Evil Fairies Love Hair by Mary G Thompson

Rating: WORTHY!

The title of this novel made me laugh, so I decided I would like to give it a try, and fortunately, the local library came through for me yet again. I for one welcome our librarian overlords!

I was not disappointed when I started reading this either. The story is so quirky and takes itself so seriously in a comic way that I couldn't help but fall in love with it, but could it maintain my interest? Well I had to wait and see, but with every page I read, I became more confident it would not let me down, and in the end, I loved it.

This is the kind of novel that made me wish I'd thought of it first. It highly amused me, and made me want to keep on reading. The characters are well drawn (as were Blake Henry's illustrations) and the main character, Alison Elizabeth Brown Butler, was adorable, determined, strong, focused, and smart - in short, one of the kick-ass female characters I love to read about.

I loved that Alison was so determined, resolute, and would not give up even as the ground shifted under her. I also loved how thoroughly naughty the imps were! The obsession with hair, the evil imp leader's plan, the ambition of the children in pursuing and maintaining their wishes, the changing allegiances and the indeterminate ending were all brilliant and I loved every little switch and change as the story unfolded. I recommend this one completely.

Elwen The Dwarf is Stolen by Rhonda Tyler

Rating: WORTHY!

I loved this book, and especially the title of it, because it makes it look like we know from the outset who stole the dwarf: Elwen The Dwarf is Stolen by Rhonda Tyler. See, Rhonda Tyler stole Elwen! It's right there!

Seriously I really liked this book. The colored drawings are as idiosyncratic as they are endearing, the text is large, so it's legible even (or is that Elwen?) as an ebook on a smart phone, and the story is a charmer. Elwen is accidentally brought home by a woodcutter, who decides that he can make enough money to dwarf his current financial status by selling the little guyn for a princely price to the king, which he does, but it all works out in the end and the prince married an unexpectedly rich woodcutter's daughter! Wait, what?

A great story - original in my experience, and lots of fun, especially the images. I consider this a worthy read.

Poet Anderson by Tom Delonge and Ben Kull

Rating: WORTHY!

This story has evidently had its critics, but I really liked it, although it's a bit young for me personally. I liked that the dream world was a real world which these two boys, Jonas and Alan Anderson, could explore, but that it had some rules - like they couldn't fly, for example (even though there are dreams about flying, I loved the way it was summarily dismissed!).

The world started out entrancing and beguiling, but in short order, there came the bad things, and things which were even worse than the bad things. This I enjoyed. The Night Terrors, however, have a counter-balancing force known as the Dream Walkers, and maybe at least one of these boys is a candidate for joining them. But the question is, who is behind the Night Terrors, and will he ever be able to find his way into the real world, and conduct the same sort of terror campaign there, that he seems to manage in the dream world?

I liked this for the characters, the fast-moving story, the inventiveness, which never went overboard, and the general set-up for a series. The art work by Djet was cool. Like I said, it's a bit young for me, but I can see a great potential here and I recommend it as a winner for the intended audience.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Rating: WARTY!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet

Rating: WORTHY!

This novel was beautifully written and had an historical feel to it even though it was set in modern times. It was also set in France commendably, thereby proving that the USA isn't the only nation where interesting stories can happen. The main character, however, was American.

Twelve-year-old Maya and her family - kid brother James, her mom, and her all-but-absent father - have moved to France for a year. Maya's father has been offered a job at the chemical philosophy society, Why, we never actually learn, we can merely guess. Maya and James attend school, and meet their oddball cousin Louise, who is all but invisible to everyone, and even when Maya looks at her she's inexplicably hard to see. But she's a great French teacher.

Close by where Maya is living, there is an odd building with a sculpture of a young woman's head above the door - a sculpture which looks disturbingly like Maya. And did that weird brass salamander door-handle actually turn and look at her? And smile? What's the deal with the old man she meets and his 'cabinet of earths'? What earths are they and where do they come from? Is there any connection between those and the children who seem to disappear too often - and then return somehow changed? And what's going on with her oddly good-looking and beautifully purple-eyed uncle?

The answers to these questions are original (at least in my experience!) and engrossing - and even disturbing. Will Maya be able to protect those she loves or if she does, does it mean she must sacrifice herself to do so? This is the start of a series, so you know she's going to come through okay - that negates the drama somewhat. And there's a guy - Valko - who befriends her, but there is no romance here, just friendship, and Maya certainly doesn't become a wilting violet in his presence or become dependent upon him to rescue her. She's a commendable young woman: responsible, thoughtful, strong - a female main character of a kind which is all-too-rare in stories written by female authors. Maya puts to shame a score of young adult female characters, and Anne Nesbet is to be congratulated on writing such a character and putting her into a story which wholly immersed even a jaded adult reader, I recommend this story highly.

Monstrovia by Mark H Newhouse

Rating: WORTHY!

"I’m so cared! Really scared!” I don't think the author meant the first one to be 'cared', but you never know!

Everyone knows the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Do beans talk? Well if you eat enough they will find a way of expressing themselves. But do you know the real story? What if Jack wasn't a hero. What if he was a murderer, hacking down the beanstalk knowing that the innocent giant would plummet to his certain death? That's the premise presented to the courtroom here, and Brodie's uncle is the only person standing in the way of Jackson Bordenschlocker and doom!

I read the advance review ebook version of this story. I understand the print version will have illustrations by Dan Traynor, but there were none in the e-version. This marks the third of an odd trilogy I am going through right now, featuring Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, Camp Midnight, an advance review graphic novel by Steven Seagle, and this one. While Bradbury's novel turned out to be merely wicked gnarly, the two ARCs are curiously parallel in some ways in that they both feature a child packed-off for the summer by their primary parent, and the child finds him/herself stick amongst monsters. I'm not a fan of first person PoV novels, and I had some difficulty getting comfortable with this story to begin with, but it grew on me as I read and in the end it was a truly worthy read.

Brodie Adkins's mom is going to China, and for reasons unknown she doesn’t want him along, so he's sent to stay with his crazy uncle, who’s a lawyer. What Brodie doesn't know is that his uncle works in Monstrovia - a parallel monster and fairytale world and there, he's considered a hero, and known as Doofinch the Defender, who stands up for downtrodden monsters. All Brodie wants to do is go back home, but he finds himself drawn into this world against his wishes and better instincts when Emily Beanstalk, aka Bordenschlocker shows up worried about her brother Jack, who's accused of murdering this giant, Eugene Bulk.

After having climbed the beanstalk with Emily to find Jack and bring him down to earth - so to speak - the latter two disappear, and when they're found, Jack's mom and key witness Annabelle Goose go missing! Jasper Doofinch feels they’ve been had - that Emily used them for the sake of rescuing her brother, but Emily turns out to have more going for her than you might think at first. She's strong and feisty, self-determined and self-possessed. She didn't seem like the kind of person who would require a boy to help her with anything.

Emily is evidently smarter than Brodie, too. At least she knows that while spiders may be poisonous, the correct word to refer to their ability to inflict painful and potentially dangerous bites, is 'venomous':

“Are the spiders poisonous?” I am reaching into the back of my shirt for a good scratch. I’m all itchy.
Emily looks serious. “Oh, Monstrovian spiders are very venomous. One bite and they turn you into a scratching post!”

Quite clearly Emily knows that poisonous refers to what might happen if you ingest an animal that's not good for you. Venomous refers to that thing's ability to inflict damage if it bites or stings you. Mushrooms can be poisonous for example, but they're never venomous. Snakes are venomous, but not poisonous judged by how many get eaten, even by humans....

The beanstalk is also an interesting character. Despite being cut down, presumably by Jack, it can regrow - and does well on lawyer jokes. It evidently has feelings. I started wondering if it would end up as a character witness for Jack! Jasper is more interested in taking a gander at the goose, but when she gets on the stand, she lays an egg - and not in a golden way. Can Jasper, his nephew Brodie, and Brodie's new friend Emile save Jack from the juggernaut jaws of giant justice?

This novel was hilarious, and an easy, fast read. I highly recommend it.

The Big Witch's Big Night by Sally Huss

Rating: WORTHY!

I have a mixed relationship with Sally Huss books. I dislike about as many as I like, so at least I know that if I hated the last one, there's a really good chance that I'll love the next. That's what happened here. This one was thoughtful and funny and educational. The premise is Halloween (yes, I know this is one of several I'll be reviewing late! Sorry! At least I'm getting them out of the way before Xmas reviews, which I'll no doubt post in January!)

The poetic meter is that of Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas, but here it's all about Halloween so instead of "'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse" we get "'Twas the night of Halloween and all through the house every creature was stirring, even the grouse."

The witch is greeting trick or treat-ers by offering them dead fish or worms, and she seems to be having little luck until one particular kid finds a way through her thorny exterior - and that;s the end, but not the end of being kind! It's a fun story; it's well told, and I recommend it.

Camp Midnight by Steven T Seagle

Rating: WORTHY!

Having enjoyed Seagle's American Virgin series which I reviewed in August 2015, I was interested to see what he'd do with a children's story, and I wasn't disappointed.

Illustrated very nicely and appropriately by Jason Katzenstein, in really eye-catching bright and shifting colors, this children's novel tells a really good story about a feisty girl, Skye, who accidentally gets sent to a summer camp for monsters instead of one for children. I fell in love with Skye from the off. She's self-possessed, willful, motivated, thoughtful, and doesn't take crap from anyone. Why is it that so few female YA authors are able to create main characters like this?!

Maybe I had Halloween on the brain, but I swear I didn't plan on having three scare stories in my lap at the same time: not only an audiobook version of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes about two kids, but also two advance review copies of stories where a kid is bundled off for the summer away from a primary parent who is going to be wa-ay out of town, and the kid ends up surrounded by monsters! It will make for an interesting comparison of the latter two, though one is a graphic novel. and the other a chapter book.

In this graphic novel, Skye's mom is off to Rwanda for the summer, and isn't about to take Skye along (I'm guessing she doesn't want Skye coming down with Ebola or being recruited into a children's army, but heaven help any Ebola virus or psycho military commander who tries to mess with Skye!). The young daughter is sent to stay with her dad and step mom - a non-mom she despises. Evidently the feeling is mutual, since stepmom has convinced real dad to bundle Skye off to summer camp. Naturally Skye not only feels like crap about this, but is acting out over it, and doing a professional job.

Intentionally or not, Skye ends up on the bus to Camp Midnight, and if the bus trip isn't creepy enough, the camp itself is creepier. The only friend Skye makes is Mia, a spirited but wilting violet of a girl she meets on the back seat of the bus. Their relationship is amusingly thorny to begin with, but broadens and deepens as the story progresses. Skye is surprised to discover that life in the camp seems to start at midnight instead of daybreak, and she eventually discovers that all the other kids (even the hottie boy she encounters) are monsters of one hue or another, and the camp counsellor is a witch.

Skye is in a bit of a panic as to what to declare herself as, when her friend Mia declares she will reveal what she is at a time and place of her choosing, and not before. Skye likes this idea, and adopts this same posture herself. Contrary to expectations that this might make her into the very a pariah she's starting o feel she already is, it lends her a mystique, and people grow interested in her, including the hottie boy, who has a hair-raising story of his own.

But what exactly, is Mia, and why do some of the other campers seem to despise her? And what will Skye do when Mia comes out and everyone finds out? The joy of this story was in finding out exactly how Skye navigates her way through this morass of monstrous, this quagmire of queer (in the olde fashion'd sense). needless to say - but I;;l say it - she does a fine job and ends up deciding she wants to return to this camp next year - and the start of a series, presumably. But not everything pans out the way you might think it might. I recommend this as a truly worthy read.

Lydia's Enchanted Toffee by Neale Osborne

Rating: WORTHY!

This is an abridged version of the 2009 novel Lydia's Tin Lid Drum, which I have not read. This portion of it, at least, grabbed my attention and imagination. I have confess a certain level of doubt over the merits of a story which is based entirely around children eating candy, but that said, this novel is very playful and a lot of fun. You can tell that the author had a lot of fun writing it, which is a good sign, although I wonder if even this abridged version might be too long for some people. For me it has a decent plot and reasonable pace, although I confess even I wanted to get finished, but that was because I have other things I need to read, not because this wasn't entertaining. Some people might grow tired of the endless word play, but for me, it's very much my style.

Note that this is a British novel which makes no concessions to the US (and "Well played, sir," says I!), so some of the writing may be rather obscure to non-Brits who are not anglophiles.

Lydia Rhodium lives on planet that looks (from the illustrations included) like a climate-changed version of Earth, where much of what we recognize as our planet has been submerged under water, leaving smaller, more isolated continents. She lives in Tinport, in the nation of Likrishka, although she's not actually from there. The entire story plays on the names of varieties of candy and sweets (some of them very British, such as Dolly Mixture), turning them into towns and nations and islands. I enjoyed the word-play but for others it might be overdone or obscure.

The maps distributed through the text will help depict the geography better than I can describe it. The world she inhabits is, on the surface, every child's delight and every dentist's nightmare: it's a candy world, where jellies and toffee (taffy) abound, literally growing on trees, or swimming in the sea. The problem here is that the nation in which she lives has been taken over by Stannic, and evil overlord who is obsessed with creating confectionary, and subjugating everyone by threat and with his metal robots which come in human, dog, bird, and other forms. All children are separated from their parents and raised by despotic 'Maters' - house-mothers cum-slave-drivers. The kids are required to study, and perhaps the best of them might get to work in Stannic's kitchens, as Lydia's much older step sister does. The rest get to work the mines and factories.

The advantage which Lydia has is that she can work magic when she eats a certain type of toffee. Her problem is that she's been denied this particular variety because it's imported and Likrisha no longer has access to it, but unexpectedly, Lydia's cold and uncommunicative sister visits her and leaves her some of this toffee as a gift. Now Lydia has power. She's already been shown to be a rebel, smuggling a cat into her lodging. Now she's on the run, and using her magical power to fend off the robots and stay out of Stannic's clutches. This came to pass along with another unexpected diversion in the story: Lydia meets up with a team of young girls with adorably oddball names and dress sense. This is where they really embark upon a fun and inventive adventure across the continent in search of the magical candies which will bring down Stannic's evil despotism.

The story did seem very long, but overall I enjoyed it and I recommend it was a worthy read.

Frozen by Jennifer Lee

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a very short (two disk CD) version of the Disney animated movie Frozen, and I recommend it. It's really well done. it's credited to "Disney Press" but I'm crediting Jennifer Lee since she wrote the screenplay and finally dug Disney out from under the sugary morass of movie-making in which they've been embroiled for a half century. I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of this movie, and I reviewed it favorably back in 2013.

The novelization is awesome, and carries the joy of the movie ( minus the songs) perfectly. I enjoyed listening to it and was sorry it was so short. I recommend this. The narrator has the rather contradictory name of Andi Arndt, but reads beautifully. You can't go wrong with this.

Corr Syl The Warrior by Garry Rogers

Rating: WARTY!

I wanted to read this advance review copy because I thought it would be a story very much in the mold of Watership Down which, though it had some issues, I enjoyed and reviewed favorably back in September 2014. This children's novel is nothing like Watership Down. The book is heavy going - there are endless chapters and a foreword, which I skipped. I don't do introductions and forewords - if it's worth saying, it's worth putting in chapter one or later. Once I got into the main story, it was less than thrilling. Maybe young children will like this, but it was hard to tell at which age group this was aimed, and from my own perspective it was not well done.

The ebook version of this novel struck me as in need to some work before it was ready for prime time. I suspect that it failed to weather the transition from original typescript to ebook version, because the formatting was way off. In literally the first four screens, on three occasions, I found text plunked down in the middle of other text where it clearly did not belong. This was the same on the iPad Kindle app as it was on my phone Kindle app, but it was not apparent in Bluefire Reader on the iPad.

On the very first screen, for example, there was a sentence which was evidently intended to read, "...began an imaginary combat exercise." There was also the italicized description of the beginning of the exercise, which started, "The Human assassin ran across the smooth stone with quick, light steps...". In the Kindle app version, these two were interleaved thus: "...and began an imaginary combat The Human assassin ran across the smooth stone with exercise. quick, light steps..." This same problem was extant on almost every screen where italics appeared with regular font text. On the very next screen, the sentence "...reached a conclusion For an instant..." was interspersed with the italicized "Rhya is intentionally avoiding me - does she actually like me?" to become, "...reached a conclusion For Rhya is intentionally avoiding me - does she actually like me?an instant..."

This same thing happened in the intro to part one (the novel is in five parts) giving us this: " dangerous inHistory of the Tsaebdividuals and species appear from time to time, and civilization needs its defenders. Morgan Silverleaf, Librarian of Wycliff". This screwing-up-o'-the-text seems to be quite a common problem with Kindle app versions for some reason. Rather than try to decipher it, I took to skipping those sections. There were other, unrelated issues, such as one part which read, "Addressed to , the letter was an invitation..." and which is obviously missing the addressee's name. This is not a fault with the Kindle app and is something a writer or an editor should have caught. There were also parts where lines of text ended early on one line and resumed on the next. Hopefully all of that will be fixed before this is ever released as a finished work.

The big question with writing a novel like this, where you're humanizing the animals, is how far should you go? If you fail to go far enough, you risk having the animals become unintelligible (in a broad sense), but if you go too far, they're too human and pointless. If all you're doing is putting humans in rabbit clothing, then why bother? You need to have some rabbit in there, otherwise all you have is humans dressed as rabbits, which is sad and boring, if not unintentionally hilarious. The same kind of problem exists when you create aliens for a sci-fi novel. In this case the author has the rabbits indistinguishable from humans except for their whiskers and fur, and this felt like huge fail to me.

Maybe children will go for this, but I doubt mine would. For me personally, it really began to bother me that the animals - not just rabbits, but all animals, were exactly like humans except for the fact that they had an animal shape and animal skin. They behaved, and thought, and spoke, and organized themselves exactly like humans, so I had to wonder what was the point of making them animals? What is it that's new here exactly, if all we essentially have here is weird or mutated-looking humans?

The rabbits evidently live in caves high on a cliff, which made no sense, since this has nothing to do with how rabbits live in real life, so why put them there? If you're going to put your characters there, then why make them rabbits as opposed to mountain goats or sheep, or something?! None of the animals wore clothes, but they seemed obsessed with wearing outrageous hats. I had no idea what was going on there.

These rabbits have some odd and unexplained skills - at least unexplained in the part I read. They have six streams of consciousness, yet nowhere is this apparent in their thinking, at least as far as being conveyed in the text. We're just told this fact and then it's apparently irrelevant after that. Worse than this is that despite being covered in fur, the rabbits blush! Have no idea where that thinking came from - what's the point of a blush response if you have fur? There seems to have been no thought whatsoever given to how these animals evolved in the way they supposedly did. And once again humans are the paragon to which they all have to aspire. Why? Why aim to take the road less traveled if all you're going to do on it is let yourself become mired in tired old ways and habits?

Their thought processes mirrored ours precisely, as I mentioned, even to the point of Corr seeing Rhya as "painfully beautiful" at one point early in the story. So not only do we get humanized animals, we also get them relegating women to pigeon-holes, one labeled 'beautiful' and the other labeled, presumably, 'beastly', because these are the only two categories females can be placed into even if they're rabbits, it would seem. How shallow is that?

I think it's wrong to focus on beauty and treat it like it's all that matters, and it's particularly wrong in a children's book where we need to avoid setting these absurd 'standards' most of all. Rhya was dancing at the time, so could we not have described her as skilled, or graceful, or daring, or something other than beautiful? Or at least qualified it by saying that she moved beautifully if that was what was meant? I think it's entirely the wrong message to send to children, and it was at this point that I decided I could better spend my time pursuing other stories. I can't recommend this one based on what I read.

Seaside by Wylde Scot

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"the site of his mate" should be " the sight of his mate"
"in the octopus' grasp" should be " in the octopus's grasp" (octopus is singular, but using apostrophe with no following 's' wrongly indicates that it's plural. What is the plural of octopus? It's octopuses. 'Octopi' is not even a word, so avoid that one!
"filled with people form Seaside." should be 'from Seaside"
“Anchor’s away,” should be "Anchors aweigh"

This children's story is set around the town of Seaside, where ten year old Bobby lives on land, and young Walter lives in the ocean. He's an octopus which, contrary to the ideas suggested here, cannot live out of water for any significant length of time, although it can survive and even move around hunting on land for short periods of time. It cannot support itself on its "legs" unless it's in water, however. On land, it slithers and slides rather like a mutated snake.

There are all kinds of octopus videos on You Tube showing escapes. They can move quite well on land for a short time, even though they look improbably flat as they do so do so. Octopuses are the most intelligent non-vertebrate species, and they show excellent problem-solving skills. Also, all octopuses are venomous, although only the blue-ringed octopus is dangerous - even deadly - to humans.

I was amused when I read, "...great white shark hanging upside down." which technically would mean that it was suspended with its dorsal fin underneath, pointed at the ground, and its white belly facing the sky. I think the author meant that it was hanging by its tale, but who knows?! Hanging upside down is funnier. Perhaps the intended children's audience will not notice this.

Despite some textual errors, the overall story was well-written and engrossing, and I don’t doubt that children of the appropriate age will love it. It shows how three very different people (there's also a feisty pelican) can learn to live and work together and overcome oppression and wrong-doing, as well as have some exciting adventures together. Both Walter and Bobby step up where adults fail, and they refuse to give up until they achieve justice. I think the "school bully" motif is rather overdone in children's stories, so I wasn't thrilled to see it represented here, although no school was involved, but that aside, I liked the story and I recommend it.

Princess Callie and the Totally Amazing Talking Tiara by Daisy Piper

Rating: WARTY!

Another book by someone named Piper, but at least she has the name in the right place! This is book one, by a debut author, in a series. I am not a fan of series unless they are exceptional, especially not 'personality cult' series where the main character's name is in every title, and this series isn't aimed at me, so I don't plan on pursuing this one, but it did sound interesting for its intended audience, so I thought I'd take a look at volume one, and see what it had to offer. I have to say I was rather disappointed in it. If you find you like it however, the series is, as of this writing: Princess Callie and the Total Amazing Talking Tiara, Princess Callie and the Fantastic Fire Breathing Dragon, and Princess Callie and the Race for the Ruby Cup.

Callie, whose full name is Calandria Arabella Philomena Teresita Anastasia Richards (CAPTAR) has just turned twelve, but is immature and/or selfish enough to be thoroughly pissed-off that her father has a new love wants to remarry, two years after his wife died. In addition to his, she also discovered that she is the princess of a magical land hidden down a tunnel in her back yard, and the land is in desperate trouble and she's the only one who can save it - of course. So off she goes, with Lewis, and Wanda, the school bully, adventuring, without a word to her parent as to where she's going or when she'll be back. See what I mean about selfishness?

We're told that Lewis Farnsworth is her best friend, but what we're shown is that he's not a very good friend. For her twelfth birthday, he gets her something completely inappropriate, and despite the fact that she's desperately and obviously trying to tell him something important, he simply doesn't listen. He didn't strike me as much of a friend, and this is reinforced by his later behavior. Why Callie values him so highly is a mystery. I guess she's desperate, given everything else in her life.

There's trope and clichéd school bullying here which goes unpunished - another failing in this type of school-oriented novel. I have no idea what school this style of writer went to as a kid, but I feel sorry for such authors if they experienced anything like the caricatured brutality they depict, even when it's 'limited' to extortion and blackmail like it is here.

One of the things which annoyed me about his novel was the genderism displayed in it, not by the characters, but by the author. At one point she has two guys (her dad and Lewis) dismissed and told to go off and discuss baseball - like sports is all guys ever have on their minds, while the two girls (Callie and her stepmom-to-be) go off and discuss 'girl-power' - like person-power is inadequate. Here's another example: "She wanted to have normal dreams about normal things, like cute boys and shoe shopping and hair accessories." Seriously? I guess that's what passes fro girl power in this world.

I don't get why a female author would demean her own gender like this - as though women even at that age, have nothing on their mind but prettying themselves up like so many magpies decorating their nests. Yes, many girls are like that, but that doesn't mean we have to slavishly depict all girls that way all the time, like there is no other hope for them, than to be objects and dolls for the entertainment of men, and to feel that this is their sole purpose in life. This approach irritated me and that was it for this book. I can't recommend it.

The Festering Season by Kevin Tinsley

Rating: WORTHY!

This graphic novel commendably takes on the tragedy of police shootings of African Americans in New York City, but to me it cheapened the real tragedy by ascribing it to a weird vudu cult. I'm not sure why the author went this way because there's drama aplenty in the reality without having to tart it up with whack religious cults, but this is what we have here, so let's go with it on that basis.

While Tim Smith 3's art work was wonderful (using a Norman Rockwell style two-color printing process), Deborah Creighton, the editor, is apparently somewhat less than fully illiterate. I found errors of spelling and grammar which any editor worth his or her salt ought to have caught. There were errors such as "...if you have too" on page five, where 'too' should have been 'to', or on page eleven, where the grammar is totally screwed up: "And it is not like I have ever had any real choice in these matters is there?"

The reason I pulled this off the library shelf is that it appeared to have a strong black female main character, which is far too rare in books, and she intrigued me. She was well-worth the read. Her name is Rene DuBoise, and she's going up against Gangleos, a powerful vudu practitioner. Note that vudu is nothing more than a religious death cult like Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, and I have no time for meaningless mythology, but sometimes these religions, with their stories of the eternal battle between good and evil, can make for entertaining reading. This one did.

The story begins with two police officers shooting what they claim was a man trying to break into a store, whereas it was a woman, Rene's mom August, who was closing up her vudu paraphernalia shop for the night. I think we're supposed to perceive from this that the police officers were under some sort of vudu spell and were hallucinating so that perhaps the bad guy could take out a rival or someone who opposes his evil, but this isn't exactly crystal clear from the opening panels. Note that all of the incidents portrayed here have their roots (if not their detailed accuracy) in real life events in NYC.

Anyway, with this woman's death, her daughter Rene is brought back to NYC, and she moves into the shop which has been trashed by the police in a desperate search to find something incriminating to try and ameliorate what they're referring to as an 'accident'. I loved the way they're brought back to reality by the woman's sister highlighting the fact that seventeen shots fired into an unarmed victim cannot be dismissed as a mere accident.

The story touches on several religions such a Santeria, which originates from Yoruba in west Africa, and Palo Mayombe, which originates in the Congo, as well as Vodun, which originates in Ghana. Rene is a practitioner herself, and is forced to put wards upon her mother's grave to prevent agents of Gangleos from disinterring her body. This is all stuff and nonsense, but there are people who believe in it. In NYC itself, as this novel reports in the notes, there was an elderly woman who claimed to be a vudu witch. Her powers evidently didn't prevent her from being struck by a vehicle and killed when she was walking close by her apartment, but when cops went in there after the accident, they found masses of vudu paraphernalia and a newborn child preserved in formaldehyde in a large jar in her closet. I don't know if they ever did determine who the child was or how she died.

But the story takes real events and adapts them to make them fit this vudu plot, and it does it quite well. Within its framework, the worry makes sense and is entertaining. I enjoyed it and I recommend it.

Doctor Who Vol 3 Final Sacrifice by Various Authors

Rating: WORTHY!

There were several stories in this one volume. Old Friend and Final sacrifice were written by Tony Lee with art by Matthew Dow Smith. Ground Control was by Jonathan L Davis with art by Kelly Yates. The Big Blue Box was by Matthew Dow Smith, and To Sleep Perchance to Scream was by Al Davison.

Old Friend

This is (combined with the separately titled part two) the longest story by far and occupies most of this graphic novel. It begins with The Doctor and his purely-in-print companion visiting a dying man in a retirement home. From there we quickly end-up several solar systems away with some Victorian adventurers, on a devastated planet fighting a bloody war between two factions, neither of whom knows when to give up. The planet, it turns out, was supposed to be terraformed, but the war has been going on so long that no one has a clue where they came from or how things got to be where they were. It's very reminiscent of the tenth Doctor and Martha's adventure in the TV ep. The Doctor's Daughter.

Final sacrifice

Is part two of Old Friend.

Ground Control

If you've ever been chased by a giant panda militia, you'll know exactly what's going on here, but that's just the introduction. The real problem comes when the Doctor is effectively pulled over by a speed cop and given the third degree.

The Big Blue Box

Borrows from Victory of the Daleks wherein the Daleks have left a robot human in London which they plan on detonating but which fails. This story doesn't involve Daleks, but otherwise is pretty much the same idea.

To Sleep Perchance to Scream

What does the Doctor dream about when he finally sleeps, and who helps him out when he has a bad dream?

I liked this in general. It wasn't spectacular, but parts of it were really good. I wasn't too keen on the sexism exhibited by The Doctor when he snidely remarks about a man and a woman:"I just knew them as the 'annoying woman'...and the one in the dress". Later he repeats this kind of insult referring to 'screaming like a girl". That aside this was, on balance, a worthy read.

Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

Rating: WARTY!

I had previously favorably reviewed two Sanderson books, The Rithmatist in September of 2013, and Steelheart in March of 2014, but this short audio book rubbed me up the wrong way from disk one, and I was going to give it another day, but when I picked it up just now to make some notes, I simply could not stand the thought of putting it back in the drive when I had other books waiting in the wings, so out it goes (back to the totally excellent local library).

The first problem was with the reader, Ramón de Ocampo. His reading voice just made my skin crawl. It felt like he was saying, in a subtext, "Hey! Check out how wonderful I am, going over the top with this novel!" I couldn't stand to listen to it even had the book been good. In that case I would have got the print or ebook version and read it myself, like I did with Vampire Academy. That option was out though, becuase the actual text was jsut as bad as the reader's voice. It felt like the aiuhtor was hitting me over the head with every word he spoke, and it was jsu tthe worng tone, the worng voice, too stupid for words.

I don't know what the plot is, other than grandpa, orphan Al, and evil librarans, and I really don't care. I can't recommend this book.

The Empty by Jimmie Robinson

Rating: WORTHY!

This is one of the most amazing graphic novels I've read in a long time. It's highly original, and though the science is questionable (seven thousand years isn't enough time for the evolution we saw going on here), I was willing to let that go and bask in the glory of the story. Tanoor is a fiercesome hunter in her impoverished desert land where gangly, somewhat disproportioned people eke out a dwindling existence.

One day Tanoor encounters a strange woman in the ocean, and she's smart enough, and desperate enough to know that this brand new thing in her world - a woman who looks like Tanoor and not like Tanoor, maybe the break-through they need to overcome the poison roots which are spreading and destroying everything in their path. Her fellow villagers, however, disagree, and banish both Lila, the new girl, and Tanoor into the harsh land of the Mool, a savage race which lives across the chasm. Lila, however, who has proved ot ahve unexpected and beneficial powers, discovers that the Mool are peace-loving and just as threatened by the encroaching roots as everyone else. Traveling with her pet, the foxelope, and her two new companions, Tanoor eventually discovers more wonders, and eventually, the deadly secret which has brought the world almost to extinction.

I really loved this story. The artwork was excellent, the story intelligent and brisk, and despite my scientific misgivings, I felt this did more than enough to overcome the reservations I had. I recommend it.

Death Vigil Volume 1 by Stjepan Šejić

Rating: WORTHY!

I loved Stjepan Šejić's Rat Queens, not so hot on his Dresden Files, but this particular series was another win for him in my book - or for me with his book, I guess. After reading two less-than-appealing graphic novels prior to this one, it was a breath of fresh air to encounter the sotry and artwork here. It wasn't all plain sailing, but overall, this was a very worthy read.

It's a great life in the Vigil. The only drawback is you have to be dead - and then get invited to join because of some special quality you possess. Oh, and you must accept that your hair color will change to white. But not your skin color. I didn't get the distinction there. The evil dudes have, of course black hair, but not necessary black skin - because that would be racist, right?!

Once you're in, though, you get a weapon, and a cool bunch of fun friends. On the downside, you have to fight horrific demonic beasties which try to break through from the abyss into the upper layers. The beasts were sadly clichéd, I'm afraid to report - all scarlet and teeth. The death vigil crew, and indeed the bad guys, all curiously shared the same face - with a change of hair style here and there, and maybe some facial hair or a slightly more square jaw if it was a guy. Sometimes it was hard for me to tell the difference between once character and another from their image, although they all had different personalities. Indeed, when the hair color unexpectedly changes on one of the good guys, she became pretty much a twin of one of the girls on the evil side. I don't think that this was intentional, but who knows - the series isn't over yet!

There's the superficial plot - cracks develop in the barrier, evil beasts break through and the Death Vigil dispatches them, calling in help from their powerful female leader if they get into trouble - and an underlying story arc, and it worked well on both levels. That was what was commendable and different about this series - the guys were not in charge here. This is a very female-centric series, with both good guys and bad guys having a strong female figure calling the shots. On the good side, there was more than one interesting female character: try five!

Bernie (Bernadette) is the leader - an ancient and powerful female who rules the roost, advising and guiding her apprentices. She has two younger females working with her and as the story begins, she adds a third, who serves as the passport for the reader to learn how this set-up works. The newbie is amusing in her own right; she has real personality, but she;s also fascinating in that whereas other vigil-ers have swords and pick-axes for fighting demons, she ends up with a feather. It proves to be far more than it seems, however. Last but not least, later in the story, there's an Asian female from another team who, along with her male colleague, joins with Bernie's group to fight a particularly dangerous threat. This is what really won me over. It's rare in comics and it was nice to see it bloom here.

I really enjoyed this story. There were some issues with poor printing of speech balloons. I don't know what that was about. Some of it was intentional - red print on a black background for some of the evil characters, for example. That didn't work - it was very hard to read and simply annoying. In other cases the speech balloons were transparent and this looked unintentional - like someone had forgot to put in a white backing for these balloons. Some of the text was hard to read on an iPad in my advance review copy, because it was so small, necessitating an annoying need to enlarge and then diminish the page to read the text. That was a minor upset compare with the generosity, warmth, complexity, and humor of the story, so titanic good v. evil battle clichés aside, I really enjoyed this and recommend it as a worthy read.

The 8th Continent by Matt London

Rating: WARTY!

This is an absurd excursion into absurdist humor for young children aimed at drawing their attention to the problem of recycling and responsible waste disposal, but as I started to read it, I began to feel increasingly that it was rather too far divorced from reality to make it effective. In addition to this, it proffered some really bad science and poor plotting, so overall, I honestly don't feel I can recommend this series because it's ultimately a wolf in recycled sheep's clothing.

The Lane family, which in the opening adventure consists of George the dad and kids Evie, and Rick (mom Melinda is at work which is another issue) are eco-nuts who travel around in a hollowed-out Sequoia tree that had been brought down by lightning and now has been turned into a hovercraft. At the start of this story, they're trespassing on a wildlife preserve that has been turned into a garbage dump by a corporation owned by the father of one of Evie's class-mates, Vesuvia Piffle.

They're spotted, and get into trouble with Winterpole, the global policing organizing that fights any change at all. I found that amusing, except that Winterpole is more like the Nazis than ever it is like Interpol. They don't even have a trial any more: they simply impose a penalty! While there is no problem with a bird being killed by garbage dumping, it's against the law to remove that bird from certain death, because it's in a protected preserve! Sounds like something George Bush invented, huh? Actually Winterpole mostly reminded me of the bureaucracy in the Terry Gilliam movie, Brazil which is brilliant. Winterpole, not so much.

Some of the information included in the novel is a bit misleading at best. Yes, there is a North Pacific Gyre, but it's a oceanic circulation system which encompasses pretty much the whole of the North Pacific. It's not like it's a little whirlpool, so to talk about an island of trash here is misleading, not only because there is no such island, but also because it makes the North Pacific Gyre seem small and inconsequential, and it's not. Far from it. Yes, it is true that if you collected all the floating garbage in the Pacific together, it would make an impressive island of trash, but the trash is spread out thinly and as such, is not readily observable - which makes it all the more insidious and difficult to combat.

In this book, the story has it that the "island" is slowly being munched-down by three robot elephants invented by dad, which are turning it into floating plastic blocks. Dad's plan is to create the eighth continent here as a wild-life preserve. To me this was a completely wrong-headed lesson to give to children. If the plastic is toxic and dangerous, then how is making a whole continent out of it improving anything? And what would a floating continent do to Earth's oceanic eco-system? Very likely it would interrupt the North Pacific Gyre and precipitate an ice age. None of this is addressed, and the plan is fundamentally flawed, as I shall point out shortly.

Without that gyre, Earth's climate would change even more than it is already. Indeed, some scientists fear that global warming will kill these gyres (there are many of them, all important) and hence kill global oceanic circulation and bring on a new ice age. That sounds paradoxical, but it's actually a real danger. Almost worse than this, though, is the idea that we should abandon the rest of the Earth to corporate depredation and pollution, and build a little wildlife preserve in the middle of the Pacific to "protect" them. Such a deluded plan would inevitably fail.

You can't get the endangered species from the entire Earth and put them all into a microcosm in the North Pacific. There are too many species in widely varying eco-systems, in too many diverse locales to be able to 'fix it' by concentrating them all in one place. This sounds disturbingly like the Nazi plan of concentrating 'undesirables' in one place - the concentration camps - to 'fix' that 'problem'. It doesn't work because it's a fundamentally (with the emphasis on 'mental') idiotic idea to begin with. You can't fix our problems with global destruction. Nor can you fix them with a sci-fi version of the Noah's ark fantasy.

There were other minor issues - such as the fact that Switzerland doesn't celebrate Arbor day! I don't know what nationality Mr. Snow from Winterpole is, but it's odd to hear him talk of Arbor day in Switzerland, even if he is American. Another issue was the hypocrisy in having Lane senior obsess over global pollution when his own home is a polluted mess. At one point the kids go down through several basements, and there is a complete mess down there, including the results of explosions that have never been cleaned up, piles of junk, and rusting remains of archived artifacts. How is this any better than the pollution they were bewailing earlier? Yes, at least it's confined to his home, but it was a poor example to set and a poor choice by the author.

Why the male figure in the Lane family is portrayed as the scientist and the woman as your standard clichéd corporate rep is a genderist mystery I don't have the patience to go into here. Suffice to say this was one in a plethora of issues I had with this book. In one instance, Rick, wearing a SCUBA said he could smell Evie's breath. That's hard to believe (even if it wasn't her breath he was actually smelling). The author evidently didn't grasp the 'self-contained' part of the underwater breathing apparatus.

In this same section, the author has these kids diving in the Arctic ocean wearing wet suits. No! It's a dry suit for the bitterly cold water, otherwise you'll freeze! That wasn't even as bad as the fact that they were near the North Pole and yet there was no ice save for a few icebergs. I didn't get whether this was meant to be in the future where the North Pole ice has all melted because of climate change, or whether the author simply didn't grasp that near the north pole, the water is frozen. Maybe he meant 'near the ice cap' instead of' near the pole', but that's not what he wrote. Maybe he doesn't actually understand the concept of the North Pole (or the fact that here are two of them!), because if he did, he could have offered a great, and for children, rather mind-blowing teaching tool here. The magnetic north pole is all over the place. Even the geographic north pole moves because of the Chandler wobble. The North Magnetic Pole, which is what we typically count on as being due north, was determined in 2001 to be in Canada, almost ten degrees away from the geographic pole. Now if that doesn't offer a stupendous potential for an hilarious story, I don't know what does. But it was lost here.

There was a so-called "thermal-charge power plant" which appeared at one point in the story, but this is just another name for a perpetual motion machine, which is impossible and as unscientific as you can get. The biggest "impossible" of all, however, was this compound which supposedly converts all inorganic matter into organic matter, and which is what supposedly will help them make their eighth continent livable. I mentioned I would address this, and I see two problems with it.

First of all, the "continent" is to be created from the plastic garbage in the Pacific, but the compound only works on non-organic matter, and the plastic is organic, so it would not work! I think the author doesn't understand the definition of "organic" in this context. It doesn't mean things which are grown without artificial fertilizer or without antibiotics. It doesn't even mean "living things". In this context, it means things which contain carbon. Plastics made from oil contain carbon! The compound would have no effect on it!

The second problem is, if you have a compound which converts everything non-organic into organic matter (which would be an amazing thing that defied the laws of physics), then how do you contain it? This is a two-fold problem, first regarding storage and second concerning containment in a much broader sense. In what vessel would you store such a compound? You can't keep it in a metal container or a glass container: it would convert it and get loose! You could keep it in an organic container, but what happens as soon as you unleash it to do the work it's designed to do? Recall that this is supposed to be unleashed on a continent surrounded by water - which is inorganic (no carbon)! The water would be converted, and without water the entire planet would die! These people are not scientists, they're morons. I know this is a children's book but does that mean we have to make it stupid?

A separate issue I encountered is one which is common in children's stories involving a school: the unrelenting and unpunished bullying and rampant snobbery. I shudder to think what kind of horrific schools these writers encountered in their youth for them to write in this way. Snobbery is not a crime, but bullying is - or ought to be - in schools. Why were these people able to get away with it? Why were the parents of the victims not up in arms over it? The fact that this is tolerated as a fact of life here is a sad example to set in a book aimed at children.

In one part of the story, when running around in Winterpole's headquarters, the two Lane kids, upon discovering piles of paperwork, made a point about the waste of ink, yet not a word was spoken about the waste of trees! This is so sad in a book which purports to be about eco-consciousness. It was doubly sad, because it was at this same point in the story where things really picked-up and started to be rather entertaining, as Rick and Evie ran around trying to avoid capture. At the risk of being hypocritical myself, I longed for them to wreak more havoc than they did here. Setting the place on fire or blowing it up would have been the wrong way to go, but could there not have been some mulching device turned loose, and shredded the whole building, or something?! No, there could not, and the story never did regain the spark of riotous mischief it had here.

That was the only part of the book that I really enjoyed, yet still I felt let down by it. The rest of it was passable in terms of technical considerations, and in terms of it being the kind of story young kids might like, but in terms of fulfilling its ostensible objective, I found this book to be a serious disappointment and I can't recommend it, and I know my kids would reject it. But then they have a decent science education.

Slade House by David Mitchell

Rating: WORTHY!

I’ve not been having much luck with advance review copies of late so it was a joy to get this one. At first it felt like reading a book of short stories, but as soon as I began on the second one, I realized this related back to the first in interesting ways. I confess I had skimmed the first, not finding it very engrossing, but I went right back re-read it properly, and then proceeded without a problem. The first part still struck me as less than thrilling, but it did help to read it properly.

The stories are set exactly nine years apart (no matter what your watch or our calendar might be telling you…) and there’s a disturbing reason for this. The snapshots all center around Slade House, which was destroyed during a World War Two bombing attack on London, but still manages, somehow, to appear every nine years. The only entrance is through a tiny door set in a wall in the claustrophobic confines of Slade Alley. That’s how you get in. You don’t get out.

Norah and Jonah Grayer are twins who discovered that they had a psychic link. When one of their acquaintances discovered this, he took them under his wing and traveled with them around the world, overseeing their training, and the perfection of their skills until they no longer had use for him. The only other problem they had was their mortality, and they discovered they could offset this by sucking the souls from certain people who had a compatible soul type. They need to do this every nine years….

The story was generally well written, and although it bogged down in a little too much detail in some parts, and the beginning was a bit off-putting, it had genuinely creepy and scary parts to offset this. It was also technically well-written with few errors that I noticed. One of them was the use of a quote instead of an apostrophe in two phrases/words: 'that’s what religion does, doesn” t it' and 'can”t'? Also this is another author who doesn't know that we stanch a blood flow, not staunch it, although by dint of usage, the wrong word is being slowly shanghaied into use.

Aside from that my biggest issue was that each story, thought told by different people, is in first person PoV, which I hate. it’s a very weak and limiting voice and it generally makes for a poor if not downright irritating story. In this case it wasn’t told too badly, but it made no sense, because if these people were dead then they couldn’t very well be relating their stories in first person, right up to their moment of death, could they? So were they really dead? In this instance, it made for an interesting question and an interesting use of voice.

I understand that in many ways, this is a companion to David Mitchell’s Bone Clocks which I haven’t read, but which some reviewers have indicated offers a nod and a wink to the earlier story, in much the same way, I imagine, my own novels do. As I said, I haven’t read the earlier work, so I can’t comment on what kind of links or connections may or may not exist between the two.

Overall I recommend this as a very worthy read.