Moo Knows Numbers by Kerry McQuaide

Rating: WORTHY!

I've been in love with Midge and Moo since I reviewed Lost in the Garden and A Day With Moo back in February 2016. In this one - another in a series of 'adventures', Moo helps children count from one through ten which is really easy route to find if you can just put your finger on it....

The illustrations are, as usual, adorable, and Moo's indispensable presence helps keep thing moo-ving. This is very much his book, starting right with number 1, the one and only Moo! there's color and action, and the pictures look great and the text is readily readable on my smart phone, so it will always be there to entertain your child even if the tablet is left at home. The print book is probably sweet, too, but I haven't seen it. If you're looking for a simple counting book for a young child, you can't do better than this one, especially int he adorability stakes (or steaks, if you want to get technical about Moo...).

Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an audiobook I picked up on spec from the library and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable books I've ever encountered. The tone was delicious, the reader, Coleen Marlo, perfect, and the story amazing. It's one of those stories which makes a hopeful writer like me wish I had thought of it first, but I doubt I could have written this particular story as well as Jeanne Ray did. The tone of voice in the story is beautiful: slightly bemused, humorous, and a little bit sarcastic. It's first person, too, which I normally do not like, but it was perfect here. Audiobooks tend to be much more experimental with me because I'm a captive audience when commuting, so I see a lot of fails with these, but those are worth the listening, because one in a while one like this pops up and makes it all worthwhile.

Clover Hobart is a fifty-four year old woman who discovers one morning that she's invisible. Her visibility wavers for a day or two before it becomes, apparently, permanent. The weird thing though is not her visibility, but the fact that no one in her family: not her husband the pediatrician, not her emotional daughter, and not her unemployed son who is living at home see any difference. She's apparently always been invisible to them!

Her best friend Gilda, who lives down the street, notices. At first Clover starts panicking, but as she grows used to it, she realizes there are things she can do. If she takes her clothes off, no one can see her and it's a super power. She discovers there are other such women in her position and that they have a secret society which meets in the Sheraton in a conference room which they don't even have to book to reserve it. No one knows they're using it! Since these women all travel naked, they have to bring a tissue with them so they can raise it when they want to speak. Clover becomes friends with some of them. At first she has a problem with the nudity, but since one property of invisibility is that she doesn't feel heat or cold, she eventually embraces it as they have done.

One day, she accompanies one of her new acquaintances to the school where she lost her job when she became invisible. The two of them ride the school bus and spend the day in the school. No one can see them and they're able to prevent bullying and tackle other issues. This inspires the other woman to think she can get her job back. On another day, Clover foils a bank robbery, but of course gets no credit since no one could see her do anything. They just thought the robber randomly threw his guns away!

I noted that some critics down-rated the story for being unrealistic(!) or vacuous, but to me, the whole point of the story was to be playful and light-hearted, and have fun while exploring a very real issue: the metaphorical invisibility which older women routinely experience, and which they do so far more than older men. I think the author did a fantastic job and I want to read more of her work. I recommend this unreservedly.

A Quiet Life in the Country by TE Kinsey

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a great old-style English country house murder mystery which kept on giving. There were some parts where it flagged a little, but overall it was a very worthy read. I enjoyed it immensely and I recommend it, which may come as a surprise to people who follow my reviews because I'm typically not a fan of series, nor am I at all enamored of first person voice, and this is both: it's book one of a "Lady Hardcastle" series, and it's also told in first person! As it happens, the voice wasn't at all distracting or intrusive, and since this was book one, there was no fear of cookie-cutter stories or of a tediously formulaic approach. It just goes to show that even a cynical, cantankerous curmudgeon like me can find the occasional exception to the rule!

In a sense, it's reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, in that the assistant is the one relating the story of the 'great detective' (although both parties do their share of detecting here). On the other hand, this story departs rather a lot from the traditional Lord (or in this case Lady) and servant duo. Lady Emily Hardcastle and her Lady's maid, Florence Armstrong (that latter name is chosen wisely, trust me), are more like companions than ever they are mistress and maid. Flo has no problem setting Lady Hardcastle straight, and even being a real smart-aleck from time to time. They have a wonderful repartee, which is what made this story for me, but then they've been together for a long time and Lady Hardcastle is a widow, so they have only each other and their relationship is entirely understandable and realistic. The two have a history of adventure abroad, which made me think this was not the first volume in the series, but it is, and I shall be interested in learning how things develop from here.

In this particular adventure, as the title suggests, the pair have arrived in the English countryside and are setting up home in a cottage with the idea of enjoying a real break from the adventurous and hectic life they had been leading (not always by choice!) abroad. The problem is that on their first ever foray into that countryside, they happen upon a dead body hanging from a fine old English oak. It looks like some despondent young man hung himself, but as Lady Hardcastle observes, one or two things about this scenario hardly ring true.

From that point onward, the game is afoot and before long there's another murder and a theft. Lady Hardcastle and Flow dive into the case because they think the detective has got it rather more round his neck than the first victim had, but in the end, and contrary to one or two negative reviewers' observations I've seen, the detective turns out to be a lot smarter than he first appears, and he and the two would-be detectives begin to get along famously.

I thought I'd solved the first murder quite early in the story, but I had not. On the other hand, I'm typically useless at solving these things, which is why I enjoy them! I still think my solution would have worked in a slightly different story, but this only serves to give me the chance to turn it into a story of my own, right?!

All in all, a fun read, a decent mystery, and a good story. I think it could have been served by being slightly shorter, but I'm not about to make a fuss over that that because I did enjoy it as is, and I recommend as a thoroughly bang-up show, what?!

Ghost Summer: Stories by Tananarive Due

Rating: WARTY!

I could not read this book the whole way through. I made it to about 70% in in terms of page count and almost two thirds through it in terms of the number of stories I read, but I simply could not continue reading because the stories were crushingly boring. In my experience with this author, the best thing about her has proven to be her astonishing name, which I love. I'm sorry I can't love what she writes, though!

There comes a point even with the best of good will that you need to cut your losses and move onto something that will provide a more rewarding read. To continue reading in a situation like this is really to indulge in what's known in economic terms as the sunk cost fallacy (I think wikipedia has it under 'Escalation of commitment'), and I do not subscribe to that! I did move on, and I didn't regret it because the advance review copy I moved to after this proved to be eminently entertaining! Life is far too short to spend it on books that don't thrill you from the off!

By the time I quit, I'd read nine of the fifteen short stories it contained. Only one of them had been interesting to me, and even that was nothing special since this kind of story has been done to death: laying a ghost by discovering long buried bones? This variation on an old theme brought nothing new to the oeuvre.

I got this book thinking it was a graphic novel of Tanarive Due stories, so I thought it might be interesting even though I hadn't liked the only other novel by this author that I read, which was Joplin's Ghost. It was included in a flyer from Net Galley advertising graphic novels. Two of the "graphic novels" were short story collections. I got both of them and liked neither! I am going to be very careful about requesting any more 'graphic novels' from Net Galley, rest assured!

This might sound strange to say, but one of my biggest problems with this novel was that it felt racist to me. It seems this author can write only about black families, and even then only about ones with issues or with silly superstitions. There are no Caucasians or Asians in her world. This is why it felt racist to me. And no, I'm not trying to suggest she's saying all African American families are superstitious or believe in ghosts or whatever. Clearly this whole book was written about the paranormal so that's a given, but the family circumstances of everyone she writes about here are awful and it felt like racial profiling! Are there no black families that lead relatively ordinary lives that she could write a paranormal story about?! Not according to this author, which is one major reason why I did not like this.

The story titles are as follows. They were divided in the book into sections which meant quite literally nothing to me, so I'm simply listing them here in order they appear in the book and ignoring the section headers:

• The Lake
This was about some kids rowing up around a lake wherein resides something that's not very friendly to kids and which is also very hungry.
• Summer
This is apparently about a baby which was apparently switched out by fairies, or something along those lines. It simply fizzled rather than have any kind of an ending.
• Ghost Summer
The title story was the one I thought was ok, but as I mentioned it really offered nothing new or different. I think this is the longest story in the collection, and it honestly felt really long, but it avoided being boring.
• Free Jim’s Mine
I honestly saw no point whatsoever to this story. It didn't seem to go anywhere to me. It touched on slavery and servitude, but cheapened that message by tossing in the supernatural element. It's like the author felt that slavery isn't bad enough by itself, there has to be something more - some horrific supernatural element added to the recipe to make it truly cook. I think the author and I will have to agree to disagree on that score.
• The Knowing
Is it a blessing or a curse to know when people will die? The "twist" in this story was pretty obvious, so it really offered no kick for me, and making this story first person failed for me because I detest that voice.
• Like Daughter
This is about cloning and again was boring and made no sense to me. There was no supernatural element: it was all sci-fi.
• Aftermoon
This is a werewolf story which made so little of am impression on me that I completely forget what happened in it.
• Trial Day
This is a story about a man who is on trial for his life, and whether or not someone who could help him will testify.
• Patient Zero
This one, as was pretty obvious from the start, is the story of a kid who is immune to a plague that is slowly killing off everyone else on the planet. It was again first person and I found it obnoxious. I skimmed lots of it rather than read every last word, and it was at this point that I decided I couldn't bare to start another of these stories, so I can't tell you a thing about the remaining stories which follow.
• Danger Word
• Removal Order
• Herd Immunity
• Carriers
• Señora Suerte
• Vanishings

Like I said, life is too short and these stories were quite simply not speaking to me or entertaining me. I can't recommend this one at all. I don't get why she's so fond of Roots, either. From what I've read it would seem to be a mashup of fiction and plagiarism, so I have no desire to read it when there are more realistic books available on the subject.

Doctor Who The American Adventures by various authors

Rating: WARTY!

This is the first of two novels I got from Net Galley as advance review copies, thinking they were graphic novels! WRONG! Rest assured I shall be very cautious about selecting anything from Net Galley that comes in a flyer advertising graphic novels from now on! Nevertheless I have to read these and see what happens. In this one, the answer was nothing much. I was very disappointed. Had the stories actually been in graphic format, I would still have been very disappointed, because for me the story is more important than the art.

The book consisted of six short stories, each one an adventure featuring the current Doctor (Peter Capaldi) who has been conspicuous by his complete absence this year for reasons the BBC has utterly failed to justify. However, on the bright side, there is a new Doctor Who spin-off titled Class which is set in Coal Hill Academy, and features the exploits of a teacher and five students, and in the first episode, a guest appearance by Capaldi.

But I digress! The stories in this book are as follows, with a brief review of each:

1. All that Glitters features an alien usurpation of a gold prospector in old California. The Doctor just happens to arrive on the scene to investigate and put things right. This story lacked any real oomph. Yes, you heard me right: oomph!
2. Off the trail is about a family traveling the Oregon trail in the old west, who are abducted by aliens. The Doctor just happens to arrive on the scene to investigate and put things right. Wait! Isn't that essentially what the previous story was about?
3. Ghosts of New York is about the discovery of a buried spacecraft under New York City during the excavation of the subway tunnels. The Doctor just happens to arrive on the scene to investigate and put things right. This story happened to be very reminiscent of the 1967 Hammer film, Quatermass and the Pit, which I liked better.
4. Taking the Plunge concerns a fun fair ride used by an alien to suck life-force out of human riders for later sale. The Doctor just happens to arrive on the scene to investigate and put things right. This story sounds very familiar to me, too, but I can't think of the Doctor Who story I saw it in. It's like the inverse of the episode The Unquiet Dead which featured Eve Myles before she became a Torchwood cast member.
5. Spectator Sport is the story of a robot assassin who tries to murder an alien spectator at the Battle of New Orleans. The Doctor just happens to arrive on the scene to investigate and put things right. This has elements of the episode A Town Called Mercy, but mostly reminded me of the movie Timescape, which was released on video as Grand Tour: Disaster in Time.
6. Base of Operations features aliens trying to take over Earth by emulating and replacing humans undercover of preparations for the D-Day invasion in World War 2. The Doctor just happens to arrive on the scene to investigate and put things right.

The problem with all these episodes is that they were predictable and boring. There was no companion, no humor, no risk that something might go wrong. This is quite literally how it happened - evil alien causes problems, Doctor shows up miraculously and fixes it, Doctor leaves. Rinse. Repeat. It was that monotonous. The stories were simply not entertaining. There was nothing really new or original here, and they failed comprehensively to exhibit the Doctor in a lovable light. The Doctor was boring and essentially a will o' the wisp; he had no real presence and so what;s the point of a Doctor Who story which feels like the Doctor isn't in it for all realistic purposes?

What's the point, for that matter of setting these in the USA? There wasn't anything in any of the stories that really solidly tied the story to the US. The gold rush story had really nothing to do with the gold rush. The Oregon Trail story could have been any road trip horror story in any country. The New York subway story could have been told of any underground railroad excavation anywhere there's an underground. The funfair story could have been any funfair. The spectator sport story could have been told of literally any battle anywhere at any time. The World war two story could have been set in England or anywhere in Europe for that matter, and not have lost a thing. I didn't get the US connection unless it was solely to try and sell copies of this this book in the US.

You can say what you like about Steven Moffat, but one thing he was not, was boring. He produced some of the most amazing Doctor Who episodes ever, he wove the old series into the new often and expertly, he had a great sense of humor, a great way with words, and I will miss him when he's gone. These stories are not a patch on the TV show. I'm hoping that Chris Chibnall will be able to not only carry this heavy mantle but to run with it. These stories didn't cut it for me and I cannot recommend this collection.

Dojo Surprise by Chris Tougas

Rating: WORTHY!

This story was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher, and it's a little bit weird and off the beaten track, which is a good thing. I think that's why it appealed to me. it;s also part of a series of "Dojo" books, and I have to warn you that it did not look at all good on a smart phone, so you definitely want to read it on something else.

The kids of the Dojo Daycare want to throw a surprise birthday party for their rather nervous sensei, and their sneaking around does little for his mental health, but they succeed in creating the surprise using hard-won ninja techniques, and in the end have a great birthday party, and a much relieved sensei! I think it's fun and playful and very colorful, but be warned: it might put sneaky ninja ideas into young children's brains!

I Am Josephine (and I Am a Living Thing) by Jan Thornhill

Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

"Inspired by science and nature writer Jan Thornhill's many classroom visits, this book is intended to help children recognize themselves as part of the natural world, with an emphasis on how all living things share similarities."

This was a great book which teaches a little taxonomy along with exhibiting a fun young girl who is the very embodiment of life. Josephine compares and contrasts herself with everything around her. Is she like this or different from that? In her comparisons and contrasts, we learn that she's a living thing (and definitely full of life!), and an animal, and a mammal, and a human being. We also learn what some other animals and plants are, as she skips and dances through her colorful world examining everything. The book is a joy to read and a delight to look at, and is educational to boot, with some interaction where young kids can search and count. All in all it's a great little book and I liked it very much.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit By Beatrix Potter

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an unexpected delight. Peter Rabbit is the naughtiest rabbit ever - and naughty is precisely the correct term for him. He's off adventuring when he should be gathering berries with his sisters; he's getting into trouble with the local farmer; he's almost getting himself caught; and he's ending his day by losing all of his nice new clothes!

First published in 1902, this story has every ounce of quaint still clinging to it like a scent of pot-pourri, and it's not your modern bleached fairy tale either. It's also a best seller, having sold over a hundred fifty million copies, which isn't too shabby given that it started as nothing more than an illustrated letter aimed at cheering up the sick son of a friend. Based on an actual pet rabbit which Potter owned, and illustrated by the author quite charmingly, this tale is well worth a few minutes of any child's time - no matter how old the child is!

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

Rating: WORTHY!

I’m a captive audience in my car with a commute that’s not overly long, but which isn’t short either, so I listen to audio books and I tend to take more risks and experiment more with this format than any other. Consequently I have more fails with this format than any other, but it’s worth it to find the occasional gem, and one such book was this one. If there’s one thing I detest in writers it’s a sheep mentality. Instead of coming up with something original (or a refreshing take on an older theme as, say, The Hunger Games trilogy or the Harry Potter heptalogy represented), most authors, particularly in YA, jump right on someone else’s band wagon and turn out sorry clones of existing work. barf. I prefer the author who tosses out cliché and trope and takes the road less traveled, as I tried to do in Femarine, and as this author does here, which is yet another variation on the same theme I varied.

Another audio book to review - this time positively. My problem with princess stories - the kind where a prince is essentially holding a lottery for a bride - is several-fold, not least of which is what it says about the prince: he's so vacuous and shallow that he thinks he can get a suitable lifelong partner in such a critical role through this haphazard means? The other side of that coin is what it says about the princess-to-be in that she's so shallow or so desperate that she's willing to sell out for this guy she never met and will be expected to marry before she even knows him. It's truly pathetic.

That doesn't even begin to cover trope and cliché either. These stories tend to be larded with them: that the most humble, plain, and simple girl gets to win, or alternatively that the girl who least cares about or least expects to win gets to win because she's a special snowflake, and the only one who truly understands the prince.

There's also a really pretty girl who everyone expects to win, but who doesn't because it turns out that the plain-jane is prettier somehow! There's the really dumb girl who is the only one who thinks she will win, and there's a really bitchy girl who we all know will never win. There's also the truly sweet girl who becomes the main character's bestie, and who dreams of marrying the prince, but who doesn't honestly believe she will win. She ends up marrying the captain of the guard or the king's younger brother or something like that. It's tedious. It's been done to death, and any author who continues to churn out this kind of story with no variation and no twist and nothing new to offer is the really dumb girl. Any author who thinks he or she can make a trilogy out of this trash is beyond dumb.

So what I look for on the very rare occasion when I read a story like this, is what I tried to provide in Femarine: something significantly different. This audio book was such a story. It impressed me and continued to impress me because it continued to inject new ideas into this trope and thereby stirred it up significantly. There were some bits that were a touch too rambling and boring, but these were few. Most of the time it kept adding the twists to make it entertaining and engrossing.

What I liked about it was that Miri, the main character, was smart, but not particularly special except in that she learned. The value of books was am important part of the story. They actually played a role in the story and in Miri's growth, and were not just lazy short-hand used by the author to say "Hey, look how smart my character is!" Miri was always learning, and this is what made her stand out from far too many spastic princesses in other stories I've read or read about, and who show zero growth or real smarts.

I liked that the girls weren't the usual suspects in these stories, but the daughters of quarriers (and some of the girls were quarry workers themselves) in a pit which produced a special high quality stones used for important buildings in the cities down the mountain. I didn't like the 'us versus them' mentality (mountain people against lowlanders, where the mountain people were considered primitive and dumb and the lowlanders urbane and cultured), but I did like that the girls were not in fixed groups or fixed mentalities. Relationships changes and morphed, and the bitchy girl wasn't always the bitchy girl. The ending was very different from what you might expect and really turned the story again from the course you might expect.

The thing was though, that while I always feared that this story would go straight to hell in a hand-basket, I always had the feeling that it could completely capture me, and this is what it did in the end, so I recommend this for those of you who, like me, are tired of trope and ready to quit with cliché. Yes, it did have some examples still of that kind of mentality - that the girl must end up with the boy for example, but overall it was different enough and enjoyable enough, and above all unpredictable enough that I consider it a very worthy read. Or listen - Laura Credidio does a decent job of rendering the characters, although her voice was a bit annoying at times.

Lastly, one thing I don't get about this is that it's part of a series. Why? This was a great story and it was told well, and it came to a satisfying conclusion. Why did the author feel the need to ruin all that by dragging it unnaturally, kicking and screaming, into a series? Is she so lacking in imagination that she can't think of a new idea to write about? Let it be known that I have no intention of following the series. As far as I'm concerned, this book stops here!

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Harper, and Dennis Calero

Rating: WARTY!

This is the third of three graphic novels I got from the library recently, all three of which I was disappointed with. This one is not about super heroes, but is based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story published over a hundred seventy years ago wherein a man who, shall I say, doesn't have all his ravens in a row, takes exception to the disfigured eye of his friend, and ends up killing the guy and secreting the body under the floor of his dwelling. The novel is part of a graphic series, but I don't think i will read any more of these.

When a neighbor reports hearing a scream from the house and the police arrive to investigate, the psycho guy (who goes unnamed), invites them in, confident they will find nothing incriminating, only to incriminate himself when he believes he can hear the still-beating heart of his victim and ends up tearing up the floor with the police present to witness it.

I haven't read Poe's original, so I can't make a comparison. All I can say is that this was dissatisfying and the story was changed slightly - the body in the original was dismembered, but it is not, here. What bothered me though, was the lack of inventiveness of the illustration. It seemed to consist almost solely of close-ups of the faces of the characters, with very few more removed images, and while this artwork was not bad, it wasn't that great, either.

Admittedly some guy rambling on about how his friend's eye drives him nuts isn't really something you can make a lot of, so perhaps choosing to turn this particular short-story into a graphic novel was a bad decision. As I can testify, while it's a lot easier to tinker with someone else's story and (in my case) make a parody of it, than it is to come up with an original story, it's not impossible either. All-in-all, I was unhappy with this one, and I cannot recommend it as a worthy read.

Birds of Prey Vol 2 Your Kiss Might Kill by Duane Swierczynski, Travel Foreman

Rating: WARTY!

This is the second of two disappointing Birds of Prey graphic novels I got from the library. This volume comes much alter than the previous one, and I have to say that the artwork was all-around better, but the story just as dissatisfying and even confusing. The cover art was just as bad as in the previous volume, with black canary shown emitting her "sonic scream" (what kind of a scream wouldn't be sonic?! LOL! That there's sound is implied in the noun itself. Only paintings by Edvard Munch are silent!) and in effect looking like she's put on many pounds in doing it! Again, this is one reason why covers don't mean a heck of a lot to me, not even in graphic novels.

This story features Batgirl, Katana, Poison Ivy, and Starling (not Clarice, unfortunately). Despite Poison Ivy getting the bigger picture on the cover, this story is about Black Canary aka Dinah lance, whose life is threatened. During the course of the story the team has to transport Poison ivy to the Amazon to save her life, and that's where the creepy people attack them. No really, people made from creepers. Really.

For me the story was poor and further undermined by various characters disporting themselves in fishnet, and bustiers and bikini-underwear, so it really wasn't entertaining at all. It made me sorry I'd even considered reading about the Birds of Prey in comic books at all, and it also made me want to get back to watch the TV series again to get clean! I cannot recommend this one, either.

Livia Lone by Barry Eisler

Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I enjoyed this novel very much. Normally I'm not a fan of flashbacks, but though the ones here were extensive, they were done well, and were integral to the story rather than filler or back-story for the sake of back-story. The entire novel moved quickly and determinedly. There was no fluff here and no time-wasting, and no young-adult-style first person, for which I personally thank the author! This is a book for grown-ups and will make even those feel uncomfortable. Events were credible (even when they were incredible!) and organic to the story, and the main character - Livia - was amazing: believable, endearing, demanding empathy, yet not pitiful. She was a woman with a mission and she never let anything get in the way of it, yet she did not ride roughshod over others to get what she wanted. She was patient and determined and in the end her dedication paid off, yet the ending was neither sentimental nor clichéd.

I grew to like this character from the start, and only admired and rooted for her more as the story continued. She was my idea of a strong female, and not necessarily in that she was physically tough - although in this case she was. She had more than that, though: she had spine and grit, both of which she direly needed after what she'd endured, but endure she did, never letting life get in the way of being a human-being no matter how single-minded she was in service to her cause. She had a habit (nicely not over-done) of saying "Yes, that!" which both evoked her non-English past, and made her at once endearing and sad. I found myself adopting that phrase in my mind from time to time when I was just going about my daily business, it made such a warm impression on me.

Her personal story was horrible. Sold by her uncaring and impoverished parents into sex slavery, thirteen year-old Livia's only concern was for her younger sister, who was sold with her in Thailand. Only one of them arrived in Portland, USA, and for the next two decades, Livia spends her time struggling to survive what befalls her and at the same time stay alive no matter what, so she can find out what happened to her sister Nason.

Just when her path looks like it will become straight and narrow, it meanders into serious problems, but upholding her silent promise to her sister, she keeps on going, true to herself, and eventually works her way into a position where no man can overwhelm her and take advantage of her again, and that's not simply because she becomes a police officer. As a law-enforcement officer however, she can now try to track down her sister, but after all this time, will the trail have gone too cold to follow? That life and that mission is what this story is about, and it was excellent from start to finish.

The story was told well, with sufficient detail and technical knowledge to make it believable, but not so much that it looked like the author was showing off, or you felt like you were reading a technical training manual rather than a novel, which is how Tom Clancy's novels sound to me. Whether in the US or Thailand, it felt real and it entertained and engrossed, and it lived and breathed. I loved the ambiguity of the title, which sounds a bit like 'leave ya alone'. Definitely my kind of phrase! So all in all a great book, and well worth reading.

The Baker's Dozen by Aaron Shepherd

Rating: WORTHY!

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

Beautifully illustrated, this Christmas story (actually set on and around Saint Nicholas's Day, which falls in early December), tells a highly fanciful tale of how a "baker's dozen" came to be thirteen rather than the actual twelve there is in a dozen. In fact it's because bakers in the past (as early as the eighteenth century if not before) didn't want to be fined for shorting their customers so they added one more to their 'dozen' (a term which comes from the French) for good measure. No one is going to complain about getting something for nothing, right?

In this story however, a rather gluttonous woman puts a curse on the baker for giving her only twelve "cookies" (a term which actually derives from a Dutch word koekje) when she'd requested a dozen. The baker's business falls into a disastrous decline until he decides to give thirteen instead of twelve for a dozen, whereupon his business flourishes! I don't know if this is the reverse of the real spirit of Christmas in our capitalistic age, where less is more - profitable!, or if it actually embodies it!

The real joy of this story though, apart from the happy ending, is Wendy Edelson's gorgeous illustrations in full color, which hark back if not to a Dickensian Christmas age, hark certainly back to a Rockwellian one. Beautifully done in great detail and in rich earth tones, ornamented with Christmas reds and whites, the images are a joy, but you cannot enjoy them at their best in electronic form unfortunately. This is very much intended as a print book, and the tablet version breaks up the images in unfortunately and uncomplimentary ways. This is the really the kind of book you have to buy in the print version and leave on the coffee table over the holidays! And perhaps that's just as well. A little old fashioned never hurt anyone at Christmas, now did it?

Star Light Star Bright by Anna Prokos

Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher!

Illustrated nicely by Dave Clegg, this is one of an educational series for young kids. This particular volume is about planets in the solar system. Others in the series are about dinosaurs, Antarctica, volcanoes, seeds, and your own back yard!

Jackson and Wyatt wish upon a star, and find themselves in a cozy spacecraft with their dog pal and a license to explore the solar system. Starting with the baking heat of Mercury, they fly ever outwards, growing ever more chill, but learning some fun facts about each planet as they go. But don't worry, they return safely and get to bed on time!

The story is simple and straight forward, with brief interesting facts about each planet, snappy enough to command attention without overloading young brains. It's got adventure and a tiny bit of danger, and is a worthwhile read for young kinds to learn about how fascinating and alien our solar system is. There's a little index at the back, along with suggested further reading, and a short fact file. Great illustrations bring the planets home to young minds and hopefully stimulate a bit of a scientific interest for later in life.

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

Rating: WARTY!

I think there are good stories to be told from roots in African folklore and mythology, but this one disappointed me by not being one of them. It began unpromisingly; then it picked up and got me interested, but too soon after that, it went downhill into tedium, confusion, and blandness. On top of that, it was a bit too whimsical for my taste.

The story is of Paama (Pah-ma) and her glutton husband Asige (Ass -ee-gay, whose name I had thought was Asike from listening only to the narration). The two are living apart, and Asige comes to join Paama in the community where she now resides. He proceeds to embarrass her endlessly with his constant need for food and the bizarre circumstances he gets himself into in the pursuit of one more mouthful. It turns out that there's a reason for this gluttony in the end, but that comes only after a long tedious separation between these two again. It was this part (the disorderly eater) which had started to recoup my interest, but it was a bit too silly and was over before I really started to think I might enjoy it.

I really didn't get this constant separation of Paama and Asige, although I could understand why she wouldn't want to be around him. I was like, "Get a divorce already!" The biggest problem for me was that when Paama wasn't looking stupid, she was looking like a doormat or a coward, running away instead of taking charge and dealing with these issues. There were African "bad spirits" taking human form and interfering with people. Paama was given a magic pestle and then some spirit came after her seeking to recover it, and the whole thing dissolved into a hot mess, and I lost all interest. In the end I found I was skimming more and more of it just to get to the end and see if anything happened. It really didn't, so I can't recommend this one at all. Robin Miles's reading and characterizations were so-so, some good and some annoying, so that didn't help. Audio books tend to be a more experimental form of reading for me than other formats, so I expect more of them to fail to capture my interest. This one was one of the failures, and I can't recommend it as a worthy read.

Change of Life by Samantha Bryant

Rating: WARTY!

Errata:
"the flange of a Ouija board"? The planchette, not the flange!
"experimenting on the populous" Populace, not populous!

Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is the sequel to Going Through the Change by Samantha Bryant, which I reviewed very favorably back in August of 2015.. I have to say up front that I was much less pleased with this one for a variety of reasons which I shall discuss shortly. The story is that of some mature women who undergo changes which equip them with superpowers when all they expected was menopause or a quiet retirement. I enjoyed reading a story about more mature women for once. Such stories are rare, and well-told and engaging ones rarer still. In the first book, Patricia O'Neill grows scales on her skin. Jessica Roark discovers that she can fly - or at least float. Helen Braeburn learns that she can create fire - and survive it - and she becomes the villain of the piece. Linda Alvarez changes, rather abruptly, into a man with very unusual strength.

This novel picks up not long after the first one finishes, with the girls moving on with their lives as best they can now their secret is out. Sort of. The story begins with Linda Alvarez, now officially renamed Leonel - although why that name rather than say, 'Lyndon', is not explained. Neither is it explained why she adopts a man's name given that her thought processes are very much a woman's at this point, since she's literally a woman occupying a male body. She apparently never heard of a boy named Sue! 'Lyndon' is a boy's name with a similar sound, although it doesn't mean the same as 'Linda' does (Spanish for beautiful).

Most names which mean 'beautiful' are female names, so Linda would need to be named something like Hermoso or Bonito, neither of which have quite the same feel. How about Bo, short for Beauregard? It's just a suggestion. Fortunately, Leonel still has the love of her husband who is conveniently bisexual (at least she hopes she still has his love), and meanwhile she's training to be an agent with the government, along with Jessica, and trying to track down the villain of the previous volume.

This volume introduces a new villain, but for me, the problems with the tale too many to really enjoy it. This volume did not have the original and inventive feel of the first; there was very little action in it; it was overly long for the story it told, and it consequently moved very slowly. On top of that, we learned nothing about how or why the women changed the way they did, so there was no more depth added there. Worse, the ending was very dissatisfying, with the villain escaping, so now it's become like an annoying episodic TV series with a seasonal arc. In short, the novel embodied what I like least about series and why I do not favor them, except for a very few rare and treasured instances.

Some parts were very entertaining. I particularly liked Jessica in this one whereas I think I preferred Linda in the first. Jessica was bouncy and energetic and I enjoyed her scenes, but these were the only ones I really enjoyed. The problem as that Jessica never got to show her stuff. She was always on a leash and neither did Linda nor Patricia get let-off the leash for that matter. It was like they were being held back, and this is fine in order to build expectations in the beginning of the story, but at some point you have to let your super heroes loose, and when they're held back for the entire story, all you do is engender disappointment and irritation. At least that's how it is with me.

Overall, the pace in this volume was lethargic, and the contrast between this volume and the last, and between Jessica's scenes here and the chapters featuring other characters was very noticeable. Talking of bouncing, there was a lot of bouncing around between characters too. I felt a bit like a pinball! While the novel is commendably not told in first person, for which I thank the author, the short chapters got me invested in one character's story only to find I was quickly ripped away from that into another character's world, where I would start to get settled only to be ripped away again. It made for a choppy and unpleasant read for me.

There was a lot of telling here rather than showing as well, and some of the characters I couldn't get invested in because reading about them felt more like this was a daytime TV show than ever it was a super-hero story. I'm very much in favor of writers who offer a different take on a given genre, in this case super powers and the people imbued with them. This is why I liked the first book in this series so much, but I don't like soap operas, and this had that feel to it, and it cropped up far too often for my taste.

The story was also rather deceitful in some regards, because all these internal monologues gave the superficial appearance of delving into a character's feelings and relationships, yet in the final analysis, we never really got to see those relationships in action. Linda, for example, was fretting about her husband, who had been the dominant stereotypical male (which makes me wonder what Linda saw in him in the first place).

In this story, we learn that he's not dealing with this role-reversal, as Linda takes up a career and he feels like he's being nudged into a back seat. The problem is that all we ever get is Linda's take on it. We never get her husband's views except through Linda's mind. It's like men have no role to play in this story unless they're a problem, or a character who seems to be there solely as a love or flirtation interest. Frankly, it felt genderist to me.

The ending was the biggest disappointment because the whole story had these two women, Jessica and Leonel, training like they were building towards some big showdown with evil, yet in the end, the story fizzled and the villain escaped not though any great villainous power or devious plan, but through sheer incompetence on the part of the very operatives who had been training supposedly so diligently and capably!

Leonel was sidelined completely at the end, and Jessica and Patricia were effectively hobbled, so there really was no showdown and no real super hero moment, let alone a real team effort. I was truly disappointed having gone through a very long build-up for an ending that was significantly less than thrilling. I wish the author all the best with this series but it's not one I want to continue following, and I can't in good faith recommend this as a worthy read. I think I would have enjoyed it more had the first story been complete in itself, and this second novel been set in a new location with a totally different group of characters who underwent, perhaps, something similar to the first set. Instead we have a second volume that felt less than the sum of the first.

Miraculous Origins by Thomas Astruc, Quentin, Sebastien Thibaudeau

Rating: WORTHY!

Not to be confused with Miraculous Origins by Cheryl Black!

Taken from a French TV show and transformed into an entertaining comic book, this is the origin story of Ladybug (aka Marinette Dupain-Cheng) and Cat Noir (aka Adrien Agreste), two young French teenagers who are given their powers through jewels called 'Miraculous'. The jewels are curated by little creatures called Kwami. Marinette's, called Tikki, permits her to transform into Ladybug, complete with flesh-hugging Harlequin mask à la Green Lantern.

Adrien (I'm sorry but I can't see or hear that name without hearing Rocky calling to his girlfriend) has a similar kwami, Plagg, which I find to be the cooler of the two. Plagg is reminiscent of Hiccup's dragon, Night Fury, in the How to Train Your Dragon movie. Hawk Moth is the arch villain who wishes only to steal their miraculous and in their everyday life, the villain is Chloé Bourgeois, a stereotypical spoiled-brat who is the Mayor's daughter and a rival for Adrienne's affection. The action takes place, refreshingly outside of the USA, in Paris.

Neither of the two kids, despite working together as heroes and despite the total inadequacy of their 'masks' as a disguise - the equivalent of Clark Kent's eyeglasses - knows the other is also their classmate in school, but they work beautifully together, Ladybug coolly deflecting all of Cat Noir's advances (ironically, Ladybug has eyes only for Adrien!), and the pair inevitably, after some pratfalls, defeating the villain. The two are like an inverse of Marvel's Spider-Man (here represented by Ladybug and every bit as nimble and athletic) and DC's Catwoman. The villains are puppets of Hawk Moth, transformed into evil-doers by the butterflies he employs to deliver evil super powers to them while staying in the shadows himself. He "evilizes" them and makes'em do his dirty work for him!

Out of curiosity, I watched two of the episodes on TV. They are episodic (you can watch them in any order and it makes no difference), but they're also extremely formulaic. Someone of Marinette's acquaintance (close or not so close) has bad feelings over a defeat, Hawk Moth senses this somehow, and dispatches a butterfly to convert those feelings into super-powered evil, and Ladybug and Cat Noir have to defeat them inventively. It's pretty much the same in every episode from what I've seen, and I hope the comic book version, which seems a bit more mature, stretches and takes more risks than the TV version does.

The Amazone conglomerate wants two bucks a pop for these TV episodes, but they're free on You Tube. Sometimes I think Google is hardly better than Amazon, but bless 'em for this, so I was at least able to take a brief look. The stories I watched were amusing and very cute. I always like a good time travel story, which one episode featured, but the shows are certainly not something to which I'd become addicted; then it's not aimed at me, and it is a very successful show. This comic is the origin story. It's less "cute" than the TV show and a bit more gritty, and it's just as entertaining. The art is good - very much in the 3D computer mode rather than the traditional drawing and coloring mode. The story lines are not bad and the execution works.

When I first saw the comic I thought it was about two girls, but the blond is Adrien. I also thought the characters were much younger - middle-grade rather than older teenagers - so I was rather concerned about the sexualization of Ladybug with her skin-tight suit. It's still a problem - as it is with all female super heroes - but since she's older and Cat Noir is decked-out pretty much the same, I was less concerned about it than I was when I thought she was twelve or thirteen. At least the genders are treated equally, for what that's worth! Ladybug's costume is somewhat ameliorated by the playfully black-spotted ladybug motif, so maybe it's not so bad by comic book standards. I thought the ears and tail on Cat Noir were an interesting touch, and at least Ladybug is shown to be very much her own person and the more dominant of the two.

So, all in all I recommend this as a worthy read.

Battlestar Galactica Six by JT Krul, Igor Lima, Rod Rodolfo

Rating: WORTHY!

This combines issues 1 through 5 of the individual comics and tells the story of a character from Battlestar Galactica, the rebooted TV series from 2004. I wasn't impressed by the overuse of "cover" (or cover backing or facing) illustrations - there are six of them before the story even begins. I know this is the way it's done in comic books, so they must really hate trees! This was clearly designed for a print edition with zero concessions made to the ebook format.

I really don't care about covers, not even for comic books. It's the story which is important to me and in a graphic novel, artwork that looks like it mattered to the book's creators. Other than that it can come without a cover for all I care. It sure doesn't need three such that I have to swipe through six screens before I can start reading the story! If you want to include those, fine! Put 'em in the back where I don't have to swipe through 'em to get at the story! For a futuristic story, the e-design was antiquated.

Aside form that, the book was fun and interesting. I think it could have been better told, but following the stories of several different versions of Six was entertaining and worthwhile reading from my PoV. She was one of the most intriguing characters from the TV show, and the actor who portrayed her is currently in the TV show Lucifer which happens to be a favorite of mine. Tricia Helfer is playing another great role as Lucifer's mom!

The interior artwork was very good. Some pictures felt merely functional, like they had been rather dashed-off, but others felt like they were really cared over. I particularly liked one of the full page spreads, especially an early one featuring six in a space suit heading down to the mine she worked in, with the nighttime backdrop of the planet Troy visible through a window. I also liked the action scene where the jerk of a guy tries to rape Six when she's showering, and he learns that you really don't want to mess with a Cylon, not even one who looks like she might be easy-pickings.

We get to see several stories, all of them for one reason or another ending up in the rebirth tank on some Cyclon installation. The feeling of coming home and being among friends or family is well done, and even a bit startling given the negative impression people had of the Cylons in the TV show in those early days. Overall, I recommend this as a worthy read if you're interested in the Battlestar Galactica world, and perhaps even if you're not and might want to read a bit about it.

November Fox by Esther Bertram

Rating: WARTY!

Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I had to DNF this novel because it made no sense and was not well-written in my judgment. It employs two voices, one of which was first person which I typically detest. Why authors do this I do not know, because very few of them do it well. I can see no rational for it here, when two third person voices would have been better. The ending (which I skipped to in order to confirm I had correctly divined it) isn't original and is telegraphed pretty well from very early in the novel so it comes as no surprise. When the ending is known, there needs to be an interesting journey toward it, but here there was not. I was bored and found myself skipping sections in order to find an interesting bit. The problem was that those became increasingly scarce the further I progressed.

The story felt like it was being told by a stalker in some regards which did not sit well with me. Erica, the narrator, is watching November Fox, a pop diva, on what appear to be TV monitors spread across a city. This was another annoyance to me, because there was zero world-building here, so I found myself very confused most of the time about what exactly, was happening, and where, and how! I started losing interest and lost it altogether when a talking elephant arrived in the cast. The elephant spoke German, so we got bits and pieces of German which was then tediously translated for us. I hate that in novels. I think if you're going to have a character speak a foreign language you need to have the character speak English and indicate the foreign nature of the tongue with a brief description up front and then an occasional reminder through the rest of the text in some form or another.

The way it was done here made it seem like we had a condescending Disney character, and it was truly annoying and felt insulting to Germans. German is an intriguing language with a fascinating (at least to me) mix of harshly masculine and endearingly feminine tones to it, and it can be beautiful to hear, but that's not how it came across in this novel. I didn't get at all why German was its language! Elephants do not hail from Germany. If it had spoken some Indian or African dialect, it would have made more sense to me.

I concede that it's certainly possible for an elephant to be born in Germany, but to have one simply show up speaking German with no explanation for it was far more of an annoyance than ever it was of interest to me. Its frequent spitting out of "Ja ja!" actually did jar and made it sound like a yahoo in terms of how brutal it was on the senses. I felt it demeaned the language, and I really didn't like this character. It was this that constituted the final straw for me, and I quickly lost all interest in trying to plod on through this book.

I wish the author, who is evidently a composer, a musician, and a producer as well as a novelist, all the best in her endeavors, but I cannot in good faith recommend this one at all based on what I read of it.

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Rating: WARTY!

This one sounded from the blurb like it might make for an interesting read, but all that ultimately means is that the blurb writer did their job. It doesn't mean that the writer did! This was a fail for me. It started out gamely enough as a steampunk story, but then it did a sidestep into high fantasy with gnomes, dwarfs, and trolls, and I was wondering if I'd entered some other universe. Apparently I had, This is Terry Pratchett's 40th Discworld novel, and I now have zero interest in learning any more about Discworld!

It came back to the steam punk story after too long of a while, but by the time it did, I'd lost all interest in pursuing this. I don't mind mixing up genres, but I have no time for trolls and dwarfs, I really don't. On top of this, the novel reminded me very much of Douglas Adams. I like Adams, but I don't like his fiction! I never knew him personally, but I did go to one of his talks one time and I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed, and favorably reviewed his non-fiction book, Last Chance to See about endangered species, but if there's one thing I can't stand, it's a Brit writer babbling on and on humorously and in an annoyingly self-satisfied manner. It reminds me too much of my own inane parodies!

No one in their right mind should take those seriously, and I honestly could not take this seriously. I certainly can't recommend it based on the ten percent I could stand to listen to. There's no point in stoically plodding on to the bitter end in a novel that quite simply doesn't get your heart beating, when you can ditch it and be off and running with the next one that will get your pulse up. Life's too short!