How Does My Body Work? Human Body Book for Kids by Sara LaFleur, MD

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Normally I'm skeptical of a book where the author lists a bunch of initials after their name. You usually see that on idiot diet books! In this case, though, I can see why she did it and it makes sense. Written by a medical doctor, this book, a STEAM tie-in aimed at middle-graders, really gets down and dirty with the deets, and with a whole bunch of fun experiments kids can do which will help illustrate the lessons learned, and just plain be fun!

The book covers all of the body's major systems, chapter-by-chapter, starting with the body's building blocks - cells, and followed by the nervous system, musculoskeletal system, circulatory system, respiratory system, digestive system, excretory system, and the endocrine and reproductive stystems.

It goes into some, but not exahustive detail: enough to give the interested reader a solid grounding without being tedious. It makes sense, is well-written, nicely-illustrated, and has a host of fun projects. I commend it as a worthy read.

Nano's Journey! by Aldo Pourchet

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This was a fun little children's book that is illustrated in color, and for me, as an adult, bordered on the obscure at times, but overall, I think it can teach children important facts about how their body works. Part of a projected series, this one focuses on the heart and lungs and has cute illustrations and an adventure story feel that hopefully will draw children in, they'll have fun, and maybe learn a few things along the way. I commend it as a worthy read.

Speed Reading by Kam Knight

Rating: WARTY!

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

I was not impressed with this. I'm not saying it can't work, only that I'm very skeptical, and that what works for the author may not be universally applicable. Some of the techniques used are pretty obvious, and are probably in use by thinking readers already. Others seemed problematical, and though I tried employing them, they did not seem work for me. It begs the obvious question: if this is so good and so effective, then why isn't it being widely adopted in schools and colleges

I also did not trust the references this author gives, some of which are not to scientific studies but to some other guy's book. When I did track down one study that was referenced, it really wasn't applicable - not in the way this author was trying to claim it was. It was a controlled study in a set of school districts that used slide projections, and claimed only a modest subsequent improvement in reading and comprehension, and then only over longer texts. There was no significant improvement over the control group when it came to shorter texts, so this felt dishonest to me and made me question whether the author had actually read the study - or whether he'd just speed read it and misunderstood it because he'd read it too fast for comprehension!

There is a big difference in meeting the stated claim "Learn to Read a 200+ Page Book in 1 Hour" when applied to a simple work of fiction, and when attempting to apply that to a more complex work, or to a textbook, so I have no faith in the efficacy of the techniques described here except perhaps in some limited applications. Even the author admits his method has limitations, so on balance I can't commend this as a worthy read.

Makeda: The Queen of Sheba by Marlon McKenney

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This book, aimed at a younger audience than I represent, was gorgeously-illustrated with a nice 3-D effect to the pictures - where the background, for example, was a little out of focus, drawing attention to the main elements of the scene.

I don't see that it has much to do with the actual queen of Sheba, who, if she exited, may have come from Saba in Yemen rather than Ethiopia, or perhaps from further south in Africa. The name 'Makeda' is from an ancient term meaning 'high official', and isn't an actual person's name, but it's a fun choice to go with.

Regardless, the author takes that mythology and runs with it in interesting and entertaining directions. It's definitely a strong-female character story and I'm all for those after reading - or trying to read - far too many young adult stories where the female author seems determined to neuter her main female character for reasons which escape me.

Makeda is the daughter of King Agabos and Queen Ismenie, and when he dies - too young - she is next in line. When her mother proves too upset to rule as a regent, Makeda is forced to step up, and she realizes that it's a tough job. She makes mistakes, but in the end she takes responsibility to fix the scary and deadly problem facing her queedom.

I loved the art and the story, and I enjoyed seeing a young woman refuse to take a back seat, and instead, take the reins. I fully commend this as a worthy read, and would definitely read more of this author's work.

Manga Artists Copic Marker Coloring Techniques by SHIN, Maripori, Yue, Junko Kitamura, Suzu Kawana, Ramiru Kirisaki

Rating: WORTHY!

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

I'd never heard of Copic Markers before I saw this book on offer for reviewing, so naturally I snapped it up and read with interest. I do not consider myself an artist - an amateur cartoonist at best, is what I am, but I'm very interested in the art-making process and I've reviewed numerous books on the topic. I try to learn at least a little from each one, and was pleased to learn something new from this one.

This is a well-written book with copious illustrations showing the materials being discussed and the techniques used to achieve effects. There is a brief Q&A at the end, and FAQ. A lot of the illustrations are from work done by the talented and dedicated artists credited with creating this book, and some of those are really quite stunning. The techniques used, even down to the specific pens (but using only the Copic identification for the pens), to create the art are gone into in some detail.

To my knowledge this book is not sponsored by Copic, so I had to wonder on more than one occasion why alternative tools got no mention. Not everyone has two hundred bucks to blow on a set of pens! A single marker and a refill of ink for it (so there is that) can cost ten dollars. In that way, it's possible to build up a collection over time on a sort of 'installment plan', and Copic are evidently quality pens and rank right up there, if not at the top, but they are very expensive and a big investment for a 'struggling artist' to take on. This needs to be kept in mind. There are cheaper alternatives which may or may not perform as well. I've never used a Copic, so I cannot comment on that score, which is why it would have been nice to have heard from the professionals about alternatives and the pros and cons of those versus Copics.

That said, I was impressed by how well written, useful, and informative this book was, and I commend it as a worthy read.

Boris the Cat by Erwin Moser

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Subtitled, "The Little Cat with Big Ideas." this book was well-illustrated and in color, and the stories I read were amusing, but why it was issued in a Kindle format is utterly beyond me. I've said it repeatedly: unless your text is plain vanilla (with not even dropcaps!), then nine times out of ten, or worse, Amazon's crappy Kindle coversion process will turn your book into kindling - especially if it has images. This one was totally mangled with text and images out of place and mismatched. In other formats the book was considerably better, but even then there was a problem.

The book had almost seventy stories and they're collected into groups by the four seasons, but my copy had only ten stories from 'the spring collection'. The rest of the stories were missing even though they were listed in the content list. And there was no way to tap from the content list to any of the stories, nor was there any way to get back to the contents by, say, tapping on the story title, so this was a serious problem. One reason I'm quitting reviewing books at the end of this year is because of this shabby treatment of reviewers by publishers and Net Galley. I don't expect to get a nice pristine print copy to review by any means, but I do expect to be treated decently, and reviewers deserve better than this.

Since this was an ARC, I checked back on the Net Galley website to see if I'd been sent a sample only, and there was nothing there to indicate any such thing, so I can only assume something got monumentally cocked-up along the way. Anyway this review is of only those ten stories, all of which are about animals and Boris's interaction with them. This is the kind of story where nearly all of the animals walk around on two legs and are all the same size, regardless of species! There are no speech balloons, just descriptive text and equally descriptive and amusing imagery, and each story consists of six such images. Why that is, I do not know!

That said, the stories were amusing to me. I'm not sure why Boris is credited so much with big ideas, but the ones we saw, from a variety of sources, were inventive in a Heath Robinson sort of a way, and were in fact reminiscent of the Mr Bean TV show, so if you've seen that and enjoyed it, you may well find this amusing. I loved the absurdist and off-the-wall humor. These were wacky enough to make me chuckle, so on that basis, and keeping in mind that I was able to read barely more than 10% of this book, I commend it as a worthy read.

Misty Presents: The Jaume Rumeu Collection by Bill Harrington, Jaume Rumeu

Rating: WARTY!

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

I didn't realize when I selected this to review that it's an antique, and I was not impressed with it. If you like old film noire type stories, or cheesy fifties horror movies, then this might resonate, but to me it was out of date, overly melodramatic, lackluster, and asinine in parts. Aimed at a female audience, it was originally published in 1978, in a comic book named Misty, which was short-lived, but quite ground-breaking for its time. I would have been more impressed if instead of recycling the old stories, they had written new ones that had the same focus.

The story I read, which I DNF'd about 50% through, consisted of a woman with the uninventive name of Black Widow - and she wasn't even black. Her real name is, of course, Webb, so it was like watching an episode of that corny sixties Batman TV show - but the story is set in Britain. The idea is that she's taken this title because her husband died in a "military scientific" experiment, and she's out for revenge against those people who were responsible, by concocting lame and labyrinthine schemes. Her widowhood explains the 'widow' part of the title, but there's no explanation at all for the 'black' portion of it.

She's apparently obsessed with spiders and has a bunch of them that are venomous (not poisonous as the text has it) and deadly. They aren't black widow spiders, so again this makes nonsense of the title. To do her bidding, she recruits two students from a local school (why? Who knows?!). One of these two she hypnotizes, the other she does not. The hypnotized one does whatever she's bidden to do when the phrase 'you creep' is included in the instructions - even if accidentally. Yeah, the language is that antiquated.

Black Widow is supposed to have the ability to determine where each of her little spiders is at any time so it makes no sense when for two issues, she spends an awfully large portion of her time bemoaning the fact that 'one of our spiders is missing'! It was amusing to me because it was so ridiculous - about as amusing, in fact, as having a guy named Roach writing an introduction to a comic book about spiders!

The comic is subtitled "The Jaume Rumeu Collection" but he's the artist. The guy who gets top billing, Bill Harrington, is the writer. Normally I'd rail at this because the artist has by far the greater portion of the work to do. In this 'collection' though, the artwork was poor to middling, and consisted entirely of black and white line drawings, so I didn't have any problem with Rumeu taking second place in the billing, but in that case, why was it not called the Bill Harrington collection? None of this made any sense to me.

But for the reasons listed, I cannot commend this as a worthy read. It was disappointing and unintentionally amusing in parts, and the art wasn't really worth the trouble.

The Mice Before Christmas by Anne L Watson, Wendy Edelson

Rating: WORTHY!

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

I fell in love with this book just from the title, so in a way, I was dreading reading it because I feared it wouldn't live up to the amusement I'd had from title. I'm happy to report the book very much lived up to its name.

I have to add that recently I discovered there are other such books with the same title, but this was the first (and only) one of these I'd seen and read, so I cannot comment on the others. I can say that I was pleased to see artist Wendy Edelson given due credit on the cover instead of being some sort of a footnote tucked down at the bottom as illustrators are all-too-often relegated in children's books, like a few sentences takes more work than pages of quality, detailed artwork! I was very pleased that didn't happen here.

The illustrations are rich, and detailed and colorful, with a delightfully Christmas-y tone to the coloring and style. The writing is far more than a few sentences in this case, and is wonderfully poetic and sweet. The whole story about a mouse Christmas is charming. The mice have no less of a festival at Christmastide than do humans. Not a lot of people know that! They deck the halls, and anything else they can get away with (they're mice after all - and thereby hangs a tail!), and they dress in finery and celebrate at eight sharp, handing out gifts, enjoying good company and good food, and finally making sense of that second line in the poem, "A Visit from St Nicholas"!

I commend this as a worthy read and perhaps the start of a new Christmas tradition, replacing the other poem - which is, lets face it, of dubious provenance!

Sparky's Electrifying Tale by Janelle London, Matthew Metz, Ilya Fortuna

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This book is a delightfully devastating indictment of our fossil-fuel culture - specifically internal combustion engines! Written by Janelle London, Matthew Metz, and I'm pleased to say, with a fair-shake (for once in a children's book!) given to a talented artist: Ilya Fortuna, this rhyming and full color illustration book for young kids describes how bad internal combustion engines are (transportation contributes about a third of our climate change problem), without getting preachy and without getting bogged down by too much detail.

The magic hamster frankly to me, looks a bit more like a guinea pig, but I've had both as pets in my youthful years, and I'm not going to quibble about that when it's so delightfully drawn. The book briefly lays out the story of how oil came to be formed, and how it's extracted, and what it does when it's burned - returning all that sequestered carbon into the atmosphere quickly and in large volume. I love this book and commend it fully. We can only hope that the children who will read this will still have a planet worth saving by the time they get old enough to do something about the disaster that we adults are still, even now and knowing what we know, hell-bent on creating for them.

Mommy, What is Confidence? by Shal Chirkut, Brianna Baker

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Again on the topic of confidence, this is another well-done book for young children, but I have to make a point once more that yet again the artist, in this case Brianna Baker, is badly underserved here. Predictably she gets a tiny text mention on the cover, but her name doesn't appear on the Net Galley listing where I downloaded the review copy of this book, nor does Amazon-owned Goodreads Jug O'Nought review website bother to credit her. I can tell you that's because they're a bunch of self-serving jerks at Goodreads, but I would have thought the publisher might treat her with a little more appreciation and consideration on the book cover and in the Net Galley listing.

The observation I'm about to make is far less applicable in this case, because there's a lot of well-thought text in this book - more than you'd usually see - but it's a fact that very many children's books have very little text and to be honest, it's not like it takes months to put together a book like this in terms of the writing. The artwork on the other hand, especially when it's as well done as this, does take time, and thought and work.

As I said, in this case the writing and art are more balanced, but that still doesn't excuse the artist being treated like a minor player. Maybe it's just me, but it bothers me that book illustration artists are treated so shabbily. And no, I am not a book illustrator for hire, so I have no skin in this game. I just feel that every contributor should be fairly treated.

That aside, this book was sweet and well done, and it told a worthy story of a young child, Nikko, who lacks confidence, and the lessons he learns with the aid fo his teacher and his mopm, abotu putitng himself otu there a bit more than he's used to. I commend this as a worthy read.

I Can Believe in Myself by Jack Canfield, Miriam Laundry, Eva Morales

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This book is a little bit on the simplistic side, but for the age range it's aimed at, I think it does the trick. It tells the story of young Molly, who is expected to give a speech the next day in front of class, and she's soooo nervous about it. I can relate to Molly since I was that way myself in school. When I was very young, I didn't care so much, but as I grew a little older, something, I know not what, happened and I lost whatever confidence I'd had.

It seems that Molly never did have confidence, and it's quite the ordeal for her. She makes rather bizarre excuses which her teacher seems to buy, to get herself out of speaking, but then she has an epiphany as she realizes that she's not alone: everyone is lacking confidence in doing something or other. She comes up with an ingenious idea to get her friends to dispose of their fear and grow some confidence in themselves.

The only issue I have with this book is the short-shrift that Eva Morales gets for her excellent illustrations, which are beautifully-done and very sweet. I know that writing, particularly in a book of this nature is important, but in terms of sheer effort and work, the artist is the one putitng in the hours and I felt she deserved better than a tiny acknowledgement way down at the bottom of the front cover, and not a word about her at all on the Net Galley page where I downloaded this copy for review. But that's just me, and it's not just this book that underserves artists.

A Crocodile in the Family by Kitty Black, Daron Parton

Rating: WORTHY!

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

A crocodile is hardly the companion you'd think of as someone who might be kind to birds. I think a better subject could have been chosen, but if you're willing to let that slide, then this was a fun book nicely and amusingly illustrated by Daron Parton and well-written by Kitty Black.

The birds find a stray egg and naturally take it home with them to raise the chick as their own, but it's all a croc! The chick isn't all the egg is cracked up to be! It's green with a large jaw and some dangerous claws, and you might think that bites, but this is Australia where they have bites for breakfast. And we certainly shouldn't expect everyone else to be just like us - in fact that's the whole point of the story!

Croccy grows large and enjoys dancing and wearing colorful sweaters, and he always helps people crossing the river. The family is often asked if one or another of these various aspects of his personality are the reason why they keep him, but the answer is always no. I fully expected the answer at the end to be "Because we love him" but it isn't! Now you'll have to read it to find out what that answer is!

Rebel Girls Powerful Pairs by Rebel Girls

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This is one of a series pf books aimed at younger readers, highlighting powerful, adventurous, and inventive woman - in this case pairing moms and daughters. I'd have loved to have given you a list of contents, but the app was so tightly locked-down that it wouldn't even let me copy that. Why a publisher would be so short-sighted as to want to hobble a reviewer from highlighting who's who in this book, and not even list that information elsewhere is a complete mystery to me, but I sure don't have the time to manually type all that out when I have other things I need to be doing! So this review will be short!

As the book cover says, it's 25 moms and daughters, some of whom, such as Beyoncé and her curiously-named daughter "Blue Ivy," or the Pankhursts, or the Curies, you may well have heard of. Others are much more obscure to the general reader, such as Wang Changyi and Nu Mei Mei, and Kim Yeshi (aka Pema Dolkar) and daughter Dechen, but they are no less important. All have inspiring stories to tell, and they are worth reading, so I commend this as a worthy read.

Sixth Sunday by Arielle Haughee, Anastasiya Yanovskaya

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This was a charmer of a book written by Arielle Haughee, and beautifully illustrated by Anastasiya Yanovskaya. I have to say it's a personal peeve of mine that writers get so much credit and the illustrators, who in a book like this do by far the most work, get second billing - if they're lucky! The cover mentions Anastasiya Yanovskaya - who is an excellent artist - but the Net Galley listing for this book makes no mention of her at all. I find that reprehensible. But this review is of the book and not the Net Galley listing, so here we go!

The nameless family depicted here seems to consist only of child and mom, and the child is fantasizing about how the day will go when Mom finally kicks loose and breaks all the rules (cue the Footloose song!) - which we're assured will happen on the sixth Sunday of the month. Which I feel I must warn you is considerably rarer than a blue moon!

The riotous plans start with jumping on the bed after waking up, then down to a raucous breakfast (via the means of rollerskate crocs!), off to baseball, burping the alphabet, and a host of other nonsensical but fun activities, ending with a mom passed out from exhaustion and snoring on the couch. I thought this was a great book, full of the joy of living, and fun ideas for kids to try themselves for that matter. I commend it fully as a worthy read.

Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver by Ned Bustard

Rating: WARTY!

I can't give this a positive review because it's nothing short of a religious tract that takes hazy and unreliable legends as facts and runs with them. Yes, there was a Nicholas, and yes, he himself was a church leader, and after his life was over, he had many improbable legends built-up around him and became a saint, but to present these folk-tales as fact - for example that he slapped an Arian bishop because he disagreed with him, when early roll calls of that very congregation do not list Nicholas as even being there, is problematical, as is a Christian church leader resorting to a violent act like that when the Bible itself calls for turning the other cheek! That's hardly saintly!

This book presents the story of Nicholas donating three bags of gold to a father so he could marry off his three daughters as fact when it's highly unlikely this happened, and the whole story is a problem even if it did happen because of the way it treats women as property to be bartered. A real saint would have taken a different tack! I know this is how things were done back then, but that merely serves to highlight the shortcomings of this man, not enhance him.

Gift-giving was a Roman tradition long before Nicholas ever came onto the scene, so he wasn't the one who originated that habit, although he was copted as a post-hoc excuse for it once commercialism saw the value of promoting the purchase and swapping of seasonal gifts. So overall I cannot commned his as a worthy read.

Will You be the I in Kind? by Julia Cook, Jomike Tejido

Rating: WORTHY!

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

This was a gorgeously- and diversely-illustrated (by Jomike Tejido) and sweetly written (by Julia Cook) picture book about putting the 'I' in kind by stepping up when kindness is called for, and setting a good example for others to follow. Several examples are given,such as offering to help up someone who has fallen down, by having a ready smile, by making sure trash gets into the trash bin where it belongs, by taking an interest in others, and by letting a young kid go before you if you're waiting in a long line.

This is a good sentiment and we often forget to follow it for a variety of reasons, which is why a reminder such as this one is so helpful. I commend this book as a worthy read.

Geckos Don't Blink by Kelly Tills

Rating: WARTY!

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

This is the first to two related books I got for review purposes from Net Galley. They were by the same author, and were two small volumes in a series of short, illustrated children's books about interesting animal facts, which I thought might be fun. The problem was that they both were unreadable.

They came in three reading options. One was the Kindle version, which I knew would be a disaster, but which I sent to my Kindle app anyway, and got exactly what I'd expected. Actually I got less than I expected, because I expected at least to have some images that were sliced, diced, and julienned, which is what Kindle routinely does to anything that's not plain vanilla text. Instead I got completely blank screens! This isn't even the kindling I expected Amazon's crappy, limited, and destructive system to deliver.

Not losing heart, I progressed to one of the two other options Net Galley offered, which was an epub format. Usually there is no problem here, but in this case, it was almost as bad as the Kindle. At least I could see the images for the book's pages, but they were truncated. Normally, if a book runs to two pages, you half-expect it to be chopped up in electronic format, but the other half of the image was not on the next screen - it was gone completely! This meant that sometimes the image had been chopped, but usually it meant that the text had been curtailed and was unreadable because so much of it was missing.

Finally, there was a Net Galley reading app format, which normally is acceptable, but with which I've occasionally had problems. In this case, what I got was exactly the same result I got from the epub version: seriously bowdlerized images and text. Both of these books suffered the same problems. I honestly do not know how a publisher can distribute a book in this condition. Did no one think to check?! I imagine these books were designed from the ground up as print books, but we reviewers still need them to be legible in the electronic version!

Normally I like to positively review children's books if they have any redeeming features at all, but this one had zero. Consequently I have no choice but to declare this book warty to the max!

Cows Have No Top Teeth by Kelly Tills

Rating: WARTY!

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

This is the first to two related books I got for review purposes from Net Galley. They were by the same author, and were two small volumes in a series of short, illustrated children's books about interesting animal facts, which I thought might be fun. The problem was that they both were unreadable.

They came in three reading options. One was the Kindle version, which I knew would be a disaster, but which I sent to my Kindle app anyway, and got exactly what I'd expected. Actually I got less than I expected, because I expected at least to have some images that were sliced, diced, and julienned, which is what Kindle routinely does to anything that's not plain vanilla text. Instead I got completely blank screens! This isn't even the kindling I expected Amazon's crappy, limited, and destructive system to deliver.

Not losing heart, I progressed to one of the two other options Net Galley offered, which was an epub format. Usually there is no problem here, but in this case, it was almost as bad as the Kindle. At least I could see the images for the book's pages, but they were truncated. Normally, if a book runs to two pages, you half-expect it to be chopped up in electronic format, but the other half of the image was not on the next screen - it was gone completely! This meant that sometimes the image had been chopped, but usually it meant that the text had been curtailed and was unreadable because so much of it was missing.

Finally, there was a Net Galley reading app format, which normally is acceptable, but with which I've occasionally had problems. In this case, what I got was exactly the same result I got from the epub version: seriously bowdlerized images and text. Both of these books suffered the same problems. I honestly do not know how a publisher can distribute a book in this condition. Did no one think to check?! I imagine these books were designed from the ground up as print books, but we reviewers still need them to be legible in the electronic version!

Normally I like to positively review children's books if they have any redeeming features at all, but this one had zero. Consequently I have no choice but to declare this book warty to the max!

The Marquess of Gorsewall Manor by Adella J Harris

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a beautifully-written novel about two gay men, set in the Regency period, which despite its 300-some page length, was a delightful and fast read for me. It's not one of your smutty bare-chested muscle guy on the cover erotic story, which are so cliched and overdone that I canlt even get past the absurdist book blurb. Such novels are typically execrable, but this was thoughtful, well-paced, considereate, intelligent, and offered plenty to keep a reader occupied. There were some sex scenes, but not many, and those were tastefully done, and believe it or not, this was written in first person, a voice I usually detest, but it was well done. Once in a while an author can carry it off and I appreciated this author's light touch.

The story makes a reader feel they are back in the Regency without being too heavy-handed about it or imparting the feeling that the author is yelling, "Hey, look how much research I did!" It was easy to read and made a lot of sense in how it was put together, and in how the relationship developed realistically between the two main characters: naturally and thoughtfully.

Thomas Brook works in a lower-level legal job in London. He's gay, but discreet, and it's only through bad luck that he's arrested in a molly house and brought to trial on charges of indecency which back then would net you a time in the public pillory and a couple of years of hard labor. Why they considered locking up a gay guy with a whole bunch of other guys to be a real punishment is a question that's worth asking, but as it happened, Thomas didn't get that far. Due to laxity and confusin during the pillorying process, he manages to get away and immedately starts sneaking onto the back of stagecoaches heading north, paying for an occasional meal by offering discreet oral sex to certainly likely travelers or locals when he feels it's safe to do so.

Eventually though, his luck runs out and he's forced to take to his feet again, and ends up passed out on the moors. Not by coincidence, he's discovered before further harm can befall him, by Lord Elmsby, who also happens to be gay and dealing with issues of his own. Elmsby takes Thomas on as a cataloguer of his library until the latter gets back on his feet, and the two start to develop a mutual liking.

Elmsby's history includes a scandal several years before, when his fiancée disappeared without a trace, so he leads a solitary life now and Thomas is a welcome novelty - at least at first. But when a body surfaces on the moors, Thomas is left wondering what he's got himself into.

As I said, the story was engaging and entertaining, warm and enjoyable, although the murderer was quite obvious from quite early, and I'm usually bad about figuring out who the perp is in such stories. That didnlt spoilt he sotry for me though. It offered variety and entertainment, and was nicely-written with only a couple of minor spelling gaffs that I didn't bother over. I fully commend this as a worthy read.

Edge of Magic by Jayne Faith

Rating: WARTY!

I made it about a third the way through this before I gave up because it was turning into your usual trope YA story with a troubled protaginist and a studly, chiseled wolfman coming to her rescue. Because, as you well know, women are useless on their own, according to far too many female YA writers. As far as I read, it hadn't quite progressed to her being tearful in his manly arms, but it sure as hell was on the steep and slippery downslide to the end, which is why I quit reading it. Just once in a while! Just once in a while, it would be nice to have an authro surprise me and to read something that isn't warmed-over; that isn't shit-scared to take a different tack, you know? It almost never happens.

That's why I write. To fill that yearning gap. It makes me wonder what's wrong with people - not just the pandering lackluster authors, but the limp fucks who read this shit. Don't they ever wish for something new and original? Soemthign jsut that bit different? Maybe that's the problem - they want no difference, or just that little bit of difference. Anything else scares them, because otherwise why would they seem to be so happy with this drab and boring pap? This is likely why I will never sell anything in significant numbers because I quite literally cannto write that badly. I cannot be that uninventive or derivative.

I should have known from the off, when I read the word 'fae' in the book blurb that this wasn't for me. Any author who is too chickenshit to call 'em fairies is not for me. The character names sucked, too: Tara Knightley and Judah McMahon? Really? But I liked the idea of a thief trying to pay off a debt to an unscruptulous jerk. I liked that she wasn't all powerful. It was just that trope tryst which turned me right off, because it was so predictbale and so utterly boring. Could she not once have chosen a path that's not so oft-taken? I guess not.

On top of this Tara is a bit onf a one-note whiner. I know she's had troubles, but her constant referencing of them is tedious and depressing, especially since she seems not to really be trying very hard to dig her way out. If she had tried as much as she gripes, she'd have paid off her debt five years ago! Judah is equally trope, having hotness and wealth as his only qualities. They haven't had any contact in a decade since he left after a falling out, yet neither has moved on. It's pathetic: sad, predictable, and boring.

On top of all that, Tara is the sole breadwinner and provider for all the people who live in the house and she doesn't even get her own room, much less any gratitude or assistance from anyone to pay bills. And she has no problem with this (apart from her internal monolgue whining)! It's all too extreme.