Charm by JA Armitage

Rating: WARTY!

The only other novel I've read by this author was The Sorcery Trial which she co-wrote with Claire Luana. I did not like that because it was poor, and also too much of a rip-off of The Hunger Games. It seems like here we are again, this time ripping-off fairytales and I have to wonder why the author doesn't try to come up with something original. Normally I will not give these novels the time of day because they're all the same, but read on!

I made a mistake with this one, because I ended up misreading the book description and thinking it was something of a rival to my own Femarine because the princess is expected to pick a spouse and ends up choosing the last person anyone would expect. I'd misread pretty good though, and I thought she'd picked a woman, but she didn't! It was just that the guy she did pick was a kitchen helper who was improbably named Cynder. If I'd realized that small fact earlier I'd never have wanted to read the darned thing, but I was curious to see how it tackled a subject I've already tackled (so I thought), and I decided to give it a read. Bad mistake! It really was just like all the other novels of this genre, and in no significant way original or different at all.

The book description has it that (and I quote!) "Charm is the first in the Reverse Fairytale series by USA Today bestselling author J.A.Armitage. Take everything you think you know about fairytales and turn it on its head," but that's misleading because it didn't turn anything on its head at all except the gender reversal: that the princess falls for the help rather than the prince falling for the help. Other than that it's exactly what you'd expect in this sort of a story, and it's so, dare I say it, disenchanting to read and discover how uninventive and unimaginative it is.

Instead of telling the story from the PoV of Cynder, it's told from the princess's PoV, and while this seems superficially like a reversal, it really isn't, because all that does is turn it into a story about a princess in search of a groom like almost every other dumb-ass YA princess story that's ever been written. We get nothing about Cynder - not even why Charmaine would fall in love with him. It just magically happens, which ought to make Charmaine suspicious since Cynder has magic powers! But he's written out of the story pretty quickly (this is a trilogy which means the author doesn't know how to tell a story between only two covers and is in dire need of a good editor.

The story begins with Princess Charmaine, the second eldest daughter of King Aaron of Silverwood, who has grown up as a carefree tomboy, but her older sister, Grace, dies from an apparent heart defect. I suspect it's actually murder: I mean how can a royal have an undetected heart defect in this day and age? Do they never get medical assessments? So anyway Charmaine gets bumped to the position of heir apparent and has to step in for her sister in the upcoming ball where 100 eligible bachelors will arrive, one of whom she must pair up with.

I made it about a fifth of the way through before I couldn't stand to read any more of this. It's set in completely modern times, but the princess seems not to have a cell phone, nor any friends, and they seem not to have the Internet in this world because when the queen is telling her there will be a ton of bachelors at the ball, she adds that she's solicited photos of them all so Charmaine can see who's who. Apparently there's no online surfing to check these guys out. It was downright weird, and poorly thought-out. World-building sucked.

With it being a thoroughly modern story, the age of consent is eighteen, Charmaine's age, but to suggest that neither of these two younger daughters - the youngest, Elise, is 17, has ever met a male peer, let alone a potential mate, is quite simply ridiculous and fundamentally stupid. Is the author writing a novel or a fairytale? It seems like she can't tell the difference. In the former, one has to make it at least seem realistic. No attempt whatsoever was made in that direction here. It's written like it was aimed at a much younger age group, but unbelievably, it's not!

As soon as Grace dies, it seems that Charmaine becomes the biggest royal dumbass ever. She has never been considered the heir until now, granted, but you cannot spend eighteen years in a royal family and not have even the most basic knowledge of protocol and etiquette. It's bullshit to suggest otherwise, yet we're expected to believe that Charmaine needs extensive tutoring and dance lessons! This beggars belief and makes her look like the dumbest royal ever, who has never been involved even remotely in any sort of royal or public life.

The novel is, as is usual for this YA garbage, unapologetically sexist and anti-feminist. Why female authors persistently write trash like this escapes me completely. I guess as long as LCD readers dominate the audience, then writers have no incentive to raise the bar do they? I disagree!

Here's one of the earliest sentences in the book: "With her stunning white blonde hair, two or three shades lighter than my own, and her darling face, she would make an excellent queen." Yes, it's in first person of course, and this is Charmaine's dumbass assessment of her kid sister. So that's all it takes to be queen? White blonde hair and darling looks? Charmaine is a fucking moron, period.

How does Charmaine rate in the 'looks' department - because this shallow piece of trash is all about appearances and skin-depth. In this world, nothing else is important: not heart, not integrity, not honesty, not experience, not dedication, not commitment, not decency, and not strength of character. Nope. None of the above, only shallow looks and pretty dresses. Charmaine is "A dirty blonde that nothing but the strongest hairspray and lots of pins could tame." Yet she gets a one-day makeover and she's suddenly gorgeous.

But here's the thing: there are magicians in this world - called magi. There are many of them who work at the palace, yet not a one of those was ever called in to tame Charmaine's hair? What is the fricking point exactly, of having magic in your story if it's never, ever, ever, ever used for anything, and your world proceeds entirely and solely by the rules we're familiar with in our own world, where no magic exists? Again, piss-poor writing, and despite the "magi" there is no magic to this novel.

The story is replete with inconsistency. Were told that mourning for Grace lasts two weeks and the royal household is wearing black, yet the very next day Charmaine is expected to wear a white dress for a bullshit interview on TV! But that's fine, because neither Charmaine nor her kid sister show any sort of grief over Grace's death! Maybe they murdered her? Who knows in this piece of crap?

Elise gets into raptures over Charmaine's make-over when she learns Charmaine has had her legs waxed because god forbid a single 'unnatural' hair should be found anywhere on the female body. How gross! How ugly! Burn the witch! Elise says, "Yeah, but you have nice smooth legs. I swear I'm turning into a gorilla." Way to diss every woman who has body hair, Armitage. Jesus fucking Christ is that how you view your fellow women who choose to be natural? They're gorillas? Because body hair is disgusting? It's unnatural? It's ugly and so are the woman who don't want to shave it? For fuck's sake get a clue, Armitage before you ever write another insulting word.

Here's the weird thing: these two girls are continually presented as sheltered, never having any contact with boys, yet they have these views of body hair? And nowhere in their royal life have they ever had any sort of royal treatment before? Again, piss-poor story-telling. Someone asks Charmaine, "Do you want to go into that ball not having a clue how to act," but she's been a royal for 18 years! Only a dedicated moron could live eighteen years in a royal family and have no clue how to act. Way to diss your main character, Armitage!

During her lessons on how to be a royal, Charmaine misses dinner, so the advice to her is: "You'll have to go down to the kitchen and ask the cook for something." Wait what? The princess and heir apparent has to go ask for food? There is a thousand people working in the place and she has no one she can call, no bell pull to ring, to get service? She has to go to the kitchen and beg for food? Again, piss-poor writing because this is the only way this author can think of to bring Charmaine into contact with the love of her life - a magi who uses his magic to wash dishes in the kitchen Apparently they have TVs, but no electric dishwasher in the palace.

Of course the creepy Cynder is overly familiar with the princess and ends up dancing with her - he can teach her but the best dance teacher in the country cannot? He has his hands all over her and kisses her on the cheek. Seriously? Again this is a dumbass rushed "love" story where these two characters are literally forced together by the author. They have to be forced because they're written so poorly and pushed together so ham-fistedly that the author has no choice but to force things. They sure as hell aren't going to happen naturally with this kind of story-telling, because they have zero chemistry and have a relationship that makes her look dumb and him look a creep. Again: it's lousy writing.

I've embarked on a few truly dumbass stories in my time, and this one is right down there with the worse of them. It's badly-written, stupidly-plotted and an insult to women everywhere. I'm done with this author permanently.

Feminist Folktales from Around the World by Ethel Johnston Phelps

Rating: WORTHY!

This is an ebook compendium of four individually published books of collected tales (Tatterhood, Kamala, Sea Girl, and The Hunter Maiden. It was great! I have to say it felt like it fell off a bit toward the end, but I don't know if that was because the later stories were not as entertaining, or because it was too many to listen to in one long string over a few days as I did. But I commend it nonetheless for having strong, smart, and even sneaky female characters throughout, lots of stories, and for being amusing as hell.

While all fairytales and folktales have common elements, I have to say that save two, I think, I had not heard any of these particular stories before, and they do come from all over. The first book, Tatterhood, contains a baker's dozen stories from places as diverse as Norway and Scotland to the Sudan and Japan and the others are similarly diverse.

I particularly liked the Sudan story, perhaps in part because it reminded me of a story about a Sudanese woman I had listened to in another audiobook (Footprints in the Dust) very recently, that was not fiction and which made a strong impression on me and gave me the makings of a story idea. My favorite of all, though, was the eponymous Tatterhood, which amused me the most, but I have to say a great deal of my enjoyment came not only from the ebullient way the tale was told, but also from the enthusiastic reading by Leslie Howard (not the British actor and film-maker!)

I liked Howard as a reader, but I can't commend her on her accents. Her Irish was off and she couldn't do Cornwall to save her life. That aside though, I liked her voice and her enthusiasm. As far as the stories go, these were as follows:

Tatterhood

1. Tatterhood
2. Unanana and the Elephant
3. The Hedley Kow
4. The Prince and the Three Fates
5. Janet and Tamlin
6. What Happened to the Six Wives Who Ate Onions
7. Kate Crackernuts
8. Three Strong Women
9. The Black Bull of Norroway
10. The Giant Caterpillar
11. The Laird's Lass and the Dobha's Son
12. The Hunted Hare
13. Clever Manka

Kamala

1. Kamala and the Seven Thieves
2. The Young Head of the family
3. The Legend of Knockmany
4. Kupti and Imani
5. The Lute Player
6. The Shepherd of Myddvai and the Lake Maiden
7. The Search for the Magic Lake
8. The Squire's Bride
9. The Stars in the Sky
10. Bucca Dhu and Bucca Gwiden
11. The Enchanted Buck
12. Mastermaid

Sea Girl

1. The Maid of the North
2. Fair Exchange
3. Wild Goose Lake
4. Gawain and the Lady Ragnell
5. The Monkey's Heart
6. The Twelve Huntsmen
7. The Tiger and the Jackal
8. East of the Sun, West of the Moon
9. The Giant's daughter
10. The Summer Quuen

The Hunter Maiden

1. Mulha
2. The Hunter Maiden
3. Elsa and the Evil Wizard
4. Maria Morevna
5. Duffy and the Devil
6. Lanval and the Lady Triamor
7. Bending Willow
8. Finn Magic
9. The Old Woman and the Rice Cakes
10. The Husband Who Stayed at Home
11. Scheherazade Retold

So plenty of entertainment there, plenty of ideas if you're looking for a topic for a novel. One of these, East of the Sun, West of the Moon has already been turned into a full-length novel by Julia Gregson. I reviewed that one favorably in January of 2017. Overall I commend this as a great source of entertainment and amusement.

Andersen's Fairy Tales vol 1 by Hans Christian Andersen

Rating: WARTY!

This really wasn't worth my time or money despite being a discounted copy. Emma Fenney does a fine job reading it and employing some amusing tones and accents, but that can't improve on fundamentally boring material. There was a male voice at one point, but nowhere can I find whose voice that was, so I can't credit him. But the problem was with the stories which are not really that entertaining. Maybe kids would find more entertainment in them than I did.

The stories are as follows:

• The Emperor's New Clothes Everyone knows this story, so 'nuff said. I didn't find it entertaining.
• The Swineherd is about a prince who disguises himself as a farmhand to stalk a princess, and it turns out she'll sell kisses for baubles and trinkets. That relationship never went anywhere and the moral of the story is the king is a tyrant because rather than try and change this behavior he himself has no doubt inculcated in his daughter, he throws her out, and rather than try to redeem her, the prince abandons her. More like a nightmare than a fairytale!
• The Real Princess More commonly known as The Princess and the Pea this is another tale of spoiled brat royalty. Any princess who was so "sensitive" that she could feel a pea through several layers of bedding would be far too delicate to survive in the real world. This is just another example of how women, according to Andersen, ought to be delicate and subjugated, and put on pedestals and mattresses.
• The Shoes of Fortune also known as 'The Galoshes of Fortune', this story tells of magic shoes that can take the wearer to anywhere, any-when. This truly dickhead Councilor, Justice Knap, having argued that the Middle Ages were a better time, is transported there and takes forever to figure out what happened to him. What a maroon. Someone should have just kicked his dumb ass with the shoes.
• The Fir Tree essentially tells suffragettes they shouldn't whine about not having the vote because they might be worse off with it. It tells people of color they shouldn't agitate against slavery because life as a free person might be worse. It's dumb and ridiculous.
• The Snow Queen is the story of Satan's mirror - designed to reflect the worst in everyone. Taking the mirror up to heaven, an accident occurs and it shatters into gazillions of pieces, two of which enter the eye and heart of a boy who was nice, but soon starts being mean to the girl who's his neighbor. He's then abducted by the snow queen and apparently there's no law enforcement in this neighborhood.
• The Leap-Frog is another story about abusing women, wherein a flea, a grasshopper, and a Leap-frog, which I assume is simply a frog, compete to see who can jump highest, and the idiot king offers his daughter's hand (and presumably the rest of her body) to the winner of the contest even though not a one of the competitors is human. The frog wins. There's no word on if it changed into a prince when the princess kissed it.
• The Elderbush is about a boy who catches cold from getting his feet wet because that's how germs work, and when a suspicious old man inveigles his way into the child's bedroom, an elder bush sprouts from the teapot and the bush contains a woman. From there the story devolves into even more incoherence.
• The Bell is a bizarre and nonsensical story about children trying to learn the origin of a ghostly bell sound coming from beyond the woods near their village.
• The Old House is really about an old man, a young boy and a tin soldier. Very suspicious. And nonsensical.
• The Happy Family is about burdock and snails. I think. Hell, I have no idea.
• The Story of a Mother is about an irresponsible woman who chases after death when he takes her young child and when he offers to give it back she turns him down and lets death carry the child off to who knows where.
• The False Collar is about shaming a woman because she will not talk to an impertinent man. The man is disguised as a shirt collar, the woman as a garter, but the implications are clear: one is high up, the other low down.
• The Shadow is a story about how the lower classes ought to be executed if they try to rise above their station. I am not making this up.
• The Little Match Girl is about how a girl who froze to death from neglect is really better off dead.
• The Dream of Little Tuk is sheer nonsense from start to finish.
• The Naughty Boy is Cupid and this story is about how evil love is. Another story about an old man and a young child.
• The Red Shoes and for something completely different: another story about an old man and a young child. This essentially is a cross between the shoes of fortune and the swineherd. This spoiled-rotten girl gets red shoes and because she wears them to church she's cursed to dance forever in them. Eventually her heart bursts. It was only because she mutilated herself that she got let into heaven.

It seems that you've been living two lives, Mr Andersen. In one of these lives, you're Hans Christian Andersen, purported teller of tall tales; you have a social life, pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. In the other life, you write disgusting stories of old men and young children. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not. That, Mr Andersen, is the sound of inevitability.

Feyland the Dark Realm by Anthea Sharp

Rating: WARTY!

This is the fourth in a collection of seven introductory stopries to urban fantasy topics - and this is mostly shape shifters unfortunately. I guess urban fantasy has a limited meaning to these authors. Note that I skipped numnber 3 because I already (negatively) reviewed it some time ago, having read it - or as much of it as I could stomach, anyway - separately.

This is supposed to be some sort of crossover - not only soft fantasy with hard computer, but also a game with reality. I wasn't impressed. I'm neither a fantasy fan (especially not when the author doesn't have the guts to call them fairies!) nor a computer gaming story adherent, but I was intrigued by this mashup or the two. Unfortunately, I did not like the style in which this was written, nor the tone of voice, nor the endless clichés the story was falling into.

Jennet Carter is fifteen and of course the new kid in school, and of course she hooks up with the bad boy. Barf. That turned me off right there. She needs him to get her going in this new computer game because for reasons unexplained, she needs to re-enter the dark realm and confront the 'faerie' queen. Sorry, but no. Two stories in a row in this 7 story volume and both are about maidens in distress needing a shining knight to save them? Barf. I should have steered clear of this story just because it uses the word 'realm' but I did not and I blame only myself for getting into it when I really knew better. Fortunately I did not waste much time on this.

There appears to be a lot of backstory here that wasn't told. Whether that comes out in pages I did not read, I can't say, but there seemed to be a ton of it and I sure would not be remotely be interested in wading through that in the form of infodumps, flashbacks, and so on. Maybe the author was aiming to bring it all out during extensive and tedious monologuing by the villain later, but that would have been far worse. Based on my experience of this, I cannot commend it.

Andersen's Fairy Tales volume 2 by Hans Christian Anderson

Rating: WORTHY!

Note these are not your childhood fairy-tales. Some are more like horror stories. The Little Mermaid isn't Disney's mermaid, which for me was a good thing because these stories as told by Anderson, have far more originality, heart and substance than anything Disney has ever animated.

The stories are as listed below in order. They're easily looked-up online so I will not detail any of them. For me the most interesting were The Wild Swans, The Little Mermaid, The Pen and the Inkstand, The real princess, aka The Princess and the Pea, but not in a favorable way. Note that chidren's author Sally Huss has a good take on that in her Princess Charlotte and the Pea which I reviewed favorably in September, 2015.

For me the most amusing one was The Portuguese Duck and that was partly because of the story itself, and partly because of the hilarious take on it by the narrator, Eve Watkinson, who read many of these tales (along with another narrator, Christopher Casson). I don't know what accent she was doing, because she used the same one, pretty much, in the very next story set in Scandinavia, but in The Portuguese Duck she had me laughing out loud.

Anyway, here's the list:

• The Flax
• The Daisy
• The Pea Blossom
• The Storks
• The Wild Swans
• The Last Dream of the Old Oak
• The Portuguese Duck
• The Snow Man
• The Farmyard Cock and the Weathercock
• The Red Shoes
• The Little Mermaid
• Buckwheat
• What Happened to the Thistle
• The Pen and the Inkstand
• The Teapot
• Soup From A Sausage Skewer
• What the Goodman Does Is Always Right
• The Old Street Lamp
• The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep
• The Drop of Water
• The Swineherd
• The Metal Pig
• The Flying Trunk
• The Butterfly
• The Goblin and the Huckster
• Everything in its Right Place
• The Real Princess
• The Emperor's New Clothes
• Great Claus and Little Claus

I commend this as a worthy listen.

Hook by Melissa Snark

Rating: WARTY!

This was yet another attempt to wring some value from the antique and ridiculous Peter Pan story. About the only one I've read so far that was worth reading was Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson which I reviewed several years ago. Note that in an experiment, I review the audiobook for this same volume in October 2020.

This one is in first person which is an irritating voice to read and it makes little sense in a novel like this one. And who is she telling this tedious story to anyway? It takes forever to get going and in the end, never really does. The captain is informed that Peter Pan's ship Ariel is spied on the horizon - a ship that's faster than the Revenge, and so they have to sneak up on it over several chapters to liberate the children Pan is abducting with the aid of Tinker Bell. I smelled a trap, but apparently it was just the writing that had gone off.

The plot sounded interesting on the surface, but it never seemed to have any depth in the bits that I read. The captain seems to debate her plans and commands with the crew in town hall meetings rather than actually captain the ship so I couldn't take her seriously from the outset. And she rambles interminably. I managed about fifty pages before I tired of this, and then I skimmed to about a third of the way through and found no reason to read any more of it, so I ditched it, neither knowing nor caring what would happen next. I cannot commend this at all.

The Girl Who Fell Below Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M Valente

Rating: WARTY!

This sequel really wasn't needed, but you know there's pressure from Big Publishing™ to milk a successful title for all it's perceived worth. This is why ten years after The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins is coming back to milk it some more with a story that's pretty much the same thing over again. Doubtlessly it will be made into a movie. That's not my world at all. I only started in on this one because I already had it in my possession. If I hadn't already bought it when I bought the first one, impressed by that one's title, I would never have read this.

This story was even less engaging than the first, which is entirely unsurprising. It felt like a series of sketches rather than a story - a litany of set pieces which really had no real connection with one another. The basic plot is that September misses fairyland, and jumps at a chance to return, but she finds it a different place to the one she left: her own shadow is now queen of the underworld. She goes by the name of Halloween (now there's an original) and is stealing everyone's shadow.

Why this is even a problem, I have no idea, but of course just like in Peter Pan (yawn), shadows have personalities here. Why September's own shadow is evil, again I have no idea. It makes no sense. Maybe it's explained in the story, maybe not, but I'd be willing to bet that any explanation offered is as limp as a shadow. Fortunately she hasn't yet stolen the shadow of the dragon which September befriended in the first story, so at least she has a friend.

That reminds me of a funny picture taken by comedian Rick Gervais of his wife and tweeted to his followers, and that one image had more soul than this story. I can't commend this any more than I could the first one, and I am done with this author.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M Valente

Rating: WARTY!

I am not a fan of series, but I loved the title of this middle-grade book, so hoping against hope, I bought both it and the sequel since they were on sale at a bookstore. I gave both of the titles a shot, but neither impressed me.

I think I made it about a third of the way through this one, but the story was so rambling and dissipated that it felt like it wasn't so much a story as it was a boring sort of a diary. Apparently the author crowdsourced funding to work on this. I should be so lucky! Then she put it online for free and it was discovered by a publisher, so a success story in that regard, but the story itself left a lot to be desired for me.

Taking a leaf out of wizard of Oz, the author starts her story out on the plains, in Nebraska, though, rather than Kansas, and has her young girl whisked away by a powerful wind, to a fairy-tale land. The child is a 12-year-old named September, who is apparently the only one who can fix a problem. Why this is, I don't recall, assuming it was ever revealed. She needs to recover a talisman, and of course she does and all is put to rights - until of course things necessarily break down in order for a sequel to be written.

The story didn't entertain me despite my gamely plowing into it quite a ways - about a third or so, as I recall. Despite the author's attempts to add whimsy and novelty, it was still your typical story, requiring a cis girl to meet a boy (named Saturday - seriously?) and solve the problem. I couldn't get into it and I cannot commend it based on what I read of it.

The Storybook of Legends by Shannon Hale

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
On one page I read, "She treaded water" - the past tense of 'to tread' is 'trod' (and also 'trodden'). It's not 'treaded' - not unless she put a tire tread on the water, which I guess is entirely possible if you can do magic....
Later I read, "But it's not like I can just look up in a phone book..." In context, this should have read, 'look her up in a phone book', or depending on what precisely the author meant, 'look in a phone book'. Either way something was wrong here!
Past tenses seemed to be a problem for Shannon Hale because later I also read, "Apple reached out and pet the dragon's tail...." This should have read 'petted'. While language is dynamic and changes over time, perhaps now faster than ever in history, some authors don't seem to get that there's actually a difference between reported speech and narration. Reported speech can be completely informal. Narration and description need to give at least a nod to grammar and correct tense!

Quite frankly, this book was an embarrassment to me and has been kept hidden away on my shelf like some sort of family black sheep. Finally I decided to take it out and read it and damn the torpedoes, and it has turned out to be highly entertaining, inventive, amusing, and fully-engaging. It's one of the best books I've ever read. Note that it's the Storybook of Legends, not leg ends, which would be quite effete....

I should not have been surprised, I guess, because I've had a positive history with its author Shannon Hale. This is, I think, the fourth or fifth thing of hers I've read and liked, but strictly speaking, it's not wholly original with her. The story has its roots in Mattel's monster dolls line. From that they created a fairy-tale doll line, and from that came a web series, a movie, and these books. Shannon Hale was, I guess, commissioned to write this one, and she did an amazing job with it. This was definitely my kind of novel even though it's not my kind of age range!

I can't promise to follow the whole series (I'm not a series sort of a guy), and especially since other volumes are written by other authors, but it was a highly enjoyable read, surprisingly. I came to admire the author both for her inventiveness and her winning sense of humor.

It's a sort of middle-grade fairy-tale fantasy in a series, no less! The series is called 'Ever After High', and it's about these children of famous fairy-tale characters returning to school after the holidays. Raven Queen is the daughter of the Evil Queen from "Snow White". Apple White is the daughter of Snow White. Cedar Wood is the daughter of Pinocchio, and Madeleine Hatter is the daughter of the Mad Hatter. Cerise Hood is the troubled daughter of red Riding Hood.

I think Maddie is my favorite character because she is so unapologetically nuts, and at several points actually has exchanges with the narrator of the novel, which I loved. Raven runs a close second as my favorite, and is an outstandingly intelligent and strong young woman. She's balking at being an evil queen like her mother was. She's supposed to feed the poisoned apple to Apple, but she doesn't want to be evil, and this makes people nervous because they think if she doesn't fulfill her role, then others' stories might fail and the whole of fairyland might collapse, so the plot is engaging, too.

The book ain't cheap! It was priced at fifteen dollars, but I recall picking it up at bargain discount at Costco several years ago. It intrigued me, but it seemed so juvenile that I hid it away until now. It's a hardcover which was printed in all these pastel shades, with the edges of the paper colored, and the pages having a colored border. After several years of looking at it and turning away, I decided to take the plunge and it proved so entertaining that I wished I had not let it sit for so long! It was a breath of fresh air and I enjoyed it for its irreverence and endless diversion - never boring, always...entrancing! I commend it fully.

French Fairy Tales by Jennifer Afron

Rating: WARTY!

This book for young children was a bit bland and boring. Perhaps young children might find it interesting, but I prefer my fairytales with a bit more oomph than these four or so very short, but illustrated stories pretend to. Although very colorfully and entertainingly depicted, these stories didn't really seem to have much of an ending, to say nothing of teaching a moral. Aargh! I said to say nothing of it and then I went right ahead and said it! Oh well....

The Lilac Princess by Wanda Luthman

Rating: WARTY!

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

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

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

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

Scarlet Hood by Mark Evans, Isobel Lundie

Rating: WARTY!

No success with this graphic novel either. I don't have anything to say about Isobel Lundie's artwork except that it was gray-scale and scrappy. And the writing was simple, pedantic, and uninventive.

When I picked this up and glanced through it briefly, I thought maybe it was a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, but it was not. It looked superficially interesting, but it was not. Greta the Cruel sounded like a fun villain, but she was not. It was just a story of school bullying and a magical remedy and it was very, very short.

Scarlet treks through the forest to grandma's house, doesn't get eaten by a wolf; grandma isn't impersonated by a wolf, and all grandma does is give to Scarlett a red hoodie which she claims will help her granddaughter. She says nothing about it delivering the poor girl to a dragon! Thanks grandma.

But Scarlet ends up befriending the dragon as she ends up befriending the school bully, who never pays for her previous acts, and no-one in the entire school seems to have any issue with the bullying. The best thing I can say about this, is that it's short. I can't commend it in any way.

The Big Book of Twisted Fairy Tales by Sue Nicholson

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Personally I think 'twisted' is a misnomer for a quartet of stories about honesty, kindness, responsibility, and teamwork, but it wasn't my choice! Rest assured that the stories are only twisted in the sense that they're changed and updated in relation to the originals.

Cinderella, whose original story revolved around a shoe fetish, loves dancing of course, but what's she to do when everyone except for her seems to be getting new shoes for the newly-opening dance school? Cindy puts her best foot forward however. This story is aimed at teaching about generosity and kindness. Unlike Cinderella, Beauty has her wish granted, and is given a pony which she names Flick, but (and here actually is a twist!), the beast isn't the animal, it's Beauty! She neglects her charge and the horse charges away! Will her parents have to pony-up for a new ride, or will beauty become more stable? This story aims to teach responsibility.

One of the fun things about these stories is how the characters each appear in the stories of the others. They not only exist in the same world, they live in the same town! One of those other characters is Jack who, like two beans in a pod, is just as irresponsible as Beauty, and who ends up destroying the family's crop. This story is about honesty, though. Will Jack fess up and will mommie bean him for his behavior? Last, but not least, is Snow White, who unaccountably isn't white in this story, so "yeay!" for diversity, but "huh?" for logic. Snow's problem doesn't exactly dwarf the others, but it is serious. She's one of the best soccer players, yet she's paradoxically not a team player! Will she also learn her lesson or will there be a penalty for her behavior?!

I liked these stories and commend them as a worthy read for young children, offering useful lessons.

Unenchanted by Chanda Hahn

Rating: WARTY!

Rooted in the Grimm fairy tales, this story borrows a bit from the TV series named Grimm where this cop turns out to be a Grimm - that is not someone who is named Grimm, but someone who is hereditarily required to fight supernatural evil as it arises. Mina Grime is in a similar position. She's the rather nerdy unpopular girl at school, but of course in the way of YA trashy novels, she's gorgeous, yet only attracts the attention of the studLy trope school jock after she saves his life.

Mina has supposedly inherited the unfinished Grimm fairy tales whatever those are. This is so obviously the start of a series, which pretty much lets me out on the ground floor, not being much of a fan of series, in particular not of YA series which are far too often derivative and tedious. Predictably I grew tired of this very quickly, especially when I came across some clunkers in the writing, such as "just not one hypnotized Brody. His movements became slower, and he was transfixed by Claire's every movement" I think the 'one' should be 'on'. That was a relatively minor infraction.

Worse by far was "Mina watched as Claire's hand stroked Brody's bicep" - it's fricking biceps moron! I'm now dedicated to ditching dumb-ass books like this at the first mention of the singular bicep. That's probably what happened here although I really don't recall why exactly I quit this. It was probably because it was too dumb for words and the female supposed hero is really nothing without a guy to validate her as per usual in this kind of tripe.

So no - not a worthy read - a very warty one in fact.

Once Upon a Kiss by Various Authors

Rating: WARTY!

This was billed as seventeen romantic 'Faerie' tales. I detest those words: 'Fae' and 'Faerie', and I ought to take my own advice and refuse to read any more books that use it, since this one was rather less than satisfactory. Even 'Fairy Tales' doesn't technically cover these stories although some of them are.

My first problem with it was the content list. It was colored magenta. On a white background, this isn't a problem, but on a black background which I typically use to save power in my phone, which is where I read ebooks more often than not, it rendered the content list illegible. You could click from the list to go to the story but you could not click back to the content from a story, and if you're not careful, merely swiping to go to the second page of content would take you to a story instead of taking you to the next page, necessitating your having to pull up the slide bar at the bottom of the screen and slide all the way back if you accidentally hit the wrong story (something which is very easily done on a small screen where the list is very compact). So, too dark of a color and far too close together to tap accurately with a finger.

Clearly publishers still have a lot to learn about formatting ebooks. Some of these stories had a prologue, an epilogue, and chapter markers and all of these sub-headings were listed on the content page meaning it ran over three screens! This kind of crap is why I never put a content page in my own novels, but then those typically do not contain a variety of stories from an assortment of authors so I could see the point of one in this case. I just wish it had been better thought through; just a list of the author's names would have been quite sufficient and occupied much less space, meaning each name could have been bigger so it was easier to tap the name and go to the story on a small screen.

Anyway, here's the list below with my comments on each story:

• The Glass Mountain by Alethea Kontis
I didn't like this. It seemed pointless and went on far too long. It was a story of a woman being trapped in a glass mountain and working with a guy who was also trapped there to get out. It was supposed to be a love story but the guy was highly antagonistic and verbally abusive from the start, and the author failed to convince me that this relationship could possibly turn around, so a big no on this story. I have no better idea what it was based on than I do how a female author can write a story like this. Does she think she's Becca Fitzpatrick or something?! (No, that's not a compliment).
• The Bakers Grimm by Hailey Edwards
This was a story about two competing bakeries and the children of the bakers getting together, and it failed to move me at all. I barely even remember it.
• Galatea and Pygmalion by Kate Danley
This was about a sculptor named Galatea, who sculpted a guy named Pygmalion - in short, just the opposite of the myth. That really was the only twist and the story wasn't that good.
• Red by Sarra Cannon
This was about a witch, part of a coven, looking for a cure for her sister and meeting a guy held prisoner in a cottage in the woods, who in turn helps her. The coven isn't everything she thought it was. Again, it failed to move me. At one point I read, "The Order had expressly forbid me to go looking for any kind of cure for my sister." The author evidently doesn't understand the distinction between forbid and forbade.
• Princess Charming by Yasmine Galenorn
An epistolary story with the twist being that the 'Charming' is female. I have no time for tedious epistolary novels, and in my amateur opinion, I already wrote the definitive Princess Charming when I wrote Femarine, so this one fell on deaf ears. I read, "I think they were getting used to being in human form. I have no clue what, now that their gig is over." I have no idea whatsoever what that piece meant!
• Mad About You by Jennifer Blackstream
Based on Alice in Wonderland, this one was about Alice trying to repel the Mad Hatter (who was paying suit to her) by getting a charm from a witch, but then changing her mind (If I recall - which I may not). I wasn't interested in the story.
• The Sea King's Daughter by Anthea Sharp
Based on The Little Mermaid. I have a severe allergy to stories which are titled in this format - making the main female character an appendage of a guy instead of her own person: The So-And-So's Daughter, The So-and-So's Wife. You shouldn't have to tell female writers that words carry heft and weight, and remind them that diminishing women like this only prolongs a detestable historical precedent. I read "They would not provide cover any long, which meant she must seize her opportunity now." It should have read 'Any longer'. It's sad when you can't even grammer- and spell-check a short story properly, but I guess most of us have been there!
• Romeo and Juliet: The Afterlife by Julia Crane
This story carried Shakespeare's original over into the afterlife to see what happened there which is similar to an idea I had myself, but did nothing with. I wasn't impressed by this effort to explore that, os I guess the opportunity is still there if I wanted to pursue it!
• Soot and Stone: A Fae Tale of the Otherworld by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson
Any novel that uses 'fae' and 'faerie' instead of fairy is chickenshit as far as I'm concerned, and I have no time for that kind of cowardice and posy-footing around That's all I have to say about his one.
• The Huntsman's Snow by Mandy M Roth
This was a shifter story and I typically have no time for those, so no.
• RumpelIMPskin by Debra Dunbar
Based on Rumpelstiltskin of course, this was mildly entertaining, but nothing special. I read, "His smug looked changed to one of utter shock when he saw us" and it should have read, 'smug look'.
• The Glass Sky by Alexia Purdy
This was a short story and still it had a prologue and chapters - all of which were listed in the content page! Yuk! As soon as I saw it was first person and the main character's name was Star Rickton, I skipped it. No. Just no.
• Rush by C Gockel
This is a story about someone named Rush who, due to a transgression, is required to find true love in two weeks which is nonsensical, so no. I read, "...several octaves too loud" which is plain dumb. An octave isn't a measure of sonic volume!
• Perchance To Dream by Phaedra Weldon
This was about your usual female underdog in a magical world and it failed to leave an impression. I read, "The two waved as they approached and an matrons woman yelled at them from Rose's left." An matrons woman? Any grammar checker will find that, so this was a truly sloppy error in an unmemorable story. I can't even guess what she was trying to say with that nonsensical phrase.
• The Toad Prince by Nikki Jefford
So, I am tiring of going through each of these, especially when I really don't recall them. I think at some point I not only stopped reading each story before it was over, but I stopped even reading the next story because I honestly don't remember a thing about some of these. In this I read, "Isabel's best features were hidden beneath her bulky wool gown." So here we have a female writer, writing about a female character, and clearly stating that all she's worth is her body. Forget about her mind - forget about any qualities such as smarts, loyalty, integrity, grit, honesty, capability, or whatever. Her body is the only thing of utility. I'm sorry but writers who write like this are assholes, period. There's a difference between a character thinking something like that, and the author stating it in the narrative, and this one is a jerk for for doing so.
• Crafted With a Kiss by Shawntelle Madison
This one wasn't bad, and I do remember it, Pynnelope is a wooden warrior who seems invincible until in her last battle she's taken down by a guy who is more powerful. She's taken prisoner, but there is more to the story. I quite liked it. There was one mistake in it. At one point I read, "Either way, I had until dawn to force Pynnelope to do the unthinkable" and this came just two paragraphs before we're told he has only until midnight. Someone's not reading for continuity!
• A Small magic by Devon Monk
I've read at least one novel by Devon Monk and liked it, so I guess it wasn't surprising that I liked this one, based on Hans Andersen's The Princess and the Pea. It was an amusing and quirky story, but it's sad that there was only one really likable one in this whole collection.

So very little to engage me here, and overall I cannot recommend this as a worthy read, but at least it informed me of over a dozen authors I don't need to bother reading ever again from this point onward!

The Replacement by Brenna Yanoff

Rating: WARTY!

This was my first and last Brenna Yanoff. The story started out sounding like it was heading somewhere, but it never did! At least it had not by halfway through which is where I abandoned it out of boredom. Main character Mackie Doyle is some sort of elf or fairy who was left in the crib of the real Mackie years before. Mackie knows he isn't human. He suffers daily and reacts badly to iron, so the entire first half of the novel is him whining about how bad his life is.

I kept thinking that something was going to happen - something had to happen - to change or bring change, but it never did. The closest it came is when someone in the know told him that he was dying, but even that didn't seem to be the kick in the pants this story needed badly, and that was where I quit it. At that point I would have been happy had he died, since I have better things to do with my time than listen to a main character whine almost non-stop about his life. Maybe if he had died, a more interesting person would have stepped up and told their story, but I didn't care by then. This book sucked. Period.

Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner

Rating: WARTY!

I didn't like this at all. I got interested in it because it sounds like the kind of thing I might write, but the story changes were such obvious ones that it didn't feel inventive or ambitious at all, and so after reading a couple of pages of the first one, I started skimming others and after two or three of those, and seeing that they were much the same, I was done with this book. Maybe it will amuse you more than it did me. The three little pigs was mildly amusing, but I couldn't rouse much interest in it, and none at all in any of the other stories. I can't commend it based on what I saw of it.

The stories the author covers are as follows FYI. The book is only a very short book so each story is really short:

• Little Red Riding Hood
• The Emperor's New Clothes
• The Three Little Pigs
• Rumpelstiltskin
• The Three Codependent Goats Gruff
• Rapunzel
• Cinderella
• Goldilocks
• Snow White
• Chicken Little
• The Frog Prince
• Jack and the Beanstalk
• The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Songs of Our Ancestors Vol 2 by Patrick Atangan

Rating: WARTY!

Subtitled "The Silk Tapestry and Other Chinese Folktales", this is the volume two I wondered about when I positively reviewed volume one back in October of 2018. This one was less than enthralling for me, so while it did hold the charm of the original to a certain extent, the stories seemed a lot less engaging, and I left the book feeling dissatisfied with it, so I cannot commend it.

The first story was of an old woman and her longsuffering daughter. The woman meets a water spirit one day at the river and is inspired to create a tapestry, based on vivid dreams that she has, of living a life as courtesan, but the story rambles on a bit too much, and then seems to completely fizzle out at the end so I wasn't at all sure what exactly happened. I didn't like it.

The next story went to the opposite end of the scale, featuring young, not old, and male, not female, and was about a boy who could paint pictures that took on a life of their own, rather reminiscent of Harold and the Purple Crayon. This story was entertaining, and the artwork was good, but it never really seemed like it wanted to go anywhere. The third one is a creation story bearing a lot of resemblance to the Biblical story (or vice-versa), and featuring a lonely god who separates waters from waters and creates things. It was boring.

So overall, I was not impressed and unlike after reading the first volume, I do not feel inclined to pursue this series any further.

The Yellow Jar by Patrick Atangan

Rating: WORTHY!

This is supposedly volume one of a series of graphic novels exploring Asian folk tales, although to my knowledge there have been no others so far. This first one was compact, with dimensions barely larger than a novel, but in hard cover and in landscape format rather than portrait. It told two tales, the titular one and another, shorter one, Two Chrysanthemum Maidens, which was my favorite of the two.

Drawn in ukiyo-e style, and beautifully rendered and colored, both stories were eminently enjoyable. The Yellow Jar tells of a fisherman who nets a...you guessed it, a large, stoneware yellow jar. Actually it’s more like a pithos, which is what the Greeks would have called it. I have no idea what the Japanese would have called this, but it was big enough to hold a person, because when he opened it, it contained a woman who was conveniently looking for a husband. These days they do it over the internet, but back then? Fishing net! LOL!

The couple get along well and everything is peachy until it’s not. Of course something goes wrong. He has lied to her about where she came from - claiming the jar was lost and she was afloat in the ocean when he found her, but she discovers the jar buried in the garden and because he lied, she leaves. The man chases after her but leaves it too late and he spends three years looking for her only to find she's now being held captive by this demon in a castle in the mountains. Fortunately the demon is a gentleman who insists on her acquiescing to his desires rather than ravishing her by force. And of course the fisherman rescues her.

In the second story, this man's beautiful garden is invaded by what appear to be two weeds - which are depicted delightfully as tiny women. In the end they prove to be pretty flowers, and attract wide attention, but when he splits them, moving the less appreciated one to a hidden location, it wilts terribly, but all's well that end's well as Master Shakespeare would have it.

I thought this volume was a delight and I commend it.

The Last Jungle Book by Stephen Desberg, Henri Reculé

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

In Rudyard Kipling's original Jungle Book stories, Mowgli is first introduced as a wild man living in the forest who is recruited into the forest ranger service because of his extraordinary jungle craft. He marries, has a child, and returns to the forest. In later stories, his childhood is related, but it really isn't quite like the sanitized Disney version (is anything?!).

I was very disappointed in this version, which let's face it is more of an introduction than a story. The blurb was completely misleading in that it suggests that Mowgli (rhymes with cow-glee) has returned to the scene of his childhood to write the last chapter in it - which I presumed would the the dispatch of his hated enemy Shere Khan (which means 'Tiger Chief', not 'lame'! 'Lungri' means lame - it was a nickname for Khan, who was lame). The problem is that none of this happens, nor will it since Mowgli is a silver-haired old man now in this story.

All we get is a pictorial re-telling of the popular version of Jungle Book with nothing new added. It makes Mowgli's vow at the end - to drape Shere Khan's pelt over the council rock of the wolves, all the more hollow, since no such thing ever happened in this story. It did happen in the original jungle books stories - not the draping but the capture of the pelt, so maybe there are more volumes to come, but even if there are, I was so disillusioned with this one that I have no interest in reading any more. This contributed nothing new, and while the artwork was acceptable and the writing not awful, neither of these offered anything truly new, original, or outstanding.

I can see why this was on Net Galley's 'Read Now' shelf. I cannot recommend it. I'd recommend going to Kipling's original material and reading that - and I believe it's all out of copyright now if you're looking for story ideas!