The Influencer by RTW Lipkin

Rating: WARTY!

This was one that was of interest to me because I'm currently working on a middle-grade novel about the evils of social media, but this book which thankfully has nothing to do with anything I'm writing was completely useless as either an inspiration or a caution, and it sadly was not even a form of entertainment, because it was so badly written as I realized when I read, early on, "After a few weeks I got more very used to other things too."

The author uses some nonstandard contractions like "to've" to represent 'to have' and it was just silly, and it felt amateur and and annoying, but that wasn't even the worst part. First person voice, for me, is the most worthless and inauthentic voice you can write in. It rarely works and it's usually annoying. This one was worse because the two characters were so clueless, and unrealistic, and both of them were using their own first person, meaning that the author had to prefix each chapter with the name of the person writing it, which is clunky at best.

I'm like, what, did these two unequal and antagonistic persons collaborate to write this story? How did that ever come to pass? Seriously, I thoroughly detest novels of this type because they are as fake as it's possible to get and when I read, I want to get lost in the author's world, not keep being reminded of how shallow and threadbare it is. I want to buy into it and get lost in it, and this author denies a reader that opportunity.

The story is of Claude, a computer programmer, and Ash, his creation, which is (we're told) an AI designed to pose as an Internet influencer pushing fashion and make-up. What Claude knows about fashion and make-up, and how he knows it is a complete mystery since we're never told (not in the seventy pages I read anyway), but what the author knows about AI's (artificial intelligence) is starkly apparent: very little, if anything.

There were two problems here, the first being, why would the programmer need an AI to do what he wanted to do? He doesm't. He just needs a computer representation of an attractive woman, since he's doing all the controlling and not letting the AI develop on its own. That story was already done in the 2002 movie Simone which was written, produced, and directed by Andrew Niccol abs starred Al Pacino. Unlike that movie, this story makes no sense and screams that the programmer is an idiot. That diagnosis is further confirmed by Claude being constantly baffled by how his AI manages to learn things. What? Sorry but no, this sucks.

I found myself skimming from very early on because the story, particularly the Claude parts, were so boring and whiny. The Ash parts were hardly better, so it's rather generous for me to claim I 'read' seventy pages, and frankly that was too many. I ditched this DNF and I'm done with this author.

The Forgotten Engineer by TS Paul

Rating: WARTY!

My first mistake with this book was not realizing initially that it had the word 'chronicles' in the book description. I have a policy never to read any such books along with any which have the word 'saga' or 'cycle' in a similar vein. Since this is the first book in the Athena Lee Chronicles, the smart move would have been to have skipped it. My bad! The fact that ten sequels appeared to this opener in 2016 alone ought to be informative. But this was a story I picked up to read some time ago, so what the hell.

I started reading it and made it a ways through surprisingly, but it's a very short book - a novella so the author or publisher claims, but it's too short for a novella. I'm not even sure it's a novelette. And there's a hardback version fo it??! So the fact that I made it three-quarters of the way through is not quite the feat it may seem. Unsurprisngly, it failed to hold my interest. This is almost inevitable in a series because the first book is a prologue, and I don't do prologues either. They're tedious and pointless. I think there's been only one time I've ever had to go back and read a prologue in a novel - and that wasn't because I wanted to!

The premise was initially entertaining: that a female engineer, of which there are far too few, is stranded a long way from home and has to 'engineer' her way back was appealing to me, but the poor writing drove the appeal out of it for me. There were multiple problems with the book, the first of which was that it's in first person, the most self-obsessed and tedious voice there is. It was this which largely turned me off the story. It was not believable given the things which happened to her in the first few pages, including a head injury. The second is that it has problems with the plot, the text, and the story, including the guy who shows up early and who is described literally, as 'beefcake'.

Normally a writer who uses initials for a first name is a female, but in this case, the 'beefcake' suggests a male writer and it is. No one uses 'beefcake' any more, expecially not an alien female. So this story is really not believable, and it made me want to avoid the actual series, not read on. The fact that it's billed as a space opera is another turn off for me. The fact that it talks about a 'cabal' trying to somehow take over 'the galaxy' is a serious issue. Clearly the author has no clue how big a galaxy is or how ridiculous and pointless is the notion that one can be owned or controlled. Sorry, but no. I can't commend it based on my experience.

Sketches by Teyla Branton

Rating: WARTY!

Detective Reese Parker is transferred to her childhood home - known as Colony 6 - after her life is threatened in her previous job. She has psychic visions when talking to witnesses and subsequently she feels a serious compulsion to sketch these images on paper. The images lead her to solving her case. At least that's what the prologue novella reveals. I didn't get far enough into this volume to learn what happens. I got only far enough to learn this is not for me because it's too sappy with the heavy-handed romance, and the story held no surprises or even any reason for engagement, for me.

It was obvious that Reese and her closest friends including a guy with the ridiculous name of Jaxon, which to me sound like an oil company - were experimented on and that's why she and Jaxon and apparently the others, have their psychic powers. Better Jaxon than Jacks Off I guess. This is pretty much rammed in our faces like a newspaper headline in block caps. They're looking for missing scientists, get it? They all have powers, get it? They will have to rebel against the very authority they serve to solve this. Yawn. The romance between her and Jaxon is tedious and predictable. The secrets they keep from each other are stupid, and the conspiracy nonsense is nothing original. I found it boring and quit reading in short order.

I can't commend this, and this is another series I will not be following.

Insight by Teyla Branton

Rating: WARTY!

This is a prequel to this author's series set in a dystopian future. It's very short, but it really explains nothing about the world in which detective Reese Parker lives. It merely is a prologue explaining how she came to end up back at Colony 6 - the very place she was only too happy to escape from when she left to join the New York Enforcer Division. It's set some 80 years after what's referred to as The Breakdown, which was apparently an economic and nuclear catastrophe, but we learn nothing of that. Nor do we learn why the NYPD is now the NYED. There is no world-building at all.

We do get right into the story wherein Parker, who gets psychic visions when questioning a suspect (and which she shares with no one), feels subsequently that she has to translate into a sketch, otherwise it physically affects her. She's compelled to get it down on paper at the risk of a restless night if she doesn't, and the image - often of a suspect, sometimes of a scene - in turn helps her to track down her quarry. In this case it turns out to be a big time businessman who is using some of his facilities as a base to manufacture a dangerous drug known as Juke which when mixed with another drug becomes deadly.

Parker eventually nails him., but in doing so makes enemies and against her will - supposedly for her own safety - she's transferred to Colony 6. End of this novella, lead in to the series. The problem with the is is that it makes her look rather stupid. The case she's making hinges on her recorded video of the businessman effectively convicting himself, but the vid is tampered with, and useless. There is no mention of any backup, and Parker herself fails to keep one - something you would think she would be sure to do in a case this important.

I managed to read the whole story - it was very short - but it didn't leave any mark on me, and I was by no means thrilled with it. I can't commend it unless you're already into the series and are curious as to how Parker got there. Even then it's barely worth the time. The writing itself isn't bad, per se, it just isn't very interesting.

Sky Noise by Ernie Lindsey

Rating: WARTY!

I made it almost 40% through this before giving up. The stupid is great with this one. There was no time travel at all in the portion I read so I didn't get the fixation with it on the book cover. There was increasing talk about it when I quit, but nothing happening at all.

It seems to me if you're going to emblazon your book cover with something, then you really need to deliver on it somewhere quite early on in the novel even if only a tease. If it's all tease and no delivery, then you're just blue-balling your reader. So, if there's one type of story above all others I hate, and it's not the one that has an endless lead-in with little or no payoff, then it's the one where there's a stupid female main character. It's worse if she's given to piercing bouts of screaming, so I was glad at least, that this was not a problem here.

Usually the stupid women are found in YA novels, but not exclusively so. A disturbing number of those are written by women too, but in this story, the main protagonist is a writer who is in her late thirties - hardly YA. Her ridiculous name is Helen Weils. The equally ridiculous name of her co-protagonist is Chip Sledd. The book should have been titled "Kitchen Sink" because the author tries to jam every ridiculous conspiracy theory into his purported time-travel nonsense, whether it fits or not, and let's face it, which conspiracy theory isn't ridiculous in the extreme?

The problem was that it was boring, hence my DNF-ing it. You could make a story like this one work - the conspiracy guy and the skeptical woman (it's X-Files rip-off after all) - but you'd have to do a lot better job than this author did. It would help immensely if you didn't make both of these characters dumb and unappealing.

The problem is that they are profoundly stupid and have no saving graces. Sledd claims he's been avoiding the Men in Black (yes, they're in it, too) for years, yet for the first forty percent of the book I listened to, these two are quite literally constantly on the run from those guys, unable to avoid them because Sledd led them right to his meeting with Weils! It's moronic, and tedious rather than smart and gripping.

Weils is a writer of fiction, which is what attracted Sledd to her, because she'd been researching a book on the Roanoke colonists who disappeared. Yes, they're in it too. Could the author not find a new original mystery to go with? He has to drag out every trope and cliché he can find? For someone who is supposed to be an author who researches and writes great stories, Weils is appallingly slow to grasp what she's being told and worse, she's completely passive - at least in that numbing forty percent I experienced. She's acted on, She is not an actor. It's annoying.

The sad frosting on the sunken cake of this novel is that the plot behaves like there's no Internet and no media, such that these guys could go and blab the whole story and end the problem! Of course that would end the novel, but for an author to fail to even address that as an option purely for the purpose of somehow ruling it out is just poor writing.

He seems to think that just because his characters can't go to the police (the Men in Black would simply extract them on some farcical pretense, presumably) then there are literally no options available to them other than to keep running. So Sledd is responsible for dragging Weils into all this, yet not once is she pissed-off with him for upending her life. It's completely inauthentic. And he doesn't even really apologize for what he's done to her, but the problem here is that he somehow thinks she can help him expose the conspiracy! Why her? Why not the Internet or a well-known investigative reporter in the media? It makes no sense.

The other question is what, precisely, do the Men in Black want with Weils and Sledd? What, exactly, would they do with them if they caught them? If the men in Black have the smarts and technology they're purported to have, they would know that she knows nothing, so why are they remotely interested in her? Why push her into Sledd's camp by clamping down on him right then? It makes no sense, and I call bullshit on these amateur theatrics. I ditched the book and cannot commend it.

Lightwave Clocker by AM Scott

Rating: WARTY!

Erratum:
“None of his questions did anything bur raise more questions” - 'but raise'

This is one of those dumb-ass sci-fi slash fantasy novels where every other character has an apostrophe in their name. Well it's not quite that bad, but near enough! That was the first problem with it. The second was that it moved too slowly, and the third that Saree, the main character, immediately fell for the ship's captain (cliché much?) who was the usual trope chiseled bad boy. Barf.

That was enough to turn me off this. I sure as hell have no intention of reading a series where the main character weakly fan-girls the chiseled dude ad nauseam. It's such an overdone trope I'm surprised his name wasn't Jack. Jack Hoff. That and the annoying computer "Hal" who insisted on using Saree's name every. Single. Time. It. Spoke. To. Her. That's how annoying it was. In a way I could understand her using its name so the computer knew she was addressing it rather than simply talking to herself, but it really didn't need to use hers when responding. Yawn.

Saree is a clocker. Somehow - it's not made clear how, at least not in the portion I read - she has an ability that a secretive alien race has to keep exact time. This race is responsible for maintaining the 'fold clocks' which allow everyone to sync to the same time when 'folding' or warp traveling. Why that's important isn't made clear, or if it is, I missed it. She maintains some of the clocks on behalf of this race with which she grew up (again no idea how or why). This makes her somehow a savior to trillions, but also a target for kidnappers, although why anyone woudl want to disrupt what she does is again unclear.

So not too-well thought out and far too vague for me. The most interesting character was Loreli, but she gets only a walk on part here and there. Given how vague and slow-moving this story was, and how pathetic the main character was, I can't commend this, I guess it was slow because it's a series and the author and publisher want to drag it out so they can keep suckers hooked for as long as possible, but it doesn't work on me and is one of the several reasons why I'm not much of a fan of series.

Victory Conditions by Elizabeth Moon

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the final volume of this five-book series known as the Vatta Wars or Vatta's War, and which consists of Trading In Danger, Marque And Reprisal, Engaging The Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. The main character is Kylara Vatta, who in volume one parlayed a shit-assignment of delivering an old spacecraft to a breaker's yard into having her own ship. Kylara is a disgraced military recruit, who uses her military training to keep on step ahead of rivals and out of trouble - with varying degrees of success.

It's taken Kylara three volumes to finally get her defense force up to a decent size where she can take on the pirates. Her first port of call is a shipyard where vessels are being built that the pirates intend to pirate and bring into their own fleet, Kylara meets them head on and denies them the success they expected, but loses her own spacecraft in the process. This defeat though enables her to sneak around while she'd believed dead and in the end, as you know would happen, defeat the pirates.

There were parts of this series that I didn't particularly enjoy: for example, Kylara's love interest did not inspire me at all. There were also some lengthy and tedious boring bits, but overall I consider this series to be a worthy read, and I commend it as such.

Command Decision by Elizabeth Moon

Rating: WORTHY!

This is volume four of a five-book series known as the Vatta Wars or Vatta's War, and which consists of Trading In Danger, Marque And Reprisal, Engaging The Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. The main character is Kylara Vatta, who in volume one parlayed a shit-assignment of delivering an old spacecraft to a breaker's yard into having her own ship. Kylara is a disgraced military recruit, who uses her military training to keep on step ahead of rivals and out of trouble - with varying degrees of success.

Kylara Vatta started out as military, fell into disgrace, went limping back to her family's interstellar commerce, was successful, but was gradually forced back into military mode by piracy. This volume was a bit of a pause and a breath before the finale, since not a whole heck of a lot new happens. The villains who have taken down the purported galaxy-wide communications system have acted with speed and decision, and seem to be winning the battle. Everyone else has been wrong-footed and there seems to be little orchestrated effort to take on the pirates or to fix the damage they've done. This is the gap that Kylara is aiming to fill.

This to me is the biggest weakness with these space operas. You can't write about space in the same way you can, for example write about piracy on the high seas, yet far too many blinkered and short-sighted sci-fi writers (David Weber I'm looking at you) think you can translate 2-D Earth issues and events into outer space with very little thought or change. They simply do not get the massive size of space, and the fact that it's 3D. It results in stories which sound stupid and fake.

I for one have never been convinced that there would be a huge traffic in interstellar commerce and nothing I've read in a host of sci-fi stories has convinced me otherwise - not yet. They simply don't get the massive costs involved in interstellar travel even if warp vessels were invented, nor do they seem to appreciate the vast distances involved and the pointlessness of buying items from one planet that could far more easily and cheaply be manufactured on the planet where they're needed.

Yes, maybe a planet has something special that is found nowhere else, but would people truly want to pay the billions involved in having someone go there and bring that particular thing home? Often the thing is some sort of mineral or alloy, but the same elements found on Earth or in asteroids around the solar system exist throughout the universe. There's nothing out there that can't be found or manufactured here. There are no magical undiscovered elements, and any alloys or minerals can be recreated far more cheaply on Earth than the cost of flying interstellar distances to retrieved them. In short, it makes no sense.

That said, Moon tells a decent story and if you're willing to overlook some of the more incredible parts of the novel, an entertaining tale is to be had here.

Engaging The Enemy by Elizabeth Moon

Rating: WORTHY!

This is volume three of a five-book series known as the Vatta Wars or Vatta's War, and which consists of Trading In Danger, Marque And Reprisal, Engaging The Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. The main character is Kylara Vatta, who in volume one parlayed a shit-assignment of delivering an old spacecraft to a breaker's yard into having her own ship. Kylara is a disgraced military recruit, who uses her military training to keep on step ahead of rivals and out of trouble - with varying degrees of success.

Despite the title, this particular volume has Kylara running more than engaging. She is intent upon taking on the pirates who were partly responsible for her family's woes thus far, but she makes little progress and worse, has a falling out with a cousin who's annoyed that Kylara seems more focused on fighting pirates than ever she is on conducting business, which is an odd change for Kylara, since she was hitherto all about profit and trade; however, they come to an agreement where Stella is to run the business while Kylara is to focus on protecting trade routes. It turns out that Kylara (unsurprising trope!) isn't who she thought she was.

Engaging the enemy is a bit of a misleading title because while she does engage in some mild ways, she really doesn't in the way you might think - as in having a space battle - not until the end, and even then she ends up fleeing and licking wounds. That said, the story was still exciting and engaging, so I enjoyed it and wanted to continue reading the series.

Marque And Reprisal by Elizabeth Moon

Rating: WORTHY!

Also known as Moving Target in some markets, this is volume two of a five-book series known as the Vatta Wars or Vatta's War, and which consists of Trading In Danger, Marque And Reprisal, Engaging The Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. The main character is Kylara Vatta, who in volume one parlayed a shit-assignment of delivering an old spacecraft to a breaker's yard into having her own ship. Kylara is a disgraced military recruit, who uses her military training to keep one step ahead of rivals and out of trouble - with varying degrees of success.

In this volume, Kylara has delivered a shipment to a planet and is waiting on a return cargo when she almost becomes the victim of assassins who bomb her spacecraft. She soon learns that she's not the only target: Vatta ships and berths have been attacked elsewhere resulting in many deaths in her family. As Kylara arms herself and her ship she learns of a cranial implant she needs to get which will give her the control codes for, and complete access to, the family business.

She's forced into forming interesting and unlikely alliances and hiring a paramilitary outfit for security as she tracks down the person responsible for the attacks, who turns out to be someone very close to home. Again, another fun and engaging adventure which I commend, although I confess I didn't much like Kylara's love interest who was brought back for an encore appearance in this volume and who is the trope bad boy from a wealthy or important family. Yawn.

Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon

Rating: WORTHY!

Here's another series, this one a part of a five-book set known as the Vatta Wars or Vatta's War, and which consists of Trading In Danger, Marque And Reprisal (aka Moving Target), Engaging The Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. The main character is Kylara Vatta, the lone girl in a large family of sons, who is trying to make her way in the world.

She has chosen to join the military rather than go into her family's business. The problem is that she runs into a situation where she's betrayed by a fellow cadet, and it results in her being expelled from the military academy and heading home with her tail between her legs. In that regard (female soldier screwed over by male colleague) it's very much along the lines of David Weber's main character in On Basilisk Station which also kicks off a series, although this is much more of a rebel sort of a story than a ramrod up the ass senseless military procedural like Weber's books are.

Despite this setback, Kylara finds herself with a chance to start back on the road to redemption, as she gets the opportunity to captain a Vatta vessel. It isn't much, but it's better than nothing and she can maybe build on this over time. Her lowly assignment is to pilot an aging ship to the knackers yard, and her father is taking no chances since he crews the vessel with old hands as much to keep a weather eye on his daughter as to make sure nothing goes wrong.

The thing about Kylara is that she may be a girl and she may be lowest on the totem pole at that, but she's a Vatta, and when the lure of 'Trade and Profit' pops up, she sees an opportunity to pick up a shipping contract that's let lapse by another company. She undertakes to meet the challenge, seeing the chance of making some money along the way to dropping off this clunker of a ship at the breakers - unless of course, she can upgrade the ship and maybe make it her own into the bargain. She soon discovers that it's not all plain sailing and Kylara's military instincts and training come into full prominence as a simple delivery of agricultural equipment turns into a chore of becoming a prison ship, and enduring a sort of a mutiny among the prisoners.

I enjoyed this book. Despite it being a part of a series, it held my interest and made me want to read on. It was different, off-beat, entertaining, and featured a strong and smart female character. I commend this and the series.

Doctor Who The Vault by Marcus Hearn

Rating: WORTHY!

Kind of cheating to ask me to do a review of a Doctor Who "treasure vault" like this because I love the show in general. I have to admit though that I have some issues with the new writer who took over after Steven Moffat. I don't think he's capable of achieving the same high bar initiated by Russell Davis - one that was taken to even greater heights by Steven Moffat. And before anyone says anything, my position has nothing to do with the Doctor now being female. I think that's great. I just wish Jodi Whittaker had better scripts to work with, which brings me to my next point which is that the seasons are far too short.

In the old days, those of the original Doctor Who seasons, there was a show every week for half of the year, typically running to forty or more episodes (the stories were split into half-hour serialized episodes back then, a varying number of episodes making a story). Admittedly some of those scripts were duffers, but they were there because numerous writers were hired to write them. From season 8, that number was reduced by almost half and then further reduced to 20 episodes and finally dropped to 13 or 14 by Colin Baker's time (although the episodes were longer, rather mirroring the more recent seasons) and into Sylvester McCoy's era. It's hardly surprising that viewership dropped-off when there was nothing to view for much of the year, and the scripts were all-too-often lacking something.

This reduced schedule was resumed when the new series kicked-off in 2005 and despite the quality of both scripts and production rising significantly, for some reason the powers-that-befuddle chose not to increase the number of episodes (now each a full story). This annoys me because there are writers out there who could write great episodes if given the chance and the will was there from the BBC to produce them. But the show has gone in the other direction, with the episode numbers being reduced - and even missed entirely in two years within recent memory, and under Chibnall, the number of episodes has been dropped to ten. if they were longer or better that might not be so bad, but they're simply not.

While Chibnall's first season had quite high ratings due to Whittaker's presence, the ratings consistently dropped throughout the series from almost 11 million to less than 7, and in series 12, from 7 down to less than five. Chibnall is killing it in the worst way possible. He wrote or co-wrote 13 of these 20 shows and one report I read has it that six of season 12's shows are among the top ten least-watched in the entire Doctor Who canon. Way to go Chibnall.

But we have our books! This one is a lush hardback - or soft hardback since there is some cushioning which lends it a nice 'expensive' feel. The book is like a scrapbook and it leaves nothing of the first fifty years untouched, including the Peter Cushing movies, and the hilarious and star-studded Case of the Fatal Death comedy special for charity, which featured a female doctor in part - although the special was far from canon!

The book covers each of the years there have been shows from the early sixties to the early 20-teens, and gives a summary of the year supplemented by lots of photos. I commend this as a worthy read.

Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds by Darren Shan

Rating: WARTY!

I found the idea of this novel interesting because it was similar to an idea I'd had for a novel of my own and I was curious as to whether I'd have to ditch my own idea or whether I could still go ahead with it down the road. You can't copyright an idea of course, only a finished work, but nevertheless I wouldn't want to publish a novel that turned out to be quite similar to one someone else had already published. I wish the writers of YA trilogies would learn that lesson instead of endlessly trying to clone books like The Hunger Games, but I'm not that lucky!

Anyway, I decided to read this and see what's what. I didn't get very far. It's first person to begin with which is so unrealistic that it turned me off this novel, and the writing in general was not to my taste. It seemed rather amateur and Darren Shan, actually an Irish author by the name of Darren O'Shaughnessy, uses a lot of British expressions which may not be well understood by American readers. Plus the main character's age is difficult to guess. The book description claims he's young, but he seems to think and behave well beyond his years - more like, say, an author in this late forties?!

One day this "kid" is ditching school because he's depressed about his dead bother, and he sees a girl disappear into some paving stones on a bridge over the Thames in London. He finds that he can magically use the same escape route, so he ditches not only school, but his life and follows her down the rabbit hole so to speak. Archibald in Wonderland. Up until this point it had been quite interesting, if a little simplistic and maudlin, but from that time onward, it went downhill. Rather than find a magical or engrossing world, we found only boring tunnels and eventually an angry girl, who pulls a knife on the kid. His non-reaction to that is ridiculously not credible given what he's done so far. It's like we're dealing with a different boy altogether.

The author writes at this point, "I don't yelp or flinch, but I fall perfectly still," - given that the two people are elevated from the ground at this point, the choice to use 'fall' in place of 'become' or something like that, is a poor one! It's also silly given that this is in first person, and it makes no sense given that this is after this "kid" has voluntarily chosen to follow the girl down into the tunnels, has kept going into complete darkness despite not knowing if he'll ever get out, or if the tunnel will narrow down and trap or even strangle him. He's eventually tracked her down, and now he's terrified into paralysis? It made no sense, whatsoever. It was absurd given it was first person voice, and this is where I decided to ditch it at somewhat under 20% in. I can't commend this as a worthy read. Mine will be a better story! Trust me!

vN by Madeline Ashby

Rating: WARTY!

Subtitled "The First Machine Dynasty" this book proved to be part of a series, which I didn't fully realize to begin with since there's nothing on the cover saying "WARNING: This is the first book in a series!" BEWARE!" The 'vN' is from (John) von Neumann, a Hungarian mathematician, and relates to the self-replicating robots which are the main characters in the novel. The two most important of these are Amy and Javier, both of whom are on the run. Javier is pregnant, which begs the unanswered question as to why there are genders with the robots and given that there are, why the males are having the babies. Apparently both genders can have babies, but no females do - at least in what I read, which was about fourth-fifths of this, before I gave up out of lack of interest and frustration with the story not making a whole lot of sense.

The robots are much more organic than we typically envision them, being able to consume plastics and use the materials to grow and when they have an abundance of this 'food' they can create a new, but smaller version of themselves in a sort of parthenogenesis. Amy is infamous for eating her own grandmother, but rather than make her pregnant, all this did was to incorporate her grandmother into Amy's psyche and not to any positive effect, so Amy effectively becomes schizophrenic. How this worked was never explained. Neither was it explained why she didnlt become pregnant from it.

A lot of stuff isn't explained, Amy has a human father but exactly how he was her father isn't gone into. There are areas like this just as there are areas in the text which lack a little something. At one point Javier is tickling Amy and she asks, "Can you try the back of my knee? My dad is ticklish there." But just a couple of lines later Javier is saying, "I can't really get the bottom of your feet if you're standing on 'em, can I?" - it's like the author forgot which part of her he was supposed to be tickling. Later I read "...Is she" followed on the next line by "No it's not that." which means there was zero punctuation at the end of that first time. I don't know of it was meant as an interruption - in which case there ought to have been ellipsis or a dash or something - or if the author simply forgot to add a question mark.

Those were very minor issues, but they didn't help when I was already disliking the novel for its rambling and disjointed approach to story-telling, and its lack of any explanations for how things worked or why they worked that way. It was like the author simply wanted to gloss over this stuff, and have us buy into this world without even offering a pretence of it making any sense, and it rendered the world incomplete and lacking authenticity as well as leaving problematic holes everywhere. I can't commend a book that's had so little attention given to its anatomy as this one has.

Black No More by George S Schuyler

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an audiobook from a novel first published in 1931 by the author, whose name is pronounced 'Skyler'. The novel is sci-fi and has the odd premise that some guy (who is black) invents a process by which people of color can be made to look white. Due to the ill-treatment of such people. There's a flock of them wanting this process, which in turn causes all kinds of unexpected issues down the road.

Max Disher's advances are rejected on New Year's Eve by a racist white woman named Helen. The thing is that Max is racist too - he only wants to date white women, so these two are made for each other. Rather than dismiss her and look for a more friendly prospect, he obsesses on her and when he learns of this 'Black No More' process, he's front of the line volunteering as a test subject, and so he ends up white. He changes his name to Matthew Fisher and moves to Atlanta, where this woman lives. He discovers she's the daughter of a white supremacist who goes by Reverend Harry Givens, head of The Knights of Nordica.

Matthew passes himself off as an anthropologist who supports the reverend's aims and soon is an integral part of the organization, turning it around into a powerful and money-making society. He becomes rich as a result, and marries the unsuspecting Helen. Problems arise when she becomes pregnant though, because although for all intents and purposes Matthew is now white, his offspring will not be. Fortunately for him, Helen miscarries, but shortly becomes pregnant again and his problems begin multiplying.

Matthew quickly discovers his life does not become a bed of roses from being white, although he has the girl of his dreams and is now wealthy. He's even on track for setting-up the next president of the USA, but society around him is falling apart. Black businesses are suffering because most blacks are now turning white and adopting an upscale lifestyle. Neighborhoods are going to hell, and society itself is in trouble.

This book was hilarious, and Schuyler proves himself to be a funny and perceptive writer who really had a surprisingly modern take on things and a good handle on how society works - or fails. I fully commend this book - which is quite short - as an amazing, entertaining, and worthy read.

Red Tooth by Brian Rathbone

Rating: WARTY!

This is a short story that I didn't like. It was too ridiculous for my taste.

Bob Hanks is a traditionalist, who hates to get rid of a piece of technology if it works and does the job he needs it to do. That much I can get with, but Bob overdoes it - fixing up his antique Bluetooth device with duct tape rather than get a new one. He's had it for so long that it's been replaced by 'greentooth'. I'm not sure the author quite gets what Bluetooth stands for, but maybe he does and doesn't care. Bob's wife has a greentooth and thinks her husband is crazy for not upgrading. She informs him as she leaves the house that morning, that they need to go shopping.

To pre-empt his wife and show her he's not as out of touch as she thinks he is, he resolves to go buy himself some stuff as soon as she's gone, and for inexplicable reasons, he heads for the pawn shop where he's on really good terms with the owner. But the owner isn't there. Instead some other guy is behind the counter and he destroys Bob's Bluetooth and insists he try the latest - redtooth, which bites into Bob's ear and uses his blood to power itself. He insists that it be removed at once, but is informed that's impossible since it's an explosive device that will take off his head if he tries to remove it.

For me that's where I would have ditched this if it were not a short story, but by this point I decided I could finish it without wasting too much time. That was a mistake because it was all downhill into crazy town from there on out. I lost track of who was who and what was what, and the story made no sense, not even within its own idiotic parameters. I thought it was dumb and beyond ridiculous and I rate it warty!

Take us to a better Place Stories by Various Authors

Rating: WARTY!

I think this collection has cured me of ever wanting to read any more short story collections. It's also cured me of ever thinking maybe I should contribute a short story to a collection like this. I know authors see this as a chance to get their work out there, but if your story is toward the back of the collection and the earlier stories just bore the pants off people, then no one is going to continue reading through to your story!

I can say without fear of conniption that never was there a more misnamed collection than this one. Not one of these took me to a better place nor did it seem like anyone in the story had gone to such a place, although to be fair, maybe if I hadn't DNF'd most of them, they might have turned around, had I read to the end. The thing is though, that I just got through DNF-ing this collection and I honestly cannot remember even one of the stories I read. Admittedly I skimmed a few, but even the ones I actually read a substantial portion of, I can't recall. There was one I came close to liking and I can't even remember that one, it made so little impression on me, so I can't pretend this was a worthy read, not by a long shot.

All I can do is list the authors and maybe if you know any of them (I didn't) you might find something of interest here (I didn't!): Madeline Ashby, Hannah Lillith Assadi, Calvin Baker, Frank Bill, Selena Goulding , Yoon Ha Lee, Karen Lord, Mike McClelland, Achy Obejas, David A. Robertson, and Martha Wells. That's all folks! Moving on to something better.

Orphan Black by Malka Older

Rating: WARTY!

I loved the TV series, and was sorry to see it end, but it did end, and in a good place. That's why, while I did hope for something interesting or exciting, or preferably both, from this short story - a prologue to an intended series no doubt - I think this was a mistake. It's the mistake commonly made in writing a series. Once the story had been told, where was there to go, but downhill? Where was there to go, but to retell it with a few scrappy changes?

That's exactly what happened here, In this brief story which was essentially a prologue and therefore offered nothing to bite into, there was nothing but tedium. It's just a new clone showing up - named Vivi. It was obvious from the off that this was who this woman was, so there was no sense of surprise, and what was she supposed to do? What could she contribute? The answer was 27 pages of nothing, so I can't commend this at all and certainly I have no intention of wasting any more of my time on this.

Super by Ernie Lyndsey

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an audiobook that was in first person and believe it or not, miracle of miracles, I ended up enjoying it enough that I consider it a worthy read even though some parts were less than thrilling and the ending was a bit flat. I enjoyed the cynical and sly humor and the overall take on super heroes, as well as the shifty roles played by many of the characters here. It's not your usual super hero novel and I enjoyed that - the fact that it was off the beaten path and there were no angst-y heroes or braindead romances going on here was part of the appeal for me.

Paul Woodson did a pretty decent read for the main character, who was narrating the story, but I'm not sure I'd want to listen to him reading anything else. He seemed right for this part though. The part is a cocky and opinionated guy named Leo who assassinates superheroes who have, for one reason or another, annoyed the US government. He has worked for all the top agencies: CIA, FBI, NSA, and now he's being recruited by an agency supposedly so secretive that even the president doesn't know about it. His job is two-fold: eliminate renowned and beloved superhero Patriotman and uncover the assassin in Leo's organization which is apparently targeting the US president.

It's no spoiler to say that he succeeds at the one, and the assassin fails at the other, but this novel is full of twists and turns and often things are not remotely like they seem. Leo has to navigate this world and the risks and dangers inherent in it and he does an amusing and nifty job. I commend this as a worthy read, although I have to say I do not feel compelled to read anything else by this author, especially not since it seems he writes mostly series.

Bringing Stella Home by Joe Vasicek

Rating: WARTY!

This is a sci-fi story that started out boringly and never improved. It seemed to me to be more of a sort of weird authorial wish-fulfillment kind of a thing than ever it did a real story. It moved slowly, which is hardly surprising since it's book one of a series.

I've been actively removing all series books from my reading lists of late because I've been so universally disappointed in them. Series are not my thing for a variety of reasons, not least of which is this lethargy in pace, and also because the first book can only ever be a prologue - which holds no interest for me - and because all the other volumes are, are essentially a re-run of the first volume. It's lazy writing. Instead of coming up with something new, original, and entertaining, the author merely retreads the last volume and feeds it to the reader one more time. No thanks.

The plot here, is of the George-slaying-the-dragon kind of thing where mid-teens hero James goes on a jag to save his helpless older sister Stella, who is kidnapped by this ridiculously barbaric rag-tag conglomerate of pirate military outfits who have apparently been ignored by the authorities for long enough that they're all banded together into one big and devastating force, which no one seems to be able to stop. Except James. His plan is to hire a para-military outfit commanded by a woman, and have them rescue Stella for him. I felt like I could see where this story would go over time: James and the captain getting it on.

Meanwhile Stella is a sex slave on this other ship where the heartless leader of the rag-tag rebels is a cruel and despotic dictator and who, as soon as he finds out that seventeen-year-old Stella is a virgin, changes his entire attitude toward her and elevates her to the role of goddess or something. That was where I quit reading because the whole story at this point had turned me off. I could see where this story was going too: Beauty and the Beast anyone? It was tedious and unimaginative, unrealistic and stupid, and it was bouncing like a pinball between three perspectives, yet despite this, it seemed to be stuck in mud. I can't commend it based on what I read of it, which occupied more of my time than I ought to have expended on it. I'm done with this book and this author.