Bellwether by Connie Willis

Rating: WORTHY!

I was all excited that the narrator of this book was named Kate Reading until a friend informed me that her real name is Jennifer Mendenhall. That sucks! I know the alternate name is funny, but what's the point?! Well, I guess it's none of my business. Her reading voice is fine, to get back on track. She tells a good story and this was a good story to tell, full of understated snark and humorous observation.

The main character, Sandra Foster is conducting a scientific study of fads - that is, if she can figure out the darned grant application forms which are obscure to the point of being candidates for admission to the Parisian Incoherent movement in the 1880's. Sandra works for the HiTek Corporation where two characters fascinate her. Bennet O'Reilly is intriguing because he seems completely immune to fads, and she comes up with a plan to study him and to use methods inspired by watching a child crayon as a means to chart her discoveries! The other person, Flip, is obnoxious beyond repair. Sandra and Bennet find themselves in charge of a flock of sheep where they hope to learn something both about fads and about chaos theory. Will baa charts help ewe? It seems to me they should have simply studied Flip, but what do I know? I'm not a scientist! I have been known to think of really good uses for sheaves of soft white grant application forms, but that's all behind me now....

I loved the sense of humor in this novel and intend to look for more books by this author, despite the fact that she's an award winner. Normally I steer clear of award winning authors, and indeed in this case, had I stuck to that plan, I might have missed this book, because I negatively reviewed another novel by this author back in March of 2015. However, after this one, I might change my vector and chart a new course towards looking for more of her novels that might be like this one!

Bell's Big Move by Tom Shay-Zapien, Matt Wiewel

Rating: WORTHY!

As part of the international Christmas in July celebration that I just made up (I guess that makes it a decelebration?), This was a fun and charming book for young kids who are fans of wint'ry days and warm furry dogs (and who isn't?!). It's evidently part of a system whereby there's also a plush puppy which costs an addition thirteen dollars or so, and is electronically linked to the book so when certain words are spoken out loud (and assuming the toy is within range), it reacts, presumably by barking or whatever. I can see parents loving that after the first fifty thousand such barks! It's yet another example of electronics creeping into every corner of life. I haven't made up my mind if it's a good thing or a bad one yet! I guess I shouldn't complain too much since I work for a corporation which is entering the home electronics market, although were not making plush toys. Not yet!

This is evidently part of a series, and I am reviewing a companion book separately today, which appears to be a kind of prequel to this one. This one is narrated nicely by Matt Wiewel, and colorfully illustrated with what actually looks like painstakingly posed toys and models. The images are quite remarkable and are evidently taken from a stop-motion animated show. The story follows Bell, the husky dog, who is having to move to a new home during the winter with her friend Sofia. Will they like their new home? Will they miss the old place? Perhaps meeting Jingle, who looks like Bell's twin, in the new town will be the start of a beautiful friendship? If not, there's always Rick's place, where everybody goes....

This is another books with an accompanying sound track, and the great thing about it is that it engages all the senses. You can swipe the screen with fingers (this book worked well on my smart phone which is very convenient), you can listen to the voice-over, you can enjoy the artwork, you can taste the adventure, and you can smell those electronic circuits warming up as you read...wait, maybe not so much on that last one. I thought it was a great way to get kids listening and reading. You can even engage them in seeking out interesting animals and items in the pictures. I recommend it.

Lady Midnight by Judith Lewis aka Cassandra Clare

Rating: WARTY!

This is yet another argument against series. This was a humongously long novel, and the reason for that is that the author evidently graduated Summa Cum Loudly from the Stephen King Endless Education in Verbose Yearning (SKEEVY) school, where it painfully obvious that the golden rule is" "Why use one word where fifty will do?" No one gets out of bed in this world unless it takes a paragraph of minutely detailed description to convey the 'action'.

This is truly sad, because I liked the idea of the novel and was waiting for the novel the blurb described, and it never arrived. The reading voice was that of no less than Morena Baccarin, one of my favorite actors, but ever her dulcet tones couldn't rescue this. She also, on occasion, read too fast. Not that I blame her given the size of this tome, but it made some of the text rather difficult to understand.

Emma Carstairs is, we're told, a Shadowhunter who lives for battle against demons, yet in the one half of this novel I could stand to listen to, there was precisely one brief battle and that was it! The rest of the time, she's leading such a tediously un-entertaining and mind-numbing life that makes my own relatively sedate one look like a summer action blockbuster movie. I honestly could not believe that I was listening to such a herd of paragraphs that were better not heard, but still they came, one after another of soul-deadening detail and palaverously prolix prattle! See, anyone can do it!

I was so sick of hearing about the minutiae of Emma's life that I simply gave up and ditched the book back at the library. I cannot recommend even half of this first volume, let alone a whole series of this. Life's far too short to waste it on the mundane even on a Monday!

Life's a Witch by Brittany Geragotelis

Rating: WARTY!

This one sounded interesting, and the author's name sounded amazingly interesting, but it (the novel not the name!) rather quickly proved to be unimaginative. Indeed, it felt most like a rip-off of early Harry Potter, inexplicably aimed at YA readership. Weird! I guess the author thinks her audience is deficient in reading skills or something. The witches were in school - seventeen or younger - and part of a coven which their parents ran. When the parents were wiped out by a group of evil witches, the kids go on the run. Their leader, Hadley (no I didn't make that up, although I can't vouch for the spelling being spot-on), is supposed to be the special snowflake Harry Potter-style liberator, but in actual fact she comes off as a spoiled, privileged brat who is irresponsible and clueless. That was how she was in the first three-eighths of this novel, after which I gave up.

There's nothing new here at all (including, boringly, that this is book one of the inevitable series, because why come up with something original each time you write when you can keep spewing out the same tired old stuff every time, with a minor tweak or two and call it a new volume?). There are direct rip-offs from TV series like Charmed (speaking spells in Hallmark-style rhyming English and using antiquated words like 'thou', and also from Harry Potter, where two words in Latin and a swish of a wand or the fingers can deliver an immoblizing spell. The evil witches are exactly like the ones in Harry Potter: attacking by tossing out minor injuries and jinxes instead of delivering a death-blow. Another rip-off from Potter: the house that can only be visited by people who already know where it is.

It's told in worst person voice which is almost an automatic fail for me these days, and the woman who read this (Joy Osmanski), didn't sound too bad to begin with but after a while her delivery really began to irritate, I'm sorry to report. Even had it not, I would still have been put off by the amateur, fan-fic level of the writing. It was all tell and no show, and was especially no-show in the inventiveness department. Witches in covens? Thoroughly evil villains who do't do anything transcendingly evil except bully the kids? The prima donna descended from one of the Salem Witches? Spells are aimed and sometimes miss? Despite having enormous magic power, all the characters typically do everything in exactly the way we non-magical people do it? When someone gets injured, not a single person knows a single thing about magically stopping bleeding or healing bruises? Seriously? That's probably a good thing because this author would probably think you 'staunch' bleeding, not stanch it!

I almost quit reading this after the prologue - which I normally wouldn't read anyway, but it's hard to know what you're getting into in a audio book. Rest assured it confirmed what I've said all along: prologues, introductions, prefaces, and forewords are a waste of time. And can we not find an author who is imaginative enough to get away from that appalling abuse of women in Salem and come up with something new for once? And what about the un-original idea that a table (or some other such object) can block a magic spell? if that's the case, how come all the witches are not wearing some sort of body armor to prevent themselves being hit by spells? See what I mean? It's thoroughly unimaginative, and I can't recommend it.

Sixkill by Robert B Parker

Rating: WARTY!

Last trip to the library to pick up a requested book, I happened upon this audiobook, which is about a private dick named Spenser (and yes, he's for hire!) who is investigating the murder of a movie star's one-night stand. Over in the young readers section I happened upon a second audiobook also by Robert B Parker, titled Chasing the Bear, which was about the same character but when he was younger. I thought it would be an interesting study to compare and contrast.

Was I ever wrong! Nauseating was a more apt description, and the major reason for it was that this author sucks at writing prose. His problem is that he has all the individuality and inventiveness of a metronome when it comes to writing conversation between two people, and he writes a lot of speech with nothing to break it up. It's like listening to two automatic tennis ball throwers trying to play tennis with each other, and every bit as engrossing.

Of course this was first person because god forbid anyone should ever deign to imagine that it's legal under US law to write a novel in third person! Here's an example of this author's appalling conversational writing, from the beginning of chapter one. Note that this is a transcript of the audiobook, so my punctuation (and spelling of names) may differ from the printed page:

"Care for a coffee?" I said.
"Got some!" Quirk said. "Nice of you to ask."
"You ever read Frazz?" I said.
"What the fuck is frazz?" Quirk said.
[small descriptive section omitted]
"A comic strip in the Globe," I said. "It's new.'
"I'm a grown man," Quirk said.
"And a police captain," I said.
"Exactly," Quirk said. "I don't read comic strips."
"I withdraw the question," I said.
Quirk nodded. "I need something," he said.

Said, said, said? Has this guy never heard of words like, "asked"? Or exclaimed? Or "interrupted"? Or of simply adding no attribution once in a while? I quote this novel shortly afterwards in sheer disbelief that a grown man could write so god-awfully badly. It didn't help that Joe Mantegna's condescending, and I felt insulting version of an American Indian accent was vomit-inducing, and worthy of American western movies of the 1940's and 50's. I used to like Joe Mantegna.

I do not like this author and after listening to the opening portion of two different novels about the same guy at different stages of his life, I've come to the conclusion that there's no difference! I also have to ask how this thoroughly obnoxious lout - the accused murderer in this novel - ever became a major movie star. It's simply not credible. The story makes no sense at all. I'm all done reading Robert B Parker, I say.

Chasing the Bear by Robert B Parker

Rating: WARTY!

Last trip to the library to pick up a requested book, I happened upon an audiobook titled Sixkill by Robert B Parker, which is about a private dick named Spenser (and yes, he's for hire!) who is investigating a murder. Over in the young readers section I happened upon a second audiobook also by Robert B Parker, which was about the same character but when he was younger. I thought it would be an interesting study to compare and contrast.

Was I ever wrong! Nauseating was a more apt description, and the major reason for it was that this author sucks at writing prose. His problem is that he has all the individuality and inventiveness of a metronome when it comes to writing conversation between two people, and he writes a lot of speech with nothing to break it up. It's like listening to two automatic tennis ball throwers trying to play tennis with each other, and every bit as engrossing.

Here's an example from the beginning of chapter nine. Note that this is a transcript of the audiobook, so my punctuation may differ from the printed page.

"Not what you had hoped for," Susan said.
"In those days," I said, "I knew less about why women cried."
"And now?"
"I understand why men and women cry," I said.
"The advantage of maturity," Susan said
"Being young is hard," I said.
"Being grown is not so easy either," Susan said
"But it's easier," I said.
She nodded. We were quiet for a moment; then Susan said, "You hunted!"
"Sure," I said. "We all did."
"You don't hunt now," Susan said.
"No," I said.

Seriously? Good God! What is wrong with this guy? I quit this novel right around that point, because quite literally, I could not bear to listen to another word. I moved on to the adult version of Spenser only to find it was no better! I'm done with this "author"! The reading of the novel by Daniel Parker (the author's son) wasn't bad, I have to add, but neither was it anything special, although to be fair, you'd have to do a super human job to make this garbage palatable.

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake

Rating: WARTY!

One Lame Tome.

Quite frankly I'm not sure why I picked this up at the library. I can only assume it was in haste. When I look at the blurb now, it sounds like it might be an interesting plot, but I honestly cannot remember my thought processes when I checked this out! I should have considered it more deeply. It turns out this is yet another Newbery award novel and I've already sworn off those because they've been almost one hundred per cent garbage in my experience. This one was no different.

Set in 1871, a young girl named Georgie Burkhardt is evidently responsible for her older sibling Agatha running away. Later a body is found wearing Agatha's ball gown (why she ran away in a ball gown is anyone's guess), and everyone is content to believe that Agatha is dead - except of course Georgie, who starts off on a quest: will the real Agatha Burkhardt please show up!

The biggest problem with this story is that it's way too damned 'down home' for my taste. If there is one thing which gets me irritated out of all proportion in novels, it's down-home country folk in stories of historical America spewing their catch-phrases and their home-spun wisdom. Yuk! I cannot stand them, and this is not only one of those stories; the reader of this audiobook, Tara Sands, reads it in the most nails-on-a-chalk-board voice imaginable. I literally could not stand to listen to it, and I doubt that even if I got the print book, I would want to actually read it. First of all it's a Newbery, and second of what's left, the writing is far too self-satisfied. The arrogance of that home-grown "country learnin'" is nauseating and just obnoxious. Y'all don't cuhm back nah!

Oliver Twist or The Parish Boy's Progress by Charles Dickens

Rating: WARTY!

This is actually my second attempt at this! I really did no better here than previously. I had much better luck with graphic novels: Fagin the Jew which I positively reviewed in October 2014, and Zombies Christmas carol which I favorably reviewed in December that same year, when I also posted negative results on a previous effort with this material!

A while ago I had an idea for a novel set in Oliver Twist's world, so I decided to go back to the source and listen in. Fortunately my excellent local library had this on audiobook format. The novel is also available for free from The Gutenberg Project as both downloadable text and audio books (but be warned, the audio version sounds like its read by Stephen Hawking. It's not - it just uses the same kind of text-to-speech engine. I think after this I'm just going to watch the movie!

I have to say that while the overall plot was convoluted, it was not awful, but the uninspired reading of Dickens's even more uninspired material was a deal-breaker for me, and I couldn't get past the first third of it. I know it was the style back then, but the incessant flowery speech and rambling diversions were too much. Plus, Dickens was rather preachy about conditions back then. This was commendable, but it was very intrusive, and it became annoying after a while.

Like the Sherlock Holmes stories, this novel was original published in installments which in this case ran monthly for a period of over two years starting in February 1837, so as an enterprise, it had more in common with our modern comic books than our modern novels. All the favorite characters were there of course, from the more commonly known Oliver, The Artful Dodger, and Fagin, to assorted prostitutes such as Bet, Charlotte, and Nancy, to the evil Monks and Sikes, to Mr Bumble, Old Sally, and the oddly-named Toby Crackit, right down to the even more unforgettably-named Master Bates (I kid you not).

Contrary to the story you might expect - of Oliver being a perennial down-and-out, he is actually a boy of extraordinarily good fortune. Ollie's mom died in childbirth and he ended-up at the parish poor house, where he was passively abused until he was of an age where they could get rid of him by pretty much literally selling him to an undertaker (Ol protested against being a sweep's assistant and got away with it!). There he was doing well until he ran afoul of the other boy who worked there, and he ran away. Right as he was heading into the territory of death and starvation, he was taken under the wing of Fagin's crew, but after a blundered robbery, Oliver ended up in jail.

His luck does not desert him however, and he's cleared of charges and semi-adopted by a book-seller where he flourishes (and blots!). For unexplained reasons, Fagin forcibly recruits him for a robbery, but once more it goes wrong, yet Ol's luck still does not desert him. Instead of being arrested, he's adopted by the family he tried to rob, who actually turn out to be related to him! This kid has four-leaf clovers growing out of his ass!

I know some people have down-graded this for racism, and by our standards it does sound a bit racist, but I don't believe we should judge a book written almost two hundred years ago by our standards. By all means comment on the standards in use, but judge them? What would be the point now? Let's consider this racism. From what I listened to, it consists entirely of identifying Fagin as "The Jew" throughout much of the book as opposed to simply naming him Fagin or, perhaps, "The Thief" (or "The Prig"!). The thing is that I got no sense that Dickens was actually using the term "The Jew" in a derogatory sense any more than he would have been had the character been Polish and he'd referred to him as "The Pole," or any more than Agatha Christie is abusing Poirot by referring to him as The Belgian. Yes it's derogatory to use today, but the way Dickens used it was simply a convenient (if inappropriate by our lights) short-hand and I don't think he saw it in any other light. At least I didn't get that impression.

Overall, the writing left a lot to be desired, and there were far too many fortunate coincidences. Plus, Ollie is a bit of a Mary Sue. I can't recommend this based on what I listened to. Hopefully my take on the life and times of this era will be better - assuming I ever do get down to cooking-up a decent plot and writing it!

Silent Thunder by Iris and Roy Johansen

Rating: WARTY!

I quit this audiobook about two fifths the way through because it was becoming ever more boring. The essential plot was really nothing more than a modern day pirate treasure hunt, and it took far too long to get going. It began with a woman and her brother who were supposed to be examining a Russian submarine which was about to go on display at a museum. Why they were even involved is a mystery. Purportedly they were ensuring that it was safe, and determining which areas needed to be cordoned off from the public, but none of this explained why they were digging around behind panels and moving consoles on a submarine which hadn't even been cleared for hazardous substances.

Clearly they were only there so the brother could get killed and the sister find some secret codes which she promptly loses. There were less ham-fisted ways to do this. The way it was done made no sense whatsoever, but arguably worse than this was the reader's voice. Jennifer van Dyck has this way of reading which sounded odd to me from the start. At first I couldn't figure out why she sounded so weird, but then I realized she was putting the same stress on every syllable, so everything she read sounded almost like a question. It was hard to listen to for any appreciable length of time to begin with, and it did not become easier.

If the story had been more interesting I might have persevered, but why bother when it's this bad from the off? At least it wasn't in first person otherwise I never would have made it through to twenty percent. Of course it's the start of the inevitable series (yawn), but I have no interest whatsoever in pursuing it.

Gossip Girl (Abridged audio) by Cecily von Ziegesar

Rating: WARTY!

If I’d known that Kirkus said of this: "Deliciously catty and immediately engrossing" I would never have pulled it off the library shelf. Kirkus pretty much never read a book they didn’t gush over, so their reviews are essentially useless, and I actively avoid books they recommend even if they sound interesting from the blurb. I didn't know beforehand that they'd praised this one. If I had, it would have saved me the time listening to it. Or perhaps, in this case, even had I known their take on it, I might still have got it because the big attraction for me was that it was read by Christina Ricci. After having fallen in love with her watching the Netflix Lizzie Borden movie and subsequent miniseries, I was severely disappointed to discover that her reading voice sucks! It’s a drab and monotonous voice which would have made even an exciting novel dreary, but in this case, the material she was reading was as bad as her reading voice proved to be.

Gossip Girl is purportedly about " a wickedly funny and risqué original novel about the provocative lives of New York City's most prestigious private school young adults", but in reality, it's about shallow mid-teens going about their spoiled-rotten but unutterably shallow and uninteresting lives. There is no "Sharp wit," no "intriguing characters," and no "high stakes", but there is oodles of cheap and boring "melodrama."

This audiobook was a waste of petroleum products. The best thing I can say about it is that it was abridged. If it had been abridged to "Chapter One The End" it would have been perfect.

Winter by Marissa Meyer

Rating: WARTY!

This is the last of the Lunar chronicles, and a case in point as to why I no longer read series with 'Chronicles' in the name (or 'Saga' or 'Cycle' or any of those other trope pretentious buzzwords), and certainly an excellent example of why I typically dislike series. I loved the first volume ion the series, Cinder and reviewed it positively. I even reviewed Scarlett positively though I had some major issues with it. By the time I got to Cress it was time to say, "Enough is enough!" I wrote some 45K of reviewing material on these three volumes explaining what I saw in them (or failed to see!).

After Scarlett and particularly Cress, I wasn't as willing to spend so much time on Winter as I had on the previous three. If it failed even after a couple of chapters, I was out of there. And after a couple of chapters I was out of there. There are over ninety chapters and almost 900 pages in this tome, and from what I've gathered from other reviews, and from what I saw myself, all of it is a waste of perfectly good trees and bandwidth. It turns out it was exactly as I feared it would be and exactly why I'm not a fan of series.

The first problem is right there in the blurb: "... despite the scars that mar her face, [Princess Winter's] beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana" How is this a qualification for anything? What does beauty have to do with it? Is she a runway model? No! She's a princess in line for the throne, so what, I ask again, does beauty have to do with anything? She's apparently admired for her " grace and kindness" but nowhere do I see competence, integrity, diligence, advocacy or anything else like that listed here. Grace has nothing to do with it, and kindness is relative in a totalitarian society like the one which she exists, but at least she's in love with " the handsome palace guard," so what else could possibly matter? The beautiful people are together. The hell with everyone else! Excuse me while I barf profusely.

Winter turned out to be the most limp of all four "princesses" in this story (which is, from other reviews I've read, nothing more than a litany of one "princess" or her lover after another being captured and held prisoner. Seriously, that could have been taken care of in a few pages. Well over eight hundred is completely self-indulgent and is what happens when you have some success with earlier volumes that you're allowed to get away with anything in later volumes. Another reason to despise series, the writers who religiously vomit them up, and the publishers who so avariciously beg for them from writers. And why I shall never, ever, ever write a series. And why I refuse to grace this garbage with the kindness of a positive review. It's ugly!

Blasphemy by Douglas Preston

Rating: WARTY!

This one had a great opening chapter about some apparent entity appearing in a black hole created by a particle collider, and then for the NEXT FIFTEEN CHAPTERS it completely abandoned that and went meandering everywhere but in pursuit of this beginning. It was so tedious it made my eyes water. Either that or I was crying over the loss of my time in listening to this garbage. We were slammed with one new character after another, NONE OF WHOM DID A DAMNED THING, and all of whom were the most simplistic trope cardboard cut-outs imaginable. This novel sucked green wieners big time. I am done with this author. But I do appreciate his putting "A Novel" on the cover because I was so convinced that this was a learned treatise on a victimless crimes that I was ready to send him money finance his campaign! Waste. Of. Aluminum and petroleum byproducts.

Outlaw Princess of Sherwood by Nancy Springer

Rating: WARTY!

Read quite charmingly by Emily Gray, this very short novel from an author I intend to avoid like the plague from now on, was awful, and the writing did no justice to the reader's game voice. It was vacuous and frivolous, and downright stupid and offered nothing whatsoever to anyone with an ounce of integrity.

The absurd plot was not in having a fictional character named Rowan Hood, the daughter, supposedly, of Robin Hood, which might have made for a good story (maybe the previous volume was better), but in attaching to her a princess of an absurdly named king of an even more absurdly named kingdom, neither of which ever actually existed, and have that princess fart around in Sherwood Forest mooning over the fact that her mom the queen was being held hostage by her dad the king in a cage(!) out in the forest, guarded by three rings of armed men, in some sort of brain-addled attempt to get their daughter back.

Rather than "man" up and turn herself in, the daughter fretted for day after day about how her mom was suffering, and then cooked up this ridiculous plan to kidnap the king and hold him to ransom - the ransom being her mom's freedom. Seriously?

These people were outlaws for goodness sake! Robin Hood was also around to rescue them, so gone was any hope of a couple of strong female characters. All they had to do was sneak up in the night, shoot arrows through everyone except her mom, and they were done! But no, let's fret and whine, and pick daisies, and worry about our clothes, and fret and whine some more. This novel was beyond ludicrous and headed deep into plaid. It ought to have been put into a cage, dragged through the forest, and dropped into the ocean instead of getting published!

Above World by Jenn Reese

Rating: WORTHY!

Read excellently by Kate Rudd, this remarkable novel, which to be honest did have a couple of stagnant portions, came bouncing back from every dip, was inventive, amusing, adventurous, playful and fun. It's the start of a series, which I don't intend to pursue at this time but to which I may return when I've addressed other books in an ever-growing virtual pile which I am excited at the prospect of reading. That's the best feeling in the world, isn't it? A new novel?! Writing it, reading it - it doesn't matter!

Aluna is on the cusp of young adulthood, but despite her human roots, she's lived her whole life in the sea, with her people, the Coral Kampai in the City of Shifting Tides. When she incurs the disfavor of her stern father (rather like Ariel the mermaid!) she leaves with her best friend Hoku on a quest to free Willy. No, I;m kididng,. She;s on a quest to find a solution to the problem of the Kampaii's failing breathing apparatus. Yes, despite frequent denials, the Kampaii are humans who need an oxygen extraction device in order to breathe, and have to take a genetic pill at Aluna's age, in order ot exchange their legs for a tail - a sign they are now adults in the eyes of their people.

Aluna isn't there yet, and it's fortunate because she needs those legs to explore above world - on the alien dry land, where she has to track down the hydro-tech corporation which supplied them with their under water technology many years before. This is, inevitably, going to bring her into contention with Fathom, not remotely human any more, and the evil leader of a large band of misfits who have taken transhumanism to scary levels. Why? Because he can.

The book fell down in small ways, such as the world building. While it was great and glorious, some of it made no sense at all. Other parts of it were wonderful. I completely fell in love with Barko, the talking dog and Kate Rudd's representation of him was first class. Also, as at least one other reviewer has pointed out, the past tense of 'tread' is 'trod', not 'treaded'. Tires are treaded! Any decent spellchecker should have caught this. Those quibbles aside, I really liked this novel and I recommend it.

The Face of Fear by Dean Koontz

Rating: WARTY!

This is my first Dean Koontz novel, and I have to report that I could not get past the first third of it. Koontz has more pen names than I have fingers on two hands: David Axton, Brian Coffey, Deanna Dwyer, KR Dwyer, John Hill, Dean Koontz, Leigh Nichols, Anthony North, Richard Paige, Owen West, and Aaron Wolfe. This novel has been released under three different names, including his own. The other two names were Brian Coffey and KR Dwyer.

The worst thing about this novel was Patrick Lawlor's atrocious reading, which turned me off from the start. It was truly sickening when he made the police detective sound just like the eponymous detective in the TV series Columbo, but given the way the character was written, Koontz probably modeled him on Columbo anyway. I just couldn't stand it. I may go back and attack this again in a print or e-version, but right now all I'm interested in is evasion!

The premise is that a sick killer by the name of The Butcher is terrorizing female victims. I did not like the relish with which Koontz described this terrorism, not did i like the way the investigation was laid out. The detective (aside from his Columbo impersonation), was obnoxious to me. I actually liked the Columbo TV series, but I sure didn't want want to follow an entire story having to deal with this guy. I found myself losing interest in the story repeatedly and in the end, I simply didn't care who dunnit, and gave up on it. I was a lot happier once I'd made that decision! Naturally I can't recommend this at all.

The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade

Rating: WORTHY!

Obviously rooted in the 1831 Victor Hugo novel, Notre-Dame de Paris ('Our Lady of Paris', and not 'Le Bossu de Notre-Dame' which would be a literal translation of the English title!) this one takes the idea into a fantasy world, where the 'hunchback', here called Modo, has the ability to change his appearance, but it's at some serious cost to his personal comfort. In this, the first of a series, Modo is a precocious, intelligent, and sensitive child who is raised from a very early age by the "mysterious Mr Socrates", who wants to recruit him to the British empire as a spy. Yes, I said it was fantasy. It sounded weird enough to tempt me anyway, even though it's really aimed at middle-grade readers, or perhaps the younger end of the YA age-range.

It started out well and held my interest for the first two-thirds, but I have to confess my enthusiasm waned somewhat towards the end. I really liked that Modo was not presented as a studly guy, or as someone to feel sorry for, nor was he given a magical cure for his maladies. He remained the same hunch-backed, stooped, odd-eyed character throughout, although he employed his shape-shifting abilities for his spy work, and later out of vanity when he met Olivia.

Olivia was another employee of Mr Socrates, and another reason why I liked this. Neither of the two main characters was shown as needing help or validation from the other. neither she nor Modo knew about the other until they met and it was some time after this that they realized they were on the same side, whereupon they began working together without need of direction, and succeeded admirably in the end, although their journey was perilous.

I recommend this story particularly for the appropriate age range(s). It's full of self-sufficiency, adventure, mystery, gadgets, mechanical beasts, and fun. As the name Modo suggests, he is far from a quasi-hero and is, instead, a really worthwhile character with a realistic view of the world. Olivia is a charmer, and I recommend this story.

Transhuman by Ben Bova

Rating: WARTY!

As a sci-fi fan, I'm familiar with Ben Bova's name and his status in the sci-fi world, but I've never read anything by him. After this, I doubt I ever will again. This was an audio book, and the reader's voice was awful. Stefan Rudnicki reminded me of the kid in the Home Alone movie trilogy who records his own voice on a tape recorder, then slows the tape down to make it sound adult. This reader sounded exactly like that and it was really hard to ignore that and focus on the story, especially since the story itself was utterly ludicrous and boring to boot. Audio books often cost a fortune, and I can't help but believe that one of the major factors in that is paying for a celebrity or a 'professional' to read it. They need to get people who can read and who are amateurs, so they can pay them well, but not exorbitantly, and get a good reader rather than some name or voice actor who are typically awful at this. In this way we would have listenable audio books at reasonable prices.

With a title like Transhuman (not to be confused with Transhuman by Jonathan Hickman or Transhuman by Mark vn Name, I expected something mutational and genetic to come out of this, perhaps along the lines of Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio, but it certainly didn't look like it was going anywhere near there - or anywhere at all by the time I quit listening about half way through the story). I was already skimming by then because quite literally nothing was happening. Not that the term 'transhuman' accurately describes Bear's novel either, BTW, but I don't think Ben Bova really understands what 'transhuman' means.

The basic plot is that this guy kidnaps his own granddaughter from the hospital where she's being treated for, and dying from a glioblastoma. She apparently only has months to live. Grandfather wants to try an experimental treatment that he has developed, but it is a long way from human trials and was not developed for this, so quite understandably no one in authority will countenance it. His daughter and her husband don't trust him enough to go for it either, so he charges ahead by himself. This instantly made me dislike him. I might have reconsidered if the novel had been better written and I'd seen something happen in the first half of the story to make it worth listening to, but literally nothing happened other than the kidnapping and rounds of treatment.

Plus the story had all the hallmarks of fan-fiction, it was so badly written. The child's own attending physician abandons her job and takes off with this guy, which is utterly ridiculous. I've worked in hospitals and they are far more protective of children than this. Even if her grandfather was legally entitled to remove her from the hospital, he was not the child's legal guardian, and I can't believe someone would not have called the parents to check with them if this was OK. I've worked in pediatric wards, and I know for a fact that pediatric nurses are devoted to their charges. Not one of them would let this happen without notifying mom and dad.

In the end, I couldn't help but see this as nothing but a wish fulfillment story, given that the author was pretty much the same age as the protagonist when this novel was written. All the female characters love him and want to help him! No one sees him as a creepy kidnapper. No. Just no. I refuse to even remotely recommend something as poor as this.

A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a delightful story, well told, and very engrossing, of Victoria Darling, and her fight for independence from her overbearing father, and it takes place alongside the suffragette movement in London, in Edwardian 1909. We meet Victoria as she's about to be sent down from her French finishing school for posing nude for her extra curricular artist's group. It was an unplanned exhibition on her part, but it gets her sent home in disgrace. Her parents are outraged, including her mother, who was also a budding artist in her own youth, but Victoria isn't about to give up so easily.

A marriage, which, it is hoped, will encourage her to grow up and settle down, is arranged for her to the son of another nouveau riche family, but Victoria, through her growing ties with the suffragettes, has become involved - or however you care to characterize it - with a police officer named Will. As her wedding draws ever closer, she also draws closer to Will.

I grew to like Victoria, although sometimes she wasn't so smart. Will was a bit of a generic YA male portrait, with little going for him other than his picturesque value, and it's entirely predictable what will happen in the end. I had hoped for more in that department because the ending was a bit too convenient and sappy, but overall, Victoria's story more than made-up for the encroaching trope, and I grew increasingly to like her as I read ever more about her.

One issue I had was that Victoria didn't sound very high class! Yes, her father was a self-made man having built-up his own toilet business (he was flush with money! LOL!), but his daughter had been to the best schools, including the one in France. Her use of language didn't seem to quite reflect her upbringing.

Part of the problem was from Katharine McEwan's reading. For the most part she did a good job, but her American accent sounds Irish, and Victoria's voice sounded a bit too 'riff-raff' for someone of her breeding! her French pronunciation needs work too! She cannot say Étienne, making it sound more like ATM than ever it does a French name! Those were minor problems though, and I overlooked them because I enjoyed Victoria's story so much. I recommend this one.

Treasury of Egyptian Mythology by Donna Jo Napoli

Rating: WARTY!

Read indifferently by Cristina Moore, this audio book failed to ignite my interest and I DNF'd it. I thought it would be fun and engaging. You never know from whence your next idea for a story might hail, but all that the author did here was to take an Egyptian creation myth (from which the Biblical myth is obviously taken), and lard it up uninterestingly. It didn't come off as engaging at all, the way it was told here, let alone exciting, and I can't see many kids finding this a worthy read. I DNF'd it in short order after less than an hour of listening. That's all I can say about his one.

The Glass Arrow by Kristen Simmons

Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with The Glass Arrow by Gerald Verner , this novel was awful! Pretty much from the first track (I listened to the audio book) it was tedious, trope-filled, irrational, and not remotely credible. That it was first person PoV did not help. I detest that voice because it's so rarely done well, and on audio it can sound bad even when the writing is good, depending on who reads it.

The story is about Aya aka Aiyana, a fifteen year old girl who is a free woman - that is, she's not owned by anyone. She lives in the wilds with her sister and some twins, Tam and Nina. Because women are so rare in this world, they are hunted brutally, and enslaved by men. That should have stopped me right there. I honestly don't know why I even picked this up from the library because it had trope trash written all over it. Well not literally, but, as Doctor Who said, give me time - and a crayon....

My problem with it was the absurdity of the opening chapter, where Aya comes back to her 'family' to discover that they're being hunted. The males and older females are killed, and the young one - that would be Aya and the twins, are taken. There was no explanation as to how the world got like this (maybe that came later - I didn't want to hang around to find out) and the premise, now that I think about it, is ridiculous on the face of it, but my real problem was Aya's narration of coming back "home" and finding devastation caused by the hunters.

Her narration bore no relationship to what a fifteen-year-old - even a wild, self-sufficient one - would deliver. I seriously doubt that she would be calmly describing her discoveries and her thoughts and her family relationships at a time like this. It was so unrealistic it almost made me laugh, but the laugh was stifled by the fact that this only made me so sad that we're seeing this kind on nonsense ever more often in YA novels. The only advantage this one has, so I understand, is that it isn't a trilogy so the author deserves a freaking medal for that, but for me, even that was not enough to make me keep on listening when other novels beckon so temptingly!

I can't imagine a girl calmly describing the scene as Aya did in first person. A disinterested third party observer - one ho with a complete lack of passion - may well have delivered this narration, but not the person to whom it was happening. This is one of the problems with this voice - it's completely unrealistic. It didn't help that the narration by Soneela Nankani made the first person voice even worse. Great name, poor reading voice. Instead of delivering anger or outrage, we got wheedling and stupidity in the narration and the voice didn't help. It turned me right off this story. I gave up and returned it to the library where scores of other audio books beg to be listened to.