Talented by Sophie Davis

Title: Talented
Author: Sophie Davis
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
Rating: WARTY!

This is book one in the "Talented saga", which runs to at least four books, because why write one novel when you can milk the same story for several? Once in a while, a writer makes it work, but this once was not that once, unfortunately. Normally I make it a point to avoid like the plague any book series which contains the word 'chronicles', or 'cycle', or 'saga' in its series title. In this case I made an exception because the blurb did its job - it lured me in. I sincerely hoped I wouldn't read to regret it, but I did!

The book, yet another in an annoyingly endless series of YA novels which for reasons unknown insist upon first person PoV, opens in a village known as Hunters Village where sleeps Natalia (Talia, Tal) in the pretentiously named 'Elite Headquarters' - yes with initial caps! I sincerely hope she doesn't really look like the anorexic girl preening herself on the cover....

Despite supposedly having to be ready on a moment's notice in case of attack, Talia sleeps in her PJs, bless her little cotton socks. She apparently has serious trouble breathing too, because when the attack siren goes off in the middle of the night, all she can do is stand around in her PJs telling herself repeatedly to breathe (yes in italics!). Funny, I thought breathing was an autonomous function....

Apparently the juvenile powers that be-otch have the idea that training consists of failing to train, and then scaring people out of bed with false alarms while they themselves sit around and laugh at the ensuing antics. Yep, adolescent juvenile dick-heads are the ones I'd trust to protect and serve. Talking of which, where are the adult operatives? I know this is a YA novel, but one of the things not explained here is why children are called upon to run these operations when there have to be trained and seasoned grown-ups available. It was one more unexplained mystery (at least in the portion I read).

Talia has psychic powers consisting of, we immediately learn, mind reading and telekinetics. She can suspend the "bombs" (in this case nothing more than neon tinted water in balloons), but she fails to do this successfully. She gets distracted by reading the mind of one of the organizers of this laugh-a-thon, and discovers from boyfriend Donavon that it's all a big joke. Such a joke is it that he and two male friends then come and physically haul Talia out of bed where she retreated in anger, welcoming her to Hunters Pledging (yes, 'pledging' with initial caps). I guess puerile moronic college bullshit hasn't changed in two hundred years.

It's obvious as soon as his name is mentioned that Donavon and Talia are an item, but it's also transparent that there's heaps of room for a triangle here. Donovan is the loyal good guy so let's kick him in the teeth by having Talia fall in love with one of the enemy, who is a bad boy with hair falling in his eyes. I have no way of knowing if that actually happened, but I would have put money on it based on this clichéd writing.

Frankly, though, rather than learn about how tall the boys are, and what color their eyes are, and what length their hair is, and how much they weigh, I'd much rather have been told what the heck is going on, who the hunters actually are (we learn in chapter four that they're 'spies'), what they do (gather information and "neutralize" threats), and who might be bombing them (rebels). Alas, the author doesn't want us to know, because that's not what this grade-school level novel was interested in conveying at this point. I don't know the precise age of the characters, but trust me, middle-grade is what they are, regardless of their actual ages.

One thing I don't get was Talia's whining, needy attitude towards Donovan. They'd had to spend a year apart, but these two can read each other's mind. That's far more intimacy than any of us ordinary humans get, yet she's whining about how hard it was to spend a year apart from him, only able to visit on holidays and special weekends! Since everything, even physical touch, is ultimately experienced in the mind, how did their separation constitute being deprived pray tell?!

I guess I should be careful what I wish for because chapter two brought a huge info-dump which actually conveyed very little. Apparently, a century before, for reasons unspecified, Earth went just plain nuts. There were earthquakes and tsunamis, hurricanes and tornadoes, cities were destroyed, and coastal villages washed away. That wasn't even the worst of it. Nuclear reactors "buried deep in the Earth's surface" also went nuts and contaminated the oceans. Exactly how that happened is not specified. What the reactors were for isn't specified. Why they were buried isn't specified. Why we had reactors when current move is away from that kind of thing and towards solar, wind, and hydro-power isn't specified.

We're told that Margaret McDonough, the founder of the school for the talented, which Talia attended, was the 75th US president, and that we are at least three to five generations along from her presidency, which means that the time-line of this story is completely screwed up! She founded her school for the "talented" before there actually were any talented! She must have been a visionary!

This story is taking place somewhere between roughly around 2200AD and 2300AD, depending upon how long each president's term was between Obama, the 44th president, and McDonough, and how long you allow for a generation, so the buried nuclear power plants makes very little sense.

From the highly improbable the info-dump went directly into the ludicrous as we were told that animal mutations arose, such as horses growing horns and dogs growing feathers. No word on whether pigs could fly. Trees grew stinging bark, and plants glowed at night! I laughed out loud at that stupidity. Evidently she wasn't kept in the dark but she was barking up the wrong tree. This is yet another example of an author who evidently didn't pay anywhere near enough attention in high school biology class, particularly in the portions discussing evolution and genetics, and it shows in this lousy writing.

These descriptions are only made worse as we learn in this info-dump that as contamination was fought, these 'talents' began to disappear. So how were these talents manifested if not genetically, and if they were genetic, then how come they were not passed on to offspring? Were all mutations beneficial? Were there no horrible death tolls as children were born with life-threatening mutations? None of this made any sense.

It would have been better had the author only vaguely alluded to a horrible, dim, distant, and largely obscured past without trying to actually explain it, especially since we're told that scientists couldn't figure out what it was which made some children different, but all were agreed that it was because of nuclear contamination? I'm sorry, but this is fanfic-level bullshit.

Right out of the X-Men play-book, we're told that children developed in a way very different from animals for no apparent reason. Unlike those feathered dogs and stinging trees, human children developed X-Men talents such as the ability to morph into an animal shape. We're told they developed other talents, too, such as telekinesis, but also "viewing" and "higher reasoning". Don't nearly all humans have higher reasoning? I know for a fact that most of us can see! Can the author not at least look-up the correct words for these things so we know what it actually is that she means?!

These kinds of talents make no sense, when you get right down to it. Or alternately, this kind of story featuring talents like these makes no sense. If you have people who can read minds, why would you need a spy agency and an information recovery team? More importantly, if the world, as we've been told, has been quite literally devastated, then what threats are there to worry about other than the ones nature itself presents? Is there still a low-level cold war, with the communist nations at odds with the non-communist? I don't see how that would work after all this devastation. Is there still a terrorist threat? I don't think so! So what threats are there? This story just didn't seem like it had been at all well thought-through - or actually thought through at all.

We're expected to buy in 'explanation' that the US has split: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas, we're told, seceded to form the Coalition of Rebel States. How, exactly, this happened in a functioning democracy, isn't explained. Why those particular states, isn't explained. How the states managed to do this, and conduct terrorist raids, slaughtering people over the border (including Talia's parents) isn't explained. Why the rest of the states didn't simply invade the rebel states isn't explained.

Back to the story in regress: after a night spent sleeping under the stars, Donavon wakes Talia up for a late breakfast before training resumes later than day. He pulls a Thermos out of a cooler, and then warms it in a fire. Honestly? What is this guy - brain-dead? A Thermos means you intend to keep the contents either hot or cold. If you need it cold, as its being in the cooler indicates, why would you take it out and warm it? If you need it warm, why was it in the cooler? If you put a Thermos in a fire, it's going to explode. Maybe Donavon was conducting an impromptu IED class?

This novel is technically passably written - nothing brilliant but not disastrous either, yet there are some instances where the writing is highly questionable, such as around 22% - 23% in where we read, "The water run for several seconds…" which should have been, "The water ran for several seconds…". On the next screen we read, "...paying the consequences...". I don’t think anyone pays the consequences. I do think people face the consequences!

That whole section is where Talia wakes up after getting drunk the night before. Maybe the author was too? I have several issues with this hang-over, though. First of all, this is supposed to be an Elite (with initial cap!) group, yet they’re out partying and getting drunk? There's no problem with soldiers unwinding and having some R&R, but getting drunk? Note that this was shortly after they'd had the alarm at the start of this novel because they might be (I assume) attacked at any time? How are these people supposed to defend themselves if they’re drunk? How are they supposed to be combat-ready if they have a hangover?

This is made worse when Erik (yes with the official Divergent 'K') insists upon Talia coming with him to the med tent to get rehydrated, because Talia is merely a helpless and directionless girl who needs to be managed at all times by men. The problem is that when they get there, all she gets is a shot. That's not rehydration, that's a shot. Rehydration would mean an IV bag and laying on a cot for as long as it takes for the fluid to get into your system. So yeah, some of the writing was downright thoughtless or ill-informed.

Worse than this, though, was the diminishing of Talia at every turn. The above-related incident is only one example, but the very use of her name is another. Originally, her name was Natalia. It’s shortened to Talia which is kind of a cool name, but then her colleagues shorten it to Tal, and Erik (in the section discussed above) employs that in the form of "Tals". What are these people, thirteen years old? Every time they do this, they diminish the character. Instead of being a promising young woman, she's rendered into a child, to be managed and baby-talked, and this is not a good thing to do to your main character!

At one point Talia suggests that her new friend Penny message her so they can get together later. It’s written like this:

"Um sure. Why don't you send me a comm," I replied, referring to the messages we sent to each other using our communicators.

No, really? 'Send me a comm' means send me a message on the communicator? I'd never, ever, have figured that one out. See what I mean about it being written at a middle-grade level? It was actually at this point, where Donavon shows up again and acts like a complete jerk for no reason other than that the author wanted a rift so she could toss Erik and Tal together and generate a completely artificial triangle, that I gave up due to extreme nausea. I'm actually surprised I made it this far, but at 25% in, I decided that this novel was unreadable because it was so juvenile and so amateurishly written. I cannot recommend it.

The Hero Chronicles: Secrets by Tim Mettey

Title: The Hero Chronicles: Secrets
Author: Tim Mettey
Publisher: Tim Mettey
Rating: WARTY!

This novel I've had in my reader for a while, putting it off for items more urgent, but it’s time to get this read. Another reason for putting it off is that this novel violates several of my conditions for reading a novel (most of which materialized after I'd added this one to my list!). First of all the title incorporates not only the word "chronicles", but also the word "hero", both of which I've sworn-off in novel titles (along with 'cycle' and 'saga'!). Secondly it’s first person PoV, which is a big no-no for me since it’s all "Me!" all the time: "Hey lookit me!" "Hey forget that, pay attention to what I'M doing!" and "No one is more important than Meeeee!"

It’s so self-indulgent and irritating, and it’s a rarity in my experience to find such a novel that's written well enough to be worth expending my time on - not when there are so many other novels and life is short! I'd much rather read something easy on the mind than something which requires fortitude and gritted teeth just to scan the text!

This novel also has sound effects incorporated into the text. Even for a middle to upper grade novel it’s a no-no. The school bell doesn’t ring, it goes "DING!DING!DING!DING!" without any spaces in between. How annoying! The the main character is equally annoying. When the bell rings for recess, he doesn’t take his turn, but hurries to the front of the line. And this is just on the second page of this thing. The school apparently experiences an earthquake, and suddenly it’s five years later and we’re in chapter two. Kudos to the author for actually putting the prologue into the body of the novel. It’s the only way you'll get me to read a prologue! I'm guessing some super villain or other comes out of the earthquake, but I haven’t read that far, so it’s only a guess.

Nick the hero is now living with his aunt Cora. Cora's only defining qualities are that she's slim and beautiful, because who wants a smart woman who might be overweight? Let’s not ever tell young children that smarts are more important than looks. And while we’re at it, who wants a woman with integrity and good humor? No one. Don’t ever tell young kids that. The hell with integrity, industry and accomplishments! Let’s not have kids growing up thinking those things are of value. Nope! Keep it superficial!

This author evidently thinks that all young kids need to know is that women should be slim and beautiful - like a magazine model - because no other woman is worth anything, let's face it. That's what all-too-many writers want us to believe, sadly enough, and that's evidently what this writer apparently wants young kids to grow-up learning. Personally, I don’t buy it, but that's the way it is. Maybe I should start keeping a tally, as I read, of how many strikes this novel garners for itself? Naw! I never read that far.

Cora and nephew are moving to a new home. I like the way Cora specifies that they'll be leaving at 5am sharp in the morning, so that he doesn’t get any ideas that they'll be moving out at 5am sharp in the afternoon…. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that he's a superhero and this could well be why they're moving so frequently. The how and why of this isn't immediately explained, but he at least has super speed, so here comes the next trip-up.

Alex and Nick decorate an older guy's car with bologna, because that's unquestionably the best way to have a really fun night, and when the older guy starts looking for the culprits, Alex proves that he can run faster than a Mustang - which in the end crashes injuring the guys. How christian is that?! He runs right into the kid he's rescuing - at speed - and takes him along so they won't be caught, but the writer is in dire need of a lesson in physics and biology, because he simply doesn’t get it (that's what too much religion will do for you!). Don’t worry, the writers in The Flash TV show don't get it either.

It doesn't matter how much of a super hero you are, the laws of physics still apply, and ordinary people still have the same biology. If you run at sixty miles an hour and pick-up a by-stander in order to rescue them, then their body is going to go from zero to sixty instantly, and you're going to break their neck or give them some serious whiplash and compression injuries at least. That's not much of a rescue.

This novel started out middle grade and moved to young adult, but the tone never changed from middle-grade. Worse than this, instead of telling us a story about the super hero powers, we got a story of the main character playing football - in tedious detail. What happened to the super hero? I guess football is more important. This story felt far more like author wish-fulfillment than ever it did a real story, and I cannot in good faith recommend it.

Steths: Cognition by Karl Fields

Title: Steths: Cognition by Karl Fields
Author: Karl Fields (no website found)
Publisher: Pleated Press (no website found)
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 book is often enough reward aplenty!

Here's a novel which gets right to the point - a cover, a title page, and then chapter one! Screw antiquated Library of Congress rules and antique publishing methods! You've got to admire that. This is the world of ebooks, not of trays of lead characters pressed together rank and file waiting to be slathered with sticky ink and squished onto a galley page. So off we go!

The world in this novel is one of people who have special powers - not supernatural powers, but enhanced human powers. Devin Chambers, the main character narrates this story, unfortunately. I say unfortunately, because it's a first person PoV format - something which I normally rail against. As it happens, it was done well on this occasion, and didn't feel to me like someone was scraping their fingernails down a chalkboard as I read it! That was a major relief.

Devin is known as a 'steth' - short for stethoscope, presumably - because he can detect, at a distance, the faintest sounds of someone's heartbeat which allows him not only to know if they're alive, but to some degree, what they're feeling and whether they're lying. How that works, exactly, goes unexplained. Yes, you can detect a change in heart-beat, or a particular rhythm, but what does that really tell you, and in how much detail? He cannot, however, detect the heartbeat of another steth - and certain other people as will become clear to readers.

He first begins to feel he's really different from others (even other steths) when his school class attends a trial and he's the only one who thinks the defendant isn't guilty. Shortly after this he's visited by a guy, Mickey, who offers him a place at the prestigious Faulkner Academy. His good friend Travis, who's also invited, is pumped about it, but Devin has doubts because the Academy has no athletic program (no, honestly!).

Devin is also obsessed with the innocent guy saddled with a guilty verdict and one day when he goes to the jail to visit him, he encounters a girl, Sarah Shaw, who was already visiting this same guy. He follows the girl, only to discover she's a special, too - but a 'bouncer' who, he learns, is supposedly his mortal enemy. Is this be the clichéd love-hate relationship whereby these two are destined to fall in love? I can't tell you!

The writing in general is very good, with only one or two questionable areas, such as on page 17 where we read: "Shaw, the defendant, who sat beside his attorney in a white jumpsuit..." Who was wearing the white jump suit?! How about, "Shaw, the defendant who was wearing a white jump suit, sat beside his attorney..."? Just a suggestion! Apart from rare happenstances like that, it was well-written, entertaining, and engrossing.

I have to say (and without confirming if I was right or wrong - I'm usually wrong on these things!) I didn't trust Carissa Watson, a fellow student at Faulkner who became involved with Devin. She seemed a little too convenient for me. I much preferred Sarah! I also liked Travis, although he initially seemed to me to be like a victim waiting to happen. Whether that does happen I'm not going to tell you!

It struck me as odd that Devin tells us he couldn't talk about movies with Carissa on their first date because there was no movie theater in town. What, they never saw one on TV or rented a video?! That struck me as strange, but that and some misspellings, such as "planed" in placed of "planned" (which a spell-checker won't find!) were about the worst issues I had with the technical aspects of this story, apart from the one I'll discuss next, which needs its own paragraph!

At one point, about halfway through this novel (which is a surprisingly fast read) there was a really improbable situation where Devin, obsessing way more on a missing photograph than ever he had any reason to, went on a highly unlikely "expedition" to a place he thought it might be. This made no sense whatsoever - first that the photograph would be hidden (and hidden there of all places) rather than simply destroyed, and second that Devin would ever become so focused on it, let alone dedicated to finding it. There was no rationale for it.

Devin had what was termed in the book, Hypersensitive Tympanic Syndrome. This isn't a real disorder as far as I know, but it is the condition which steths are supposed to have. What bugged me about that was that if steths's hearing is so sensitive that they can clearly detect a heartbeat (and from a distance, yet!), then how come every noise out there doesn't drive them crazy or deafen them? This issue is never even discussed, much less explained!

Those things aside, I really liked the characters and the story. It was well-thought out (for the most part!) and interesting. Devin was a really likable character and, again for the most part, the story was believable and made sense. This was a refreshing change from way too much YA 'literature' that I've had to read. Also kudos for having a believable guy as the main character. Devin was an African American, but one who isn't somehow tied-in to gangs or rap! It was such a relief to find stereotyping was absent here: Devin was just an ordinary everyday guy, and I appreciated that. I'm looking forward to the sequel to this novel.

Ange'El by Jamie Le Fay

Title: Ange'El
Author: Jamie Le Fay
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
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 chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This story focuses on Morgan, a Brit feminist writer who's visiting New York City in support of her her Hope foundation. She gets to know a security guard who's assigned for her protection, but there are things about him which seem weird. Naturally she falls for him because why wouldn't a feminist woman in a romance novel betray everything she stands for by becoming totally dependent upon a guy for her slavation - or is that salvation?!

Seriously, that's what I didn't get about this novel. Morgan is supposed to be this strong female character, but she ends up being nothing more than a damsel in distress, totally owned by - who else, of course - angel Gabriel. He's not really an angel, just part of a bizarre cult of genetically superior beings.

Morgan then starts behaving like an idiot, so he has to save her even more. It was at this point that I said, "Enough already! If I want to see a woman this completely owned, I'll watch a 1950's TV family sit-com". At least I can count on a laugh or two that way.

Instead of showing a woman with a sword in a superior position to a man, this novel's cover should have depicted her cowering under his security-blanket angel's wings. At least that would have been a realistic representation of what's inside the novel (not that anyone actually has wings in this novel - not in the part I read, anyway). Your mileage may differ, but I cannot get with this kind of story at all. If you do like it, then you're in for a treat, because it's the start of the inevitable series. For me, a series needs to be a lot hotter than run-of-the-mill and warmed-over if it wants me on-board, so I will not be following Morgan.

Zodiac Legacy by Stan Lee

Title: Zodiac Legacy
Author: Stan Lee
Publisher: Disney Press
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Andie Tong

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 book is often enough reward aplenty!

Erratum:
p51 "He's one of us know..." should be "He's one of us now..."
p51 "We keep tabs of Maxwell..." should be "We keep tabs on Maxwell..."

Today is the last day of my alphabet December reviews, with a double 'Z' brace of books. I'm done! Never again!

This novel (not a graphic novel, but a novel with some graphics) was available for both Adobe Digital Editions and the Kindle and I looked at it in both. The Kindle edition was problematical because the first part of each chapter had text which was grayed out and difficult to read as Kindle grey scale text. In the ADE version, I could see why - that text is on a red background. Also what are full-page illustrations in the ADE are very small images in the Kindle and so lose a lot of their impact. Other than that, both editions looked fine.

The story - which is evidently book one in the inevitable series - begins with Steven Lee, who is on a tour of a museum in China. Steven is Chinese-American and he's thinking that the tour guide is at best distracted, and at worst out of her league, when strange things begin happening. He and the tour guide, Jumanne (not her real name!), are the last to leave the room they're currently in, but as he is leaving, he hears a scream. The tour guide seems to become a different person at this point: focused and purposeful as she disappears through a hidden door. Asking himself, "What would a superhero do?" Steven follows.

He's rather surprised to find the Jumanne's clothes at the foot of a long flight of stairs, but not as surprised as he is to discover, when he reaches a balcony down there, a guy down below who is apparently being imbued, one-by-one, with the powers associated with the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac: Dog, Dragon, Goat, Horse, Monkey, Ox, Pig, Rabbit, Rat, Rooster, Snake, and Tiger.

The guy's name is Maxwell, and he's the bad guy and so is of course, a dragon. It turns out that Jumanne and Maxwell's assistant, Carlos, are both aligned against Maxwell, and Steven is actually a candidate for taking on zodiacal powers himself! He's a tiger. Carlos has no such affinity, but is an excellent side-kick. Jumanne, whose real name, it turns out, is Jasmine, also happens to be a dragon.

There are two free mini-books on BN & Amazon, each of which offers some details of the characters (six on each side), and offers about six chapters of the Zodiac novel as well. It's the same six chapters in each book, but one book details the good guys: Dragon (Jasmine), Goat, Pig, Rabbit, Rooster (Roxanne), Tiger (Steven), the other the bad guys: dog, horse (Josie), monkey, ox, rat, snake, plus Maxwell on the dragon). Maxwell wanted to absorb all the powers - something which is supposed to be impossible- and then dole them out to minions whom he could control. He claims he wants to make the world a better place, but Jasmine's crew doesn't believe him.

Once the initial confrontation is over and the zodiac device has been split, Jasmine, Carlos, and Steven take off across the world tracking down the young people who have somehow managed to pull down the various spare zodiac powers that Maxwell hadn't yet claimed for himself. Given that they're complaining they don't have large financial backing like Maxwell does, how they manage to commandeer passage on a container ship and then flights to Paris and other places, I have no idea!

'This is very much a middle grade story. It isn't aimed at adults. As such it wasn't that entertaining for me, but it wasn't bad, and I can see how young kids would find it engrossing, so I'm going to rate it positively. The art-work by Andie Tong, which served more as dividers between chapters than anything else, was very good, so all-in-all, not too bad of an effort, but not very demanding or engaging for more mature readers.

It Falls to Us by Tim Nolen

Title: It Falls to Us
Author: Tim Nolen
Publisher: Tim Nolen
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 chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!

Erratum:
P13 "Yeah, we'll you'll need…" should be "Yeah, well you'll need…"

I don’t do covers because this blog is about writing and writers have little or nothing to do with the cover (unless they self-publish). Covers are all about misdirection, fluff, and advertising and generally have nothing to do with the story. In this case, the only reason I found the cover interesting was that the design of the silhouetted superhero's chest looks like a face - the two white roundels on the upper pectorals look like eyes, the straight vertical line dividing the pecs looks like a nose, the rounded lower portions of the pecs look like cheeks or jowls, and the cape billowing away to the right (as we look at the image) looks like long, flowing hair! Fluff.

This novel is 47 chapters in 114 pages which means really short chapters, especially since the text is pretty much double-spaced. It's a very short novel - perhaps even a novella (I don’t know the word count) - but then it’s part of the inevitable series, the whole point of which is to keep spinning the story out as long as possible. I should say up front that I don’t do series unless they're exceptional, and few are. I am not planning on following this one.

The novel doesn’t have a prologue - which I never read anyway. Instead, the author wisely put the prologue - where the old guard superheroes meet their come-uppance - into chapter one. See? It can be done, folks! Tim Nolen proved it!

This first chapter is trope and clichéd superhero stuff, which I was willing to put up with in the hope that the new generation in the following chapters would have something different and original to offer. They didn’t. It was just more of the same. I ran into a small problem on page three where I read, "…rabbit punched her in the face…" A 'rabbit punch' is a blow to the neck - so it’s impossible by definition to rabbit punch someone in the face! Oh well….

In the very next paragraph the author confuses smoke with darkness - either that or the properties of a typical night vision image intensifier with the properties of a thermal imaging camera, by having someone with "night vision goggles" able to see through smoke, but let's let that slide by in its sentence fragment, because, in general, the writing wasn't too bad. There were however some real clunkers such as that on page 11, where I found this odd phrase describing part of a fight between younger generation hero 'Defiant' and super-villain 'The Wrecking Crew': "…sending Defiant sailing down the block, taking an enclosed bus stop with him. Defiant landed out into an intersection..." 'landed out into'? Fortunately most of it was good English.

One of the major problems with this for me was that it’s not a graphic novel, but it read like one. I didn’t see that as a point in its favor. Had it been accompanied by panels of images on each page, then it would have felt like it was much more in its element. It just felt wrong for a text novel because there's no real attempt at descriptive or detail writing here, nor is there any attempt at creating atmosphere. It’s all straight-forward depiction of fights between heroes and villains, conversations, and preparations for the next fight. There's no world-building going on here - no deeper context.

After Defiant comes up with a smart decision on how to take down Wrecking Crew, he carts him off to jail, where we learn that the jail has a nullifier device which cancels the villains' powers. I was immediately thinking: if this is the case, how come the cops don't simply use one out in the field to nullify the villains' powers and arrest them? Why do we need superheroes? How come the villains don’t have one to use against the superheroes? Apparently the reason for this is that there is only the one and it’s huge - buried in the ground under the six cells it powers.

There was one incident which I felt was rather racist, which is where some thugs threaten a character named Veronica, and Defiant comes to her rescue. This is yet another instance of a girl needing rescue by a guy, but that wasn't even the worst part of it. The thugs were given dialog that sounded like a white person's ill-considered attempt at 'Ebonics' - thereby identifying the thugs as black. I don't know if this was the intention or not, but the implied association of 'black' with 'thug' wasn't appreciated. I can't speak to whether the entire cast of this story (apart from aforementioned thugs) was white, because there really was very little description of anything.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the major villain's name was Blackheart! He is the one who negates the four main superheroes at the start, but he reminded me of Doctor Evil in the Austin Powers movies! He just didn’t seem like a real villain - more like a caricature. I made it to fifty percent of the way through this book before I ditched it. It just wasn't interesting enough to keep pushing on, not when there are so many other books out there which I know will pull me in and hold my attention. I can’t rate this as a worthy read.

The Siren and the Sword by Cecilia Tan

Title: The Siren and the Sword
Author: Cecilia Tan
Publisher: Riverdale Avenue Books
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 book is often reward aplenty!

Erratum:
p47 "…then la down…" should be "…then lay down.."

This novel is a huge rip-off of the Harry Potter stories (and the author admits it - kinda!). It's book one of the Magic University series, because one novel is never enough any more in the YA world. There was a prologue which I skipped as I always do. If the writer doesn’t consider it important enough to put into chapter one or later, then it’s not important enough for me to waste my time reading it. I've followed this philosophy consistently and I've never come across a novel (including this one) where I've had to go back and read the prologue because I felt I missed something. QED.

The novel is about main character Kyle's integration into magic college, his making of friends, and his resolving the issue of who is the siren who haunts the college library, but I use the word "story" very loosely because there really isn't one. What there is, is really thin and not nourishing at all. There's nothing new, original, or even interesting here, unless all you want is a cheap non-romance and some raunchy sex (Celia Tan is primarily a writer of erotica). That isn't enough for me.

There are no interesting characters here: no one who stands out, or who registers as engaging or fun, or admirable. There's no villain as such, and there's really no attempt whatsoever at world-building, so we're treated to a tale that's essentially just a series of sketches or vignettes rather than a real story.

The best thing about his novel is that it’s not told in first person PoV - the most self-centered, pretentious, and inauthentic of writing styles. I commend the author for that, but the rest is pretty much boiler-plate Harry Potter. Kyle Wadsworth is in the trope position of starting his first day at a new and surprisingly unexpected school. He's an orphan boy who isn’t wanted at home, who suddenly finds out that he's magical, and sees 'new school' as synonymous with 'new home'.

The only real difference is that Kyle is eighteen and starting college instead of just launching into a middle and high school education. You might want to make a note that there's a strong and very prevalent sexual content in this novel - which definitely wasn't in Harry Potter and which is much more graphic than you usually find in YA stories. That didn't bother me, and in some ways it was quite well done, but I never trusted it for some reason, and given how the story turned out in the end, it made everything that went before seem farcical and inauthentic.

We're quickly introduced to Jess, who's a stand-in for Ginny Weasley (after a fashion), but who has nowhere near the power which Ginny had. Next we meet Alex, who is pretty much Ron Weasley, and we meet Lindy, who is a clone of Hermione Granger, right down to her being born of non-magical parents and having wild hair. Not only is Kyle magical, but he's a special magical person - just like Harry Potter - and there's a prophecy about him. And just like Hogwarts, there are four school houses which follow the four suits of (tarot) cards:

• Camella (Latin for a bowl or a cup
• Gladius (Latin for a short sword - the primary fighting instrument of the Roman legions)
• Nummus (the Latin term for copper coins)
• Scipionis means that which belongs to Scipio (who was a Roman general), but it also means a rod or a staff

Just like Harry, Kyle is placed into one of these houses by magical means. Unlike Harry, he gets Gladius, which isn't the one he wanted. Like Harry, his dorm room is way up in the top of a tower above the common room. Oh! And there's even an underground chamber. This one isn't hidden, although it probably contains secrets.

Unlike Harry, Kyle has no problem whatsoever completely swallowing everything he's told - including, of course, the revelation that there are magical and non-magical people. None of this freaks him out, or even imbues him with a modicum of skepticism. He immediately and completely believes it all. I didn't like Kyle.

There's a really funny instance of cluelessness from Jess when the two of them 'magically' hook up and go out to eat. Jess claims she had a prophetic dream of meeting a man at a carnavale. That dream has never come true, so why on Earth is she claiming it was prophetic? Just because she remembers it? Lol! This struck me as completely nonsensical. I didn't like Jess.

Suddenly on their way to get pizza, her eyes look like deep pools to Kyle, and now the two of them are no longer hungry but horny! Once again we have a relationship in a YA novel which is all about looks, skin deep, carnality - and nothing to do with actually getting to know and value - or even like - a person. It's sad that this was written by a woman.

The classes Kyle is assigned make no sense. He's assigned a class on poetry! Why? Isn’t he supposed to be training to be some kind of a magician? He's a late starter (how that's so when he's just applying to the college is a complete mystery - students don’t normally apply to start when it's already two weeks after the semester begins) - but if he's late as we're told, and magically clueless, as we're told, then why isn't he being assigned some intensive introductory courses? There's no explanation for this.

At one point, we meet Kyle sitting outside a building with gryphons at the door (gryphon-door get it?!) and our hero is so clueless that he can’t think of a single thing to say about a TS Eliot poem. He's not the sharpest sword in the house is he? Fortunately this is where his magical powers come in, and he breezes the class. Apparent his magical power is understanding poetry.... Excuse me?

Next we're having broomstick races and someone is injured. I wonder where I read that before? Keep an eye on the person who gets injured - he fades from view in the story, and then comes roaring back completely out of the blue (and making no sense whatsoever plot-wise) towards the end.

Once again on page 69 (how appropriate) we get prettiness specified as the most important trait in a woman. Shame on Celia Tan. She also writes a conversation in which a nineteen-year-old uses the word "honey" as an endearment. Really? That struck me as highly unlikely. Which teens use that word any more? The author has Kyle talking about being in love with Jess when they hardly know each other, and when the only thing they evidently have in common is sex. It made me lose respect for Kyle that he "fell in love" with someone as shallow, one-dimensional, and cardboard as Jess.

The author does make an effort to pull it out of the fire in the second half, and things began to get a bit more readable with some unexpected twists and turns, but in the end, this wasn't a good story. It was too flimsy and lacking in any real substance. The characters were readily forgettable. The novel had far too little to offer. it had nothing new, and I can't generate any enthusiasm for reading a whole series like this. I barely managed to talk myself into finishing this and would not have done so were it not so short.

Strong Female Protagonist by Brennan Lee Mulligan

Title: Strong Female Protagonist
Author: Brennan Lee Mulligan
Publisher: Top Shelf
Rating: WORTHY!

Gorgeously illustrated by Molly Ostertag.

With all I've been saying about strong female protagonists, how could I not want to read this?! It turned out to be everything I hoped for. This is what I'm talking about when I say I want a strong female protagonist. Alison is freaking awesome and it has nothing to do with the fact that she can pretty much kick anyone's ass whom she wants to. Here we have a superhero comic that simultaneously parodies superhero comics and tells an amazingly good superhero story of its own.

Alison Elizabeth Green is MegaGirl in a world where young teens have become superheroes and supervillains. Alison's power is super strength and invulnerability, but she's not even remotely invulnerable to self-doubt and to questioning the whole superhero-supervillain trope, and fretting over her place and power in such a world, nor is she to questioning whether, in the final analysis she, as a hero is really any better or even any different to a villain.

The satire and comedy meld perfectly with the harsh reality of the story told here, and it all combines to make a remarkably good superhero story. I particularly liked the sly comments at bottom of each page which have some trenchant or amusing observation to impart. It’s like the writer is reviewing his own work! On page 52, for example, there's an amusing aside about trashcans. On page 111, there's one about two side characters who appear in just the one panel. Later there's a bizarre one about a soldier trying to get his commanding officer to read his poetry. It goes on for every page and they're hilarious.

We follow Alison through her life - mostly her regular life, but with heroic interludes sprinkled in. Alison came out as a super hero, so she has no secret identity. Everything is out in the open, even her past, which frequently comes back to haunt her. Her relationship with the villains is unusual, too. She's actually friends with one who has given-up his villainy, and with another who has found a rather scary way to make up for her past. That character is known as Feral, and I loved her almost as much as I loved Ali.

I was a bit sorry that they didn’t develop an intimate relationship, but that was another strong point of this novel: she didn't need a relationship precisely because she was a strong character who didn't have to have some partner around to validate her.

And that was another amazing thing about his comic: it didn’t present women as objects to be ogled. All of the characters were ordinary people. There were no pneumatic breasts, no improbably toy-like legs. There was no ridiculously juvenile smart-mouthing and clunky one-liners during fights. The whole thing seemed perfectly real, even as it was obviously fictional.

Little bits here and there didn’t work. For example, the reversed text (white lettering on black background on page 127) doesn't function at all well. It's all but illegible. Curiously, the comment typeface used in this way on page 142 works fine. I think it’s that the 'hand-written' font used for the panels just doesn’t work well in the negative.

Also I don’t get that the coach is talking about a 4th quarter in a soccer game on page 181. Soccer doesn't have quarters unless they really wimp out in high school girls soccer. Who knows, maybe they do. I never played high school girls soccer. I found this - if true - to be a truly sad commentary, though. Here I'm reading about a strong female protagonist and learning that girls might be considered such wimps that they can’t play for 30 or even the regular 45 minutes of soccer each half without taking a break! How ironic is that?

I've recently begin reading a sci-fi novel which features, at one point, a planet which is still undergoing a meteorite bombardment similar to that which Earth underwent in its early history (known as the late heavy bombardment - something for which the young-Earth creationists cannot account!). This is why I think that when I read on page 198 of a meteorological forecast, my brain immediately went to meteors instead of weather! That was a weird moment. I began wondering if the meteor bombardment was what caused the superpowers. Very confusing - and totally wrong!

That weirdness aside, I loved this comic from start to finish in its entirety. It was beautifully written, refreshingly illustrated (props to Molly Ostertag), it was realistic within its framework, even as it poked fun at not only superhero conventions, but also at itself. I highly recommend this comic. You can get a look at some of this story on the website: strongfemaleprotagonist.com.

Outshine by Nola Decker

Title: Outshine
Author: Nola Decker
Publisher: 7 Sparks Press (no website found)
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: p50 "Last night she stayed wake watching..." "stayed awake" maybe?

Oh, what do we do about a novel which gets 85% of it right, but in the last fifteen percent, really goes seriously down hill? I was all ready to rate this as a worthy read. I'd even put up the first draft of this review and had it set-up that way, but I hadn't finished the novel! Let this be a lesson to all we who review! Now I have to seriously think about how much this last fifteen percent undermines every good thought I'd had in reading the first 85%!

This novel began very strongly. It felt to me like the one which makes it worth wading through a dozen other average or even crappy novels in order to reach such a novel. I don't know where Nola Decker came from; I'd never heard of her, but she is without doubt a writer to watch. No, strike that! The heck with watching: Nola Decker is a writer to read! This story really grabbed my imagination from page one, and it refused to let go. I love stories like this! At least I did for some four-fifths of it!

Unfortunately, that's not to say it was perfect, but which novels are? There are some flaws in it, but that there are flaws is not the issue. The issue is whether the story is a good and engaging one 9in general it was), whether it's original (it is), whether it has something to say (it does, particularly if you want to know how to really write a YA 'romance'. No writer is perfect, and this novel comes close to delivering perfection from its originality to its well-drawn characters. Is that enough to rate it a worthy read?

Gabe and Jessa have known each other since childhood, but they're not friends. In fact, Gabe isn't friends with anyone, and especially not his spoiled-rotten kid brother Watson, because it's too painful. Gabe's problem is that he knows, just knows when you're lying. It makes him so ill that he refers to it as his 'allergy'.

He can't stand to be around people, since people tend to lie to a greater or lesser degree all the time, and even 'harmless' white lies aren't harmless to Gabe. He has it so bad that he can't even lie to himself, and sometimes he can't keep his mouth shut when he feels a lie - feels it like rusty stakes in his mouth or needles under his skin - being told by someone else, and this has caused disruption and embarrassment on more than one occasion.

Jessa is one of the hot girls in school: immaculately dressed in designer clothes and heels, perfectly manicured and made-up, but she's a complete lie. Inside, Jessa is the tomboy of all tomboys, and turbo-charged at that. One day, skipping class to go for a nail-job down-town, she was cutting through an alley when four guys who evidently knew about her 'power', showed up to abduct her. She almost literally kicked the crap out of them. It felt good to her, too, after hiding her skills for so long under a "girlie" exterior. Now she's looking forward to finally getting a date with Watson (even without her nails having been done!), but Watts has suddenly, with neither warning nor explanation, disappeared.

Jessa sees a connection between the disappearance and her own experience, and she realizes that, unfortunately, she needs Gabe's help to find out what's going on with Watts going off. She thinks he was abducted by the same guys who made the mistake of trying to tackle her, and the more the two of them look into it, the more it looks like she was right.

Here's an observation which has nothing to do with the actual writing itself; it's more to do with the mechanics of presenting what's written via various media. I started reading this on Adobe Reader, where it looked fine, and then I tried it on my antique Kindle (since Adobe Reader isn't portable - not for me anyway!), where it also looked fine for the most part until I reached the end of chapter 11; that's when my Kindle went bankrupt!

The Kindle is rather small, and doesn't make for a great reading experience (I'm very much a print book guy. Sorry, trees!). In order to make it more like reading a book, I keep the text sized quite small and read it in landscape mode. When I reached the end of chapter 11, I swiped to the last screen and the text size was suddenly in a font three times larger than the text on the previous screen or on the next screen! Weird!

This same thing happened in chapter 23, where the whole last paragraph was three times larger on that last screen of the chapter! I have no idea why it did this, or whether or not it's tied to how this novel was formatted, or to some kink in the Kindle, but while it is odd and a bit annoying, it's nothing to do with the story-telling itself, so it's not an issue there. I'm just passing it on FYI.

I don't want to give away any big spoilers since this is a brand-new novel, but in order to review this and describe some problems I had with the plotting, I have to reveals a few details. There were two parts of this novel where credibility really went right out the window. The first was relatively minor, but there were issues in the last fifteen percent that were major. It turns out that Gabe and Jessa are not the way they are by pure chance - there's a lot more going on here, and to her credit, the author skilfully un-peels this story like an onion. Despite that, some of the upcoming plot points are telegraphed rather loudly, so that even I figured it out beforehand. Other parts are much more subtle.

Anyway, in process of unfolding this tale, there's a point at which someone supposedly calls the police, and this someone later turns out to be working for the bad guys, yet both main characters continue to trust that this traitor actually called the police! This issue becomes even worse later, because it's referenced by one of the police officers. This made even less sense to me, unless this university town quite literally has only two police officers. The problem with this whole thing is that it suggests that the two main characters don't have a whole heck of a lot going on behind their forehead, which isn't the best way to depict them! So I was disappointed there.

Aside from a weakness here and there, and the plot holes I mentioned, the story was solid and well-written - very well written. I was impressed, for example, by the relationship between Gabe and Jessa. It was done better than about 70% of YA romances where it's all, "Hi, nice to meet you! Oh God I am so in love with you already!", which is shamefully pathetic and speaks really badly of far too many YA novelists.

Nola Decker isn't one of those people. She knows how to write believable characters, and how to issue them with credible behaviors and motivate them rationally based on their back-story. This novel, as fantastical as it is, is for the most part very credible within its own framework. Yes, occasionally the dialog (in particular, where the bad guys monologue about their world domination plans like evil super-villains!) is a bit eye-roll-inducing, but overall there isn't anything which outright condemns the novel, and there is so very much to recommend it.

Jessa in particular has become one of my favorite kick-ass female heroes. She's actually a bit reminiscent of Spider-Man in some ways, particularly the symbiont-infected one in Spider-Man 3, because she not only has incredible power, and essentially wants to do the right thing, she also has some serious issues to contend with in the form of her own genetic urge to hurt people, and also in the form of her impossible relationships with Gabe and Watts. I felt so bad for her.

There was a weakness which is common to all YA novels in that the authors for some reason will have their characters display all manner of questionable behaviors, but they will never have them kill anyone! This particular flaw occurs several times in this novel, where Gabe and Jessa have the leader of the bad guys (or some of his minions at one point) at their mercy, and yet they let them live, and worse, in effect let them go free, meaning that these people are now free to do as they please,including continuing causing trouble, and even killing other young people!

That was insane in my opinion. Of course, if she'd done that, this would never have been able to run to a series, now would it? Since this blog is primarily about writing, here's a question for writers to consider: how much are you willing betray the quality of your writing for the sake of stretching a one-volume story into a trilogy? The answer should be: "Not at all". Jessa has two golden chances to kill the leader of the bad guys and she fails both times. hence volume two.

What bothered me about this is that we're not talking here about wanton killing or gratuitous violence. We're talking about stopping the bad guys, something which Jessa harps on repeatedly, yet when she had the chance to quite literally stop him cold, she turned her back on it. These are guys who have repeatedly shown themselves to be merciless killers, and to be controllers and manipulators. They plan on continuing abducting or executing other teens dependent upon their value to 'the cause', yet when Gabe says "No, don't kill him!" Jessa loses all her independence and self-motivation, and falls completely into line. This does nothing but cause them ever more grief down the line. For me this was a betrayal of Jessa as a character. Neither did it make any sense in context.

I wouldn't advocate novels where the 'good guys' are shown mercilessly killing others for no good or valid reason, but I honestly cannot get on board with this pussy-footing around dispatching bad guys who are downright evil, and who are clearly never going to change their minds, and never reform their behaviors.

I can see why not having your main characters kill someone in a young teens novel might make sense, but this novel is clearly for older teens and young adults, and this limp attitude which Gabe and Jessa repeatedly exhibit towards some very dangerous and downright evil people seriously undermined the import of the story and the integrity of the two main characters for me. We have PG-13 movies where death is depicted without sentimentality, so what's up with novels aimed at an age-range which is more mature than that?!

Here's another plot hole, as long as we're on that topic: there's a point where Jessa and Gabe have escaped the bad guys (and failed to kill them!) and they're driving back and forth on this one stretch of road because they can't agree on whether they should get back to their home town asap, or go and recover Jessa's car. In the end they decide to recover the car. The sole reason for finally choosing this action is because there's medication in the car which they can use to keep their prisoner under control, so this they do - but then they fail to administer the med and the prisoner busts loose!

This was a real clunker for me. I can see how people, young adults or otherwise, might make bad decisions if they're tired, or strung-out, or scared, but when they make a U-turn for a specific purpose, and then neglect to fulfill that purpose, and we're given no explanation for it, and no good reason (other than that the plot demands it!), then it really drops me out of suspension of disbelief.

But this was very tame when we compare it with the biggest clunker. This is the one which occurred in the last fifteen percent of this novel and which made me seriously reconsider if I still wanted to rate this the way I'd been thinking I would. This is where Gabe gets into a fight with his brother. Normally Gabe is as placid as they come, and it's Watts who has the violence and meanness genes, but Gabe has been pushed and pushed and pushed, and there is so much on the line that when Watts starts beating him up, and really punishing him, Gabe fights back and gives as good as he gets.

There are no adults around: no one to stop the fight (which struck me as odd), but someone calls the police, and when they arrive, they take Watts, who is hardly injured, to the ambulance to treat his "wounds" and they immediately arrest Gabe. All of this is done without the officers asking anyone - anyone at all - what happened here! They just blindly arrest Gabe, the acknowledged weakling of the family, as though he's the brute and the bully and Watts is his innocent victim! That made my jaw drop to the floor because it is absolutely nonsensical, and it carries zero credibility. How did this ever get past the beta readers and the editor? Nola Decker should ask me to be a beta reader, because these plot holes would never have got past me without a red flag being raised! Gabe, a minor, is hauled off to jail without his mother being notified, and without his injuries being treated.

I have to note that the final 15% of this novel is really badly written. And I know exactly what's going to happen in the sequel: they who are dead aren't really dead, and they who were enemies are now friends again. Make of that what you will! My problem is how to rate this. I can't rate it 'warty' because so much of it is so very good. In the end, it's for that reason: for the fact that most of it is really good when compared with the lousy standards of all-too-many YA novels, that I'm going to rate this a worthy read, in the hope (and the faith!) that an author with Nola Decker's very evident chops will get it right in the sequel. So let's look forward to that.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

Rating: WORTHY!

Curiously, this novel isn't copyrighted to Brandon Sanderson, but to Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC. What's up with that?!

This is the first in The Reckoners series: Steelheart, Mitosis, Firefight (due in late 2014 to be followed by Calamity). There's a huge prologue to this novel (which I naturally refused to read) that apparently details how the main protagonist's father died. In my book(!), if it’s worth telling, it’s worth labeling it 'chapter one'. Otherwise, fugeddaboudit! This review contains some big spoilers.

I’d looked at Steelheart several times on the library shelf before I decided to check it out. My problem with it was first of all, that it’s a first-person PoV novel. Nine-out-of-ten 1PoVs are detestable in my experience. The other problem was less easily definable: I just couldn’t get inspired by the idea of it, but then I decided, since I'd already read and liked The Rithmatist by this same author, what's to lose? That's the advantage of the public library: you're not out anything but a bit of time if you don’t like it, and you can always go buy the novel later if you really do like it. I had some minor issues with the story as I began reading it, but I found myself starting to become engrossed pretty quickly, which was a welcome surprise.

But be advised that this represents two negatives with which I came into this: that I was really ambivalent to begin with about this novel, and that this is a super-hero story. This may affect my take on it! This is not a comic book, but it has that graphic novel aura about it because of its subject matter. I used to like comics when I was a kid, but I grew out of them, so I never became a part of that culture. I've reviewed several comics in this blog, and actually enjoyed them for the most part, but I'm not an aficionado, and although I've been to a few comic-cons, I was neither part of, nor impressed by, the fanboi/girl culture; in fact, I'm turned off by it. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a good super-hero movie as my movie reviews page proves.

Sanderson tries to remain faithful to the comic book style, but I'm not sure this was the best way to go with a novel written entirely in words. I can see where he's coming from, but comic book fandom is most akin to a fanatical religion, and writing a novel entirely in words and putting it out there for comic fans seems to me to be rather like being a heretic. OTOH, you cannot possibly write a graphic novel and include in it as much as is included in a regular novel. Not in one volume! To me, this is a severe and debilitating limitation of comics. It's why I grew out of them. They couldn’t continue to offer me enough as I grew up.

So the story is set in a future Chicago - clunkily re-named "Newcago" - which is run by a cadre of super-villains, the leader of whom is Steelheart. Steel heart could also refer to the main protagonist, and can also refer to "Newcago" itself - the entire city was turned to steel - walls, streets, furniture, windows, doors, and so on by Steelheart. I guess he's just that kind of a guy. How the city even stayed above ground with that extremely dense tonnage of metal being tugged down by gravity remains unexplained. Society fortunately had new mobile phone technology by then, so the massive preponderance of metal conveniently doesn’t affect people's ability to communicate or navigate.

A decade before, the bad stuff happened. A weird comet or light of some kind appeared in the sky and bad people developed super powers - or more likely, ordinary people got them and became bad. These people are called Epics, and they come in various rankings, dependent upon their influence and power. Steelheart is the leader in this city and has a close group of slightly lesser super-villains who work with him. Why they do this isn’t explained. Why any super-villain would even want to be the reigning monarch over a city is also unexplained, especially given that Steelheart quite literally does nothing save eat and sleep, and occasionally display his power to keep people afraid of him.

One of these sub-villains is Nightwielder, who can be incorporeal, and who casts the city into permanent darkness for reasons unexplained. The only thing which shines through is the light in the sky, now named Calamity. No one knows what it is or how any of this came about. Nor does anyone know how people manage to find things to eat when there's nothing capable of growing under the darkened sky. The rest of the country is similarly under martial law from super-villains and suffering devastation.

A small group of anonymous people, known as The Reckoners, is trying to kill Epics. This group seems almost super-human itself in its ability to get into and out of places, and to assassinate many of the lesser Epics. David Charleston, whose father was killed in the prologue by Steelheart, has recently got out of the child-labor munitions factory which supplies weapons to Steelheart's fifty squads of enforcers.

When he became eighteen he was forced to quit and make his own way in the world, but he has savings: enough money to get his own apartment and to live independently while he plans how to exact revenge upon Steelheart for his father's death. He has a hand-written library of notes on a huge number of super-villains, and a plan to take-out Steelheart. Why hand-written is unexplained. The first step of this plan is to distract Steelheart by making him think that there's a new villain in town - Limelight - who is planning on challenging Steelheart's despotism.

One night David hears a rumor that The Reckoners are in town, and he figures that they will go after Fortuity - a villain who has precognition and consequently is extremely hard to assassinate. David ends up joining The Reckoners and seems to be accepted by them all except for his peer, Megan, who for some unexplained reason resents him, so you know they will become an item. Can you say "cliché"? David's only thoughts of her center around her physical attributes and appearance. He exhibits no apparent desire to know her mind.

The Reckoners group consists of 'The Prof' - who is so suspicious that I began thinking he was an Epic himself - along with Tia, a researcher who digs up data in an attempt to find ways to bring down the Epics, Cody, a sniper, Abraham, a weapons expert, and the aforesaid Megan, who's special talent appears to be that she's eye-candy. Sanderson has given each character an oddball quirk or two, but none of this worked for me, and in the end, simply became irritating.

The group begins planning how to bring down Steelheart, and thereby really make a statement. No one has ever taken down a prime level Epic. The goal is to get Steelheart, but in order to do that, they need to get to one of his minions, and the one they choose is the one in charge of the security forces - he apparently uses his own super-generated power to augment his paramilitary teams, and to supply the city with energy to make up a deficit. If he was taken out, it would really put a dent in Steelheart's power structure in more ways than one.

This brings me to another issue! Many villains are named and some are even associated with a power or two, but we see very little of them or what they do. Those parts are a bit like reading a phone book or a who's who. We want to get to the wikipedia entry on them (well, maybe not quite that much detail!), but we are denied.

I continued to like the novel as I quickly read through it. Indeed, I found myself wishing I had more free time so I could simply read it through without stopping, which is a good sign, and a vote for wanting to read the sequels, assuming this one didn’t go belly-up in the last half (it didn't). As a reader, we have to hope for the best while coping with the worst, and I can see how people can become addicted to a series even if it’s less than ideal. It’s not that any given series is necessarily so great, it's that it can be so hard to give that up in the hope of finding something better, and once you've read volume one, you have an investment in things which can be hard to let go. In economics, it’s known as 'commitment bias', or simply the 'sunk cost fallacy'.

Personally, I've never understood how people can dislike volume one of a series and rate it two stars or whatever, and then look forward to volume two! I guess it’s an addiction from which I'm thankfully free. In many ways a series is like having a good friend to hang out with, a partner, a spouse, or even children or a pet. As big of a pain in the ass as they can be from time to time, you really miss them when they're not around. That's why some people stay in miserable relationships which they should have long ago abandoned. It can be miserable to be alone, at least initially, but I don’t agree that this means that we should encourage bad writing by voting with our pocketbook for these pock-marked books!

The series problem is that they’re so easily written in many regards. The first novel is the hardest, of course: you have to create the characters, the world, and the plot and make it work intelligently together and bring it to a satisfying conclusion, but a series demands rebellion against this paradigm by insisting that not only the initial, but each succeeding story is actually never finished. This is unsatisfying by its very nature.

Once that first volume is out of the way, subsequent volumes are far easier because the world and the characters are already there. If the first volume was a success, you already have a fan base and can afford to relax somewhat, and even to take some liberties with your readership. This may account for the bottoming-out of so many second volumes: the author isn’t motivated to try (not like they were in volume one). This doesn’t mean that there's no work to be done, or no effort to be made in volume two and later (obviously there needs to be a new plot which ideally is at least as good as volume one), but you can take a lot of short-cuts because the world and its population is already established. I think this privilege and freedom, and even the shortcuts are all-too-often abused.

One problem I had with this story is one which I've had with far too many other stories: the relationship between the girl and the guy. The authors' preponderant need to have one male and one female, both preferably white, and to have them meet and fall in love no matter what, is a bit sad to say nothing of tiresome. David and Megan don’t have a relationship. They're thrown together artificially, and it's completely nonsensical since they're the two most junior members of the team.

As far as their relationship goes, there isn’t one. Nothing happens or develops. David's entire investment in Megan is sexual - based entirely on superficiality. Later, much later, we get a hint that there may be something more in development, but in general it’s so juvenile, and in the end it's too little too late. At least Sanderson gives a somewhat rational explanation for her hot and cold treatment of David, although even that seemed uncomfortably artificial, especially in that it was directed towards David and no one else on the team - like he was the sole offender.

I liked this novel mostly, and by that I mean that I'm ready to read a sequel to it, but I was disappointed by some of the really clunky parts. The biggest problem I had, I think, was how completely incompetent the Reckoners proved themselves to be. In the beginning, we were asked to accept that they were smart, seasoned, Epic assassins, who plan meticulously, have great success, and who leave no trail back to them. Initially, they didn’t even want David on board because he was so young and amateurish. The reality, as depicted in the novel that we get to read, is that they're idiots who couldn’t build Panama if they had a man, a plan, a canal inside out and backwards.

The first problem was David, the main character and narrator. He was a bad character and was actually at the root of many of the clunkers which irritated me. I don’t expect a perfect character. Indeed, that would be awful, but I do expect one to make sense within his framework. His deliberately lousy metaphors weren't remotely amusing and became tedious very quickly. His really weird obsession with stating, long and loud to anyone who would listen, that handguns were poor and inaccurate and his rifle was infinitely better, sounded like he was quoting the villain from the Clint Eastwood movie A Fistful of Dollars. This was clearly intended to telegraph that this was going somewhere, but it never did!

The next problem was that the two newest members of the team were consistently partnered on missions. This made no sense, and was clearly done for no reason other than to clumsily keep the two together so that romance could blossom, but even if I wanted to swallow down that sorry lump of indigestible gristle, there was no romance! All we were given was adolescent David lusting after Megan's "hot" body. Badly written. Sanderson did this in exemplary fashion in The Rithmatist so why did he perform so poorly here? I dunno.

One crucial issue, which unusually was not tied to David, was that these so-called professionals failed to change their coded frequency after Megan's cell phone was lost. That's all I'm going to say about that, but it made me wonder how people this clueless had managed to even survive, let alone have the success they'd supposedly had in the past.

The most egregious example though, was the incompetence and stupidity exhibited by the team when they tried to take out Conflux, a supposedly a key Epic who controls the security forces. Yes, their information about him is poor, but it’s solid about the route his car takes when traveling through the city. Note that at this point they have the flux gun which can vaporize a target, and they have a power cell which can power it for some twelve shots. All they had to do was wait in concealment on the route and blast Conflux's limo with the gun. They didn’t even have to know if any Epic was in the car. It didn’t matter if they failed on this occasion because they could get away and try later. They failed to do this. They had a gun in place, but it was not the flux gun.

Even when they screwed this up, David could still have salvaged something. He had the flux gun and he had a UV light which he knew would solidify Nightwielder, yet he failed to take him out when a golden opportunity presented itself! They exposed themselves when they didn’t have to and this made no sense.

So this is all I'm going to write about this volume. Let's just say that the ending wasn't god-awful and held a surprise or two, and I'll be looking for the sequels - the next one at least. After that I'll decide whether to go another step! For now I rate this particular volume a worthy read - just don't expect miracles!

Lexicon by Max Barry

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 of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is shorter so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!

Erratum
P17 "…proddel her with his shoe." should be "…prodded her with his shoe."

I love the 'Lexicon' logo. I was attracted to this story because it’s a novel about the power of words. What could be more wonderful than that? Except maybe a story which is about the literal power of words; a story in which certain nonsense words spoken in a certain way can actually control the behavior of another person by slipping past the neurochemical barriers which the mind sets up to filter out unwanted ideas. That's what this novel is. It’s the kind of novel that makes you whine: "Why didn’t I think of that?".

This novel starts out confusingly. It’s done intentionally, but it’s a bit overdone. I can see the point of trying to put us into the confused state of the victim, but there is such a thing as too much! The story begins rather improbably with Wil Parke being kidnapped from an airport restroom by two men at least one of whom is carrying a shotgun. There's a shoot-out in the airport grounds, with some people trying to stop Wil's abductor, Eliot, but in the end he gets away with Wil. Later Eliot seems about to shoot him, but something Wil says regarding his girlfriend (a girlfriend who was waiting to pick him up at the airport but who had obviously betrayed Wil) causes Eliot to have second thoughts and stow the shotgun.

In another place, street-living teen Emily is trying to con people with a three-card scam. She utterly fails to con Lee, because he planted a suggestion in her mind, causing her to fail, and this pisses off her accomplice, so Emily is left on her own. The next morning, after sleeping in a park, she encounters Lee again conducting a survey on a street corner - and curiously asking the very same questions of the people he surveys as did the men who abducted Wil. Emily talks him into buying her breakfast. She tries to talk him into playing the card game again, but he offers her a different 'game' and he says, "Like, don’t blow me" to her, which confuses her slightly and she thinks she's misunderstood him. He then asks her those key questions:

Your name?
Are you cat cat person or a dog person?
Your favorite color?
Pick a number between one and a hundred.
Do you love your family?
Why did you do it?

Finally he says some gobbledygook to her and she feels compelled to follow his suggestion that she go to the bathroom. He follows her in there and takes out his penis, but at the last minute, Emily, who has been thinking he's not such a bad guy after all, suddenly resents all of this and punches him where it hurts most. She takes off running but is cornered by Lee and three other people. She's told that she passed the test: she beat his suggestion, and ends up being offered a scholarship at an exclusive academy set up to train people in the use of powerful 'words' to achieve ends. She decides to check it out, and over the course of many months she learns a lot, including that there are some combinations of letters that, once a recipient's personality type is properly understood, can be tailored to get that person to do whatever you want.

The way this novel is laid out is also a bit confusing. At first, it seemed to me that it’s written in parallel universes, or there are duplicates of various people! Or perhaps the tutors at the academy at which Emily is now a newbie, lead alternate lives. But it was really hard to gage what was going on because the novel was so choppy. We bounced back and forth between Emily and Wil, who are definitely on two different time lines. Wil is being abducted/befriended (it all apparently depends upon the phase of the Moon and which way the wind is blowing) by Eliot, and while his entire story is confined to only a few days or so, Emily's story, interleaved with his, takes place over many months.

This, fortunately, becomes clear as we read more deeply, but at 400 pages, it takes a while for all the pieces to fall into place. Do please rest assured, that this is worth the investment. This novel is outstanding and it’s well written. It makes it worth plowing through some awful ebooks when I can find one or two gems such as Lexicon in there amongst them. This novel has an amazing villain, with whose aims I actually found myself in sympathy at times, although I could never condone his methods. That's why he was a villain for me. I can see Terence Stamp playing him very nicely in a movie.

The hero of the story is Emily, who is as kick-A as any hero I've read, yet she isn’t someone who knocks down doors and shoots bad guys. She isn’t a weapons expert or a martial artist. Nope. Emily has it up top (no, higher than that, where it counts: in her mind. She's brilliant, she's a hard worker, and she wants to learn. She has some serious weaknesses, but she is resilient, inventive, and overcomes obstacles even when it’s time-consuming and painful to do so. And she can talk you into anything without even using sex. I rate Emily up there with Katsa and Kitai, and she doesn’t even have a feline name! Believe me, that's quite a compliment from me.

Indeed, Emily is quite the opposite of a cat, but to tell you more would be to give away secrets! I can see someone like Charice Pempengco playing Emily, or maybe Hansika Motwani, or Reem Al Baroudy. Maybe Tom Green to play Wil, and Matt Bomer or Ryan Sypek as Eliot

Down to Earth again! There are certain people who have been trained to unlock pathways in your mind by the use of key words, which don't even sound like any language you might know. But a short string of these followed by a command will compel you to carry out that command, and even make you feel like it’s a good idea to do what you've been told. I need to learn this skill to use on my kids! All the characters who are skilled at this practice are referred to as 'poets' and are code-named after people who were noted for their writing skills even though they were not strictly poets necessarily: Atwood, Bronte, De Castro, Eliot, Woolf, Yeats. The latter of these is paradoxically both the best poet and the most soulless of them all. TS Eliot is the one with Wil. He was also a teacher at the academy which Emily attended - her favorite, in fact.

Initially Emily does well at school, but she seems to flunk out twice only to be brought back. The second time, she gets to meet Yeats - something she was given to understand would never happen. This is a momentous meeting, and results in her being exiled (or deployed, depending on how you view it) to the middle-of-nowhere town in Australia called Broken Hill.

There are several attempts on Wil's life - or attempts to try and get him free of Eliot - again it depends on your PoV. These attempts fail. We learn more of Broken Hill, and it sounds like some other Broken Hill at some other time, one which has been closed off for the next two hundred years because of a toxic gas leak - so everyone is told. We're told that the rebel poet Woolf said a word there which wiped out the entire population of three thousand, and worse, the word still has power; it sits there still, waiting to wreak more destruction. But is this true? Can it be true? How can a word hang around like that?

One time when Eliot sent a kid, someone who was supposedly immune to the power of such suggestions into Broken Hill, he came back out with an ax in his hand evidently intent upon butchering Eliot - who shoots him dead. The kid was lucky, I guess: we're told that he's the only one who has ever actually come back out of Broken Hill once sent in.

So what the heck is going on here? What happened in Broken Hill? Does Emily need to take on Yeats? Can she even think of succeeding in bringing down the guy who is perhaps the most skilled practitioner of poetic suggestion in the entire world? This is a slow-burn story which brings a solid reward. I loved it. axbagor mrysow xiconn adlere go read max Barry's Lexicon now!