The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade

Rating: WORTHY!

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

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

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

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

The Day They Came to Arrest the Book by Nat Hentoff

Rating: WARTY!

This is an old (1980's) novel, but it tells what could have been an interesting story. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is on the school reading list this year, but some parents are objecting to the way it characterizes African Americans, and has a subtext of homosexuality (so they argue) if not pedophilia.

It's been so long since I read this book that I honestly can't even remember what it was about except in very general terms. I can say it left very little impression on me and I'd probably rate it 'warty' if I were to read and review it now. Quite frankly, I've never understood this American obsession with teaching the so-called classics when there are much better and far more engaging and relevant modern novels which can be brought into classrooms.

I did like that the author gave good arguments in favor of requesting the book removed, but it's not like the deck was loaded all on one side, which made for intelligent reading, which is a good thing in a novel aimed at middle-graders and young adults. The story is in many ways laid out like a court case - both sides give their evidence, and it's up to you, the jury to bring in a fair verdict, although there is a verdict returned in the story, too.

One thing I found very curious is that the author seems to insist upon using the full name - first and last - of all of the adult characters very nearly every single time he mentions them, at least in the first few chapters. This was very irritating. But I got even with him by playing with his name. I love names and I love playing with them. 'Nat' is short for Nathaniel, or Nathan, and this author's last name begins with Hen, so if you run the name together, you can get Nathen Toff out of it. I'm just weird that way!

My problem with this book was that there were some really good arguments which never got laid out, and the story itself felt rather antiquated. I think the author could have done a much better job and done it using a better example. That was really the problem. It was all black and white with no real grey areas. I can't recommend this novel and did not like the rather misleading title.

There is some interesting information online if you want to read more about real - and modern - censorship issues in schools:
American Library Association page on school censorship issues. Here's some recent news on censorship of a John Green novel which is fine by me - not for censoring it as inappropriate reading material for school kids, but for being a mind-numbing bunch of drivel! LOL! Here's another link to the National Association Against Censorship. There are lots more you can find online.

The Changelings by Christina Soontornvat

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an advance review copy which I was happy to read. It's aimed at middle grade (eight to twelve-year-olds) so it's not for me, and parts of it were not to my taste, but for the intended age group I think it's absolutely perfect. Isabella and younger sister Henriette have moved to a new home (why goes pretty much unexplained - yes, grandma died and left them her home, but they didn't have to move into it!). Izzy learns that the woman next door, through the woods, is a witch! is she? Maybe! Izzy and Hen go to spy on her and shortly afterwards, Izzy sees Hen disappear into the forest, hypnotized by flute music!

Feisty and capable Izzy chases after her and ends up in fairy-land with three outlaw changelings. What's going on here? Izzy has to find out and pursue her kid sister before the evil queen can...what is she going to do with the little girl? I have to say that these characters were beautifully drawn with words. Both Izzy and Hen were strong female characters, self-motivated, strong at heart, and independent. The thee changelings were fun, interesting, and complex. I was particularly intrigued by Dree. Lug (from the name on down) was a bit of a cliche, but even he wasn't all trope and no substance. The evil queen was delightful and also self-motivated. She was just on the wrong side, unfortunately, but nonetheless very real and believable. And the enigmatic Peter? Did he really deserve the title "Good"?

I loved this story overall, and I recommend it for middle grade readers who like a good adventure, and are too old for paper-thin Disney Princesses. If I had any complaints, they would be about the claim that King Arthur was just a made-up character. He's really not! Yes, the shining knights at the round table are fiction, but there really was a man beneath the legend. One of the characters said this, however, and there's no reason a fictional character could not be just as ill-informed as a real person! The other thing, and this really bothered me, was when one of the characters said "Just don't make me a goblin or a fat lady." It is unnecessarily cruel to put this idea into young children's minds: that overweight people, females in particular, are akin to goblins? Not a good idea. Fortunately that as the only distasteful part of this book. Even authors with awesome names shouldn't be allowed to get away with dissing people because of their weight! And yes, I know a character said this, but that doesn't make it go away. For the rest of it - it was great!

Anna The Girl Witch Vol 2 Wandering Witch by Max Candee

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the second I have read of this series, and although I am not a fan of series, and this one is definitely outside of my age range, I found it to be as entertaining as the first, which I rated positively. There were a couple of portions where I became bored, notably when Anna spends so much time with her grandmother, Baba Yaga before she goes on her quest. This wasn't entertaining to me. I am not a fan of Baba Yaga stories at all, which was one reason this bored me. The time spent in this endeavor seemed to really drag and produce very little fruit, and there were, for me, far too many pages expended on Baba. The quest was much more fun, and really kicked the story back into high gear, but then we hit another tedious section where Anna is involved with this really annoying cat, and frankly I skipped most of that because it was even more boring than the time she was with Baba.

Those sections aside, I enjoyed the story very much and consider it a worthy read for the intended age range. Anna continues to be a strong young girl who wants to do good even as she fears that using magic is somehow allowing the same darkness into her heart which has overtaken and possessed her grandmother. It's a bit scary for Anna, who is trying to find where her father is and rescue him. Can Anna rebel against her grandmother - who is seeking to own her as she tried to own her father - without letting either that darkness or her grandmother take her over?

Anna learns a lot more about her family history in this volume and frankly, it was a bit too much for my taste. Maybe others will like the firehose of family history, but I would have preferred the same volume delivered as a trickle over the length of the story. It was interesting in some ways, but it rather deadened the mind when so much of it was unloaded all at once, and it really brought the story-flow to a bit of a halt.

There are moments of good humor, though, which helped to lighten the load, despite the rather oppressive tone of the volume as a whole, such as when I read "...the sound of an enraged tiger in the taiga." which made me laugh out loud. Anna is an impressive character who fears the consequences of her use of magic, but who also wants to do some good with it if she can. Besides there's a father to rescue, and a matching hand for her disembodied helper, Squire, to be found. I recommend this for the age range, but it's not a series I am interested in following for myself, especially when I have so much else to read!

Becoming Naomi Léon by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Rating: WORTHY!

Published in Spanish as Yo, Naomi León, and read rather nicely by Annie Kozuch, this short story is about Naomi, of course, who lives with her "special needs" brother Owen, and her grandmother, after her own mother pretty much left them in the lurch. And now she's back, from outer space, she shows up at the door with that dumb look upon her face. They should have changed their trailer park, they should have fled upon a whim, if they'd known for just one second she'd be back to bother them! She's returned with her new boyfriend Clive, and a new name, to reclaim her kids, but Clive, it seems, has an agenda which is more tightly aligned with claiming dependent benefits than it is with wanting to love and care for two young kids. In fact, Mom wants only Naomi, not Owen.

At several audiobook web sites, Naomi's name is given as Naomi Guadalupe Zamora Outlaw, but in the actual book (which I take as canon over the blurbs!), her name is actually Naomi Soledad Léon Outlaw, the last part being her grandmother's name, and one which has brought her grief at the hands (or more accurately at the lips) of some moronic kids in school. The ordered and structured life they have in Lemon Tree, California (a lemon tree, my dear Watson!), where they live in a small trailer nicknamed 'Baby Beluga', might end up as a rather reckless road trip to find their father, Santiago, who evidently now lives in Oaxaca, Mexico. He was run out of their lives by mom, who might just now be pushing them back into his arms.

The kids' names didn't seem to fit, of me. Would a Santiago name his kids Naomi and Owen? It seemed just as unlikely that their mom would do it, given that she's just pretentiously changed her name to Skyla. I'm not sure what Skyla's motive is. Maybe she's just going along with Clive's plan, but after she slaps Naomi across the face, Naomi decides where she wants to be, and it ain't by momma's side.

There was one unintentional amusing moment when the narrator said "syrupy glaze" and with the Mexican element and the religious element to this story, along with my warped mind, I couldn't help but think of this as 'syrup igles" - but igles isn't the word for church, as it happens, it's iglesia, so it didn't quite work but almost! it works a lot better in French: syrup église!

The novel slipped a bit for me. It was interesting right up until they went to Mexico and we got bogged down in the radish carving festival, but that didn't last long, and it picked up again when Santiago arrived on the scene. Overall I liked this and felt it to be a worthy read (despite the fact that it has won some medals and honors!), and I recommend it.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Rating: WARTY!

This audiobook started out well, but rapidly deteriorated into tedium maximum™! Seriously. The premise, of a young, purportedly intelligent orphan managing to get himself into a secret society, and discovering that this society is investigating subliminal messages being transmitted over the airwaves to come out into our minds through TV and radio isn't original, but it does make for a promising start to a middle-grade story. The problem was that once this set-up was put in place, nothing happened! I mean literally nothing happened. The story just rambled on and on and on and on with these kids whining and discussing, and arguing and contemplating, and cogitating and regurgitating, and NOTHING HAPPENED!

We're told that Mr Benedict has tried going to the authorities, but that they paid him no attention because the subliminal messaging is getting to the adults, too, because you know the only thing that all adults do is listen to TV and radio all the time. It was nonsensical. The question as to why Mr Benedict had not gone to the media or published his proof on the Internet was never even raised. No wonder this moron needed kids to help him. Any kid is smarter than he was, whether they had passed the weird-ass tests Reynard had to take or not! And let;s not even get into the evil twin trope which it takes these geniuses forever to figure out.

I quit it about forty percent in because I could not stand the dull story, and the voice of the reader was just awful. The guy who reads this, Del Roy, must have been in his eighties when he recorded it, and while that voice would have been great had the story been about political machinations or boardroom subterfuge, it was completely out of place here. There wasn't a paragraph went by where I wasn't yanked out of the story at some point because of the incongruity of this croaky voice trying to impersonate these kids. It didn't work, and neither did this story. I can't recommend it.

The Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman

Rating: WARTY!

Read by Joshua Swanson, who doesn't do a bad job, this library audio book started out very intriguingly. I found myself wondering how useful obsidian would be for a blade. It's a material rather like glass, and so is readily shattered, but there are finds of obsidian being used historically for arrow heads. It can be chipped to a very sharp edge, so maybe an obsidian blade isn't such a stretch.

I have to say that the story caught my interest right off the bat. This kid Tucker is out in the yard and his father, who is a man of the church, is on the roof fixing a broken shingle. When Tucker hears a cry, he runs out thinking his dad fell off the roof, but dad is nowhere to be seen. What Tucker does see is what appears to be a shimmering disk hovering at the edge of the roof. Hmm!

His dad shows up later with a young girl in tow, whom he says he found in town. He denies all Tucker's suggestions that he fell off the roof, which is odd to Tucker, who is used to telling lies to get himself out of trouble, but who isn't used to his dad doing the same thing. Dad says that the girl, Lahlia is in need of adoption, but she seems rather strange and doesn't talk other than to say Tucker's name. His dad has also bizarrely lost his faith, now no longer believing there is a God. It turns out that Tucker's mom was also adopted, and it seems pretty obvious from the start that that both she and Lahlia, the new girl, come from a parallel dimension, which means that Tucker is half from this dimension and half from the other. Okay, I'm hooked!

So far so good, but the novel began to go downhill, and I had a few questions. Take the girl's name, for example. If she isn't talking, then how does anyone know her name, much less the spelling of it? I actually didn't know the spelling myself, which is one problem with audio books, but why is it Lahlia, instead of say, Laleah? Did she write it down for them?! The way the reader pronounces it makes it seem much more like the latter than the former to me. Obviously it's that way because the author chose it to be that way, but this is a writing issue worthy of some consideration for budding authors. To me, names are important in fiction.

Talking of writing issues, there was another curious one. When Tucker's parents disappear with an oddly uninformative note (obviously they've gone back to the other parallel world from which Tucker's mom hailed, but he doesn't know this and takes a tedious amount of time to figure out), Tucker learns that his uncle, who is known as Kosh, will take care of him in their absence. Shortly after they meet, I read this sentence: "He walked towards Tucker, stopped about eight feet away, and peered at him closely." I am trying to figure out how you peer at someone closely from eight feet away. I think I know what the writer was trying to convey, but to me he did it in a poor way. Just a thought from a writing perspective! Plus this 'initial' meeting makes little sense given what's coming later.

That "peering" reminded me of a character from the TV show, Heroes and the subsequent miniseries, which evidently failed to launch successfully. Character Matt Parkman can read minds, but the actor's portrayal of this made me laugh. When he was trying to catch someone's thoughts, he would frown and cock his head and push his head forwards, and it just looked ridiculous to me - as ridiculous as the head twist the 'wesen' characters do when changing faces in the TV show Grimm, which I think looks equally ridiculous, although I love that show. I call it the Sergeant Wu show because he's the most entertaining character in it, talking of facial expressions. But I digress! I imagined this Matt Parkman act when I read that sentence about Kosh, so it made me laugh too. This was probably not the effect the author was seeking!

These shimmering disks or lenses of air show up wherever Tucker goes, which seems to me to be too much unless he is somehow causing, triggering, or attracting them. That was a possibility, so I let that ride, but the first time Tucker travels through one, he ends up atop one of the twin towers in New York city right before the first jetliner hits. What are the odds of that? I have to say I have little time for uninventive time-travel stories which have their characters arrive at critical points in history (typically US history for US stories, and so on) or have them meet famous and influential characters. What are the odds of that? It seems to me to be a lazy way to write such a novels - picking an easy target rather than doing the work of writing a more realistic and more creative story with unknowns from history.

Worse than this though was how Tucker came to be there. How did the wormhole (or whatever it is), link the top of his uncle's barn to the top of the WTC? He was nowhere near NYC geographically, and nowhere near the elevation of the towers vertically, so how did this work? And why were the disks always up in the air - and conveniently next to a roof? Why were the spiritual beings known as Klaatu? Was that short for Klaatu barada nikto?! Maybe an explanation would be forthcoming. I had to keep on listening to find out, but I soon grew tired of unanswered questions and nonsensical rambling about the Klaatu and the wormholes. The story made less sense as it went on, rather than more sense, and I ditched it after a while as a DNF because I couldn't stand to listen to any more. I can't recommend this one. And I never did find out what the obsidian blade had to do with anything - doubtlessly because I dropped this one. Worse, though, is that this is a series, and I'm not a fan of series, especially not ones which start out so badly!

Interworld by Neil Gaiman, Michael Reeves

Rating: WARTY!

I'd like to like Neil Gaiman. I loved the Doctor Who episode he wrote a couple of seasons back, and I really liked his novel Stardust, and I liked his Underwhere graphic novel, but ever since those, it seems that he's determined to thwart my every effort to like what he writes. A few days ago I read a The Sandman Overture graphic novel and thought it was a nasty mess. I decided to try again with this middle-grade audiobook and I thought, finally, I'd found something I could listen to, but after enjoying the opening chapters, the novel went the same way that Sandman had: sideways, but in this case literally. It then devolved into nonsense and became just annoying. Maybe middle-graders will like this gobbledygook, but it sure doesn't leave anything but distaste in my reading mouth. I can't imagine my own kids finding it entertaining.

I say reading, but I mean listening since this was an audiobook, and to be fair ('cos I'm normally as unfair as I can get!), Christopher Evan Welch didn't do too bad of a job reading it. The story is about a kid named Joey. He makes a big deal about his lack of any sense of direction, which is not only irrelevant to the story, but it makes him look like a moron who doesn't even know where the sun rises. I don't know why any writer would do that to their main character.

The novel is first person PoV, which is sucky, and the authors admit how limiting it is by having "interlogs" told by another party. It's a clunker. Tell it in third and be done with it instead of performing these ridiculous acrobatics, for god's sakes. Get a clue.

Joey ends up wandering in a fog and no, it's not a metaphor. He comes out in a parallel world where his own mom, who has no son named Joey, but instead, a daughter named Josephine live. He's rescued from his ridiculously prolonged confusion by a guy named 'J', which is evidently 'Jay' - it's impossible to tell in an audiobook. In fact, everyone he meets thereafter - on the good guys side - seems to have a name beginning with a 'J'. No idea why. It was at this point that the story went downhill for me and never recovered.

Apparently there is an infinity of worlds which range on a scale from scientifically inclined at one end, which are inexplicably named binary worlds, and magically-inclined at the other end, inexplicably named HEX worlds. Earth - Joey's Earth that is - is of course in the middle. Despite this veritable plethora of worlds, there is a battle for control of them between various forces, and the "walkers" are charged with keeping a balance between them. Why? No idea. But you know there always has to be a balance even in a universe where the laws of physics are suspended, right? Because, well, it's the law. Either that or authors are either too dumb or lazy to think up something new and original. I'm sorry but no. None of this made any sense, and Gaiman's obsessive addiction to describing mathematical concepts in the Interworld, larding it up with geometrical ideas and paradoxes was just boring, and that's all it was. Like I said, maybe some middle graders will be mesmerized, but I was yawning. This was a DNF and I cannot recommend it.

Cogling by Jordan Elizabeth Mierek

Rating: WARTY!

I was asked by the author if I would review this after I gave a favorable review to a previous novel by this author: Escape From Witchwood Hollow back in February 2016. Well be careful what you ask for! I would have liked to have recommended this one, too, but I cannot. I was very disappointed in Cogling because it was so disturbingly far from what the previous novel had been. This felt like a first draft of a first novel by a new writer, whereas 'Witchwood Hollow', which also felt like a first novel, was a lot better-crafted and a lot more credible in its world than this one was.

This novel had a prologue which I skipped, as I do all prologues without exception. Never once have I missed anything by doing this, which only goes to show how useless prologues are. If it's worth reading, put it in chapter one, or simply omit it! Don't sacrifice any more trees to prologues! That said, this story was not technically bad in terms of spelling, grammar, and so on. Even the overall story was, in very general terms, an interesting idea, but it fell far short in the details, and while it was not an awful read, it was not a satisfying one at all for me.

The issues I had were many and ranged from general to specific. A specific one, for example, would be the use of 'kohl'. At least this author didn't write it as 'coal', which I have seen in a novel, but the phrase used was 'dark kohl' Since kohl is black, that phrase made little sense. To write, 'Kohl darkened her silver eyes' is one thing, but to say "Dark kohl rimmed her silver eyes" is not well-phrased at all. There were many instances of such suspect wording, each of which took me out of the suspension of disbelief and reminded me that I was reading a novel and not immersed in a alternate world.

The story is about Edna, a fifteen year old girl who discovers that her brother has been replaced by a cogling - a clockwork life-like replica, and she embarks upon a quest into the world of hags to rescue him. The hags use the dreams of children to power their machinery. This was my first problem, because it seemed like all that was being done here is that hags stole children to power machines to make more coglings which were used to replace the children being stolen. What was the point? Obviously they were seeking to take over the human world in revenge for a sour past history, but the hags had powerful magical and could control and enchant humans so why were the coglings needed? It made no sense at all to me.

The sad thing is that Edna is not allowed to rescue her brother alone. So much for girl power! Instead, she needs the trope YA studly male to prop her up and give her validation. That was bad enough, but the happenstance that she fell into the sphere of influence of the sole male in the entire country who was best set-up to help her was too much to take seriously, especially given his original story, which would be too much of a spoiler to give away here. The bottom line was that his behavior and living circumstances were simply not credible given his origin, and we were offered nothing to explain why or how he'd ended up where he had.

In this world, there is a history of antagonism between the hags (and their male equivalents, the ogres) on one side, and the humans on the other, and this is a story of the hags' revenge. These were not the only 'magical' creatures; there were others, but none of them were really given any freedom to breathe, and so they were consistently lifeless. It felt like they were simply added as pure MacGuffins or dei ex machina for no other reason than to help out Edna's quest, and then they disappeared completely. Most of them appeared so briefly that it was impossible to get a decent handle on them. I liked the idea of the 'foxkins', but the 'nix' and the 'tomtars' left me unentertained. Sometimes it seemed like these were actually mutated humans, and other times not, and there was so little to go on, that it left me frustrated that they had appeared at all.

I think one serious problem was that the author tried to do too much in one story. There was literally everything in this but the kitchen sink - and there may well have been one of those. In fact, I think there was in one kitchen scene. But there was fantasy, and magic, and steam-punk, and romance, and Oliver Twist (not in person), and a quest, and a hot air balloon which was not steam-punk, but which was called an airship which is often associated with steam-punk, and it felt like lots of little bits rather than one whole. It was the difference between Thanksgiving dinner and the next day's jumbled and assorted leftovers.

This story evidently arose (according to the acknowledgements) at least in part from a 'Victorian' fare in Rome, New York. I think that was the first problem: that Americans tend not to do Renaissance or Victorian well, or to overdo it, and consequently this novel was sadly warped, dragged down by a lack of authenticity. Granted we're not told explicitly where it was set (if we are, I missed it), but it seemed like it was professing to be set in Britain, as steam punk and Victorian dramas typically are, but there were far too many Americanisms for me to take that idea seriously.

For example, there are no klutzes in Britain - or at least there were not in Victorian times. There are clots, which means largely the same thing, but 'klutz' is a very American term which came from Germany via Yiddish, I think. Of course, American influence being what it is in the world, for good or ill, people probably do use that term in Britain now, but they didn't in Victorian times. This was as out of place as the word 'jerky' was. This is very much an Americanism, taken from the South American term char qui. It's not British.

There are very few cities in Britain which actually have the word 'city' in their name. Manchester City, for example, is a football (soccer) club. The city itself is simply named Manchester. The same goes for Birmingham, Exeter, Bristol, Leicester Norwich, and so on. Every single city in this story was named -something- City. The Brits don't have this insecurity which forces them to title a city as -something- City lest it be mistaken - gods forbid! - for a town!

Britain has no venomous snakes except for the adder (and yes, it does come in black!), which no one in Britain takes very seriously (notwithstanding scare stories in newspapers last year), so this Indiana Jones scene where kids are dumped into a pit of snakes wasn't impressive. Why would hags even do this when they have magic and can simply kill the kids outright? The real problem here though, was that the snakes are described as poisonous. No snake, to my knowledge, is poisonous, and by that I mean that you can eat any snake and it won't poison you; however, if you get bitten by one (and you're not in Britain!) then you may well become ill or die from it. Those snakes are venomous, not poisonous, and writers should understand this. Strictly speaking the British adder can do damage, but it's so rare that anyone is bitten, it's not typically an issue.

Edna Mather is supposedly fifteen, yet she behaves much younger. The story read like a middle-grade novel rather than a young-adult one. Several other reviews I've seen mention this and while I agree, I'm not sure I arrived at the conclusion the same way. The thing you have to remember is that this is not set in modern times and you cannot expect a fifteen year old Victorian era girl to have the same outlook as a modern one.

By our standards, she would seem ridiculously naive and sheltered, even though she would (had she any privilege) be far better read (and in better-written literature too!) than most modern fifteen-year-olds. In Edna's case, she was one step away from living on the street, and was largely in charge of running her home and taking care of her kid brother, so she should be expected to have the maturity which inevitably comes with that circumstance, yet she really didn't. She was desperately intent upon rescuing her brother, but this was all she had going for her, and it made her seem more juvenile than he was!

Worse than this though, for me, was the fact that Edna had magic in her - a magic which she thought was evil - a fact of which we're re-apprised to a really annoying degree. The problem for me was not so much that though, as it was that she never employed this magic. I kept waiting for her to go bad-ass and unleash it, but she didn't except in very minor and largely unimportant ways, and even then it wasn't clear if it was her magic or the magic embedded in this enchanted brooch she carried. This was really annoying. Why give her this power if it's not going to be employed in the entire story, even in dire cases where any kid who had magic would have pulled it out regardless of how they felt about it. It made no sense and was a major disappointment for me. It also made her look even more helpless and ineffectual than she already appeared.

I noted the author makes mention in the acknowledgements of a steamy romance between Ike and Edna, but there was no such thing. There was almost no romance, thankfully, and certainly no steam (not even of the steam punk variety except in passing mentions). There was impetus for romance, either. Neither Ike nor Edna were likable, and he was such a jerk to begin with that it's hard to see how she would ever come around to finding him romantic. The 'romance' felt forced and not natural - like the author was putting it in there because she felt this was the way things had to be done, not because there was anything organic or necessary about it. It felt false to me and it didn't so much get in the way of the story, as it was an annoying distraction, like a fly buzzing around when you're trying to fall asleep.

I noticed some reviewers had talked of there being a rape or near rape in this story, but there was nothing of the sort in the version I read. There was a case of highly inappropriate conduct of a doctor threatening to kiss a patient, followed by downright abusive conduct by that same doctor, but there was no sex involved. What bothered me about this scene and the events leading up to it was something I've seen no other reviewer mention, which is the absurd abduction of Lady Rachel.

Note that I do not believe for a second that celebrities and the wealthy should have any privileged treatment by law enforcement, but also note that this novel was set in Victorian times when nobility was highly respected (if perhaps derided in private), yet here we have Lady Rachel being forcibly taken from her aunt's home by two regular police constables, without a shred of respect or deference and based solely on this aunt's say-so. This was simply not credible in Victorian times, and especially not on the say-so of an aunt without any other reason. Never once was there any mention of contacting this woman's actual parents. Lady and Lord Waxman thought their daughter had been kidnapped, and yet instead of informing them she was safe and reuniting them, the cops haul Lady Rachel off for incarceration on her aunt's whim?! This robbed the story of all credibility for me, and frankly, I almost quit reading at that point because it was one straw dog too many.

The real killer was the ending. It's no spoiler to say it was a happily-ever-after one, but only for Edna and her crew. All her ideals and claims and vows to help the poor and downtrodden which she spouted regularly throughout this story were forgotten in the end. She did nothing to help anyone. This selfishness and self-serving attitude was brought into the light earlier, when she and Ike rescue a woman from a cruel psychiatric facility, which in itself is admirable, but they do it by kidnapping a homeless girl and substituting the one for the other in the blind assumption that this psycho doctor will simply toss the girl back out onto the street when he discovers the deception. I'm sorry, but no, heroic people do not do that. Good people do not do that. Jerks and villains do that. I already disliked the two protagonists before this, but after this behavior, I had no time for them at all. Frankly, this made me wonder if this neutered "dark magic' that Edna spent the entire story fretting over, had actually risen up and claimed her after all.

So, overall, this was not a worthy read by my standards. and I cannot in good faith recommend it. Read Jordan Mierek's previous story, escape From Witchwood Hollow instead. It's much better.

It Ain't So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a kind of coming-of-age story and although I typically don't like those, this was not your stereotypical USA cutely white-washed pretense. Instead, and this was the reason I was attracted to it, it was about an Iranian girl growing-up in the USA during the time of the Iranian Hostage crisis in 1979 - 1980. It's autobiographical, but with a lot of fiction mixed in.

Note that Iranians not actually Arabic. They are Aryan, aka Indo-European. Arabs are a Semitic people, so there is a difference, although to western eyes they are all-too-often "just the same." Iran used to be known as Persia, which sounds far more exotic, doesn't it? The hostage crisis arose out of the overthrow of the US supported (or perhaps more accurately, 'puppeteered') Shah of Persia, and is one more example of the US getting itself into embarrassingly hot water because of poor foreign policy choices and grotesque short-sightedness in demonstrating a complete lack of empathy for what a people need and instead exhibiting a tunnel vision for what the US demands. I was glad to see some of this come through in the story that was told.

The whole process of having the Shah dance to the US's tune because of oil is what has led not only to the hostage crisis which brought down the Carter government (although the Reagan government for all its bluster, continued exactly the same policy!), but also directly to the present troubles which are no more than the just deserts of poor policy choices in the past. Of course, there is no excuse for taking hostages and punishing the innocent, but this punishing took place on both sides, and the Iranians began by punishing their own people after the Ayatollah took over, remember! It began with US policy effectively punishing poor Iranians. Later, Iranian students punished the US embassy people. Subsequent to that, US residents punished innocent Iranians living in the USA, and so the wheel turns. As Ghandi said, an eye for an eye ends up leaving everybody blind. What he didn't say is that if people start out blind to begin with, this exactly what we should expect.

This author does a wonderfully humorous job of depicting other events, as some of the chapter headings make clear:
Sultans of Suntan
Never Owned a Camel
and
Are You There, Allah? It’s Me, Zomorod

The crisis, for me, was rather too intrusive, although it was obviously a critical and tragic event which cast a huge shadow over their lives. That said, it wasn't such a large part of the story that it overwhelmed other things which to me were more interesting because they were less predictable. I loved the humor in contrasting Iranian life with the life she experienced in the USA, but it bothered me that the wider perspective she thought she was bringing was in its own way just as blinkered as the one she sought to supplant, since the impression given here is that an exile can only get a decent life in the USA! There is this strong suggestion that nowhere else in the world can really offer anyone a life except for the US, and while Iran was criticized routinely, this same gimlet eye was never applied to the USA except in the most limited fashion. Frankly, that's nothing but a jingoistic insult to the rest of the world!

Those complaints aside, I did enjoy this story - the humor more than the horror, but both were engaging - and I recommend it as an educational and entertaining story.

Diary of Anna the Girl Witch: Foundling Witch by Max Candee

Rating: WORTHY!

Max Candee is a rather obvious pseudonym used by an author who also uses 'Austin Briggs' for his much more adult titles (that latter is also the name of a comic book illustrator who is no longer with us). This is the first work of his that I've read. This advance review copy, which I was happy to have the chance to enjoy, is aimed at middle-grade, and it was very well done. There were some minor issues with it, but nothing to spoil it, and nothing that would bother the intended age range. Note though that this is somewhat darker and deals with more adult issues than your usual middle grade novel.

I don't usually talk about book covers because they're nothing to do with the author, typically, and all about Big publishing™ but in this case I have to comment that no, the girl witch isn't pregnant, although the cover seems to suggest she is! It's just that she's holding something against her stomach. The illustrations inside the story were not bad - line drawings with one portion colored. Anna is a red haired girl, of course, but the drawings show her hair as straight, whereas the text says it's curly, so another mismatch there, but while I am not sure they really contributed anything, the drawings were not bad at all.

It's very much the trope 'orphan coming of age to find they're really special' kind of a story, but there are some differences. For one, it was a really refreshing change to find this set somewhere other than the USA. Of course, it took a foreign author (at least I assume so. I believe "Max Candee" is Swiss, but I am not sure of it) to realize that there are people and nations and lives outside of the USA, an important fact which far too few USA authors seem to be able to grasp, I'm sorry to say.

This is, be warned, a series, and while there is thankfully no cliff-hanger at the end of volume one, there is a teaser for the next volume in the series, titled, 'Wandering Witch'. Anna, who was evidently found in Russia being raised by bears, and delivered to Geneva by her "uncle" Misha, turns thirteen and comes into an inheritance, which in this case is actually money, but not just money. She is also the recipient of a stone fist, a brief letter from her mother, and a mysteriously animated drawing. It turns out, as she slowly discovers, that Anna is a witch and is being stalked not by your usual villain, which was another delightful twist in this delightfully twisted story.

Anna proves to be strong, determined, and in the end, unstoppable. Of course, those magical powers help, but this story doesn't take itself too seriously - as her mode of witchy transportation proves beyond a doubt, and although she uses her powers for good, and against largely non-magical enemies, there is a real and serious cost to Anna for using them - a cost she has to evaluate and judge wisely each time she employs her magic. This was a refreshing change from being able to shake a stick, chant two Latin words, and cast major magic whilst suffering no cost whatsoever.

Note that Misha is a diminutive of Mikhail, which is a variant of Michael, which is a Hebrew naming meaning "Who is like God". I don't know if this author puts any meaning into his character names like I do, but it's interesting to note that Anna is derived ultimately also from the Hebrew Hannah, who was a New Testament woman who recognized the divinity of Jesus. I don't put any more stock into those myths than I do into any other myth, but it makes me wonder if the author chose these names for a reason, or if they just were names he lit upon simply because he liked them. To me, as a writer, names always mean something, and while minor character names are not that important (unless you have some secret purpose!), I like to imbue my main characters with names that mean something beyond just being a character name! I promise you I will never write a series, but if I were going to, I would definitely put a lot of thought into what the names of the main characters mean! I can't say if this author did the same thing here.

So, that aside, aside, I liked this novel very much. It was about friendship and loyalty, unexpected allies, resilience and resourcefulness, and doing the right thing. It was nice to see the magical protagonist going up against bad people rather than your usual mustache-twirling evil magician. I think this was a fun story appropriate to the age range, and without any of the fluff and flounce too many middle grade stories sprout. I recommend it as a worthy read.

The Fire Chronicle Book Two by John Stephens

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audio book written very much in the vein of the Harry Potter series, and it was read by Jim Dale. This, I think, is where the two-fold problem with it lies. It's too much like Harry Potter. That problem is not improved by having Jim Dale read it! I'm a big fan of Jim Dale and he has a mellifluous voice, but having him read a novel which has such a lot owed to HP made it seem like a rip-off. It's a junior Harry Potter without the better HP qualities, namely that adults could enjoy it as much as kids did.

The first few minutes I was listening to it, I kept having to remind myself that it was not Harry Potter, but that became easier as the story progressed, because this is very much written for middle grade and it was neither entertaining or appealing to me. There was far too much predictability and trope. Just as in HP, Kate, Michael, and Emma (the equivalent of Harry, Ron, and Hermione) are orphans who meet up with an elderly wizard (the equivalent of Dumbledore) and have magical adventures in pursuit of some horcruxes - er magical books.

Despite now starting book two (I haven't read book one, note) and being exposed to all manner of magic and magical creatures in that volume, when these kids meet up with the professor again, and he takes them to another place by traveling through a cupboard, the kids are amazed and surprised that they enter from one location and exit to another place entirely. Which part of "WIZARD" is it they don't get? This told me that these kids are morons, and I had no further wish to read of them. The fact that the professor was an information hog, telling these poor kids next-to-nothing made me detest him as much as I detested the real Dumbledore. This series may interest incurious kids of the eight to ten range, but I can't imagine older kids - who have any kind of imagination at all - finding anything really new or entertaining here. I cannot recommend it.

How To Catch a Bogle by Catherine Jinks

Rating: WORTHY!

I listened to this audio book some time ago and thought I'd already blogged it. I guess I was so blown away by it that I forgot to blog it! LOL! it was excellent and I recommend it highly. A large part of my enjoyment came from the narration by Mandy Williams which was beyond excellent. She was remarkable and I really enjoyed listening to her, especially to her renditions of the folk songs, which were really heart-rending, the way she sang them, and to her rendition of Birdie's voice, the main female character, which was a joy.

This is a middle-grade book with some dark content, so be warned it might be scary - and the scary parts aren't really anything to do with the bogles. The nasty life these poor children were forced to live back then (and which many endure even today) is the really horrific part. The kind of life that was your everyday lot for people is exemplified in the songs which Birdie sings. They're aren't anything sweet, but are about pirates and young women being hanged: The Female Smuggler, The Highway Robber, Rescued From the Gallows, Bonnie Susie Cleland, and Sovay, Sovay, and Three Black Ribbons.

Ten-year-old orphan Birdie McAdam sings to lure out bogles, monsters which hide in dark places and which feed off children who are unlucky enough to stray too close. They are attracted by tuneful singing, and this is where Birdie's canary-like voice comes in so handily. She stands in the open and lures out the bogle with her folk songs, and Alfred Bunce, her partner, stabs them with a special lance and they turn to dust.

The job is dangerous, but Birdie trusts Alfred and has worked with him quite a bit. She's proud of him in fact, and proud to be his assistant ("Am a Bogler's gel, ah yam!"). Poor as they are, everything is fine for this pair of monster-hunters until children begin disappearing, they're approached by the highly suspect Sarah Pickles, and on the other end of the social scale, a certain Miss Eames starts fearing for Birdie's safety and welfare and starts proposing scientific methods of attracting bogles which would put Birdie out of a living.

The real joy of this story was Mandy Williams's reading of it. Sometimes, an audio book can be fingernails on a chalkboard for one reason or another: poor writing, poor reading, a reader's interpretation of the story interfering with your own, but in this case, I was one hundred percent in love with Williams's interpretation, her vocalization, and above all, her singing. She was not a diva by any means, but she was very good and in this case, her voice, to me, was Birdie all through. I fell in love with the signing and the songs, and even had the story not been so engaging, I would still have rated it a worthy read just for the songs and the vocal performance! Highly recommended, guvna!

The Witch With The Glitch by Adam Maxwell

Rating: WORTHY!

Note, this is not to be confused with Glitch of a Witch by Pat Hatt, or The Witch Hits a Glitch by Elizabeth Schram, or Witch Glitch by Robyn Peterman, or Witch Glitch by Leslie Goldman! Yes, the title is way overused already.

Illustrated here and there by Dale Maloney, this novel aimed at middle-graders is highly amusing and very entertaining. It's decidedly British, so there may be a reference here and there that you won't get unless you're familiar with Brit slang, but for the most part it's very accessible no matter where you're from, as long as you're an English speaker, of course!

This story is part of the "Lost Bookshop Adventure" series. I read the first one (The Search for the Sheriff's Star) back in September last year and reviewed it favorably. In this adventure, the two girls and the boy travel through the dusty closet into fairy tale land, inhabited by a green witch. Abraham van Helsing is there too, but the problem is that each of our adventurers is adversely affected by an errant spell tossed out by the irritated witch.

One of them ends up as a ghost, another as a vampire, and the poor boy as a werewolf. They have only until midnight to resolve the witches problem and become transformed back to their usual selves, or stay that way forever! I loved the unruly but clueless mob who set out carry not pitchforks, but cushions and so on! Did you know, also, that owls and bats do not really get along? I was very entertained by the continually changing story and the predicaments these three kids got themselves into - but they never gave up. I recommend this one.

The Monster That Ate Our Keys by AJ Cosmo

Rating: WARTY!

I'd been enjoying 100% success with children's novels by AJ Cosmo, until this one, which fell completely flat. The Monster That Ate My Socks, I Don't Want to Go To School, and There's a Monster in the Dark were very entertaining reads, especially for their intended age group, but this one didn't get there at all. I'm wondering if there are only so many variations on the "There's a Monster..." theme which you can exploit in children's books?

This monster does precisely what it's billed for: it eats dad's car keys, and the boy and his father have to chase it as try to trap it or bribe it to get them back, but there really isn't much going on that's entertaining. It doesn't go anywhere other than around the house, unfortunately. The story really isn't as inventive as I felt the previous ones were. I can't recommend it.

The Girl in the Well is Me by Karen Rivers

Rating: WARTY!

Note: not to be confused with the Grimm brothers' The Goose Girl at the Well, or with Rin Chupeco's The Girl from the Well and certainly not with Zehra Hicks's Girl Who Loved Wellies!

How can you not want to read a book about a girl who is fearful of drowning, when it's written by an author named Rivers?! The blurb made this novel sound interesting, but in the end it was not. I realize this is aimed at middle grade, and I am not that audience by any means, but to me the novel was so thoroughly unrealistic as to fail in its purpose. Additionally, the main character was not sympathetic. She was sadly lacking in intellect, and worse, she was boring, despite her sad circumstances. I am not a fan of novels that depict women as stupid and passive unless they merely begin that way and then grow - through the course of the story - to be otherwise. I think it's a very poor role model to present to that age group.

This was an advance review copy which I did not finish. Life is too short to spend it on reading materials which do not move me, so I have to allow that things might have changed for the better, but it certainly did not look to me like they were likely to move in a positive direction, which is why I gave up on this: every page was more of the same. Worse than this, it felt completely unrealistic to me. I could not believe that an eleven-year-old trapped in a well (which was so ridiculously narrow that it would barely admit a bucket to draw water), would be blithely reminiscing about her life given that she's slipping further and further down, the well is growing ever more narrow, and her breathing is growing ever more difficult.

The reason she was in the well was because of a dare issued by three mean and spoiled girls with whom Kammie (the victim, and very much a victim unfortunately) wanted to be friends. She was required to cut her hair short and stand on the top of the well, which was boarded over. Kammie stupidly complied with their every edict without even a second thought. This is what saddened me: for all her soul searching, she never once second guesses herself. Of course, when the rotten boards break, down she goes. The fact that the three girls were not even remotely concerned for her was another factor in this novel's lacking credibility. Every character was a caricature, and none of them were interesting.

Another issue was that this story was first person PoV which rarely works. The fact that Kammie was telling this story means she survived, unless her ghost is telling it, which still means a happy ending - she survived one way or another). Where's the tension? Obviously, nowhere. You know she's going to get out. On top of this, no one that age in such dire circumstances thinks so eruditely and so clearly. Kids panic and there was not a shred of any such thing in Kammie. It's not credible. Her complete lack of real stress makes this story very nearly a potential invitation to young kids: "Hey, let's go slide down a well! It'll be fun!" I hope none of them are as dumb as Kammie.

I could not take this story seriously. I kept hearing that old song "Three Old Ladies Locked in a Lavatory" going around in my head as I read it. The mean girls were such a caricature that not even one of them had the remotest feeling of discomfort for Kammie, and this is nonsensical. Even the meanest girls have some vestige of a conscious, yet not once - not in the portion I read - did even one of them evince anything approaching concern. I wish the author well, but I cannot in good conscious recommend this as a worthy read, not even for the intended age group.

Infinitas by David N Sebastian

Rating: WARTY!

This advance review copy novel was a DNF for me. It started out promisingly, a fantasy romp and a quest, but there was a truly oddball mixture of modern English and medieval which kept tripping me up, and taking me out of suspension of disbelief. I'm not a fan of stories where the author tries to write them in Chaucerian English, so I don't mind a bit of modern idiom here and there, but when it's a mix of both ancient and too modern, it's really a jolt.

One minute they would be saying, 'tis (but without the apostrophe) and the next they would be saying 'butthole' which made me feel like I was reading a juvenile toilet-humor story for which I have no time. In short order I was reading terms like "All righty then" and "Crack of dawn" along with words like 'Busboy' (in a tavern!). It didn't work. I think the biggest problem was the level at which it was written - it felt to me like middle-grade whereas the characters felt like young adults, so it was mismatched there, too.

When the wood sprites showed up, my interest perked up a bit because I thought the story might be improving, but their humor began to grate, and they were gone pretty quickly. I didn't know whether to feel relieved that none of them joined the quest, so I didn't have to deal with their inane pranks anymore, or saddened because they had brought a spark to a story which badly needed one. It had already begun to set like drying clay.

There were moments of unintended humor like when one character says to another, "You're a Druid Harry" which made me feel like I was reading Harry Potter again, and not in a good way. This was a fantasy, yet there was a heavy coating of Christianity overlaid on it, which struck me as out of place for this particular story, as did a thumbscrew which "goes crackle snap pop." Seriously?

One of the characters but "Coal on her eyes" I doubt it. Kohl maybe, but coal? I had to quit reading this because it just wasn't working. I can't take a story seriously which doesn't even take itself seriously, and I can't recommend this one.

Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Rating: WARTY!

This novel is aimed at middle-grade readers. I requested an advance review copy because it looked interesting and invited me in with this: "As the fifteenth anniversary of September 11th nears, Towers Falling explores the thought-provoking question of how kids born after 2001 can find meaning in events they have no personal memory of, but which still have a monumental impact on their families, educators, and communities." The problem was that by the time I got to fifty percent through this story, the twin towers had been mentioned a sum total of pretty much one time. The rest of the story was about Deja settling in as a new student at school. There was nothing new here, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the twin towers. I failed to see the point of another 'new kid on the block' story which has nothing new to bring to the table.

While technically this was well-written, from the point of view of telling the story it claimed to be telling, it went nowhere - not in the first half of the novel, and by that time I had lost all interest in reading any more about a rather self-centered main character who had nothing new or interesting to say. I can't recommend this novel base don what I read.

Stand Up and Whistle by Phyllis Perry

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a very short (less than 90 pages!), well-written and educational story about two young girls who embark upon a quest to save some local wildlife. I had some issues with the story, but overall, I consider it a worthy read for the age group, which is middle grade.

Out to photograph prairie dogs for a school research paper, Jeannie and Mary Joe discover that the place they are photographing is going to be leveled and the prairie dogs (which are of course not dogs, but a form of burrowing ground squirrel related to squirrels and ground hogs) are scheduled to be exterminated. They decide to do something about it. I liked that the author evidently knows what she's talking about when she describes the prairie dogs, so it's very educational in that regard, and also in how to make a an official and grown-up protest about a problem.

This story was realistic in many ways. I would have expected no less given that the author is a resident of Colorado and there was a scandalous business from which this novel is no doubt taken, regarding the wanton slaughtering of prairie dogs, and the building of malls and the shameless, but predictable behavior of degenerate local government officials.

The evidently Nazi-trained City officials of Castle Rock in Colorado aided and abetted the extermination of a large prairie dog colony with poison gas pellets, but it's not only prairie dogs which suffer from this chemical warfare. The annihilation was done in spite of offers to relocate the animals and the city officials lied about it, as though they could not wait to see the animals bleed out.

This story seems to be heavily-based on that real life massacre, but it has a happier ending - although it's not always roses, and so is more realistic than pure fiction in how it plays out. There is also a side story about confidence building in Jeannie's best friend Mary Jo. That came with some baggage as I shall discuss, but I liked that the story showed the girls, particularly Jeannie, the main protagonist, to be thoughtful, smart, capable, and willing to work and research. Jeannie was brave in facing the "bad guys" - the property developers. She was a commendable protagonist.

I think this will be enjoyable for age-appropriate readers, but I have to add as an adult that there were some problems with the story which some kids might pick up on. I know my kids would have. The first is the rather hypocritical stance of the girls, who are not vegetarians (as judged by their consuming sloppy joes!), yet here are fussing and cooing over these cute prairie dogs. it's not just cute mammals which are threatened by humans. I felt the girls were hypocritical in that they give not a thought to the daily and routine slaughter of the cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens and fish that they themselves eat! I'm not going to fuss over this because the story has other virtues, but this kind of thing is worth keeping in mind from a writer's point of view.

Another thing which bothered me was when Jeannie went to protest the poisoning along with some other people, her parents did not accompany her! I felt that was wrong, and implausible. Either that, or it portrayed her parents as callously hands-off. Maybe kids will not notice this, and I know on the one hand it showed that Jeannie was strong and willing to go it alone, which was commendable, but it made her parents look really bad and uncaring, to me. If they'd had some important function they had to attend and could not get away from, then it would have been more realistic than just simply abandoning their daughter to her fate!

One last thing is nothing to do with the author, and everything to do with Big Publishing's longstanding cluelessness when it comes to book covers and illustrations. It's long been my theory that very nearly all book cover designers have no clue what's in the book they are photographing or illustrating for, and this one was a prime example. In the story, it's made quite clear that Mary Jo is overweight, and she's outright described as "fat" at one point. This is commendable, not that she's overweight, but that we're not being fed a trope diet of runway models for characters in a story! So far so good.

There is the trope 'let's ditch the eyeglasses and give you a quick makeover, and you'll be beautiful and popular', which I didn't like at all. I think it's the wrong message to send to young people, and especially to send to young girls, who are already bombarded with those shameless messages from the cosmetic industry. The right message to send is that if you're eating healthily and exercising some, then you're just fine as you are. We should not be sending messages saying you need to be pretty to be worth anything. On this occasion, I was willing to overlook that because it was a minor portion of a story which had other important messages in abundance.

That said, neither the cover nor any of the books interior illustrations gave any indication whatsoever that Mary Jo was even mildly overweight, which was disgraceful. I don't hold this against the author. She had done her job in this story. It was the artists and illustrators who sold out to popular norms. This is why I will never let anyone other than myself publish anything I write!

But that's a personal peeve. Aside from the illustrations, and with a nod to the issues I raised, I think this novel is a worthy read for the readership it's aimed at, and I recommend it.

Grayling's Song by Karen Cushman

Rating: WARTY!

This is a story of young Grayling, daughter of a hedge witch who is called back to the house from her outdoor chores one morning to discover that her home is burning down and her mother is in process of turning into a tree! She has to launch her unwilling self upon a quest to discover the evil being who did this.

Grayling is not a hero and does not want this quest. She has no magical powers as far as she knows, but perhaps the title will give you a clue as to what she can do. Accompanied by people she picks up along the way, mostly cantankerous or weird, and a shape-shifting mouse, Grayling sets off on her quest.

This is a very short novel, hardly more than a hundred pages, but although I started it in good humor enjoying the writing, about halfway through, it began to fall into a boring rut, and though I read on some more, I reached a point where I really could not drum up any more enthusiasm for reading further. One more "belike" or "mayhap" would have put me over the edge! I know we strive for realism in historical fiction, but there is such a thing as too much realism!

So the story, which had been originally quite inventive (the mouse was fun, and somewhat reminiscent of Taggle the cat in Erin Bow's novel Plain Kate which I reviewed on my blog back in June 2014), became bogged down in asides which were uninteresting to me, and which I felt failed to move the story along. Despite the bright beginning, when what I read is considered overall, I cannot recommend this as a worthy read, but I think this author bears watching for future stories.