Seven Dials by Anne Perry

Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with Agatha Christie's The Seven Dials Mystery, this novel is named after a location in Covent Garden, London, where seven streets converge. It's the twenty-third in the Pitt detective series by Anne Perry, aka Juliet Marion Hulme, who served five years starting in 1954, when when she was fifteen, for helping her friend Pauline Parker brutally murder Parker's mother. A Murder mystery written by someone who has actually murdered! I didn't realize this when I started reading (or actually, listening to) this novel. I mistakenly thought that this author was the one who wrote The Accidental Tourist, but of course that was Anne Tyler! Oops!

As it happened, the novel really wasn't very good. I only made it to the half way point, and that was by skimming and skipping about sixty percent of the first half. I started listening with interest. I thought the crime was a good one to investigate, but this novel took so many digressions and rambling asides into pointless drivel that I tired of it very quickly. It didn't help that reader Michael Page, while doing fine with male voices, sounded like a Monty Python sketch when he tried impersonating cantankerous dowager aunts.

One of the worst failures is that an obvious possibility for a murder motive was completely ignored. Obviously I don't know if that turned out to be the actual motive, but it seemed to me that there were two options here, and neither was voiced, not in the portion to which I listened anyway. The first of these is that the victim was lured there deliberately by a third (or actually, a fourth in this case!) party for the express purpose of murdering him. The second possibility was that the victim was actually 'collateral damage' from an attempt by the fourth party to murder the third. The fact that this detective never even considered these possibilities made him look inept at best, and like a moron at worst.

Almost as off-putting: the detective's boss was a complete caricature, and all of his scenes with the main character were nauseatingly bad. The reader's tone may have contributed to how bad these were, I have to add. That's one of several problems with audio books - you get their take on it, not your own! And what's with the whiny violin music at the start of these disks? When you opened the original print novel, did violins spew forth? I seriously doubt it, so where are the heads of these audio book morons at, that they feel compelled to add music? Get a life you guys!

This novel takes place - as far as I can gather, during or after 1883, by which time the use of fingerprints had already appeared in an 1883 novel (by Mark Twain), yet never once is the consideration of using fingerprinting raised in order to see who had handled the gun used in the murder. So, along with other problems I had with it, this novel was sad and I am not interested in reading any more by this author. I cannot recommend this one.

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Rating: WARTY!

I'm sorely tempted to say that you can't beat a novel with a title which suggests that the author is the villain (Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson), but my ongoing quest to find a readable classic continues to be frustrated! I recall reading at least part of this young adult novel when I was a lot younger, but since the only thing I remember about that is a couple of Scots dashing around in the heather, I don't think it made an impression on me. I found it looking forlorn on the library audio bookshelf, and decided to revisit it. If mony a mickle maks a muckle, then maybe another little read will have a big impact? Sadly, no!

I started out quite bemused by the novel, both for its antiquated language (of course it wasn't antiquated when it was first published in 1886 in installments no less!), and for the quirky narration by Jim Weiss, who is not even Scots for goodness sakes, has no idea how to emulate a Scots accent, and who seems to have only two voices, sassy and sissy. In the voice avoiding to Tim, all Scots except for Davy Balfour are in the first category. Even without the voices, though, I would have found this novel a thoroughly unworthy read.

Davy was quite simply a chronic whiner, and his story was tedious in most places, describing far too much detail and far too little action. His entire life in this novel, it seems, consists of him repeatedly losing his money or making bad bargains with it, and wandering the Scots "desert" trying to get back to his evil uncle and reclaim his inheritance, threadbare as it is. He would have actually been better off had he made it to the tobacco plantations. He might have become rich there.

I know this novel is not written for modern audiences, but I reserve the right to judge classics the same as any modern novel, and by this judgment it failed to entertain me!

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Rating: WARTY!

I just began watching the TV version of this novel and I really enjoy it, so I checked with the local library and they had the audio book! Yeay! Bless that library! I began listening to that as soon as the library got it in, but unfortunately, the thrill of having the chance to hear this book was quickly replaced by deadening boredom. Mark Bramhall's dull delivery left a lot to be desired, but even had the reader been enthralling, I would still have found this novel tedious in the extreme. It was awful. This was a book about magic, and somehow Lev Grossman had contrived to remove all magic from it, and render it into one of the most pretentiously monotonous books that has ever crossed my eyesight.

I was hoping the book would be just as good as, if not better than the TV show, and perhaps with a little more substance, but there was no substance. There was no magic even when magic was being performed because the descriptions of the magic were written to tediously that all immediacy and thrill was banished. Lev Grossman seems to be the type of writer who thinks, "Why use one word where I can use a dozen?" He evidently asks himself, "Why be pithy, to the point, and gripping, when I can be rambling, dissipated, and tiresome?" It was not a pleasant experience for me.

The novel is very broadly the same as the TV show of course, but there are some significant differences which became obvious from the rambling, self-important first chapter. Indeed the first couple of chapters could have been completely dispensed with and would have actually improved this novel. I had hoped that it would improve once I got to the Breakbills magic school, but it was just as boring there as it had been in the seemingly endless run-up to that point. The TV show did a much better job of starting the story, and it made the main character, Quentin, much more appealing. Here, he was boring and I had no interest in reading about him. Even the visit from the evil wizard was uninteresting. How someone can take an event which on TV was gripping and dramatic, and make it leaden and unappealing is a mystery, but Lev Grossman managed it.

So this was a big fat DBF, but to be fair, I do owe the author for two things. One: he's convinced me that I never need to read another book by Lev Grossman, and two, he's convinced me I never need to read even one book by George RR Martin! How did that happen? Well this publisher somehow inveigled Martin to write a 'sound bite' for the cover, which ran along the lines of "The Magicians is to Harry Potter what a shot of Irish whisky is to weak tea." This phrase convinced me of two things: George Martin is utterly clueless, and so is Big Publishing™.

I think even people who hate Harry Potter would have to agree that this novel and that series have nothing on common. They are aimed at different audiences and different age ranges, so why Martin thought there was some point to comparing them is a mystery. Clearly the publisher was hoping to suck deeply on the teat of Harry Potter and draw his fans into this novel, but they have been thoroughly dishonest in comparing the two. Harry Potter had magic, to which his legions of fans and the run-away success of the movies clearly attest. The Potter books were juvenile, but they were readable, inventive, and widely appealing. This story is none of the above. Harry Potter was wordy at times, and lacked much weighty substance, but it was not leaden, and it cut to the chase on a regular basis. By contrast, there is no chase to cut to in this story. I'd say it plods, but that would imply that it was going somewhere when it was not.

I can't recommend something as stodgy and badly written as this is. Watch the TV show instead.

VALIS by Philip K Dick

Rating: WARTY!

I guess I'm done reading Philip Dick novels at this point. I've enjoyed movies and TV shows based on his works, but I can't seem to find much in his novels that I like, except for a graphic version of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Even when I've liked the movie or TV show, I tend to find the novel uninteresting. VALIS (an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System) was volume one in a planned trilogy which was never completed due to the author not being smart enough to go to the ER when his doctor advised him to do so.

I could not stand this novel. It began promisingly enough, but then became bogged down under Dick's juvenile rants about religion and philosophy and there was no story being told. I quit about twenty percent in, and I cannot recommend this dreary and pretentious book of boredom based on the portion I endured. Tom Weiner's droll voice didn't help with the narration, either.

The Body on the Beach By Simon Brett

Rating: WARTY!

This one I picked up from the library on spec. It's book one of "The Fethering Mysteries", Fethering being the quaint English village in which the mysteries are found, but given how tiny the village is, I find it had to believe a whole series can reasonable be conjured from it, and having listened to one disk of this, I decided I certainly had no interest in a series on the topic.

The novel was published in 2000, but it reads like it was written in the fifties. The main character was quite simply unlikeable. Whether she's in the entire series, I don't know, but she's not someone I'm interested in, although to the author's credit, she's an older woman and not some air-headed, cupcake-baking, superficial busy-body which topic seems to have become quite the trend of late. This audiobook was read by Geoffrey Howard, and it was a bit tedious to listen to. If you imagine the perky guy who used to read the old Pathé News films, but having a really tragic day, that's how this one was read.

The story is that this woman is out walking her dog and encounters a dead body on the beach apparently washed up by the tide. She returns to her house (evidently she has no cell phone) and instead of calling the police at once, she washes her dog, then cleans her kitchen, then calls the police, by which time the body has disappeared. Shortly after he skeptical police leave, a strange and possibly drug-abusing woman appears at her door with a gun, threatening her to say nothing more about the body, before fleeing the house when someone else knocks at the door. How this second woman even knew where to find the first is a mystery, but the first disk was as far as I wished to go, so maybe some of that mystery is unveiled later. This was not for me, and I certainly can't recommend it based on what I listened to .

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Rating: WARTY!

This is one of three novels by Agatha Christie that I intend to review this year, the other two being Murder on the Orient Express, and Cat Among the Pigeons. I enjoyed all three of these in the ITV television series starring David Suchet as the consummate Hercule Poirot, but my experience with the novels was not the same. This one I really did not care for. It was boring. Note that I already favorably reviewed Christie's The Unexpected Guest in July of 2013, and Thirteen at Dinner in November of 2014.

The murder doesn't take place until about half way through the story, so the entirety of the first half is prologue. I'm not a fan of prologue! Some of it plays into the story, but most of it seemed to be nothing more than Christie running off at the mouth painting character studies and contributing nothing to the plot at all. It was awful. The same could have been achieved with two or three short chapters.

This saddened me, because this particular audio book was read by David Suchet, and he did an excellent job. I had never heard his real voice until this novel! But the tedium, particularly of the interactions between the girls in the opening chapter, was deadening. I detested each and every one of those women and had no issues with any of them being bumped off!

The story was highly formulaic in quintessential Christie manner. She cannot write a travelogue story without having her stock characters. These consist of several Brits, including a young woman and an old crotchety woman, a couple of Brit guys, and then there are "the foreigners" which always consist of an American, an Italian, and at least one other foreigner, preferably French or German. In addition to this there is the trope Christie ending which improbably gathers all of the characters together at the end so he can lord it over them with his brilliance. This, for me, was the most irritating part of the TV series, and it was so unrealistic as to be ridiculous. Seriously, would all of these people put up with this every episode, including the murderer? Not on your nelly!

Poirot is actually in danger of being charged with impeding a police investigation, too, since he has knowledge which leads to the arrest of the perp, but which he inevitably conceals until the last minute, and the police inexplicably indulge him every time! In this case, there were no police, just Poirot and some high-up in the Brit consulate or something, I forget which from the TV show, and I didn't listen far enough to meet him in the audio book. The essential plot is that a woman introduces her fiancé to a Lady who isn't so much a Lady as a spoiled brat. She steals the man and marries him, and the jilted woman takes to stalking the happy couple including following them on their honeymoon to Egypt. No one thinks to ask how this impoverished woman could afford a vacation to Egypt and a cruise on the Nile. If they had, they might have rooted out the killer earlier.

The new bride is found shot, and witnesses are being bumped off left, right and center before Poirot figures it out. There are the usual Christie red herrings, of course. All in all it's a bit improbable, but not a bad story in the TV version. The written version not so much. I can't recommend it.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Rating: WORTHY!

This is one of three novels by Agatha Christie that I intend to review this year, the other two being Death on the Nile and Cat Among the Pigeons. I enjoyed all three of these in the ITV television series starring David Suchet as the consummate Hercule Poirot, but my experience with the novels was not the same. This one I really liked, though. Note that I already favorably reviewed Christie's The Unexpected Guest in July of 2013, and Thirteen at Dinner in November of 2014.

This one contains many of the tropes Christie routinely employed in her detective stories, including the usual array of foreigners: one Italian, one American, one French or German, and assorted Brits. It includes the young good looking guy, the young good looking girl, and the old crotchety woman. There is also the stock Christie signature ending whereby Poirot gathers all his suspects together at the end and slowly eliminates each until the murderer is identified. This to me is the weakest link, because none of these people would put up with this, and the police certainly would not. Fortunately for Poirot, the audience is already captive aboard the train, and there are no police here, only an official from the railroad. The role of official is usually played by a police officer, but there are other people who act as stand-ins, such as government officials. Here it's the railroad guy who lends Poirot authority as an agent of the railroad.

This story is so old that you very likely know the outline if not the filler, so I'm not going to launch into a detailed review here. The basis is that a truly bad man is traveling on the Orient express with a large assortment of other people. The express is full, which is unusual for the time of year. Poirot has encountered some of the passengers before he gets on the Orient Express, and meets many more aboard. The train hits a snowdrift and is stuck for several days. The night the snowdrift is encountered, the bad guy is bumped off, and Poirot naturally takes it upon himself to solve the crime. He has a harder time of it here than he usually does because of the nature of the death.

The victim was traveling under a false identity. He was stabbed twelve times, but the stab wounds offered no consistency: some were violent and deep, while others were shallow and weak. Some appear to have been delivered left-handed, whereas others were right-handed. There were some 'clues' which appeared to be false, whereas others appeared to be real, and the result of mistakes made by the perps(s).

The passengers are interviewed one by one, and Poirot slowly picks away at their stories until the rather unusual truth is revealed. I liked this story and the characters, and I recommend it.

The Edge of Nowhere by Elizabeth George

Rating: WARTY!

This audio book came as one of a pair I picked up at the local library. Of course the blurbs made them sound interesting, so I figured if I like this, one will get me two. Naturally I began listening to the wrong one first, so the next day I started on the other one. The first had not been very impressive to start with, but it began to grow on me as I continued to listen. The second, which was actually the first volume of the pair, I liked right away, but then it began to grow off me, I'm sad to say. I think it's always sad when a book lets a reader down.

The main character, Becca, has the ability to catch people's thoughts, but in just the same way that mediums cannot ever give you anything concrete (because they're freaking frauds, of course!), Becca's thought-capture utility gives her only vague, fragmented snatches which made little sense. It did, however, drive her nuts when so many random thoughts invaded her mind, so her mom got her this thing which at first I thought was called the 'odd box', but which was actually called the "aud" box. I was saddened when I learned that, because I really liked the idea of them calling it an odd box. This is the price of audio books: no way to know the spelling of an odd word or a name, no ability to skip prologues reliably, and god-awful trashy music beginning and ending every disk.

What in the name of all that's inscribed is going through the mind of the audio book publishers that they feel they have lard-up the written word with mindless snatches of music that don't even disappear when the reader starts in on the text, but instead slowly fade away? I have no idea. Did the author write the music. NO! The music is entirely, completely, absolutely, fundamentally, and in every other way nothing to do with the story! It was absent from the novel as written by the author (which is all I care about), so what in the entire universe possessed these delusional deviants to add it? Are they so anal that they cannot get past the illusion that if it's a CD it has to have music? If it's audio it must have power chords and thrashing drums? These people are morons.

But I digress. The story begins interestingly enough when Becca catches thoughts from her stepdad that show he has murdered his business partner. Her dad, aware she can catch thoughts, knows that she knows, and this, finally, is evidently enough to motivate her mother to leave this jerk. Somehow Laurel, the mom, magically has the wherewithal to conjure up false identities for Becca and herself, and with hair color and makeup disguises, the two flee - to Whidbey island. Mom evidently has an old friend from high school who lives on the island, and who has agreed to take care of Becca. Mom herself, for reasons unexplained, does not stay with Becca, but disappears off somewhere else, leaving her daughter entirely alone.

The woman Becca is supposed to stay with dies before Becca gets to the house, and she has evidently told no one else that Becca is coming, so Becca is not only alone, she is without substantial money and has nowhere to stay. Then magic happens. Again. Becca gets a ride from a nice woman; she meets a nice young guy who directs her to another gruff but nice older woman, who magically runs a motel where Becca can stay for free in return for helping out around the place. You know this is what happens to all runaways right? They get everything on a plate and never have any difficulties. Happy, happy, joy, joy. This novel is Newbery material right there.

So this story that began with a great premise now descends rapidly into nothing more than high school rivalry and love triangles. The perky rockin' music was appropriate after all! Who knew?! Becca meets Derek, a slightly older student who is sweetness personified. She also meets Jen, one of the most obnoxious people it's possible to not avoid meeting. She immediately hates Becca and misses no opportunity to trash her in public and in front of Derek. Never once does Derek call Jen on it, or try to stop the insults flowing. Yet he's a nice guy, because we're told he is. He has a nice opinion of Jen, too, notwithstanding her disgraceful attitude and criminal behavior. (Note that I managed to stomach only about 30% of this novel, so when I say "never once" it refers only to that portion)

That's all the story offered at this point, and it was nowhere near enough. That and some vague mystery from the past which was so heavily and repeatedly foreshadowed that it became tedious to listen to. The reader, Amy McFadden, was way too perky and while not god-awfully bad, could not do a decent male voice to save her life, so that became a joke. Becca isn't very smart, either, which is another no-no in stories for me. When she gets a lift to go meet Derek, the driver sees him, and Becca catches certain foreboding thoughts. When she gets to Derek's side, she catches the other side of those thoughts, but never once does she suspect there's anything going on here. She's an idiot.

I was thoroughly disappointed in Becca that she had this ability to catch thoughts, yet did nothing with it: she did not practice, she tried no training of her ability, there was no exploration, no testing, no spying, nothing. Instead, she treated it like a mental illness, which was disappointing and short-sighted. I don't care if a girl starts out dumb and wises up, but I don't really want to read about female characters who have no sense of curiosity or ambition and never develop one.

There wasn't even any internal logic to the thought capture. She couldn't pick up thoughts from sentient animals such as dogs for example, and couldn't pick them up from an unconscious boy who'd had an accident, so it made no sense (unless maybe he was brain dead - I didn't read that far). She picked up no images, sounds, or smells, only words, and never once did she get a full sentence, again with no explanation as to why. In the case of the boy, Becca calls for an ambulance, and then refuses to give her name and hides her phone. What? I know she's trying to stay below the radar, but seriously is that the smartest way to do it?

My plan is, despite the disappointment here, to at least give volume two a shot, and see if it's any better, especially since I already started it. The problem with this plan is that the main character here appears to be Jen - at least in the beginning - and she was so nauseating in volume one that unless she underwent a marked improvement somewhere in volume one, then volume two isn't going to be enjoyable either! We'll see. As for this volume, I can't recommend it.

Scrivener's Moon by Philip Reeve

Rating: WORTHY!

This is an oddball steampunk novel to which I took an initial liking, and that stayed with me apart from an unfortunate dip in the middle, but overall I consider it a worthy read. It's always nice to find a novel that gets you right from the start. It's read by Sarah Coombes who has a delightful British accent and does a nice range of voices, including a beautiful Scots accent too, but her voicing of male characters is a bit off, and rather grating. Apart from that I really liked it. I'm picky, I admit, so it was nice to have a reader who didn't irritate me.

Note that this is book 3 of a series (the Fever Crumb series) and I haven't read books one and two. Evidently it's also tied to Author Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines series which I haven't read either. I wasn't even aware that there was a series when I picked this audio book up in the library, since the morons in Big Publishing™ seem to have a huge problem with actually putting the book series information on the cover or in the blurb. That said, I was able to get into it without any problem. Obviously I don't know what I'm missing from the first two, if anything, and whether or not that would improve my appreciation of this particular volume, but this one didn't start out like it was one of a continuing series, so perhaps I'm missing nothing.

Normally I skip prologues like the plague since I don't see the point. This book proved my case. The entire three volume set is a prologue to his Mortal engines series! But, it's hard to skip prologues in audio books, since you can't see where they are or be sure that the first thing you listen to actually is a prologue if it's not announced as such, nor can you see where to jump to in order to bypass it arrive at chapter one. So I ended up listening to this prologue, and as expected. it contributed nothing.

The hilarious thing was that this is book three! Were not books one and two the prologue to this volume? If so, why do we need a yet another prologue here in volume three, especially one which contributed zilch to reader information or appreciation?! I think authors put prologues in because they think they have to, or because they're simply pretentious or melodramatic. They just don't get it, so let me offer this newsflash: chapter one is the prologue, you hockey pucks! I've never read a book where I've had to go back and consult the prologue to get an understanding of what's going on in the novel. Not once. I rest my case. Prologues are a delusional waste of time and worse, a waste of trees in print books.

That said, the story itself is nicely done in the steampunk genre with a twist. There was a nice emphasis on engineering, which I like and admire. Where would we be without engineers? And we definitely need more female engineers. Victorian times were a wonderful era for some amazing feats of engineering. People talk of the Pyramids as great engineering efforts, but all those guys did was stack block on top of each other! The Romans were engineers. The Victorians were engineers. Today we have engineers!

This novel however, is not set in Victorian times, which is another reason it's different. This is set in a future where some catastrophe (known melodramatically as The Diminishing) has set back humanity and reduced our numbers catastrophically - an era which could still come down the pipe if we don't take care of climate change, fresh water shortage, and disease. In the novel, all of the technology of today has gone, and we have been set back to the age of steam in a world where populations have splintered, barbarian tribes threaten England, and an ice age seems to be encroaching more and more territory. How things became so bad that we reverted to a steam age is not explained in this volume. I don't know if the earlier volumes offer more details.

Mammoths, for reasons unspecified, seem to have been brought back from extinction big time, although they're really just bystanders in this volume, so I did't get the point. There are actually three projects attempting to achieve this in real life as it happens, though. The entire mammoth genome (at least for one species of mammoth) has been recreated, but that was the easy part. Getting a healthy and viable fetus from a genome is something only nature has perfected, and even it has problems at times. Human science is far behind, so while we will probably see a mammoth again, it's going to be a while. Given how scientific knowledge and technology have been so completely lost, Reeve fails (at least in this volume) to explain how it was that the mammoth genome was not only preserved, but the technology to recreate it also survived whatever disaster befell humanity. Maybe they had been created before the disaster fell.

These threatening circumstances are the reason an engineer has decided to put London on wheels - yes, the entire city - so it can move around on tank tracks, to keep it safe from encroaching ice and barbarian raids. Absurd, but where would we be without fiction like that to set us back on our heels and amaze and intrigue us? Talking of which, in this world there are three intriguing females. Wavy, who is a mystery, her daughter Fever Crumb, who is an engineer, and Cluny Morvish, a woman is who very much Fever's equal, but who is on the opposite side of a brewing war. Fever and her mom are of the scrivener bloodline, but it's unclear exactly what that is. Again, this may have been covered in earlier volumes, but it was unexplained here.

In addition to these is Charley Shallow, the designated mustache-twirling villain although he is clean-shaven. I found him uninteresting (right through to the end, as it happens, and quickly took to skipping tracks on which he appeared. At the end, I didn't feel like I had missed a thing.

The story kicks into gear - brass gear no doubt - when information comes to Wavy about a mysterious pyramid in the frozen north - one which has a reputation both for being haunted and for being impregnable. The information is that a crack has opened up in it. Wavy and her daughter head north on a land ship to investigate.

For me, this is where the story went south, paradoxically. This is a quest story in many ways, and the goal is this pyramid, but when Fever and Her mom get to it (and meet up with Cluny on the way) Reeve expends a pitiful few pages on the thing, reveals virtually nothing about it, and then it's destroyed. I didn't get that at all. What was the point? Well the point was that i was ready to give up on the nbvoel after that, and the only thing which kept me reaidng was Cluny and Fever's interactions, wihc far form being instadore were relaistic and captivating. These two were os much alike in ways it would spoil the sotry to relate, but they were laso on opposite sides, and the frictiona dn tension between them was palpable.

To me they were really the only thing worth reading about in this book, and it was far too little, but what there was, was pure gold, particularly the ending sequence, which is why I finally decided I could rate this novel as a worthy read. I noticed that some reviewers had described this relationship as insta-love (or instadore as I term it since no actual love is ever involved in these relationships, especially when written by female authors of young adult paranormal stories. Those reviewers missed the point.

Cluny and Fever had significant ties which went outside the normal range of interaction and which for me explained their attraction to and fascination with one another. One was something which happened to each of them in their respective childhoods. Another was their isolation from real family and friends. Another was their being so alike yet on opposite sides. Another was their desire to see justice. Another was that each in turn was the captive of the other and was rescued by the other from imminent death. I don't see how they could not have been drawn together and bonded.

So overall, I recommend this and while some of it was boring to me, it's well-worth reading for the relationship.

Goddess of Yesterday by Caroline B Cooney

Rating: WARTY!

Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of ward-winning novels, but this one, which won the Josette Frank Award in 2003, started out really well and I enjoyed it, but as soon as the main character took up residence in the palace of King Menelaus, the story fell completely flat and became a tiresome read. It is aimed at middle-grade children, so we shouldn't expect too much of it, but I think children have a right to expect enough from a novel, and I felt that this quite simply did not deliver. Even the title was a bit of a downer, which struck me as strange.

Some people have described this as an historical novel and it is, technically speaking, but it's also one of those novels written for children which puts the child at the pivot of events, and I typically find those to be the disingenuous and annoying braggarts of the literary world (whether written for children or for adults for that matter).

The story is supposed to be that of Anaxandra, who we join at the age of six, the daughter of a minor pirate lord of some non-entity of an Aegean island. She is a devotee of Medusa, and often prays to her for help and guidance, although Medusa was not actually a god. She was one of the Gorgons, a race of monsters. Why anyone would pray to such a creature is unexplained in this novel. This young girl is taken as tribute (so she believes) by king Nikander (note that my spellings may be off because I listened to an audio book, so I have no idea how the author spelled these names in the printed version), and grows up to middle-grade age with the royal family as a companion to his handicapped daughter Callisto, but his small island is raided by pirates who slaughter and destroy. Anaxandra manages to survive this and at one point amusingly frightens away some pirates by putting an octopus on her head and pretends that she is a displeased Medusa come to wreak havoc upon them. These pirates are pretty dumb, let's face it, and so they take off, and Anaxandra buries her dead king.

Just when she thinks hope is lost, King Menelaus of Sparta arrives with his fleet, and fearful of being taken into slavery, Anaxandra pretends she is Nikander's dead daughter Callisto. Menelaus adopts her into his own family, perhaps because they both share red hair (a color which is brought up with nauseating frequency). For me, here is where the story became uninteresting and fell completely flat. Contrary to popular consciousness, Helen (of Troy), wife of Menelaus, is portrayed not such much as a raging beauty as she is a royal bitch, and Paris is portrayed as a complete fop more worthy of being named Narkissos than Paris.

The problem with this part of this novel is that it's taken to the level of caricature, and so was as uninteresting to me. It lacked all and any attempt at nuance. As such, it wasn't entertaining at all. This is where the story became tedious to me, with page after page of commentary on what a bitch Helen was and what a poseur Paris was. It was tiresome, unimaginative, and uninventive, and it was at this point that i quit reading it. How it won an award, I do not know because Anaxandra had so many opportunities to become a really powerful character, and the author let all of them slip through her fingers.

Additionally, Anaxandra was one of the most emotionally dead characters I've ever encountered. There was no concern on her part for example, from the fact that she had been forced from her original home, or from seeing King Nikander, of whom she was very fond, die along with - evidently, her adopted sister Callisto, or form seeing her adopted mother, who was very kind to Callisto, being taken into slavery by the pirates. We never even got a description of her adopted mom's grief from losing both her husband and her daughter. At one point Anaxandra did consider going into the palace during the raid to get to Callisto, but her effort was half-hearted at best, and her complete loss of interest in Callisto's fate thereafter was shameful. Could the author not at least have had her find her sister and bury her too?

It was this complete lack of a clue about how real people children react and behave coupled with the sheer boredom later, which turned me off this book. How can any author,m even by accident, make the story of Helen and Paris boring?! I've never heard of the Josette Frank Award, but I have to say that standards must be low if this one won it. I can't recommend it.

Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Rating: WARTY!

Two households, both alike in dipshits,
In fair bird droppings, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break two new misfits,
Where uncivil blood makes love demeaned.
From forth the fatal wash of mortal enemas
A pair of snake-cross'd birders take their life;
One Zane Cobriana, in heart and soul an ass
Talks Danica Shardae into becoming his wife.
The fearful passage of their asinine love,
And the continuance of their friends' rage,
Which, buttheads that they were, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
Shall wish your very own life to end.

This was one of the sorriest novels I've ever not read. Nope, I listened to it, and the reader's voice was barely tolerable. It's a Romeo and Juliet redux, but instead of the couple dying, the story died.

The blurb, of course, made it sound like it might be interesting and there was a sequel, both of which I happily borrowed from the local library hoping for a treat. That hope died. I returned the second volume unheard. I got through fifty percent of the first volume before I could stand it no more. There was no performance, unless that word is a contraction of 'perfunctory dormancy', and if I had to listen to the reader Jennifer Ikeda say "Donnika" just one more time I would have lost it. Dahknicker Shardead and inZane Cobrie-cheese. he;s so inzane that he crawls out of his skin every year. Literally.

I've seen some reviewers, even negative ones, praise the world building, and I have to ask, what world-building? There was ZERO world building here! What 'story' we got made no sense. These two races, the Avians and the reptilians - no - they were not even reptilians, they were serpient! What is that? It's not the equivalent of a class like avian. It's a sub-order, serpentes, which I guess is what those people were, so maybe it's right after all, if their race is judged by the behavior of the leader, Zane, who happily skins people who piss him off, and evidently carpets the floor of his room with the skins. This is a civilized person? This is someone to fall in love with? He's a snake in the grass. A man who suggests that his intended bride wasn't been beaten too much? How much beating would be just enough, Zane? This is a man who cam make peace? No, it isn't. Snakes are not very much into making peace with birds. They'd rather eat them.

There was no real description of the world in which these people lived, or even how they came to be (= no world-building). They were supposed to be birds and snakes, yet they maintained human form most of the time. Why? No explanation. Apparently there were humans on this planet, but they played no role whatsoever in the events - not in the portion to which I listened, anyway - so why were these races mimicking humans? No explanation. Why were there humans at all? No explanation.

The races were supposed to have been at war for a thousand years or more, and no one had any idea why they were fighting, yet they continued. Not once during this millennium of mêlée was any technology developed. Why not? War produces huge and lethal advances in technology, yet neither of these two races achieved anything. Why not? How the birds had failed to beat the earth-bound snakes escapes me. The two races supposedly detested each other, yet completely out of the blue, two of them magically started to trust each other. Two alien races, neither of which could have had any attraction to the other, yet they agree to marry, believing, for no reason at all, that this would end the war. Seriously? Why would it? Why would they think it would?

Dah-knicker became Zane's "Naga" - yet another snake word which made me laugh because it sounded so much like "nagger". Donni-kuh was his nagger. We had the Cobriana family, the Cobra race, the serpient people, the serpents? There was no logic to any of these amateur naming conventions, including the main character's names. The bird was named Danica Shardae, the guy Zane Cobriana? Seriously? So that's why he couldn't get into the dance club - it was mambas only! He drove an old battered car. It was a real rattler! He's so tired of people that he dreams of living alone on a coral island, watching Monty Python. And wearing a boa....

These critters were not human, yet they mimicked humans and took very pretentious human names. Why? No doubt for the same reason that they inhabited very human palaces, where they had servants, and where despite being at war for a thousand years, they Avians still haven't thought that it might be a good idea to guard the servants' stairs which lead directly to the princess's bedroom. These people are morons. No wonder they can't win. Again, zero world-building.

Danica was supposed to be a hawk, yet she possessed not a single hawk-like trait. She was more like a Dodo. Danica laid an egg. The same goes for Zane and his purported cobra-esque personality. The snakes could hypnotize people with a glance? Honestly? Could we not get a modicum of originality here? This story was sad, sad, sad. Yeah, it gave me a belly-laugh, but I give it the bird.

Spy the Lie by Philip Houston, Michael Floyd, Susan Carnicero

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a book written by a twenty-five year veteran of the CIA, and ex-employee of both the CIA and the NSA, and a CIA security officer. I picked it up because it looked interesting and recently I've been watching the TV show Lie to Me which I completely adore. That show, which gets a mention here, actually employs some of the techniques discussed in this book, although it understandably over-dramatizes them (sometimes to a melodramatic level) for the sake of making entertaining TV.

This book is a little slow, and doesn't offer much (the audio version to which I listened was only four CDs), but what it does offer, when it offers it, is interesting and useful knowledge. It mentions real cases in which the authors have been involved, and some in which they were not, including, for example, the Simpson (OJ, not Homer) trial.

This book never was intended as an audio book, so it makes no sense to it referring to figures and diagrams, which are clearly print version only. Those issues aside, I enjoyed listening and learned some interesting stuff - stuff that maybe I can use in some future novel? Who knows?! It's read by Fred Berman whose voice was slightly irritating but not obnoxious. I recommend this if you're into the background to spying and lying.

See You at Harry's by Jo Knowles

Rating: WARTY!

Read acceptably by Kate Rudd, this audiobook version is about middle-grader Fern. She's the youngest child in the family apart from so-called "surprise baby" which is actually a toddler named Charlie, who's a bit like the Tiny Tim of this family, although he has no physical condition other than general snottiness and stickiness common to all such children. He's not really that much of a surprise given how wide-spread in age this family is. Fern is, quite frankly, a bit self-centered, spoiled, and whiney.

Her older sister Sarah might have been a more interesting subject. She's taking a gap year after high school, although she appears to be doing nothing with it since she's staying at home and working part time in the family restaurant, Harry's. The family is rounded out with Holden, who is gay and thinks no one knows it, and mom and dad, but dad is a jerk who is completely out in left field, and mom has to literally bribe the kids to get them to go along with his weird ideas about how to advertise his restaurant. His name isn't even Harry.

Despite his devotion to her, Fern is mean to Charlie, which is what made me think that when " tragedy strikes" and Fern is at fault, as the blurb tells us, the tragedy afflicts Charlie. It;s absolutely no spoiler whatsoever to reveal that Charlie dies and Fern feels responsible. Unoriginal and cynically, manipulatively pulling heart strings? Yes. Trite and pathetic? Definitely. It's another story written by a woman where the main female character has to have a guy come rescue her because she's nothing but a maiden in distress waiting for exactly that event for her life to be complete. Stick a Newbery in it. It's done to death.

A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd

Rating: WARTY!

Read hick-ily by Cassandra Morris, this is a children's novel which at first irked me somewhat, but which then began to grow on me, before really irking me so I quit listening to it (it was an audio book). The irking part was the 'southern bumpkin' accent of the reader. I don't know if she really speaks like that, or if she just adopted the voice for this novel, but it wasn't an easy voice to warm to because it sounded so annoyingly vacant. The text of the novel was what kept me listening for a while. Initially, I liked the way it was written and the kid's philosophy despite it being first person PoV, but the kid was too country hayseed for my taste, and the endless rambling really ticked me off. She used phrases like, "What the hayseed is going on here?" and she used made up words such as "spin-diddly" to signify something wonderful.

If it had been just once or twice, I think I could have withstood it, but when it's every chapter, it's offensive, especially when the story is quite literally going nowhere. I'm not one of these people who likes to read stories about people who are quirky just because it's about people who are quirky. I need for the story to go somewhere or do something. This one didn't. The blurb lied that it was about a magical town that had lost its magic and implied that this country bumpkin would bring it back. She did absolutely nothing - not as far as I listened, which about 75%.

Her friend was 'The Beedle' who was a character who did good deeds for people anonymously. She learned who he really was, but I honestly could not tell if the reader was saying 'Beetle' or Beedle'. I decided it had to be 'Beedle' eventually, but I wasn't sure. Not that it mattered because he did nothing either.

I assume something in the way of fixin' the magic happened at some point before 'THE END', but I sure as heck isn't hell had no interest in traveling all the way through the great state of tedium to get there. It was nothing save endless rambling about day-to-day life, with a mind-numbing amount of tedious detail. I really, honestly don't need to know exactly how she dries dishes. I'd rather watch paint drying than hear that, especially when what I wanted to hear was what they were talking about while they dried the dishes. Her unremarkable experiences in school were equally uninteresting as were her trips to the ice cream parlor. Yes, this is the kind of story where they have an ice cream parlor even if they don't call it that. If you know what I mean.

I can't recommend this one. Stick a Newbery in it and move on.

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Rating: WARTY!

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency! How can you not love a title like that? Well, I learned. I love several of the titles of this series, but when I came to read the first one (or rather, to listen to the audio book), my experience was singularly less than satisfactory. The absurdity of series is sweetly highlighted here since this novel is known as The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency #1). How bizarre is that?!

This fiction is supposedly Rooted on the real life ritual murder of Segametsi Mogomotsi a couple of years ago. This was a religious murder which was perpetrated purely for deluded business purposes. That story shows up about halfway through, but here it's a boy rather than a girl who is the victim. The novel is set in Gaborone, Botswana, and it takes too long to get down to business. It features a Motswana character named Precious Ramotswe. Curiously enough, 'Motswana' is the singular form of 'Tswana' which is a Bantu-speaking people of southern Africa.

I know nothing of Bantu, so I have to bow to the reader of this novel, a woman with the awesomely kick-ass name of Lisette Lecat, who is actually from southern Africa. Her voice is sweet and melodic as are all of those voices down there, it seems to me, but it drove me nuts when listening to her pronouncing 'Mma Ramotswe' with an exaggeratedly long Mmmmm, rolling into the 'r' of the name. I think she was overdoing it, frankly! This was exacerbated by the author's inane insistence upon using everyone's full name every time they're referred to, even when it's entirely unnecessary. There's no 'she' or 'he' here, only full names or titled names, such as Ummmmm-aaaaah Rrramotswe. Yes, it's that annoying. Maybe it won't bother other readers, but it did me. I’d recommend avoiding the audiobook unless you're really into that kind of thing!

As for the novel itself, I was really disappointed. I was hoping for some interesting African detective work, but it took forever to get going. There was a case right a the start, but then the story gets bogged down with some three chapters of info dump on not only the main character, but also her father. What the heck does that have to do with the story? Nothing! Yes, she got the money for her agency after her father died from miner's lung, and left her his house, but seriously?

The worst part about this novel was that the cases themselves were worthy of a children's book, not an adult story. One woman took in a strange guy who said he was her long lost father. This is a commendable tradition in Botswana, but she became suspicious of his free-loading, and brought the case to Ramotswe. She solves it by using a principal based on the Biblical story of Solomon, where he threatened to cut up a child in order to determine which of two competing women was the actual mother. Why, when he purportedly had a god on his side, he had to resort to such barbaric measures went unexplained.

Fortunately, Ummmmm-aaaaah Rrramotswe proves to be wiser than Solomon in her execution of the principal. Another case was self-evident - a guy disappeared and was quite obviously taken by a crocodile, although how he disappeared so completely silently when standing next to five other people who were waiting with him to be baptized is as much of a mystery as it is a joke. Why no body parts were found when the crocodile was cut open was an even bigger mystery. After that story, I could no longer take any of this seriously and decided to quit listening and move onto something more grown up.

It's nice to read about Africa, the cradle of humanity, and those parts of the novel were, for the most part, interesting, but nothing truly special. The novel is more like a series of short stories than a novel, with no overall arc and no over-arching plot, and what bit of a story that was there, wasn't exactly enthralling. Another factor that turned me off it was the hatred of men which pervaded the entire story (at least as far as I listened). Violence against women in domestic relationships is high in Botswana, so this might account for that approach, but I thought this could have been better handled. it was simply annoying to hear pretty much everyone insulting men pretty much every time they spoke. Maybe in Botswana, they deserve it, but that doesn't mean we have to hear it like a ritualistic mantra every time a man is mentioned! Overall, I can’t recommend this story.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Rating: WARTY!

This novel was beyond awful; I'd even go so far as to say that it was something John Green would be proud of. Oh, wait, he was! I actually read this some time ago, but must have blanked it out until I got reminded recently that I never posted a review for this.

Cather and Rine are twins who don't even get their own name. If 'it' was a girl she would have been named Catherine, but 'it' was twin girls, so Mom, who is no longer on the scene, split the name. Listening to this on the audio book, I thought the sister's name was 'Ren' because of the way the reader pronounced it. It took a while to make sense of it. I see some reviewers have rendered her name as Wren, so maybe that's how it was in the print book. In the audio version, you can't tell. Cather, who likes to be called Cath, is the eponymous fangirl. She writes popular fan fiction about Simon Snow - who is a direct rip-off of Harry Potter, if Potter had been gay or bi, and had a relationship going with Malfoy (a topic which actually is the subject of fanfiction, believe it or not).

The problem is that Cath has the mentality and outlook of a middle-grader, and she is lost without A). her sister, and B). her fan fiction. Now they're going to college, without any warning whatsoever, Ren has chosen to put away childish things and embrace adulthood. For her this means staying not only in a different room at college, but also in a different dorm. Essentially, she ditches her own sister, leaving Cath lost and adrift. I'm tempted to call her a bitch, but in that, she's really no different from Cath. They're both the same underneath their respective veneer of civilization. They're like positive and negative terminals and both are equally lost in college. So Cath has only Simon Snow to cling to, and she's racing to finish her novel length fanfiction before the next installment of the actual Simon Snow series gets published. She has a lot of fans. Why, I don't know, because her writing is as stereotypically crappy as fan fiction is supposed to be and all-too-often-but-not-always, is.

After getting through about twenty percent of this, I had no interest in reading about either of these two loser twins. They were clichéd and boring as all-get-out. The person I wanted to read about was Cath's roommate, Reagan (who ought to have been president instead of the actual Reagan! LOL!), but I was denied that except in too-brief glimpses. Instead, what I got was Cath and her roommate's obnoxious boyfriend Zither (or whatever the hell this jerk-off's name was), who had no respect whatsoever for Cath, whom he played like a Zither.

As one prescient reviewer observed, Cath was thirteen for all practical purposes, and he was in his twenties, so this relationship was creepy at best. He constantly took advantage of her and invaded her space. He stole things from her. He occupied her bed like it was Wall Street. He was always there. He flatly refused to call her by the name she wanted to be known by: Cath. He forced his way into her room when she had told him "No!" more than once. She didn't want him around, but because he was raping her incrementally, he was allowed, by this author (who apparently thinks that no means you have to be more forceful) to have his way with her. Instead of being dependent upon her sister, Cath became dependent upon him. How that was supposed to represent an improvement in her condition, I don't know. But at least someone now owned her, so I guess this author thought that was fine.

There were huge screeds of Simon Snow fanfic in this volume, all of which I skipped when I realized how godawful it truly was. The novel would be about fifty percent smaller without it. I'm guessing the author was hoping for a comic book series based on Simon Snow. It's not going to happen. At least not through any writer who has any self-respect. The main character was thoroughly unlikeable, as was her twin. Cath was a spineless uninteresting juvenile who had no redeeming qualities. Her self-appointed overlord was even worse. The novel was out-and-out awful, and I refuse to even consider recommending it.

What Happened on Planet Kid by Jane Leslie Conly

Rating: WARTY!

The short answer to What Happened on Planet Kid is: Not a darned thing! Admittedly I skimmed this audio book because it plumbed new depths in the bottomless mine of the ineffably boring, but Planet Kid was barely mentioned. The two kids were almost never there and pretty much everything that happened in this novel happened elsewhere. Not that it was actually a planet, of course; it was simply a hide-away that they had created to avoid boys, but THEY WERE NEVER THERE! Nothing happened. The novel's title was a complete lie!

Not only that, but reader Kate Forbes not only sounded too old for the character, she sounded like Clarice Starling from the movie Silence of the Lambs! I honestly couldn't take it seriously, but it wasn't funny, either. If you consider a twelve-year old's "Dear Diary" from half a century ago, with all the interesting bits cut out, entertaining and engrossing, then this is for you, otherwise you might want to give it a fly by - I planet kid you not.

Ghost Buddy: Zero to Hero by Lin Oliver and Henry Winkler

Rating: WARTY!

Billy Broccoli has moved to a new home with his mom, which they're sharing with her new husband and his daughter. No word on what happened to his original dad. Billy is facing a new school and is missing his old friends (although why he can't visit them isn't explained), but he's not expecting that his new home is haunted by a ghost named Hoover.

I know this novel, the first in a series, is not aimed at my age group, but I found it to be far too black and white and simplistic to be even mildly entertaining, and Henry Winkler's reading of it left something to be desired. Maybe younger kids will like this because it seemed to me that it was pitched too low for middle grade. Cliche abounded and it was boring and predictable. Things were too disastrous to begin with, the pain-in-the-patoot neighbor kid was a ridiculous caricature (I can't imagine any cops even responding to a kid who calls them and reports a car being parked one inch over the no parking area, much less the cops having the car towed for that).

Billy does show some maturity in how he handles his revenge on this neighbor, but there was too much bullying and threats. It's stories like these which put a young kid's foot onto that dreary road to reality TV, sports is everything, and frat parties. if that's what you want for your kids, then have at it. I'd prefer something which has the guts to take the road less traveled instead of the lowest common denominator. I'd like to see some moral ambiguity, some gray areas, and some thought-provoking options which seem to me to be more age appropriate for the audience this book is aimed at. An approach like that that would have made for a much better story and a better educational experience for kids.

It's not like Winkler (or Oliver for that matter) is an unknown who doesn't have the mojo to ease a series like that through a publisher's door. Why would he need to take the easy way out as though he's some unknown children's book writing wannabe? For that matter, was the publisher so star-struck that they didn't want to look too closely at this? Whatever. I can't recommend this one. Winkler is dyslexic and I think he could have turned out better work than this on that and other such topics.

Doll Bones by Holly Black

Rating: WORTHY!

These three twelve-year-old kids, Alice, Poppy, and Zach, have a healthy imagination and play together in an elaborate fantasy world they've created, featuring pirates and mermaids, and evil queens, based on their respective toys - action figures, Barbie dolls, and this one bone china doll in Poppy's mom's cabinet. The way Holly Black evokes these kids and their passion for this fantasy world is remarkable. The way it's read by Nick Podehl contributed greatly to the atmosphere and representation of the kids, too. I can only speculate uselessly how I would have found this novel had I read it first rather than listened to it. I would still have liked it, but would I have liked it as much? More? It's impossible to say, just as it's impossible to say if I would have disliked it had the narrator been rather nauseating. You pays your money and you takes your chance! Except that in this case it's "You borrows your audiobook ...."

Zach's dad thinks Zach is too old and too male to be playing with dolls, so he throws out all of Zach's figures one day while Zach is at school. The boy already resented his father for disappearing for some time before slowly sliding his way back into the family, but now Zach honestly hates him. For reasons which I didn't feel were well explained, Zach is too embarrassed to admit to the girls that his toys were thrown away, so he brusquely states that he's done playing these childish games. This begins a thread of discord which runs uncomfortably through this story like a out-of-the-way itch

The girls are crushed, but he's adamant about his decision, until late one night Alice and Poppy show up outside his bedroom window with a story that Poppy has been having night-time visitations from the ghost of the bone china doll, which she says is made from real bones of a dead girl who wants to be buried or she will curse them. Poppy has some actual ashes and bone fragments she says were inside the doll. They look like they came from someone's cremated remains.

Zach isn't sure that she's being honest, and he only half-way believes the ghost story, but he's impressed by Poppy's earnest demeanor, and by Alice's bravery at risking being grounded for life by her strict grandmother. Alice said she would only go with Poppy if Zach came, and Poppy was determined to go alone if she had to. Zach may have been skeptical, but impressed by the strength of conviction in his friends, and interested in one more adventure with the girls, the three of them hop on a bus to East Liverpool in the wee hours. it's a three hour ride to whence this dead girl supposedly hailed. Their plan is to bury her and lift the curse.

Thus begins their quest! The story is told well and has a lot of action and adventure, and some interesting conversations and shifting allegiances. There are some less than noble behaviors indulged in by these three kids, and I would have liked to have seen some sort of remorse or cost to the kids resulting from these, but there was none. I didn't like that. That aside, though, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I recommend it not only for age-appropriate readers (/listeners!), but for anyone who likes a good adventure story.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Rating: WARTY!

I started listening to Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief this past weekend and this morning. It's pretty bad and very much a rip-off of Harry Potter. It's like cut-price Greek mythology - set in America no less - meets Harry Potter. There's even a wand, after a fashion - it's Zeus's lightning bolt. Someone stole it and evidently the gods are, as usual, utterly incapable of discovering who took it or where it is. For reasons unexplained, they zero-in on Percy Jackson, who is, unbeknownst to him, the son of not only his mother, but also Zeus's brother Poseidon, who's been banned by Zeus from seeing his son. The Greek gods were the original dysfunctional family.

In order to protect Percy from unspecified potential enemies, his mom evidently had no other choice than to take-up residence with a disgusting guy who abuses her to a caricatured degree, mentally and physically. Evidently his smell is powerful enough to hide Percy from enemies who are evidently as dumb as the gods. Percy attends a special private school, although who pays for this goes unspecified. The only thing taught at the school, it would seem, is ancient Greek mythology, and Latin. Why Latin, I have no idea whatsoever. No Roman gods are involved in this story! I studied Latin for two years in high school and got nothing out of it other than a better understanding of English, which I could have arrived at in far less painful ways, trust me!

As is typical for this magical child trope, Percy, like Potter, grows up in pain and is kept in ignorance about his true origin and nature. Like Potter, he's bullied at school, and he's been told that he suffers from ADHD and dyslexia. He discovers he can read ancient Greek with no trouble, but plain modern English escapes him. I never knew that was what dyslexia was all about! Wow!

I was having a hard time getting into the story, mostly because Percy was incredibly stupid and blind, and the mythology had been dumbed-down to childish levels presumably to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I had quite liked the movie, which despite its flaws, was considerably better than the novel. It was tighter, smarter, better told, and more 'sensible', although it still fell short of being truly good.

The movie changed a few significant things, too - such as Percy saving Grover from the minotaur in the book, which was changed to Grover saving Percy in the movie; then came the second movie which sucked! This morning, I decided that this first novel was very much of the same nature as the second movie, and I skipped to the last couple of disks figuring I could skim through those before I drop it off at the library this afternoon. It's gone, girl!

My conviction that this novel would never improve and would be just as bad at the end as it was at the beginning, was fully confirmed and amplified upon. After hearing the guy who was reading this story pronounce Charon as Karen as opposed to Care - on, and discovering that Kerberos (not pronounced with a K, but begun with a 'ser' - as in Ser-bian in this novel), and discovering that this fierce guardian of hell was really just a puppy who liked to chase balls, I had pretty much heard all I could stand. I never like Annabeth in the movie (she was better in True Detective), and I liked her just as little in the novel. And why was she named Annabeth? She's the daughter of a Greek God and she's named with a Hebrew name? Grover is a Satyr, and gets an English name?!

This author has no respect for the mythology and dumbs it down incredibly. What in the name of the gods inspired him to take Greek mythology and then divorce it entirely from Greece and set it in the USA? What logic or rationale is behind that? Obviously none. The Empire State Building is Olympus? It's really saddening that he trashed and cheapened some fine mythology instead of fully capitalizing on it. On the other hand, he has a best-selling franchise from treating his readers like they deserve nothing better, so maybe the rest of us should jump on this bandwagon and start turning out equally careless LCD novels? I honestly don't l think I can do that, and I certainly can't recommend this as a worthy read. The grpahic novle is no better. I posted a negative review of that in June of 2017.