larger ebook collection. This one didn't start out too badly, but it soon embarked upon road after road most traveled, and it was boring. The cliff-hanger ending was expected and not appreciated, and I have zero intention of reading any more of this series.

The novel is aimed at a younger audience than the one I (don't!) represent, so take my commentary as you will, but the story had issues. The author set up the girl as having no female friends. Even her sisters hated her, and the only female she meets turns out to be a traitor to her. Her only savior is of course the inevitable boy, because all women are useless unless they have some sort of male validation according to this kind of author. Why so many female authors seem so hell-bent upon denying female friendships to their characters is beyond me.

In this medieval world - where they have female actors strangely enough - every child grows up with a 'darkbeast', which is an animal (bird, amphibian, or reptile, it would seem) which can talk and which plays the role of Jesus, taking away their sins. They're supposed to unload their negative thoughts and emotions on the beast, and at the age of twelve, are required to visit the 'godhouse' and kill the animal, thereby freeing themselves of childhood sins so they can enter adulthood renewed. Keara cannot kill her darkbeast - her only friend - and is forced to flee her community, sought by inquisitors. She runs away and joins the circus - well, a company of traveling players at least, which earns a living by visiting villages and performs plays tied to one or other of the twelve gods

The story was a fast read and I followed it all the way, believe it or not, but by the end I was disappointed and resented the time I had blown reading this when I could have been doing something much more rewarding. This is why I typically do not even try to read a book to the end when it's doing little or nothing for me. With this one I kept hoping it would really have something to offer, but it never did, and I cannot commend it at all. It was full of trope and took forever to really have anything happen despite it being a relatively short read. It was as warty as one of the darkbeast toads - which aren't really warty, but this observation isn't meant to be any more realistic than was this novel, which turbned out to be a dark beast that definitely ought to have been slain.

Arsenic in the Azaleas by Dale Mayer

Rating: WARTY!

I despise what are laughably called 'cozy mysteries' and I particularly despise any novel which has a dog or a cat as a main character. Not that I dislike dogs or cats; I just find their use in detective stories abhorrent. Since I'm interested for my own purposes in this genre, and this one was at loss leader, I decided to give it a try and it fully met my exceedingly low expectations - and then some!

The main character is of course the "recently divorced Doreen," (recently divorced so she can have a love interest because a woman without a man is begging for a handicapped sticker according to the majority of authors of this and other genres such as YA). She's accompanied by one of the few dogs I do dislike, because it is an unhealthily-bred Basset hound and anyone who supports this so-called pedigree breeding cult needs to read up something about Nazi "doctors" like Eduard Wirths, Aribert Heim, and Josef Mengele. The dog breeders are no better, really.

The antique-named Doreen is starting over (of course!) in a house owned by grandmother, but the dog finds a body in the back yard. We're laughably asked, "Can Doreen prove her grandmother's innocence?' No, of course not. Her grandmother is going to be found guilty as sin and given a lethal injection. Seriously?

Of course she'll prove her innocence, and then she'll inevitably go on to prove the innocence of endless others in a tedious series wherein this little community she just moved to proves to be have a higher body-count than cartel-infested regions in Mexico, with victims falling like flies, all of them suspiciously connected with Doreen the Exploiter and her interests and activities. Why more of these amateur "sleuths" aren't arrested for causing all these murders is the real mystery here. And no, I don't read any book with 'sleuth' anywhere on the cover. I'm allergic to them.

This one started out badly. After a road trip ending at grandma's house - and bringing the wolf with her (or at least a descendent of one), Doreen's very last thought is to get the poor dog set up in the house with food and water. No wonder it's out digging in the back yard for bones. I can't remember exactly where I gave up reading this, but rest assured it wasn't far into it. I can't commend this garbage based on what little I could stomach of it.

Seal Team Six by Howard E Wasdin, Stephen Templin

Rating: WARTY!

My problem with this was the complete lack of modesty and boundaries on the part of the author. I get that these guys need to unwind, that they do a job most of us would fail dismally at (even the part about getting through basic training), but this went beyond strutting and into abuse and psychosis. I draw the line there.

The author seemed like he always had to be first and on top, and successful, and he had no respect for those who dropped out of the BUD\S training or who finished behind him, which was disrespectful in my opinion. This arrogance pervaded the entire book and turned me right off it and the author in short order. Much as I would have liked to have read more and learned more, I rang the bell three times about a third of the way through and felt no sense of failure about it at all. The failure is all on the part of the author. There are much better books about Navy SEALs than this one. This is the worst I've read.

The author tells a story about a third of the way through, of visiting a stripper bar one day. Inside the bar, he asked the staff if they'd make an announcement to welcome back soldiers who were recently on foreign operations, which was a bit overbearing, but fair enough. Apparently there were four Tunisian men in the bar, one of whom made a comment about America minding its own business.

How he knew these guys were Tunisian I do not know, but this guy took exception to that comment, and rather than let it go, which in my opinion he ought to have been man enough to do, he literally leaped over the table at the Tunisian guy, and a fight ensued. The cops were called, but rather than be contrite and settle down, the SEALs then got into a fight with the cops, including a female cop who was manhandled, and they were all arrested.

Then this guy has the nerve to say the female cop wrote her phone number on a piece of paper and put it in his shirt pocket. I'm like, "Seriously?" I didn't believe it, and I am sure as hell not going to read any more of that arrogant and puffed-up crap. I'll find other sources to learn about these men - and I mean the men, not the adolescent boys who this author is evidently obsessed with talking about.

I like to learn about these special ops guys, and I don't mind some swagger and bravado. I think they've earned that, but the over-the-top gung-ho bullshit and sense of entitlement this book was larded with left me cold.

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinney

Rating: WARTY!

Me and this novel did not get along. Despite misgivings (see below) I did start to read it but it did not draw me in, and I felt like I shouldn't have started it anyway for reasonsI discuss next.

This novel in print form uses less than sixty percent of the page for text, and only some forty percent on new chapter pages. Naturally no one wants a book that is so print heavy it's like reading in the dark, but publishers could very easily use much more of the page than they do, thereby reducing paper waste and saving trees, which are the only organized institution actually doing anything concrete to seriously fight climate change. They need all the help they can get.

Since this was a recycled read, I don't feel so bad about that, but I have to say that it's not acceptable to sell or buy new books that so foolishly waste trees. That said, the story itself wasn't worth all this waste of trees though, either! No story is. It was boring, slow-moving, uninteresting and tedious, and I started skimming quite quickly trying to find interesting parts, and failed. I gave up less than 25% in.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill) by John Cleland

Rating: WARTY!

Written while in prison by an evidently horny inmate, this is a first person voice novel, purporting to be a memoir by a woman, now of means, who is recollecting her earlier, less secure and well-off years. Frances Hill's nickname, some claim, recalls the Latin mons Veneris, the mound of Venus. In Latin, that is actually Veneris montem. Mons Veneris refers to Kunlun. Mons pubis is a wiser choice term. Veneris was the Roman word for Friday: dies Veneris because Venus was associated with pagan god Frija. Note that Fanny, in the UK, does not reference the posterior as it does in the US, but precisely the opposite.

I have to report that this novel is complete bullshit, notwithstanding the pretentious literary garbage that's been written about it by clueless so-called scholars. If this had been written today, it would have gone nowhere and no actual literary scholar would have been caught dead analyzing it, so that tells us all we kneed to know about it.

It's nothing more than authorial wish-fulfillment, and the way it's written shows no understanding of women at all. It's entirely a man's book form a male PoV, doing nothing more than your typical porn movie does - having some purportedly innocent woman be accosted by an erect male and instead of being horrified, turned off, or angered by his presumption and shunning him, she immediately leaps on him and has unprotected sex. She's not concerned one whit about her own satisfaction, not even remotely, but only about getting him off as quickly and in as many positions as she can possible accommodate!

This lame excuse for a novel, which is right up there with every modern derivative of it, is exactly that: it's pornography, not-so-pure and decidedly simple, with zero pretension to literature. It delights in describing, in first (or is it forced?) person recall, how awed and overwhelmed Fanny is at every sight of an erect penis which is invariably described in aggressive masculine terms as an arrow, or a weapon, for example. It's not very inventive. Let's face it: it's poorly-conceived and badly-written garbage. 'Scholars' who claim it's anything else are morons. I can't commend it based on the portion of it that I could stand to read.

Girlwood by Claire Dean

Rating: WARTY!

Polly is twelve. Her older sister Bree has fallen into the wrong crowd - drugs and so on, and one day Bree disappears. Polly is convinced she has escaped to the woods, but no one believes her. Given how everyone pitches in when a child goes missing, I found it hard ot believe that there was so little interest in organizing a search for her. Yes, Bree was older, and there is the drugs angle, but it felt wrong.

There is talk of fantasy and fairies in the story, and it started out well enough, but then it just dragged. Instead of getting into the woods and going along with the story I felt I'd been promised, it became bogged down in Polly and her wolly doodles all day, and it became a tedious read. I'm not about to expend more of my time on this when there is too much to read and too much to be written. I can't commend this based on the part I read.

Off Course by Simon Haynes

Rating: WARTY!

This was a short story aimed, presumably, at luring people into the writing world of the author in the hopes that you'll stay and buy books. It didn't work on me because I really didn't enjoy this story, so I was glad it was short. It's about a totally matter-of-fact encounter between impatient golfers and an alien spacecraft which has a crew who are evidently intent upon pulling Earth into their galactic sphere of influence. The golfers give them what for. You would think from that premise, that it would be funny, but I didn't really find it very amusing or entertaining, so I can't commend it.

Kind Nepenthe by Matthew V Brockmeyer

Rating: WARTY!

This is another ebook that I've had sitting on my virtual shelf and haven't looked at in forever, and so I decided to get this off the list and I wished I hadn't. I have no idea what the title is supposed to mean, except that 'nepenthe' appears in Homer's Odyssey. It's a drug that's supposed to work like an anti-depressant, I guess. It's also the name of a genus of pitcher plants that I featured in one of my The Little Rattuses™ books for children: Nepenthes attenboroughii.

How any of that relates to this story I can't say, but whatever it was in classical literature, it felt like a sorry pity that I didn't have some on hand to deal with this novel! The opening few chapters were utterly boring - rambling on about some hippy commune, foraging, drugs and wasted lives.

It's supposed to build to an 'explosive' ending, but if that's the case, then this has to be the ultimate in slow fuses. I could generate not a scintilla of interest. None the characters appealed to me at all and I quit reading it. There are too many readily available books out there these days and I can't justify spending time trying to get into a novel that doesn't grab me from the off. I can't commend it based on the admittedly limited exposure I had to it.