The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the second time I've reviewed this! Normally I don't review books twice, not even when one is print and the other audio, but this was the audio version, it was one disk sitting on the library shelf looking at me like audio books do, and so I thought what the heck? I can tell you it was nicely read by Meryl Streep, but then she does have a lot of Streep cred....

The previous review was of the print book back in June of 2015, so you can visit that if you want the full take on it. For this review I'll just confine myself to one issue which is the use of music. There was no music sold with the original novel, and there is no music in the novel, so why the producers of this audio version felt the need to lard it up with music by George Winston (of whom I've never heard) is a mystery, but make a note: they did! And it was loud. And intrusive. And irritating. Maybe the age-range at whom this is aimed won't be bothered by it. They might even like it. For me it had no place on the disk.

That said I recommend the story. Meryl Streep does a fine job when she's not being interrupted and told to take a back seat to the music! George Winston? Not so much.

City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

Rating: WARTY!

I got this audiobook from the library, and having seen the movie a while ago thought it might be interesting to read - or listen to - the book. It wasn't. The movie wasn't that great, but I don't recall it being entirely without merit. This audiobook failed to grab my attention. It's the start of a successful series, but it's for younger children and it failed to move me. I'm not a fan of series, but I'm willing to make an exception for something exceptional, which this wasn't.

It's about an artificial city wherein live people who know nothing about the artifice, but the city is coming to the end of its life. No good reason is given why it has a lifespan. This is quite a short novel, but instead of getting into it, the story rambles and meanders and wanders around, and I had zero interest in following this drunken walk. if it had been an interesting or funny ramble, I might have meandered along with it, but no. I couldn't. I can't recommend this, but I experience very little of it, Your mileage on your drunken walk may differ!

The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner

Rating: WORTHY!

This audio book was a major disappointment. It began well and really drew me in quickly, but around halfway, when it ought to have been picking up speed for the David and Goliath-style grand finale, it just fizzled away into tedium and nonsense and became insufferable. I gave up on it. I have to say I would not have listened for as long as I did were it not for the excellent and talented reading voice of Carrington MacDuffie. Kudos to her!

This is book one in a series and I have no interest in listening to any more. I have no idea why it would even become a series, either, for that matter, but as I said, I did not finish it, so maybe there's something there at the end which gives some sort of reason for the book to go on to a second volume, however weak. I don't care what it is!

Here's one problem with audio books. If a word is unfamiliar to the listener - and this especially applies to names! - or if the word sounds like one you know but is actually a different word, there's no way to tell what word was used or how it was spelled, so I am relying on some research in Google books for the spelling of the character's names. Set in the period of the early days of the French revolution, this novel begins with a small troupe of entertainers being invited to the house of Marquis de Villeduval for a well-paid private performance. Yann Margoza, one of the three in the troupe, counsels against going, but the leader, Topolain insists upon it. He is signing his own death warrant by doing so, because also in attendance is and Count Kalliovski, who shoots Topolain dead by "accident" during his performance of his "bullet proof routine

This is the first thing which ticked me off about the story: I never did learn what it was between Kalliovski and Topolain which led to this. It may be that it was covered in the part I skipped, but I listened to a lot of this and it never came up. Either that or I was so focused on driving at the time it was revealed, that I missed it! Maybe the author kept this for volume two which would have ticked me off even more!

Topolain's death leaves Yann and the dwarf member of the troupe, Têtu (which is actually the French word for 'stubborn') running for their lives because evidently - again, I know not why - the Count is out for them too, and they'll be out for the count if they don't get away. Somehow, out of this, it winds up that Yann, who has started falling for the Marquis's daughter, Sido, ends up going to England. I have no explanation for how this happened. I'd been seeing this woman's name as Çideaux or Sideaux. Maybe Sido is short for Sidonie or maybe it's short for Do-si-do! I don't know!

The count has been loaning large sums of money to the marquis, but he knows he's not going to get it back. What he wants instead is Sido's dowry and eventually he forces the marquis to effectively sell her off in marriage, whereupon he will kill her and keep her fortune. Back then, women were essentially property. In some parts of the world this hasn't changed even today. They had no rights, no vote, no say, and could own nothing. Sido was money int he bank to the trope evil count, and nothing else.

The second thing which ticked me off was that the count is all set to marry Sido, and then suddenly two years are gone and we're with Yann in England. When we get back to France, Sido still isn't married! This made no sense to me, and again no reason was given for it - not in the part I listened to. It was at this point that the quality of the story began a rapid decline, and I lost all interest in it, so I can't speak for what happened after that. I can't recommend this base don my experience of it, despite the MacDuffie voice!

Becoming Naomi Léon by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Rating: WORTHY!

Published in Spanish as Yo, Naomi León, and read rather nicely by Annie Kozuch, this short story is about Naomi, of course, who lives with her "special needs" brother Owen, and her grandmother, after her own mother pretty much left them in the lurch. And now she's back, from outer space, she shows up at the door with that dumb look upon her face. They should have changed their trailer park, they should have fled upon a whim, if they'd known for just one second she'd be back to bother them! She's returned with her new boyfriend Clive, and a new name, to reclaim her kids, but Clive, it seems, has an agenda which is more tightly aligned with claiming dependent benefits than it is with wanting to love and care for two young kids. In fact, Mom wants only Naomi, not Owen.

At several audiobook web sites, Naomi's name is given as Naomi Guadalupe Zamora Outlaw, but in the actual book (which I take as canon over the blurbs!), her name is actually Naomi Soledad Léon Outlaw, the last part being her grandmother's name, and one which has brought her grief at the hands (or more accurately at the lips) of some moronic kids in school. The ordered and structured life they have in Lemon Tree, California (a lemon tree, my dear Watson!), where they live in a small trailer nicknamed 'Baby Beluga', might end up as a rather reckless road trip to find their father, Santiago, who evidently now lives in Oaxaca, Mexico. He was run out of their lives by mom, who might just now be pushing them back into his arms.

The kids' names didn't seem to fit, of me. Would a Santiago name his kids Naomi and Owen? It seemed just as unlikely that their mom would do it, given that she's just pretentiously changed her name to Skyla. I'm not sure what Skyla's motive is. Maybe she's just going along with Clive's plan, but after she slaps Naomi across the face, Naomi decides where she wants to be, and it ain't by momma's side.

There was one unintentional amusing moment when the narrator said "syrupy glaze" and with the Mexican element and the religious element to this story, along with my warped mind, I couldn't help but think of this as 'syrup igles" - but igles isn't the word for church, as it happens, it's iglesia, so it didn't quite work but almost! it works a lot better in French: syrup église!

The novel slipped a bit for me. It was interesting right up until they went to Mexico and we got bogged down in the radish carving festival, but that didn't last long, and it picked up again when Santiago arrived on the scene. Overall I liked this and felt it to be a worthy read (despite the fact that it has won some medals and honors!), and I recommend it.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Rating: WARTY!

This audiobook started out well, but rapidly deteriorated into tedium maximum™! Seriously. The premise, of a young, purportedly intelligent orphan managing to get himself into a secret society, and discovering that this society is investigating subliminal messages being transmitted over the airwaves to come out into our minds through TV and radio isn't original, but it does make for a promising start to a middle-grade story. The problem was that once this set-up was put in place, nothing happened! I mean literally nothing happened. The story just rambled on and on and on and on with these kids whining and discussing, and arguing and contemplating, and cogitating and regurgitating, and NOTHING HAPPENED!

We're told that Mr Benedict has tried going to the authorities, but that they paid him no attention because the subliminal messaging is getting to the adults, too, because you know the only thing that all adults do is listen to TV and radio all the time. It was nonsensical. The question as to why Mr Benedict had not gone to the media or published his proof on the Internet was never even raised. No wonder this moron needed kids to help him. Any kid is smarter than he was, whether they had passed the weird-ass tests Reynard had to take or not! And let;s not even get into the evil twin trope which it takes these geniuses forever to figure out.

I quit it about forty percent in because I could not stand the dull story, and the voice of the reader was just awful. The guy who reads this, Del Roy, must have been in his eighties when he recorded it, and while that voice would have been great had the story been about political machinations or boardroom subterfuge, it was completely out of place here. There wasn't a paragraph went by where I wasn't yanked out of the story at some point because of the incongruity of this croaky voice trying to impersonate these kids. It didn't work, and neither did this story. I can't recommend it.

Awaken Me Darkly by Gena Showalter

Rating: WARTY!

I have no idea what that title means. It's nonsensical. Wake me without turning on the light? Wake me with a shocking revelation? That's what the blurb promises, but the blurbs always promise that, and it never is. Blurb writers are morons. This audiobook was read in the kind of purring chocolate voice that sounds intriguing to begin with, but runs a severe risk of becoming cloying, irritating, even nauseating with too much exposure. And it did.

Listening to an audiobook isn't like meeting someone at a function or a party, where you have a conversation with them and can move on at any time. In an audiobook, you're stuck with them for the duration! There is no conversation. You're lectured and expected to like it. The reading in this case was done by Justine Eyre. I had no idea who she was, and the impression I got was that she was a lot older than the character. Since this is told in first person, this seemed wrong to me. Later I learned that she is, very roughly, the same age as the character, but she still seems wrong for this voice. She eyred! The voice sounds too old and nowhere near appropriate to the character as depicted in the novel. It's not enough street for my taste, so the character, as read by Eyre, came off as inauthentic to me.

When you're reading a novel for yourself, you have the choice to picture the characters however you want, but when this is taken from you by a reader in an audio book, it can be a spark of life or a kiss of death. In this case I tried not to be lured to either extreme and just let this voice go by me. It wasn't easy! I am no fan of first person PoV and I cannot understand why so many authors are so compulsively addicted to it. Some writers can make it work in some cases, but for me it's too much "me" from the character: "Hey, lookit me! Look, I'm looking in a mirror and describing myself for you! Aren't I wonderful? Lookit what I'm doing now. Pay attention only to meeeeee! I own you!" Yuk!

Anyway, let's look at the plot, which makes little sense, but this is what we have to work with. At some point in the near future, interplanetary portals appear on Earth for no evident reason, allowing through several varieties of alien, all of which seem to be superior to humans. Feeling threatened, the humans fought back - literally - and were pretty much losing when a treaty was struck and an organization to police the aliens was formed. The main character, Mia Snow works for the New Chicago Police Department as an 'alien huntress'. I don't get why it's New Chicago, but this is sci-fi so you have to have the city renamed with the new prefix, right? It's the law! Why she's a 'huntress' rather than a 'hunter' I don't get either. Do women need to be especially labeled to pigeon-hole them as women rather than as people? Gena Showalter seems to think so. Why is she a 'huntress' at all? Why not a detective - or a detectivess in this case? LOL!

The story starts with an alien serial killer. The evidence points to a female Arcadian. Why the alien race is named after residents of the highlands in the middle of the Peloponnese in ancient Greece, I have no idea. I'm guessing Showalter doesn't either. The name just sounds cool, right? The body is a muscular male with dark hair. He's found naked and posed and tied with ribbons - which is why the idiot detectives insist it had to have been a female who did it. No male would ever use a ribbon, right? Genderism and pigeon-holing seems to be the order of the day in this future. "She" is identified as Arcadian by the fact that Arcadians have three hairs to each root as opposed to the single hair per follicle every other species evidently has. Et in Arcadia ego grew three hairs, apparently.

None of this could have been possibly, planted, could it? I'm sorry, but this story started out stupid and got worse. I ditched it DNF and moved on to something much better written and far more entertaining. I cannot recommend this one, and I'm done with this author!

Magisterium by Jeff Hirsch

Rating: WARTY!

This audio book, poorly read by Julia Whelan, failed to get my attention despite my twice trying to get with it. It simply wasn't interesting, and the story made no sense. It wasn't even that original - it's another we v. they story, in this case scientists (The Colloquium) v. magicians (The unoriginally named 'Magisterium'), but the scientists, as represented by main female character, 16-year-old Glenn Morgan were so caricatured that they weren't even remotely realistic. The author would have us swallow the idiotic creationist position that science is blind and dogmatic and interested only in preserving the status quo, whereas the Magisterium is open to intuitive learning, which is nonsensical in real life. You can't "know" anything - not in any meaningful sense - without a scientific approach. You can blindly believe, and you can think you know, and you can fool yourself into 'knowing', but you can't really know.

In any story where magic is permitted, you're automatically throwing out the rulebook, which is why writers of such stories have to come up with rather arbitrary rules which the magicians have to follow, and unless they're done well, it fails. Usually there is no cost attached to performing magic in these stories, but then again it's magic, so why would there be? On the other hand, if there's no cost, then anyone can do anything and your story lacks any imperative, risk, or danger. There was no magic performed in the portion of the story to which I listened, so I can't speak to that here. I can only say it was boring to me, so I DNF'd it and moved onto something which turned out to be much more entertaining. Life's too short, y'know?!

The Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman

Rating: WARTY!

Read by Joshua Swanson, who doesn't do a bad job, this library audio book started out very intriguingly. I found myself wondering how useful obsidian would be for a blade. It's a material rather like glass, and so is readily shattered, but there are finds of obsidian being used historically for arrow heads. It can be chipped to a very sharp edge, so maybe an obsidian blade isn't such a stretch.

I have to say that the story caught my interest right off the bat. This kid Tucker is out in the yard and his father, who is a man of the church, is on the roof fixing a broken shingle. When Tucker hears a cry, he runs out thinking his dad fell off the roof, but dad is nowhere to be seen. What Tucker does see is what appears to be a shimmering disk hovering at the edge of the roof. Hmm!

His dad shows up later with a young girl in tow, whom he says he found in town. He denies all Tucker's suggestions that he fell off the roof, which is odd to Tucker, who is used to telling lies to get himself out of trouble, but who isn't used to his dad doing the same thing. Dad says that the girl, Lahlia is in need of adoption, but she seems rather strange and doesn't talk other than to say Tucker's name. His dad has also bizarrely lost his faith, now no longer believing there is a God. It turns out that Tucker's mom was also adopted, and it seems pretty obvious from the start that that both she and Lahlia, the new girl, come from a parallel dimension, which means that Tucker is half from this dimension and half from the other. Okay, I'm hooked!

So far so good, but the novel began to go downhill, and I had a few questions. Take the girl's name, for example. If she isn't talking, then how does anyone know her name, much less the spelling of it? I actually didn't know the spelling myself, which is one problem with audio books, but why is it Lahlia, instead of say, Laleah? Did she write it down for them?! The way the reader pronounces it makes it seem much more like the latter than the former to me. Obviously it's that way because the author chose it to be that way, but this is a writing issue worthy of some consideration for budding authors. To me, names are important in fiction.

Talking of writing issues, there was another curious one. When Tucker's parents disappear with an oddly uninformative note (obviously they've gone back to the other parallel world from which Tucker's mom hailed, but he doesn't know this and takes a tedious amount of time to figure out), Tucker learns that his uncle, who is known as Kosh, will take care of him in their absence. Shortly after they meet, I read this sentence: "He walked towards Tucker, stopped about eight feet away, and peered at him closely." I am trying to figure out how you peer at someone closely from eight feet away. I think I know what the writer was trying to convey, but to me he did it in a poor way. Just a thought from a writing perspective! Plus this 'initial' meeting makes little sense given what's coming later.

That "peering" reminded me of a character from the TV show, Heroes and the subsequent miniseries, which evidently failed to launch successfully. Character Matt Parkman can read minds, but the actor's portrayal of this made me laugh. When he was trying to catch someone's thoughts, he would frown and cock his head and push his head forwards, and it just looked ridiculous to me - as ridiculous as the head twist the 'wesen' characters do when changing faces in the TV show Grimm, which I think looks equally ridiculous, although I love that show. I call it the Sergeant Wu show because he's the most entertaining character in it, talking of facial expressions. But I digress! I imagined this Matt Parkman act when I read that sentence about Kosh, so it made me laugh too. This was probably not the effect the author was seeking!

These shimmering disks or lenses of air show up wherever Tucker goes, which seems to me to be too much unless he is somehow causing, triggering, or attracting them. That was a possibility, so I let that ride, but the first time Tucker travels through one, he ends up atop one of the twin towers in New York city right before the first jetliner hits. What are the odds of that? I have to say I have little time for uninventive time-travel stories which have their characters arrive at critical points in history (typically US history for US stories, and so on) or have them meet famous and influential characters. What are the odds of that? It seems to me to be a lazy way to write such a novels - picking an easy target rather than doing the work of writing a more realistic and more creative story with unknowns from history.

Worse than this though was how Tucker came to be there. How did the wormhole (or whatever it is), link the top of his uncle's barn to the top of the WTC? He was nowhere near NYC geographically, and nowhere near the elevation of the towers vertically, so how did this work? And why were the disks always up in the air - and conveniently next to a roof? Why were the spiritual beings known as Klaatu? Was that short for Klaatu barada nikto?! Maybe an explanation would be forthcoming. I had to keep on listening to find out, but I soon grew tired of unanswered questions and nonsensical rambling about the Klaatu and the wormholes. The story made less sense as it went on, rather than more sense, and I ditched it after a while as a DNF because I couldn't stand to listen to any more. I can't recommend this one. And I never did find out what the obsidian blade had to do with anything - doubtlessly because I dropped this one. Worse, though, is that this is a series, and I'm not a fan of series, especially not ones which start out so badly!

Interworld by Neil Gaiman, Michael Reeves

Rating: WARTY!

I'd like to like Neil Gaiman. I loved the Doctor Who episode he wrote a couple of seasons back, and I really liked his novel Stardust, and I liked his Underwhere graphic novel, but ever since those, it seems that he's determined to thwart my every effort to like what he writes. A few days ago I read a The Sandman Overture graphic novel and thought it was a nasty mess. I decided to try again with this middle-grade audiobook and I thought, finally, I'd found something I could listen to, but after enjoying the opening chapters, the novel went the same way that Sandman had: sideways, but in this case literally. It then devolved into nonsense and became just annoying. Maybe middle-graders will like this gobbledygook, but it sure doesn't leave anything but distaste in my reading mouth. I can't imagine my own kids finding it entertaining.

I say reading, but I mean listening since this was an audiobook, and to be fair ('cos I'm normally as unfair as I can get!), Christopher Evan Welch didn't do too bad of a job reading it. The story is about a kid named Joey. He makes a big deal about his lack of any sense of direction, which is not only irrelevant to the story, but it makes him look like a moron who doesn't even know where the sun rises. I don't know why any writer would do that to their main character.

The novel is first person PoV, which is sucky, and the authors admit how limiting it is by having "interlogs" told by another party. It's a clunker. Tell it in third and be done with it instead of performing these ridiculous acrobatics, for god's sakes. Get a clue.

Joey ends up wandering in a fog and no, it's not a metaphor. He comes out in a parallel world where his own mom, who has no son named Joey, but instead, a daughter named Josephine live. He's rescued from his ridiculously prolonged confusion by a guy named 'J', which is evidently 'Jay' - it's impossible to tell in an audiobook. In fact, everyone he meets thereafter - on the good guys side - seems to have a name beginning with a 'J'. No idea why. It was at this point that the story went downhill for me and never recovered.

Apparently there is an infinity of worlds which range on a scale from scientifically inclined at one end, which are inexplicably named binary worlds, and magically-inclined at the other end, inexplicably named HEX worlds. Earth - Joey's Earth that is - is of course in the middle. Despite this veritable plethora of worlds, there is a battle for control of them between various forces, and the "walkers" are charged with keeping a balance between them. Why? No idea. But you know there always has to be a balance even in a universe where the laws of physics are suspended, right? Because, well, it's the law. Either that or authors are either too dumb or lazy to think up something new and original. I'm sorry but no. None of this made any sense, and Gaiman's obsessive addiction to describing mathematical concepts in the Interworld, larding it up with geometrical ideas and paradoxes was just boring, and that's all it was. Like I said, maybe some middle graders will be mesmerized, but I was yawning. This was a DNF and I cannot recommend it.

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Rating: WARTY!

I fell in love with William Gibson after I read Neuromancer, but from that point on, he's been a bit of a disappointment. One or two of his books I've read since then have been entertaining, but none of them have blown me away like Neuromancer did or made me want to read them again later, and several of them have been real disappointments, including this one, which I DNF'd because it was so boring and so obsessed with product placement and rambling asides. I can't tell you what it's about (read the blurb!). I can tell you it was an awful read and I'm done with Gibson now.

The reading of the audiobook by Shelly Fraser didn't help. That was drab and lifeless enough as it was, but it was the story itself that was at fault. It dimply did not move. It rambled into endless asides with Gibson seemingly more interested in describing consumerism than actually getting on with the story he was purporting to tell, which evidently revolved around the anonymous positing of small snatches of video online. The video wasn't even described - not in the portion which I could stand to listen to, except in very brief terms, so I had no idea what was in the clips, and this was another issue. If you're going to write about them, at least have the courtesy to tell your reader/listener what's in them so we know as much as the main character does! I can't recommend this one. Not at all.

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.