Selume Proferre by EE Ottoman

Title: Selume Proferre
Author: EE Ottoman
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!

Erratum:
p16 "...t-shirt with a button-up shirt open over it a much-worn leather jacket over that and her black cowboy hat firmly on her head." was really hard to read on first pass. It needs some commas. I'd have written it: "...t-shirt with a button-up shirt open over it, a much-worn leather jacket over that, and her black cowboy hat firmly on her head."
p23 "I think you're logic is faulty." should be "I think your logic is faulty."
p23 "While some geeks wear sweater vest..." should be "While some geeks wear sweater vests..."
p40 "The house they finally pulled up to was huge, white, and new-looking, surrounded by a gate." doesn't sound right. Maybe, "The house they finally pulled up to was huge, white, and new-looking, surrounded by a gate and a fence." or "...a gated fence"?
p41 "...as if for conformation..." should be "...as if for confirmation..."
(EE ottoman, I volunteer to be a beta reader any time you need one!)

I am not a Latin student by any means although I did do a couple of years of it in high school. The title, if it's intended to be a Latin phrase, is wrong. I think it should be Se Lumen Proferre which means roughly, "Allow illumination to prevail" or "to be brought out" - or tritely, "Let there be light" (although the Biblical version of that is actually Fiat lux).

And now to the novel itself! An-An Li-Johnson is not only a mouthful of a name, it's an intriguing character which may or may not be modeled on the author, who if anyone does, has the proverbial 300 watt smile. An-An is a lesbian who works part time at a book store (cool name of 'Bookfall', and who also temps as a scribe at a spell-craft firm called Simon and Davidson which is about to embark upon an exorcism. If that doesn't grab you for a starter, nothing will!

I should say right up front (if you can call four paragraphs in "right up front"!) that I flatly do not believe in demons and angels, gods and devils, etc (and you can include ghosts, flying saucers, and the Loch Ness monster in there, too! I wrote a novel about the Loch Ness "monster" myself, so I can't pretend to be completely disgusted with this!).

I can't get with the ludicrous ritual - the power of chalk? The so-called 'holy' water, the Latin incantations! Why is Latin supposedly a language of power - really?! I do, however, recognize that these tropes are required in this kind of a novel, and I do love a good story about these things: and this one was definitely a good story.

An-An is called in to work with MC Anderson (no, that's not a DJ!), a senior employee at S&D, who's in charge of the upcoming exorcism. She's supposedly difficult to work with, which is how An-An ended up hired for the job, but An-An doesn't view MC that way. And so it begins, both the exorcism and the wonderful, dancing interplay between 'acolyte' and 'master'....

I have to say I fell in love (in a nice, manly, platonic way, of course!) with MC as soon as I learned that she watches Doctor Who and Mythbusters! Hopefully she's a bit more satisfied with this season's Doctor Who than I've been (although it did pick up commendably in episode three). I loved An-An, too, although I found her name a bit annoying. Sorry! But kudos to the author for stepping well outside pathetic YA socio-normative tedium to deliver something very different and powerful. I loved this novel!

I also have to say I had a concern about the guns which the security guards were so readily brandishing - did they really think they could shoot a demon? From a writing perspective, the guns themselves weren't the issue; that MC said nothing about them was what bothered me. A word would have been nice.

Note that this novel/novella/novelette/short story (I didn't count the words, I just read them as they went by!) is really, really short - fifty pages or so, so it's a very fast and engaging read. In fact, go read it now. I'll wait. Take your time.

Replay by Ken Grimwood

Title: Replay
Author: Ken Grimwood
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WORTHY!

Set in 1987 (and other years!) Jeff Winston, a tired and disaffected radio journalist with an unhappy marriage is talking with his wife on the phone. Just as she's telling him, "We need...", he has what feels like a heart attack and he agonizes not only over the intense pain, but also over the feeling that he will never know what his wife was about to tell him they need. A divorce? A gallon of milk?

When Jeff comes round, he's not in a hospital, he's in his bed in his college dorm at Emory University, and it's in 1963! He's somehow materialized inside his own youthful body, but with all his memories for the next quarter century still in his brain.

Jeff tries to pick up his life there, while also trying to figure out what the heck happened. He decides he cannot stand the thought of being a student all over again, and realizes he can make some money by betting on games and horses (for which he needs a legal age fellow-student to help). He already knows the outcome - or at least hopes he does, and it turns out he's not wrong. He becomes a millionaire and tries to track down his wife as she was then, but when he finds her, she doesn't appreciate this teenager claiming to be rich trying to pick her up on the beach!

He eventually settles in his new life with no answers, but with a wife and a child, and enjoys his life and his daughter. He takes especial care of his health, particularly as he starts to approach the date when he had his 'heart attack' in his 'previous life', but despite being in excellent health, he still goes through exactly the same pain, and the same 'rebirth' - back as a student - and it keeps repeating!

No matter what he does, he discovers over time, he can neither explain nor break this cycle. The only thing which seems to him to change is the point at which he replays his life: the starting point seems to be later each time he returns, and the period of the delay is growing larger with each replay.

He despairs of getting out of this cycle, and he eventually reaches a point where he simply doesn't care any more. Each time he comes back, he makes money as fast as he can at the start; then he launches upon a life of dissipation, drugs, free love (it's the sixties!) and on and on, until one point where he almost dies in an air-crash, at which point he starts memorizing all natural and man-made disasters.

Eventually living a public life is of no interest and he retreats to the mountains, but on a visit back to civilization to pick up supplies one day, he encounters a poster for a blockbuster movie which he's neither seen nor heard of before - not in any life. Not understanding how such a blockbuster of a movie could have escaped his attention, he goes to see it and is so moved by it that he has to meet the writer-director - which he can given how rich he is.

The meeting doesn't go well, it turns out that the woman, Pamela Phillips, is a replayer, too, and they do not get along at first. Eventually they do hook up and they begin an effort to locate other replayers. They have limited success, finding only a guy who is a replayer but who is confined to an institution because he's become psychotic.

Jeff and Pamela begin planning and meeting each other on subsequent replays, which proves to be a significant problem at first, since she is several years younger than he is, and her father doesn't appreciate an adult man visiting his fourteen year old daughter no matter how well they seem to know each other! They work this out eventually, and it's over this period that they really appreciate that their replays are starting with significantly increasing delays.

At one point they make the mistake of publishing predictions in an effort to try to find out what's going on. When their predictions prove amazingly accurate, the government becomes involved and the two of them end up as virtual prisoners in a world going to hell because of the government second-guessing their predictions and trying to capitalize on their knowledge of the future. The world quickly changes so much that they can no longer predict anything.

With their replays becoming increasingly shorter, and Pamela's returns appearing dramatically later than Jeff's things eventually come to a head when Jeff meets her before she has returned, when she is married to someone else. He maneuvers her into having an affair with him, which succeeds because he knows exactly how to ingratiate himself with her by then. When she suddenly replays in the middle of one of their clandestine dates, she's really angry with him taking advantage of her, and she quits seeing him altogether.

The repeat replays become faster and faster, and the delay times shorter and shorter until it's like one constant replay after another and suddenly, he's back at his desk, with his wife saying "We need..." but this time he doesn't 'die', the moment passes and he's still there on the phone. His wife finishes her sentence at last "...to talk" and he agrees.

This novel is one of my all time favorites. It takes great skill (and a heck of a lot of work!) to write 'the same story' over and over again, yet make it so different each time that it still makes for a fresh read. I'm in awe of Grimwood's skill in writing this so well, and selfishly saddened that his loss meant that the sequel he was beginning work on would never get completed. According to wikipedia, there's talk of a movie from the novel, but nothing is up on the web yet.

The Pleasure Dial by Jeremy Edwards

Title: The Pleasure Dial
Author: Jeremy Edwards
Publisher: 1001 Nights Press
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Erratum:
p118 "bicep" - it's biceps. And triceps.

I'm not a big fan of erotic literature per se. I'd much rather indulge in it than sit and read about it, but done the right way, in the right context - that of a real story rather than inauthentic titillation for mere titillation's sake - I'm perfectly happy with it. What I find truly sad is that we live in a very effective theocracy under the dictates of which, children are at liberty to read or to watch endless scenes of people being mean and brutal towards one another, but must be "protected" fiercely from anything which depicts people enjoying and loving one another in physical ways.

How sad is it that the church, an 'authority' which is itself rooted in the absurdest of fictions, insists that intimacy is so evil, even in fiction, that not even adults ought to be exposed to it no matter how educationally, fleetingly, cursorily, or tangentially. The United States of America is one of the most fundamentalist societies on the planet, giving feared places like Iran a run for its mullah. Is it any surprise that in such a closeted society, people end-up hobbled by the worst sex-education it's possible to get?

Is it any surprise that in such a society people who 'deviate' from "the norm" however slightly, however naturally, however much in the privacy of their own homes still run a grave risk of being (metaphorically if not literally) pilloried? Is it any surprise that as a direct result of allowing such a blinkered society to propagate and fester, that same society then pays a hefty price in unwanted pregnancy and sexual inappropriateness which runs the huge gamut from annoying, through abusive, to outright criminal? Not to me it isn't.

I do enjoy a well-written comedy, which explains why I was actually interested in this novel: it's a humorous story which neither flinches nor baulks at following people into the bedroom (or wherever!) rather than shyly panning over to a roaring fire which ineffectually seeks to simulate sexual passion whilst stimulating nothing but laughter.

This story is set in the 1930's when radio listener-ship more than doubled to almost 30 million people in the US. Radio shows were for several decades directly sponsored - indeed, effectively owned - by corporations which advertised freely throughout the show, and for which the show's stars became spokes-people. This comedy of erogenous follows the machinations and lubrications of various characters as they duel and fool with each other to reach their assorted and diverse goals.

Artie Plask is a comedy writer, newly arrived in LA to join the team for Sydney Heffernan's radio show. Under the name Syd Heffy, this guy acts himself: a buffoon who barely has a competent grasp of the nuances of the English language, but who is nonetheless considered to be one of the best and biggest comedians in the country. Artie's immediate problem is that after one day on the job he discovers that the entire writing team has been fired as 'Syd Heffy' decides to abandon comedy, and relaunch himself in serious drama show.

This writing team is exclusively white of course, because writers nearly always were back then, and it's almost exclusively male for the same reason, but it's actually headed by a woman, Mariel Fenton, who also writes for the show. Here's where I first became honestly impressed. Jeremy Edwards knows how to write strong female characters, and this one saves the show - literally.

Mariel is a self-possessed, self-made woman, who holds her own (in whatever way she feels like) quite effortlessly in a man's world, and who is not only a genuinely funny person, which makes her perfect for this gig, but who is also extremely smart and astute. And of course, as required by the novel's very tone, gorgeous. Indeed, she's the real mover and shaker here, with Artie really just along for the ride (whether the ride be sexual or not!).

I have no idea who the girl on the cover of this novel is, either in real life or as representative of a character. She could be generic or she could be intended as Elyse Heffernan, Syd Heffy's pan-sexual and nympho-maniacal daughter. She certainly isn't Mariel, and she really doesn't appear to be Elyse, either, but the photograph is undeniably erotic. The feet seem a little bit large for the image to be perfect, but that may just be a perspective distortion (or my bias towards smaller feet!).

That said, I have to admit that this near-perfect picture is what initially caught my eye with this novel. I would never have launched into reading it on that cover image though, no matter how exciting it may be. The novel could have actually had any cover, because it was the novel's premise which sold it to me, recalling screwball comedies of the forties, and madcap comedies of the fifties. But kudos to the cover designer and photographer(s). For once in a blue moon, they really, er, nailed it.

If you think the cover model is Elyse, then you really need to read the novel, because you simply don't get her at all. Elyse is the second powerful female character in this novel. Her liberal sexuality is misleading, for there's a strength to this young woman which far-too-many young-adult writers, for example - even female ones - fail to understand, much less employ in a world where the main female lead, after being sold to us as strong, independent, and capable, is all-too-often immediately subjugated to an even stronger male.

Neither of these women is subject to anyone. Artie's first introduction to Elyse is when he sees her naked at the swimming pool at her father's house (what daddy doesn't know...well, she can get away with, including having sex with every one of the writers except the gay one). The patio is where all the writing gets done, and Elyse gets wet from just being around these creative, smart, and funny people before she ever enters the pool. His second introduction to her is in bed shortly afterwards, but it's just that one time, because once Artie and Mariel start becoming better acquainted, they become much better acquainted and indeed, inseparable - often quite literally.

The thing which really turns Artie on most about Mariel is, quite appropriately, a woman's most overwhelming sex organ: her mind. He gets off on her thoughts, and she returns the appreciation in equal measure. This is what makes this organ of entertainment, as the rabbi said after the circumcision, a cut above the rest. I just wish more female writers - especially writers of so-called romance novels and YA novels - would get this fact as well as Jeremy Edwards does in his own genre.

This novel follows a host of amusing twists, turns, and delectable diversions. The dialog is snappy, entertaining, and more often than not, rib-ticklingly funny. I'd love to meet someone like Mariel just to have that kind of mind to interact with, or better yet to co-write with - and the hell with the sex! It wasn't all smooth surfing for me, but the only real issue I had with this is the author's descriptions of the many supposedly erotic encounters. To me there's a marked difference between eroticism and crudity, and this novel strayed over the line once in a while.

Note that the language is ribald at best and in the gutter at worst when it comes to depicting the intimate encounters here, so please do not venture into this if you're readily offended. Personally I don't care what language is used as long as it's appropriate to the story or to the character, and there's the, er, rub! Edwards was a bit too fond of using a certain four-letter word to describe a certain defining part of the feminine anatomy, but in this context - one of eroticism - it seemed too abusive to me to find a home here.

I can see it showing up in a novel about abuse or in one relating a story of BDSM even, but in erotica? To me erotica tells a different and very special story, and this jarred too much. Usually, the erotic scenes were deliciously erotic, but unfortunately often they kicked me out of suspension of disbelief because it felt like the author was trying much too hard to use every word he could conjure up to describe events and anatomy. You may have a different crudity scale from me, of course, and consequently your denier may differ.

That aside, I loved this novel and I recommend it erotically! Personally I'm going ot be looking for more by this author.

Contemporary Passion by RM Romarney

Title: Contemporary Passion
Author: RM Romarney
Publisher: Vivid Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

I don't usually review poetry because I tend to find very little that speaks to me or impresses me in any relatable way, but I have to admit that this one has what it takes and turned out to be entertaining. It's a 38-page poem (in my ebook ARC) set in modern times, but played out as religious passion play. Actually, to me, it seemed more like a musical, or like that old Queen song, Bohemian Rhapsody, and I enjoyed it a lot despite its religious theme.

It features a group of young, passionate, and virile artists in process of recording an album of music, and having some serious relationship issues along the way - and I mean serious! And for once, I get a book with a truly appropriate cover! Yeay!

I think this poem made an impression on me because in some ways it reminds me of some of my own, such as published in Poem y Granite, but I've never written one as long as his! To reference my own work might seem self-serving or self-absorbed, but isn't that how we all are with poetry? It has to reach us, doesn't it? It has to say something to each of us personally, and speak in a voice we understand - one to which we can easily relate, otherwise it's meaningless, obscure, pointless, and boring. Contemporary Passion was none of the above, which is why it appealed to me. It was joyful and passionate, and had a life of its own, and I salute the author of it.

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Title: The Great Gatsby
Author: F Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Rating: WARTY!

Fitzgerald write this in 1925, but it's set three years earlier in the summer of 1922, and tells a story of some wealthy characters observed and narrated by a not-so-wealthy character, Nick Carraway, during their time in the fictional resort location of West Egg on Long Island sound.

Carraway is a prospective bond salesman new to the area, and he rents a place which happens to be next door to the magnificent residence owned by Jay Gatsby (whose real name is James Gatz, Jimmy to his father). Nick has dinner one evening with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, the burly Tom, an old acquaintance from college, and meets intriguing Jordan Baker, with whom he begins an affair.

It's through her that Nick learns that his cousin's husband is having an affair with one Myrtle Wilson, but he appears to have no problem with that because he attends a raunchy party with Tom and Myrtle where, as it happens, Tom punches her and breaks her nose.

One day Nick receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's famous parties which he;s seen but never attended. He's intrigued by the invitation brought over by Gatsby's chauffeur, so he attends and finds himself invited to an audience with Gatsby himself - a curious man who never attends his own parties, seems constantly busy with business schemes, and for some reason appears to take a shine to Nick.

It turns out that his interest in Nick is actually an interest in Nicks's cousin, Daisy, with whom Gatsby was in a relationship many years before, but which couldn't be pursued due to Nick's poverty. After they separated, Gatsby inherited some money and parlayed that into an empire, and now he wants to get back with Daisy, but Daisy has married - something he had not expected her to do.

He persuades Nick to invite Daisy - alone - to tea one day, and the two begin bonding again, and spending more and more time together. Despite his own affair, Tom begins to grow concerned about where his wife is spending her free time. A showdown comes in New York at an hotel which Daisy, Gatsby, Jordan, Nick, and Tom visit one really hot day. Gatsby outright announces Daisy's love for him, although Daisy protests and gives Gatsby a surprise by announcing her love for Tom, who in turn, denounces Gatsby as a criminal.

The gathering breaks up and Tom allows Gatsby and Daisy to travel together back to the Egg to demonstrate how little concerned he is, but Daisy drives and accidentally kills Tom's mistress Myrtle somehow. The latter's husband, who has come to the conclusion that Gatsby is the lover he's begun to suspect his wife has taken, tracks down this yellow car which killed his wife, and he fatally shoots Gatsby and then himself. Nick, disillusioned with this life on the eastern shores, moves back to the mid-west.

Throughout listening to this on audio, I wavered between liking it and then disliking it. In the end I cannot recommend it because the dislikes far outweighed the likes in the final analysis. Fitzgerald does have an interesting turn of phrase here and there, but his writing tended far too often, when it wasn't merely mundane, to descend into endless lists of things which I found irritating as hell.

The story is ok, but it's not particularly brilliant or inventive and I really don't think it merits of the acclaim it seems to have today. I'd recommend reading the wikipedia entry on it, however, which is quite interesting. This novel is based on real people whom Fitzgerald himself knew.

His Secret Superheroine by Patricia Eimer

Title: His Secret Superheroine
Author: Patricia Eimer
Publisher: Entangled
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Entangled Publishing. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. I really appreciate the opportunity to review this novel, so thank you, Entangled!

ErratARC:
p71 "You're kind are what-" should be "Your kind are what-"
p83 "...effect Liza." should be "...affect Liza"

p125 "Flittering..." should be "Flitting..."
p196 "...his bicep..." should be "his biceps..." It's not singular.
p200 "...letting Liza slid out of her seat..." should be "...letting Liza slide out of her seat..."

Patricia Eimer, you had me at "TARDIS". That's an automatic five stars as far as I'm concerned. Just kidding. I'd really love to do that, but I have to rate the book, not her Doctor Who references! Sorry! But I knew then that I'd feel wretched if I didn't like this novel. Fortunately for all concerned, I loved it.

I have to confess right up front that I'm not a fan of sappy romance novels, so it was with some trepidation that I asked to read this one. The problem is that I couldn't not request it once I saw this scenario. How cool a premise is it?! If handled right, a story like this has the potential to be really entertaining and amusing. And in the end I can't begin to tell you how pleasantly surprised and really thrilled I was with this story. Okay, I lied; I can tell you, so here goes!

This is St. Louis Superheroes #1, and the story is about Peyton Pearson née Hughes, a woman who develops super powers after her (now ex-)husband (also a superhero) tampered with her birth-control pills. So she fights crime in St. Louis. When she's evicted from her house (denounced as a super hero sympathizer) through the the machinations of the very powerful 'Safer America Party', Dylan Wilson, a neighbor who lives directly across the street, offers her his spare room to live in while she gets back on her feet.

This offer will help her, and it will also help him because she has a really good relationship with his young daughter Liza, and it will give him some ammunition in his fight against Liza's drunk mother Aria, who is a total jerk and who wants full custody (although I have to confess that I strongly suspected it might not look quite as good as that when presented in some lights as it does in others!).

The problem is that Peyton has the hots for Dylan, but he's a police officer who's dead-set against super heroes getting involved where he doesn't think they belong. Worse, St. Louis is a breeding ground for an anti-superhero movement of which Dylan is a member. She doesn't know that Dylan also has the hots for her, being cursed, as usual, with a poor self-image dumped on her (as it is on every woman) by the abusive fashion and cosmetics industries. No wonder she doesn't trust men!

The author writes remarkably well, with a good eye for dialog and some really amusing asides, so despite my reservations, I was quickly drawn into this story - which also has a really good plot. Finally - a romance story that makes sense! It's told in third person, too, so I was seriously on-board with that.

The chapters alternate somewhat in perspective, some being told from Dylan's viewpoint, others from Peyton's. And the author doesn't shy away from plain English description either. If you're offended by bare-bones references to human anatomy, this might not be for you! In short, this isn't your usual romance novel. Either that or I've read some disturbingly perverse ones in my time....

The characters are intelligent, varied, and interesting, and the story keeps moving. Even relatively minor characters such as Dylan's daughter Liza, his younger sister Laura, and Peyton's friend (and side-kick) Shea stood out as having real personality and presence. I adored the interactions between Peyton and Shea. I also loved the name of Peyton's cat, but despite intense pressure from the Safer America Party I am not going to out this poor cat in public....

If I have a complaint it's that there's too much emphasis on lustful glances and lascivious thoughts on the part of the two main protagonists, and not enough on other qualities which might attract them to each other - such as personality, sense of humor, decency, integrity, empathy, and so on. I would have liked to have seen far more of that, but I guess that's par for the course for a novel in this genre. Fortunately, even this aspect is significantly toned-down as the novel progresses and the tension heightens. So I began enjoying it as I would any decent novel (and to hell with the genre!).

Peyton is no wilting violet. She has a presence and a personality (and a temper!). She has real problems and real feelings about them, and she has no problem in standing-up for her principles, especially against her super hero ex, who is actually stalking her. And there's no sad little love triangle here either, thank goodness.

If I have another complaint it's about the use of the word 'superheroine'. I know reasonable people can disagree, and I am not female, believe it or not, so perhaps my opinion carries less weight in this matter, but it bothers me, in the arena of female equality, that we're still saddling women with the '-ine' and the '-ienne', and the '-ess' (and even the '-ix') suffixes.

Why superheroine, and not simply superhero? I would ask this same question in other areas, too. For example, why actress and not actor? Why comedienne? Does a woman deserve less than a man? Or is there a problem that 'actor' and 'comedian' have been traditionally male, and women don't want to be saddled with that?

If that's the case, then why do we not still have murderesses? We have female murderers, but no murderesses any more! That gender-specific term (along with some others) has already fallen into disuse, and I don't see any movement afoot to resurrect it. Can we not allow - and even encourage - other specifically-female descriptive forms to lapse likewise? It just bothers me that there has to be a separate name if you're female. Okay, maybe 'mistress' and 'dominatrix' might be hard to get rid of, I admit! But waiter seems to me to be significantly better than wait-person...!

On a small point of order - especially since this is a super hero novel, I have to take issue with one of Peyton's epithets: "For Spiderman's sake...." It's actually Spider-Man. For some reason, while DC tends to run the "man" right into the superhero name, Marvel tends to hyphenate; Ant-man, Giant-man, Psycho-Man, Spider-Man, Stilt-Man, X-Men. The exception to this 'rule' seems to be Iron Man for some reason. DC comics goes the opposite way, as in Superman and Batman, although Bat-Man is also used. I'm just saying!

I have to ask about "Klangon" on page 53, the start of chapter six. Is it supposed to be klaxon? Or is it a humorous play on clanging and klaxon? Either way it's funny. The humor is one thing which impressed me repeatedly. I don't know what it is, but the author is on my wavelength (or I on hers), and she just keeps coming out with turns of phrase that tickle my funny bone, such as when she says, on page 57, regarding Peyton's chest showing through her accidentally soaked T-shirt "...both the girls were completely visible." That just got me right in the mammary glands. Yes, I know that situations such as these, apparently requisite in romance novels, are sadly contrived, but there's a readable way to do it and a sickly saccharine way to do it, and Patricia Eimer evidently doesn't do sickly saccharine.

Inevitably in this kind of romance there's a fight, a misunderstanding, a cross-purposes situation. I felt that the one in this novel was weak. Dylan didn't have a leg to stand on so his arguments were forced and empty, but what are you going to do? It was a small price to pay for the quality of the rest of the novel. Overall, this was so well done that it really felt a lot less like a romance-genre novel than it did just a regular novel of some other genre.

So in the end, only one question remains: Patricia Eimer, when is the next novel in this series coming out, and can I be a beta reader?! I guess that's two questions. Okay, I'm going to go off quietly by myself and look for other novels by this same author....

A Very Long Engagement by Sébastien Japrisot

Title: A Very Long Engagement
Author: Sébastien Japrisot
Publisher: Simply Audio Books
Rating: WARTY!

This review is one of a brace of forays into World War fiction which I undertook this month. The other is Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex which I have to say right now blew this one completely away. Anne Frank can write. This guy cannot, but I'll bet he's won more pretentious and snotty medals and acclaim than Anne ever will. Sébastien Japrisot is an anagram of the author's real name: Jean-Baptiste Rossi. I don't know why, but there it is. Consequently, all of my future novels will be penned by Waid Ono. Look for them on a loose bookshelf near you!

This novel is about a woman who wastes a significant portion of her life chasing a guy who isn't to be found because he's someone else and too stupid to grasp it. It's one of the most tediously pedantic novels I have ever not read. It should be neither seen nor heard. I picked it up thinking it looked really interesting. It isn't. Not even a little bit. It's tiresome and plodding, and as dense as a plate of day-old spaghetti. Don't start this novel unless you have a toolkit to hand for extricating deeply-embedded components, and preferably one of those fire department jaws-of-life devices for prying open the impacted and inscrutable.

The premise is that of a World War 1 widow/fiancée named Mathilde (aka Mary Sue) Donnay, disbelieving that her husband/fiancé, Jean Etchevery, aka Manech, is dead, and tracking him down after the war. She can afford this as a war widow/fiancée in 1919 because she is the spoiled brat of rich family. No word on how she ended up with that particular husband or why her family didn't cut her off because of him! No word either on Spanish flu, which was rampaging across Europe back then, but which didn't exist according to Sébastien Jean-Baptiste Rossi-Japrisot.

A lot of the novel's tediousness comes from two sources, both of which happen to be the author. The first of these is his verbal diarrhea in compulsively describing every last detail of everybody who is even tangentially involved in the story whether those details have any bearing on the plot or not. Stephen King would be proud of this writer. The other is in the abysmally artificial use of correspondence.

You that know that when novelist falls back upon quoting letters (or diary entries, for that matter, or newspaper articles) in the novel they're there for two reasons: first of all the novelist is just plain lazy; secondly, they're stupid if they imagine for a minute that they will fool us by adding a letter that miraculously (and in detail, yet!) moves the plot precisely to where it needs to go next. No one writes letters (or diaries or newspaper articles) like that, not even in 1919.

After the first disk on this audio CD, I had no interest at all in the five men who disappeared, one of whom was the woman's paramour. First it became immaterial to me whether they were ever found, and then I actively began wishing that they would be gone forever. Please interpret that how you wish. Mathilde does find pain-in-the-Manech in the end: he's lost his memory and the jerk-off was too incurious about his past to go looking, so she wisely ditches him and heads home. The end.

I rate this novel trench-mouth warty.

La Princesse de Clèves by Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne

Title: La Princesse de Clèves
Author: Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne aka Madame de Lafayette
Publisher: Read a Classic
Rating: WORTHY!

I feel like I should write this in French, mais mon français aspire! (See what I mean?) Originally published in March 1678, in France as La Princesse de Clèves, and possibly written by Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, aka Madame de La Fayette, this novel was a huge success in its day. And it had a less nonsensical cover than this modern edition does. Seriously - the title in half English and half French, the accent which should be on 'Clèves' is missing, but the dot over the 'i' in 'Princesse' is warped so much that it looks like an accent? What was the cover designer smoking that day? Old book covers?

The novel's main protagonist is 16-year-old Mademoiselle de Chartres, who is maneuvered by her mom into marriage at the court of Henri 2nd, to La Prince de Clèves. This is her best prospect financially and socially, but it isn't, of course, the one she would choose for herself. Had she that choice, she would have aligned herself with the Duke de Nemours, a dashing young man with whom she falls in love and he, it seems, with she. They do not pursue this affair physically, but instead meet irregularly, when he attends her "salon" - regular social gatherings which she holds in her new position as La Princesse de Clèves.

The duke falls afoul of a scandal for which he is blameless, but for which he assumes responsibility in order to protect another. The princess at first believes him to be guilty, but learns later that he isn't. It's also at this time that her husband, who loves her dearly, realizes that she's actually in love with someone else, and she admits as much to him.

This causes an onset of the wilts and the vapors for the Prince, who takes to his bed and dies, but not before extracting an evil promise from his wife that she will not pursue any relationship with the duke. The latter pursues the princess even more ardently now that she's a widow, but she rejects him and enters a convent.

I like this novel not because it's a great novel. Far from it: it's the worst kind of chick-lit, but it's ancient chick-lit and that's what makes it interesting to me. It enables us to get inside the mind of a woman from well-over three hundred years ago. We're treated to few such insights and that's what makes this fascinating as far as I'm concerned.

The Kiss of Deception by Mary E Pearson

Title: The Kiss of Deception
Author: Mary E Pearson
Publisher: MacMillan
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

The Kiss of Deception shares its title with another novel billed as: "Swat-Secret Werewolf Assault Team 3 Everlasting Classic Manlove" which is why authors should take care in their titles! The way to sales is to distinguish your novel, not conflate it. But that's the problem with Big Publishing™: when you go that route, you effectively lose control of your work with regard to title, cover, and other areas.

That said, I had doubly-mixed feelings reading this one. I started out, even in the first page or two, wondering how long I was going to be able to continue reading it, because it began so poorly. That's not a good feeling to get on page one, and it's definitely not one with which you want to imbue your reader. After that, though, I began to get into it and enjoyed it, and that's when the author put several major roadblocks in my path.

The first of these was the nonsensical triple first person PoV telling of the story. This was amateur and confusing. One first person PoV is too much unless it's done really well, and I can see how a princess might do this, but to also have the prince who is chasing her, and the assassin tell the story in their own first person PoV? It doesn't work, and I call bullshit on that one. When authors use more than one 1PoV, they typically title the chapters with the name of the person who's narrating, but this isn't done here, and it makes for an unholy mess. It would seem that the reason this choice was made was that the author wanted to screw with your perception of which was the prince and which was the assassin, but both characters are so useless that in the end it makes no difference. They both, in their own ways, assasinate her after a fashion, and she deserves it!

I tried to ignore these and read past them, but by the time I was about half-way through, I couldn't stand to read any more of this pathetic romance novel. And that's what it is: a Harlequin-style romance in the final analysis. It's certainly no adventure novel. It's not a fantasy novel, and it's not even historical fiction. Indeed, and as the author herself kept telegraphing, this isn't historical at all. Quite the opposite - which means it made even less sense.

So what were these roadblocks? Well the first was one which I detest most of all: switch and bait. I know with Big Publishing™ you lose control of important aspects of your work (like book blurbs for instance), but I felt I was promised an adventure with fantasy elements, and a strong main character. Instead, I got this sad little romance in place of adventure. I thought I was getting a strong female character who knew her own mind and was not afraid to go after what she wanted, but instead, I got this wilting violet whose heart goes all a-flutter whenever trope triangle guy #1 (his name is irrelevant) gets close. I am serious. The number of times her skin flushed and her heart hammered was truly nauseating.

This princess isn't a strong female at all. She's weak, selfish, sad, cowardly, dishonest, capricious, thoughtless, and pathetic - and the laughable thing is that even taken as such she still isn't credible. We're given snippets of her history here and there, and I'm sorry but that tomboy history doth not a wilting violet make. On the contrary. Neither does a mature woman, which is what she's presented as (even though she's seventeen years old) fall in love the instant she meets a guy. This was truly one of the most pathetic females I've ever encountered in fiction.

The second major roadblock was a totally unbelievable "love" triangle. This princess runs away to a distant city to avoid her arranged marriage, and starts living life as a waitress, and the prince she was to marry - one whom she had never set eyes upon, chases after her even though he didn't want to marry her either. Why? His motivation is entirely absurd, because he has none. He had no more interest in her than she did in him, so where is his drive to find her? It's nonsense.

It wasn't as if trope guy #1 was anything. He was supposed to be a prince of the land, but he came off as a country bumpkin and not just a country bumpkin, but a really stupid one. How would any self-respecting princess find such a man attractive? Well the author has that covered! He's tall. Yep. that's it. Oh, and he has a broad chest, because you know it's a capital offense for a YA chick to find any guy attractive if he's shorter and doesn't have a broad chest.

The real problem here however, is that we have yet another female author portraying a female main character through whom she advises her young and evidently impressionable female readers that it's okay for a girl to be involved with a guy who does not respect boundaries, who cannot take "No!" for an answer, who stalks the girl, and who enters her home without permission. That's unforgivable, and female authors who write stories like this ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Far from being offended by this behavior, this loser princess doesn't find any of this even so much as creepy, let alone objectionable. She rewards it with a kiss. I don't know: maybe she's so preoccupied by flushing like a public toilet and in coping with more flutters than your typical aviary hosts that she doesn't notice his obnoxious behavior? She is truly one of the limpest, saddest, most worthless female main characters ever.

Trope guy #2 (and he deserves that epithet) is even worse if you can get your mind around that. He's an assassin sent to kill the princess, yet he consistently fails to do so. Again, there is zero motivation for his failure. This novel simply is not credible. The really laughable thing is that this guy, the assassin, has more respect for the princess than the prince does! How hilarious is that?

Add to this the fact that this princess outright lies to her best friend about something critical, and that the only thing she can ever talk about, or even think about, is getting a guy, and this really puts this entire novel in the crapper.

At the risk of a big spoiler, I also didn't get why there were kingdoms, and this absurd 'first daughter' religion, and why the most advanced technology was swords. Given what the author has gone out of her way to telegraphing so loudly, none of this setting made any sense at all, which was yet another roadblock for me. That's all I am going to say about that! In short, this novel is pathetic. I rate it WARTY! It had a lot of potential, if it had been handled right, but it turned out to be the worst one I've read this year so far.

The Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood

Title: The Poison Diaries
Author: Maryrose Wood
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WORTHY!

Based on an idea by The Duchess Of Northumberland (who maintains a real garden of poisonous plants at her stately residence in the north of England, Alnwick Hall), this novel is in many ways a re-telling of the fictional tale of the slavery and subsequent liberation of Eve in the Garden of Eden. But if all you ever read is vampires, werewolves, and angels, then don’t venture into this garden. The raw power of nature will be outside of your comfort zone, and you won’t be able to handle a tale as subtle, seductive, insidious, and profoundly different as this one is.

If I have a complaint about his novel, it’s in the form of this question: Do YA authors honestly believe that it’s a capital offense to pen a YA novel about a female main character and not tell it in first person present PoV? I can’t think of any other reason why they would so spastically, robotically, and with tedious persistence write all such novels this way (and make them trilogies to boot). Usually such novels are awful. Once in a while (as is fortunately the case here) we get one that's done well, but even in this case the author is hoist by her own pen when it comes to a point in this story where she's forced to tell it from the perspective of another character. That was really clunky and could have been comfortably avoided had she only the smarts and courage to break this sorry mold and tell it in third person throughout.

The first similarity to the Biblical fable of Adam and Eve is that we begin with an innocent girl, living in a garden, overseen by her god-like father, who in many ways has power over life and death. There is no tree of the knowledge of good and evil here, nor one of everlasting life, but there is a dangerous garden of poisonous plants to which Jessamine (the Eve of the tale) is forbidden entry. The entire story is about the danger of a little knowledge, and the greater danger of ignorance, about innocence, and about temptation and deceit.

There is also a strong element of the devilish here - in the traditional sense. No serpent tempts Eve, but the poisonous plants tempt Adam, who shows up in the form of a boy of Jessamine's age, and who is known as Weed. For me, he was difficult to classify. Outside the protective confines of the garden, he was considered a witch (or insane - or both), and brought to Jessamine's father, Thomas Luxton, who is an apothecary, because Weed appeared to have knowledge of the medical uses of plants. Initially, I could not decide if Weed was a personification of nature, or if he was merely highly attuned to it.

He is a major frustration to Luxton, and a source of growing attraction for Jessamine. He's frustrating because, despite what the Judas figure said when he handed-over Weed to Luxton for judgment, Weed appears not to have any knowledge of herbal remedies which he could share, yet when he's under pressure, a simple walk through the garden seems to imbue him with sufficient knowledge to suggest a cure, or at least a palliative for the ailment in question.

At first, in the tail-end of winter, Weed lives below ground in the basement of his host's home, but as spring perks up the plant life around him, so too does weed come to the surface and blossom. He starts enjoying the outdoors, and long walks with Jessamine, during which he displays an intimate knowledge of the plants they encounter. She discovers that he's easily angered by her collecting of these plants for her father, as though she's committing murder. He's loathe to eat anything until he learns to give thanks to nature before he eats; then he starts to put on weight and grow strongly and healthily, but he seems far more in love with nature than with humanity, and this is a source of frustration and anger in Jessamine.

Things really come to a head when Jessamine's father is to be gone for a few days. He's barely out the door, and Jessamine and Weed are barely dressed, both of them appearing to be drugged, if not with love. How did this happen? And how is it that Jessamine's father returns so suddenly, and so unexpectedly, and behaves so oddly?

Far from being angry, he decides that his two charges are sufficiently in love that they must be wed, but before this can happen, Jessamine becomes seriously and unexpectedly ill, and it seems that the only thing which can save her Weed's willingness (or foolishness) to put himself at grave risk by communing with the residents of the seductively poisonous garden. It’s then, and only then, that we learn how truly powerful the garden is and why Thomas Luxton should never have corralled such a diverse array of poisonous plants in such close quarters. The term "plant suggestion" takes on a whole new meaning at this point, and the nature of Weed's relationship with nature becomes as disturbingly apparent as the devious motives of Jessamine's father.

I recommend this novel as a fascinating and alluring read. Aside from the aforementioned issue with person, it was a well-written, easy, and entertaining read. The only other problem I had with it is that it is apparently the start of a series, with Nightshade being the sequel. For me, this spoils a perfectly good novel. Sad as the ending might be in many ways, I don’t believe it called for a more than likely sadder sequel. I like this novel, but I feel no need to line the pockets of Big Publishing™ by literally buying into a trope series when it isn’t necessary. I think that would spoil it for me, but do read the first one if you want a different experience from your humdrum YA fiction and your YA romance.

We Are the Goldens by Dana Reinhardt

Title: We Are the Goldens
Author: Dana Reinhardt
Publisher: Wendy Lamb
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Finally! Another author who has a dot net instead of a dot com. Why is that such a rare thing?! But I digress! This is an oddity of a novel. That's probably why I liked it so much, but I have to ask why I appear to be cursed with long novels which are not always a pleasant read, and then short gems like this, which are irresistible? It doesn't seem right, somehow. Can't I have longer versions of the good ones and shorter bad ones? But here’s the thing: I appreciate an author more who knows when her novel needs to end rather than one who’s dedicated to writing 400 pages no matter what state the novel ends up in!

This story is told in first person by younger sister Nell, who obsesses over her older sister Layla. Despite my antagonism towards first person stories, this one wasn't bad at all in the telling. See? Some writers can carry it, but not many. Reinhardt is one who evidently can. This is the first of hers that I've read, and I am disposed now towards reading others since this was such a good experience.

It’s a love affair after a fashion, although one in which there's nothing incestuous going on. I must confess that I don't know about this choice of names for the two sisters. Somehow 'Nell' and 'Layla' (the names) don't seem to go together, whereas Nell and Layla (the sisters) are perfect together. This (the names) bothers me a little bit because names are really important to me. In this case, it’s like the two girls are from different eras, like each name has its own un-blend-able ethos, but I digress…(again).

The novel is told as though Nell is speaking to Layla (who might be lying in a coma or in her grave for all we know to begin with) or as though Nell is writing a letter - an old fashioned hand-written one, not an email, or a dear diary to a sister who has run away or who has mysteriously disappeared. It was intriguing to say the least, and part of what drew me in to this story, because at the beginning, we have no idea how it's going to end, and I wanted to know.

Both girls play soccer which I think is hot. Yes, I know, that might seem quite disgusting to you: Nell is only fifteen and Layla hardly any older, but I'm shameless - and anyway, I'm not saying that the girls are hot, merely that their penchant for sports is hot: that they play, and play well. A sport, anyway, since the only one that they play is soccer, which is wonderful, but it seems odd that they have no other sports interests.

On that, er, score, my only real problem here was that the author completely glosses over the soccer! I know it’s not the most important thing going on here, but this sport was important to them and yet we got nothing about the first game of the season, save that City Day (their school in San Francisco) won 2-0, and this was after she had given the game a little bit of a build-up. We get precious little later, too, and I felt somewhat let-down by this, which is never a good feeling with which to imbue your readers!

It was disappointing to learn nothing of how either girl performed on the pitch, when we had been delivered pretty much a blow-by-blow account of the rest of their lives, and when the soccer was shown as an important part of their lives, being mentioned repeatedly. That struck me as an important omission, but it does let me get this in (WARNING: shameless plug coming up) for some great soccer action, you can always read my novel Seasoning, which in my totally unbiased opinion is the ultimate girls soccer novel....

The soccer, however, is a delivery vehicle - it delivers to us the first clues about what's going on here: what the underlying current is in this novel. Some might argue that there is some telegraphy at play here too, but it was never so much that you had an "A-ha!" moment where you felt you knew for a fact what was happening (or more importantly, what was going to happen), and sneakily, the tide which begins to run here serves to mask an under-current which is going to become important later. Note that neither of these affairs is anything new or avant-garde. The joy of this story does not lie in that anything happens to teens here which has not happened before; the joy lies in how these things happen, and in how they're addressed by the author and by each of the sisters. That's what makes this a worthwhile read.

Here's a pet peeve; this author doesn’t get that it’s 'biceps', not 'bicep'. I can't believe how many YA authors make that mistake! It’s becoming bizarrely common, but no, they will not convince me that they're right and that I should join them over on the dark side with this error! Other than that, the quality of the writing was excellent. It was well-done, it was intriguing, it was amusing, it was observant, and it was engrossing: in short, everything I need in a novel right there!

If I had a real complaint about it, I'd use it to question the wit and vocabulary expressed by Nell, who in her fifteen years comes off as way more mature than reasonable expectation might lead you to accept. Maybe she is. There are people like that, but Nell presents like she's an Eng. Lit. major or a book critic, or an editor, with some stand-up comedian tossed in. I would have loved to have known someone like that at that age, or better, at eighteen or twenty-one, but for a mid-teen to express herself this way strained credibility a bit for me.

Having said that, Nell, it turns out when it comes down to the bottom line, is the more mature of the two sisters who in the end does the right thing. This was an amazing novel, with twists and turns that are remarkable. It's very readable, and I enjoyed this immensely. In reading this, I found a new, strong female character to admire, and a new YA romance to champion as how it should be done. I recommend this novel very highly.

Looking For Alaska by John Green

Title: Looking For Alaska
Author: John Green
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WARTY!

Audio novel almost acceptably read by Jeff Woodman.

I wasn't impressed by John Green's debut novel and more than I was with his novel Paper Towns. It's living testimony to the fact that people who hand out book awards, hand them out from their ass, where their head is. But take my advice: if you want to write 'great literature' and win such awards, the secret is to include multiple quotes from dead people, preferably men, and you're almost half-way there. Make them foreign dead people and you are half-way there. Include some bone-headed words about nature conjoined with spiritualism, and you're three-quarters the way there. Don’t worry at all about your writing style. That's irrelevant in great (perhaps) literature.

And Green is quite obviously trying oh-so hard to write literature, isn’t he? Given that what’s classed as such is all-too-often anachronistic, irrelevant, tedious, pedantic, and boring, Green succeeds admirably. In this one, he sets up his template for all his novels (at least the two I've suffered through). You need a smug, spoiled, self-centered, clueless, uninteresting guy, a quirky side-kick, and a female bitch, and you're there. In this case the tedious male lead is Miles Halter tells his story in first person PoV which is all-too-typically horrible in any novel, and which seems to be the trope du jour in YA fiction these days. To be fair, in this novel it’s not completely cringe-worthy, just annoyingly smug.

Halter's life is so utterly devoid of anything of utility that he spends it memorizing the last words of the rich and famous. He's never actually read anything by those purported 'greats' of literature, just their biographies, and all he remembers of those are their dying words. With this more than ample qualification, he decides he's ready to launch himself upon life, and he goes off to boarding school at the age of 16. His parents evidently have no objection to this, not even financially, yet somehow he's classed not with the well-to-do students, but with the riff-raff.

On his first day there he meets all the riff-raff he will ever need to know. No new people need apply. His roommate, Chip(!), is known as "The Colonel". Because Halter is so skinny, he's named 'Pudge'. Oh how hilarious is the irony! Halter immediately falls head-in-ass in "love" with a girl. Alaska Young isn’t; that is to say she doesn’t come across as a sixteen-year-old, but as an idealized Mary Sue, wise way-beyond her years, so you know this is going to be tragic. It couldn’t possibly be 'literature' otherwise, now could it?

Seriously, Juliet and Romeo live happily ever after? Teens who don’t stupidly kill themselves but go on to make a real contribution to life and to their society? Who wants to read that trash? So you know it's going to be tragic, and since the narrator is named Halter, and his "love" interest is young, who’s going to die? Do the math. The give-away is in the last name, and it’s not a word that's related to 'stopping', it’s a word that's too often and all-too-sadly associated with 'die'.

The problem is that Halter's infatuation is never about who Alaska is as a person, it's entirely about how hot she looks on the surface. Adolescent love, superficial is thy name. Halter's view of her never improves, nor does her behavior. She's entirely unappealing. I don’t care how beautiful a woman is supposed to be; if she smokes like a chimney (not that chimneys smoke so much these days) then she's ugly, period. She's apparently trying to smoke herself to death, how wonderfully deep and literate. I'm impressed. Impressed by how self-destructive these losers are. But of course, if she didn’t chain-smoke, then how could she possibly be an artist, sculpting Halter's rough-hewn adolescent rock into a masterpiece worthy of some dusty corner of a museum. Shall we muse?

Halter doesn’t get how pointless young Alaska is. On the contrary, like a male spider to a potential mate, he enters her web with great, perhaps, abandon, completely embracing her lifestyle of shallow rebelliousness, cutting classes, smoking, drinking, and generally wasting his time. Yes, I get that the claim is that he wants to idiotically pursue the last dying words of Rabelais (the great perhaps), as though the delusional ranting of someone at death's door is magically philosophical, deep, and sacred (but only if they're famous). You definitely have to slap a medal on that or die trying - or try dying. Moreover, if the person is foreign, then his words (no female who dies is worth remembering apparently) are to be hallowed for eternity!

But here's the rub: if that's the case, then why does Halter go to school at all? Why not drop out completely and run away from home? Great Perhaps because that's where the lie lies in his life? Halter isn't actually interested in exploring any great perhaps; he's just interested in geek mishaps. He "explores" the unknown by doing the staid, tried-and-tested, and very-well known: going to school! Yet even then, he's paradoxically not getting an education in anything that's important. Instead, he's hanging with his peers, his attention drifting even in his favorite class. Great perhaps he's learning nothing at all? He sure doesn't appear to be.

On his first night there, he's bullied, but this is never reported, because 'ratting out' the bullies would be the wrong thing to do, don't you know? The fact that he could have been killed is completely irrelevant; it's much better to let them get away with their recklessness and cruelty so they're encouraged to do it again and again until someone does die; then everyone can adopt a pained expression and whine, "How could this happen here?" The joke here is that he fails to come up with anything interesting in the way of last words.

Despite my sarcasm, I guess I really don’t get how a novel larded with trope and cliché manages to even get considered for an award, let alone win one. The Printz Award? Really? Is there an out-of-Printz award? Probably not, but I made one up and awarded it my own Dire Virgins novel! Every main character, and there are really only three, let's face it, is a trope. Chip is the 'seasoned pro' - the one who knows every trick and angle, who becomes the mentor to the new guy. His one feature is that he knows the names of capitals. Honestly? Character Tukumi's only real feature is his name.

We already met Halter, arguably the most trope-ish since he's the tediously stereotypical skinny geek - like geek and physique are inalienably alien bed-fellows, oh, and did I mention that he knows the last words of some dead dudes? Presage much, Green? Next thing you know he'll be writing a novel where he has a count-down to the tragedy to make sure that we don't miss it. Oh, wait a minute, he did count down to the tragedy in this novel!

Oh, and Halter failed to halt her. How awful for him. Boy! You gotta carry that weight, carry that weight a long time…. Maybe if Halter had actually learned about life instead of philosophically jerking-off to the 'great perhaps' he might have learned enough to see what was coming and been prepared to do something to prevent it, but from an awards PoV, it's a far, far better thing that he doesn’t than he ever did, and it’s a far, far better ending that he goes through than he's ever gone….

Even I saw that ending coming, and that was at the same moment that I saw the cover and read the title of this novel. A candle gone out? Seriously? I'll bet the cover artist got whiplash trying to pat their self on the back after that one. The Sylvia Plath Award for most tragically tragic tragedy goes, of course, to Alaska, a teenager who was in an ice-cold state even before she died.

But what really died here was a chance at a readable and entertaining novel. I rate this novel warty, but do take form it a timeless moral: never, ever read a novel with a person's name in the title - unless it's a children's novel. They don't seem to suffer from the acute lethargy and lack of inventiveness which is the stone from which John Green is hewn..

I Have to add that I can't help but wonder why Green insists upon making his female characters jerks. I've read two of his novels (all I am ever going to read, rest assured) and in both the female is a loser and a jerk. Is he a misogynist that he does this? Or is it simply that he doesn't know any better? Actually, the question which interests me more is why John Green went out of his way to call me a liar? Indeed, he called every one of us self-publishing/indie authors liars. In a speech which he made to the Association of American Booksellers in 2013 (of which I was unaware until very recently), he stated:

We must strike down the insidious lie that a book is the creation of an individual soul laboring in isolation. We must strike it down because it threatens the overall quality and breadth of American literature...without an editor my first novel, Looking for Alaska, would have been unreadably self-indulgent.
From Brit newspaper The Guardian

In short, John Green thinks we're liars if we say we did it all ourselves (not that your typical indie author ever does this in my experience). Guess what, Green behind the ears? I did it all myself and I know other people did too, and no, I am not lying. The question is why are you so insecure that you need an entourage to write your books? And yes, Looking for Alaska was self-indulgent so you failed. Deal with it.

Marta Oulie by Sigrid Undset

Title: Marta Oulie
Author: Sigrid Undset
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Rating: worthy!

Translated from Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally.

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is less detailed so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more in-depth than you'll typically find elsewhere!

The novel covers much more than the lone topic of Marta's marital infidelity. It ventures deeply into feminism, it looks at morality, and it discusses the validity of religion, all in the context of what Marta and her husband are doing, how they're interacting, and how she's feeling towards him. Interestingly, Marta's lover, if he can be described as such, who is also Otto's business partner, hardly gets a look in. I found that rather intriguing.

This is very much a novel from Marta's perspective, told in first person PoV, which I normally detest, but which is not obnoxious here. That alone is commendable. It's annoying to have to pick novels without knowing from whose perspective they will be told (the blurbs almost never say - and I'm as guilty of this as anyone), so I always appreciate it when I inadvertently select one and discover that it's not nauseating!

On a technical matter, I have to say that while the Adobe Reader version of this is good, the kindle version is seriously hobbled by really annoying formatting issues. It looks like they simply took the PDF and dumped it unadjusted straight into Kindle format. Now you can argue that this is a "galley proof", and therefore we should not expect it to be perfect, but if you argue that, then I'm going to argue right back that while this novel is set in 1902, we are not! We're no longer living in 1907, when this was written, and novels had to be typeset using trays of metal characters laboriously put in place one-by-one line-by-line by hand! There is no excuse for sloppy proofs in this day and age!

Even rank amateurs have professional quality word processors, spell-checkers and formatting styles available to us! So no, there is no excuse for "galleys" that have line breaks in the middle of sentences or that have words like "UNCORRECTED" and "SALE" randomly mixed in with the text (the Adobe Reader version has "UNCORRECTED PROOF NOT FOR SALE" appearing on every page), or having one person's speech end and the next's take off with only a space (as opposed to a paragraph space) between the two separate quotations. If it had been corrected, though, I would never have enjoyed such amusing sentences as, "And I, the proper little merchant's wife who went around so nice and quiet, tending to my house, UNCORRECTED..."! Yes, this woman needs to be - as the butler put it in Stephen King's The Shining - CORRECTED! Or, "...my heart began to pound as a UNCORRECTED clammy sweat began to pour from my body..."! Correct that sweating, sister! Or how about this one: "It was a natural instinct that broke open inside me, raw SALE and insatiable." Yes, Marta Oulie sold out!

Known as Fru Marta Oulie in the original Norwegian, Undset wrote this in 1907 about a woman who was unfaithful to her husband, but it's not quite as simple a premise as it sounds. This was Sigrid Undset's first novel, but it was not her last. She enjoyed sufficient success to make a career out of writing, including a well-regarded trilogy which might be considered a fantasy story by modern audiences. Some of her life oddly paralleled Marta's. This novel is relevant today even as it seems understandably dated in some regards. It's relevant because there are still double-standards today, over a century later, in how women are perceived and treated in comparison with men. It's relevant in that feminism is just as much an issue today, when it shouldn't be, as it was back then when it was considered to be revolutionary.

You would think that over the course of a century these issues would have been long-ago resolved, and women would truly be equal, but it has not yet happened. It is easier to give voice to inequalities now than it was then, but it's also harder to be heard because ears have become lamentably inured to these issues over such a prolonged exposure. Feminism is no longer fresh in a culture which gobbles down fresh with an astounding voracity, and because it's not fresh any more, women have had to reach towards increasing extremes to get the message out. Consequently, feminists are now in danger of being mistakenly considered extremists instead of being correctly considered to be justified.

The novel starts out rather sensationally with the sentence "I have been unfaithful to my husband", which must have been far more shocking in 1907 than ever it is today. Had this been a modern novel, or even a modern historical novel, I would downgrade it for that. I think it has value in a 1907 novel; however, this did force me into a consideration of how this novel needs to be reviewed. Is it fair to review a 1907 novel by today's standards? There are arguments to be heard for either side. I asked this same question when I reviewed novels like Dracula, Frankenstein, and Pride and Prejudice. This is not a modern novel written in an historical setting, it's truly an historical novel translated into modern idiom. I think that latter fact is relevant: clearly those who brought this translation to published fruition think that this novel is relevant to our times, so reviewing it by the standards of our times isn't inappropriate.

In 1902 Norway, Marta is courted by and marries Otto. She tells us she loves him dearly. The two of them travel in Europe together (whilst Marta is a school teacher with commensurate salary, Otto is a partner in a business which is evidently doing well). They start a large family (by modern western standards), having two boys (Einar and Halfred) and then a girl (Ingrid), and it's with the arrival of the girl and the necessary simultaneous switch to larger accommodations that things begin to sour for Marta. It's not so much that Otto changes as it is that more of who he is starts seeping through un-modulated.

I don't know if Undset did this on purpose - juxtaposing the arrival of a girl (Ingrid, Otto's daughter) in the family with the attendant turmoil of lives being uprooted and moved around. If she did (and I am tempted to think she did), then that's pretty cool and smart on her part. Undset (which is reminiscent of 'upset' or 'unsettle' which is what this novel does) is a capable writer, but since this is a translation, it's really hard to know how much of the technical quality of the writing is due to Undset, and how much is due to her translator, Nunnally. Since I don't read Norwegian, I'll never know! However I take heart in the knowledge that even a bad translation cannot hide a decent plot! And no, this is not a comment on Nunnally's translation. Undset earned herself the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928 - the last Norwegian woman to do so to date. I'm not a big fan of "literary" novels or of stories written by Nobel laureates, but I would have to assume she's a capable writer even were I lacking other indicators (which I'm not!).

The stakes ratchet up as Marta starts an affair almost accidentally with Henrik, and he starts to feature more in her life until Otto contracts TB, whereupon she feels such guilt that she ends the affair, but continues with the pregnancy. Is it Henrik's or Otto's? The only way to tell back then was by recalling with whom one had enjoyed sex at the right (or the wrong!) time, and since Otto became sick, there has been none with him, so Åse has to be Henrik's. This comes in intriguing counterpoint to the birth of Ingrid: whereas Otto's daughter stirred-up things uncomfortably and was a contributing factor in Marta's falling into an affair, Henrik's daughter has the opposite effect - bringing the affair to a precipitous termination, and sending Marta back to her husband emotionally.

In the end, I don't like Marta Oulie (although I do like the novel), and the reason I don't like her is not because she betrayed her husband, but because she betrayed everyone, including herself, and cruelly so in Henrik's case, who has a daughter with Marta, a child who he will never be allowed to know. I hope this isn't 'the moral of this story': that if you betray your husband you will become lonely and miserable, indecisive and inert for the rest of your life, because that runs completely contrary to the feminist portrayal of Marta which colors the earlier portion of this novel!

Again, there are formatting issues at the end, with the story ending seemingly unfinished and very abruptly, and being followed without a break by some notes on Undset's life, yet the author's name is spelled with all lower case characters, which is not only inexplicable, it also seemed rather an insult. I mean why make a big deal about bringing this woman's writing to a modern audience if you're going to slight her in this way?! She's not edward estlin cummings after all.... The name of Marta's lover appears on more than one occasion spelled with a lower case 'h', which is hard enough to explain since it's something which is easily fixed with search & replace, but to trot out the author's name like that is downright weird! However, I am willing to rate this novel as a worthy read, in the hope that the final version will have these formatting and case issues resolved.

Paper Towns by John Green

Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Rating: WARTY!

This audio CD was read competently by Dan John Miller.

This novel, unfortunately told from first-person PoV, could be a lot worse, but it was getting there. Miller's narration helps, and the fact that the novel was amusing in parts also helped. The story hinges (and I use that word advisedly) entirely upon spineless Quentin Jacobsen's infatuation with his next-door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, who turns out to be a complete jerk.

Quentin is in fatuation with Margo, who shows up at his bedroom window one night demanding that he drive her around in his mom's van (he has no car) because she's had her car keys confiscated by her predictable, unadventurous, but also feisty parents, and she has eleven critical things to do that night (so she deludedly believes). The entire repertoire of criticality is inextricably entangled in Margo's juvenile need for revenge against a two-timing boyfriend, and she drags Quentin in on it with her, selfish much-adolescent-about-nothing that she is.

This plan having been more-or-less successfully executed, Quentin finds his life starting to turn around, but even as it does, Margo has disappeared. This isn't the first time she's taken off, and she's always left an impossible-to-follow clue before showing up shortly afterwards of her own accord, no less irresponsible or full of self-importance. This time, it's been six days with no word at all from her, and when Quentin discovers a whole series of cryptic clues, since he has no life and no self-respect, he obsesses on following wherever they lead, in hopes of tracking down Margo, and he starts to slowly come to the conclusion that maybe Margo has taken the biggest trip of all. Or has she?

Disk 6 wouldn't play in the car, so I skipped to disk 7 which turned out to be fine because disk 6 evidently had zero to say. Disk 5 ended with Quentin setting out to follow his last clue and disk 7 began with him arriving at his destination, which begs the question as to what value disk 6 was in the first place! Obviously none. Disk 7 was short and had a really unsatisfactory ending. I didn't like either invertebrate Quentin or Margo at all; in fact I think she's a jerk.

I can't help but wonder why Green insists upon making his female characters jerks. I've read two of his novels (all I am ever going to read, rest assured) and in both the female is a loser and a jerk. Is he a misogynist that he does this? Or is it simply that he doesn't know any better? Actually, the question which interests me more is why John Green went out of his way to call me a liar? Indeed, he called every one of us self-publishing/indie authors liars. In a speech which he made to the Association of American Booksellers in 2013 (of which I was unaware until very recently), he stated:

We must strike down the insidious lie that a book is the creation of an individual soul laboring in isolation. We must strike it down because it threatens the overall quality and breadth of American literature...without an editor my first novel, Looking for Alaska, would have been unreadably self-indulgent.
From Brit newspaper The Guardian

In short, John Green thinks we're liars if we say we did it all ourselves (not that your typical indie author ever does this in my experience). Guess what, Green behind the ears? I did it all myself and I know other people did too, and no, I am not lying. The question is why are you so insecure that you need an entourage to write your books? And yes, Looking for Alaska was self-indulgent so you failed and all of your team with you. Deal with it.